I have too many EA T-shirts from conferences. What should I do with them?

On further googling, there is actually an active proposal by the Commission!
The proposed directive introduces a new type of legal form (the "European cross-border association"), which will make it a lot easier for non-profits to operate across the entire EEA.

However, at this stage, the issue of taxation is not addressed. The European Parliament is expected to work on the proposal before the election next year, so now may be a good time to call further attention to this :)

I looked into this for a few hours a while ago - it's crazy to me that Cross-Border commerce is so easy in the EU, but tax-deductible cross-border donations are not.

I think there should be a push for harmonizing EU rules on tax-deductibility. Two scenarios:

1. You could make anything that's deemed a charity/public benefit in an EU country automatically deductible everywhere.
2. Or, if member states can't agree on criteria, create a new legal status for some orgs that means they are automatically deemed public benefit by any EU country. Ideally, this status would also be available to non-EU entities.

I would like to make this happen, but I have no idea how.

Do you have any takes on insect farming? There's a company that sells protein powder made from crickets, and they basically claim they feel no pain and are super efficient. Could that be on the same scale or even better than vegan protein powder, made from e.g. peas?

https://eatsens.com/pages/cricket-protein

I wonder what EV projects the money was dedicated for. Which project actually ended up with a budget shortfall?

I very much agree, and I believe the whole community needs to think about our values. Every local group or other EA group should agree on some values and live by them.

I really like this frame of "given these constraints, how can we do the most good?", and I think EA doesn't do enough of that.

Giving the standard EA answer: Usually, people in crisis situations are less neglected than the global poor, that also lack access to clean water and healthcare. Right now, millions of people are thinking about how they can help Palestinians. So you should still prefer donating to e.g. GiveWell recommendations.

However, that misses the point that there are cheap effectiveness improvements you can unlock by slightly improving your friends' decision making and having them select a better Palestinian org.

First, some terminology: cash transfers are an intervention within the Cause Area of extreme poverty.

Their effectiveness needs to be compared to other available interventions. GiveWell is an organization that does just that, and they found bednets much more effective than cash transfers. I suppose many EAs choose to follow GiveWell on these judgements.

While Give Directly is definitely awesome and more effective than most charities, they don't really put together a convincing argument that they are more effective than bednets in this post. In general, I do like their point that we should think beyond the marginal donation. However, this isn't a post about politics or how to influence large amounts of money. It's a post that wants to get you to donate to Give Directly.

The Problem isn't that they make money from their superior product. The problem, as I understand, is that they use an unethical business model to do so, heavily distorting the options available to doctors and locking them into using their product.

At the very least, I think they should openly justify their pricing strategy. The public and Danaher's customers should know about their profits, per-machine and per-test, so they can negotiate fairer deals.