[epistemic status: tentative, as I did not pay attention very well in my one-credit accounting class ~20 years ago]

Regarding your summary of the evidence, I'm not sure how much weight to give the lived experiences of PfG / PfG-adjacent companies. I pulled data for two of them, and I didn't see evidence of large improvements in margins relative to what I would expect from comparable profit-for-yacht businesses. Although presumably businesses could improve, these are also among the current best-in-class PfG companies -- and survivorship bias means that we're not likely to analyze attempts that didn't work out well (or at all).

Thankyou's financials are difficult to discern -- most numbers of interest are redacted in the report I pulled from the Australian charity regulator. A 2019 news report reflects donations of about $700K AUD (about half of its profit) on revenues of about $31MM. I confess that I don't know a whole lot about the "fast-moving consumer goods" category . . . but profits equal to about 4.5% and donate-able profits of about half that doesn't immediately strike me as having a massive advantage to similarly situated private-profit competitors. I did not see sales numbers for the Good Store, so don't have any comparison to make there. 

To check another PFG company: Newman's Own was reported in 2017 to have donated close to $30M a year on sales of over $600M/year, so ~5%. A glance at KraftHeinz's balance sheet -- obviously they sell much more than salad dressing! -- suggests net income after taxes of about 10% of net sales (p. 60 of this link). Although donate-able profits and net income after taxes aren't the same thing, the numbers here don't give me the impression that Newman's Own -- which has been around for decades -- is crushing it compared to its competitors in the field. (Also I think one should consider what Newman's Own would look like without the free strong endorsement by Paul Newman. I think failure to make that adjustment would oversell PfG's contribution to the enterprise's success.)

To be sure, KraftHeinz's numbers reflect the advantage of its size. But the large companies that currently lead in the market come to the table with that advantage, and their access to capital would be much better even if all of EA (or even all of US philanthropy) became sold on PfG. They can (and presumably would) use those advantages in an attempt to drive off any PfG firm they deemed to be too threatening. So comparing PfG margins to the margins of industry-leading megafirms, rather than similarly-sized and capitalized profit-for-yacht firms, seems appropriate here.

I don't understand the relevance of "people will not generally pay non-trivial amounts more for companies that 'do good'." Here, Brad's argument is that the consumer doesn't have to pay extra for the Profit for Good choice, which is substantively identical other than where the profits go:

When people can choose between two identical products at the same price, and one enriches shareholders while the other funds solving real problems, people choose solving problems. 

(emphasis added).

Could you say more about the relevance you perceive to the theory and/or practice of effective altruism? 

Part 1 frames this significantly in terms of actions by major corporations (that includes big universities) exercising their power, especially tech companies. On the one side, I'm less worried about the risk of individual people and relatively small social movements effectively suppressing speech than I am about big tech companies or even "ordinary" major corporations doing so. To the extent that an EA actor is powerful enough to achieve some suppression, the actual effect on the suppressed speech's ability to obtain a hearing should be pretty minimal. 

On the other side, I find the interests of individuals and social movements in distancing themselves from speech they find odious to be much greater than for large corporations. Some of that is about association -- if you're trying to create a certain sort of community, tolerating problematic speech is going to impede that.

So the balance implied by the linked material -- which to be fair, wasn't written with the EA community in mind -- doesn't strike me as particularly helpful for the types of "suppression" decisions that individual EAs, EA actors, and the EA community are likely to face.

(The post including "This demographic has historically been disconnected from social impact" made me much less inclined to want this person to stick around.)

Barring pretty unusual circumstances, I don't think commenting on the relative undesirability of an individual poster sticking around is warranted. Especially when the individual poster is new and commenting on a criticism-adjacent area.

I don't like the quoted sentence from the original poster either, as it stands -- if someone is going to make that assertion, it needs to be better specified and supported. But there are lots of communities in which it wouldn't be seen as controversial or needing support (especially in the context of a short post). So judging a newcomer for not knowing that this community would expect specification/support does not seem appropriate.

Moreover, if we're going to take LLM outputs seriously, it's worth noting that ChatGPT thinks the quote is significantly true:

Even though I don't take ChatGPT's answer too seriously, I do think it is evidence that the original statement was neither frivolous nor presented in bad faith.

I directionally agree with this comment, but I think the concept of UPFs is broader / murkier than:

When people talk about UPFs, they're clearly concerned about chemical additives like emulsifiers, stabilizers, colorings, and artificial sweeteners. 

In addition to ingredient-level concerns, people also seem concerned with manufacturing and processing steps like freeze drying, curing, hydrogenating, extremely heating, etc. A commonly-used framework is discussed here. Unfortunately, eliminating "chemical additives" from alternative proteins strikes me as a much easier task than avoiding industrial processing. 

(I do think at the consumer level, the working definition of ultra-processed food is probably more vibes-based than either of my links would imply.)

In other words, how can EA turn 90% of people into semi-altruists instead of turning 1% of people into perfectly effective altruists? I think the 10% pledge in its current structure isn't very appealing to 90% of people.

Looking at successful non-EA social movements, I suspect that endorsing a multi-level approach rather than moving away from higher-commitment organizations would be the right move. Think of Christianity (or probably other religions, I just know Christianity better) -- you have the option of full-in commitment as a monk or a run, but also significantly lower-commitment options to appeal to the larger population. That doesn't mean moving away from offering medium- or higher-commitment options, though.

I don't think there is a great understanding of why EA has been relatively unsuccessful at reaching broader populations at more modest commitment levels. I think it is in part a cultural issue, but I don't think that's all of it.

This analysis doesn't account for the potential downsides of excess protein consumption -- cf., based on a quick non-AI search, the discussion here for a specific risk, this older review article for a broader discussion.

I don't claim to be qualified to balance those potential tradeoffs against the potential advantages, but think they should be acknowledged.

In fact, wouldn’t it be much easier in general for people to conceptualize and pledge a certain % of their total assets to EA causes upon passing instead of doing it every year? 

It might be easier to conceptualize, but it might not be particularly impactful.

(I'm going to use numbers close to US medians. The 10% Pledge was created by middle-class people, and I think its middle-class accessibility is an important part of keeping EA at least mildly "democratic.")

Suppose a 25-year old ("Jane Doe") will have total earnings of $3M over a 40-year period in current dollars (averaging $75,000 per year in current dollars). The the national average wage index is about $69K nowadays, but round numbers are easier to work with.

So the value of what the pledge asks of Jane is $300K in current dollars. That's a significant ask, to be sure, and much ink has been spilled about whether it the right amount. It probably is a bit too much for Jane, but then again I expect that the average person with openness to the 10% Pledge has above-average earnings capacity. Although I would prefer some income gradation to the Pledge, the people who run it have emphasized simplicity, and it doesn't sound like a graduated scale would address your concern anyway.

I question whether Jane's estate will have $300K in current dollars in it when she dies. The US median household wealth was $167K in 2021, mostly home equity. Older workers will have more, but there's also dissaving in retirement. The average inheritance conditioned on receiving an inheritance is $184K according to this (also 2021). 

Even if we're generous and assume Jane will have $300K in current-dollar assets when she dies, the "certain % of their total assets" would have to be 100% to match the commitment level of the current pledge. For at least most people with kids -- and if Jane is statistically common, she will have at least one child -- that is a very hard sell. If the ask was (say) 25% of assets at death, the pledge might be only 12-25% as impactful as the 10% Pledge.

So, at a minimum, I think one would need to compare an equal-sacrifice version of "% of income" vs. "% of assets at death." 

A few other observations:

• The balancing act, I think, is minimizing a "holier than thou" attitude while making an implied moral claim effectively. Any solution involves some degree of tradeoffs.
• When most people sign the Pledge, I think they can be seen as impliedly asserting something. That is approximately: People similarly situated to me should give away a meaningful amount of their income, where meaningful is an amount whose absence is clearly noticed but is not onerous. It's inevitable that making this kind of assertion is going to be controversial.
• The signaling value of having a community of people pledging to make donations when they die is much weaker than having a community of live givers. It's not the pledging that conveys moral weight so much as the doing. It's very easy to dismiss mere pledges without action as performative.
• I think the claim-making power of giving is lower when one gives only (or predominately) at death for a different reason as well. The universe has already decided to divest you of your money at that point. So in some sense, the donor who gives at death is spending (what would counterfactually be) other people's money. I take -- and I think many people take -- the moral claims of people who opine about how to spend other people's money much less seriously than the claims of people who spend their own money on a cause.

Canva strikes me as something other than "classic" Profit for Good (at least as I've understood it). That understanding has involved the vast majority of profits / enterprise value being devoted to charitable purposes, which in turn makes it nearly impossible to secure sufficient traditional venture capital interest. Canva has been able to attract plenty of VC interest, so doesn't strike me as very relevant to the "classic" model as I understand it.

Moreover, from a glance at its homepage, it doesn't seem to me that Canva is marketing heavily on its charitable pledge. (From a consumer perspective, I haven't been aware of Bosch doing so either, despite owning one of their dishwashers). So I don't have an update here on the extent to which advertising a corporation's very strong charitable commitment would radically affect consumer choice.

One downside is that you may end up with a suboptimal filter. The one you linked, for instance, is P2 (~N95 in US) rather than P3 (~N100 or P100) -- so less protective against particulates. It does add some protection against organic vapors ("A1") -- but I don't think that would add anything in a pandemic scenario and likely reduces breathability. 3M does make some P3-rated models in that series, but I bet the cost is higher and breathability worse (because they also incorporate ratings against other gases and/or a higher rating against organic vapors).