I found this approach very hard to make sense of. If we take the value of a statistical life as $250k/year, does that mean the optimal thing to do for anyone earning less than $250k is to stop working? Or rather, work as little as they can to stay alive?
If it is the optimal thing, that is in tension with your ‘sanity check’
However, as a sanity check, I will do the standard economist thing: use revealed preference, and assume that people are optimizing in a well-functioning market
seeing as people clearly try to earn more than simply to stay alive.
I sense that there is some kind of deep confusion or miscommunication here that may take a while to resolve. Have you read the Life-Valuation Variability post? In it, I explain why “The Value of a Statistical Life in a country” should be understood very narrowly and specifically as “The exchange rate between lives and money when taking money away from, or giving money to, people in that country”.
This post is not meant to tell individuals how to live their lives. There is a huge variation in individual preferences for leisure vs buying nice things. However, I do observe that most of the smart people are either FIREing or working at high-status jobs that give them utility. And there are reasons to believe that social pressures and monkey-brain instincts cause people to value consumption much more than they should if they were actually optimizing for happiness.
I think that it would be useful for people to think that their leisure is valued at $60 an hour, and adjust things accordingly. This is most useful for giving yourself permission to say no to unpleasant time-costing obligations that generate less than $60/hr of value for the world. And If you have the ability to do so, you should experiment with working less and consuming less, and enjoying more leisure, to see what that does for you.
I do believe that, after we have already maxed out all giving opportunities with a better payoff (i.e. we have solved all x-risk problems, ended global poverty, and put humanity on a path to filling the universe with flourishing life), and if there is enough automation of the production of basic needs to support it, then it would be optimal to pay everyone enough of a basic income so that nobody who earns less than $60 an hour ever has to work for a living if they don’t want to.
I found this approach very hard to make sense of. If we take the value of a statistical life as $250k/year, does that mean the optimal thing to do for anyone earning less than $250k is to stop working? Or rather, work as little as they can to stay alive?
If it is the optimal thing, that is in tension with your ‘sanity check’
seeing as people clearly try to earn more than simply to stay alive.
Please let me know if/what I’ve misunderstood!
I sense that there is some kind of deep confusion or miscommunication here that may take a while to resolve. Have you read the Life-Valuation Variability post? In it, I explain why “The Value of a Statistical Life in a country” should be understood very narrowly and specifically as “The exchange rate between lives and money when taking money away from, or giving money to, people in that country”.
This post is not meant to tell individuals how to live their lives. There is a huge variation in individual preferences for leisure vs buying nice things. However, I do observe that most of the smart people are either FIREing or working at high-status jobs that give them utility. And there are reasons to believe that social pressures and monkey-brain instincts cause people to value consumption much more than they should if they were actually optimizing for happiness.
I think that it would be useful for people to think that their leisure is valued at $60 an hour, and adjust things accordingly. This is most useful for giving yourself permission to say no to unpleasant time-costing obligations that generate less than $60/hr of value for the world. And If you have the ability to do so, you should experiment with working less and consuming less, and enjoying more leisure, to see what that does for you.
I do believe that, after we have already maxed out all giving opportunities with a better payoff (i.e. we have solved all x-risk problems, ended global poverty, and put humanity on a path to filling the universe with flourishing life), and if there is enough automation of the production of basic needs to support it, then it would be optimal to pay everyone enough of a basic income so that nobody who earns less than $60 an hour ever has to work for a living if they don’t want to.