I love EA as a concept, I've proselytized for it, but I've never contributed actual money. I feel vaguely ashamed about that last part.

My problem with EA is that it lacks aggression towards its competitors. I think this is a very serious issue, for the following reasons.

The largest altruistic organisations, especially in political developmental aid, seriously suck. Much like religions, they enjoy some immunity from criticism and benefit from lots of goodwill from volunteer workers. That has made them complacent, and they do not seriously compete with each other. They're intransparent, tribal and too badly managed to be effective. In many cases, they spend more money in the First World than in the Third. They're typical places for semi-retired politicians and their relatives to get employment, which I'm sure often isn't technically a that was quite critical, but still nowhere near hostile enough.

I'm confident a mere 10% increase in effectiveness of the "Mega-Charities" would move more dollars the right way than a doubling of the EA population. And it wouldn't be hard to do; some investigative reporting can go a long way. But for actual actual investigative work you have to be willing to do some actual damage.

Everybody else has an excuse why they don't do that. EA doesn't. And that makes me think they just lack the aggression. Maybe Scott Alexander is right about EA people being super scupulous. Scrupulosity isn't a fighting stance.