
Early-career funding for individuals interested in improving long-term future - apsec112
https://www.openphilanthropy.org/focus/other-areas/early-career-funding-individuals-interested-improving-long-term-future
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DoreenMichele
It sounds nice in theory, but in practice programs like this strike me as not
very effective in achieving their stated goals.

The applicants who get accepted will tend to be those whose ideas are within
the Overton Window and who are good at playing the game, politically/career-
wise, under the current system. Real change tends to come from the margins and
tends to be overlooked initially as nothing worth anything.

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Overton_window](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Overton_window)

I've lived without a car for over a decade. When I worked at Aflac, they had a
number of programs to try to encourage people to car pool and the like and
these programs were mostly useless because they were mostly created by people
with car-centric lives, for people with car-centric lives and they defaulted
to car-centric assumptions. They mostly didn't fit my life -- a person
actually living without a car -- and I stopped participating in some of them
for fear of getting in trouble after there was an incident where the parking
privileges of a friend of mine were revoked under one of the programs when it
came out she was giving me a ride to work, but not home again in the evening.

So I have some first-hand experience with how such things go and I'm not
hugely impressed. Real change tends to not qualify for this kind of support.

