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The alternative is not only Open Philanthropy/the NHS/the government listening to people. It's the people organizing themselves civically, independently, and more unconstrainedly. For this you don't need to have barriers to entry of the kinds you are thinking of, you need for the community to not have atrophied a muscle of organizing things of its own initiative, using its own resources, with its own labour. As an example, consider the Informal Anarchist Federation.
I'm arguing on the margin. Yes, the current top model has costs, and I think that on reflection these are much higher than when EA is advertising itself, which should lead to other alternatives looking better on the margin. I'm saying that, if one reflects on these dynamics, for some fraction of people who buy deeply into EA, the costs will have been too high. Maybe the trouble is that I'm not arguing "EA as a whole should", but rather at the level of individuals.
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