(These are more additional considerations, not intended to be counterarguments given that your post itself was mostly pointing at additional considerations.)
Objection.
The longtermism community can enjoy above-average growth for only a finite window of time. (It can at most control all resources, after which its growth equals average growth.)
Thus, spending money on growing the longtermism community now rather than later merely moves a transient window of additional resource growth to an earlier point in time.
We should be indifferent about the timing of benefits, so this effect doesn’t matter. On the other hand, by waiting one year we can earn positive expected returns by (e.g.) investing into the stock market.
To sum up, giving later rather than now has two effects: (1) moving a fixed window of additional growth around in time and (2) leaving us more time to earn positive financial returns. The first effect is neutral, the second is positive. Thus, overall, giving later is always better.
Given that longtermists are generally concerned with trajectory changes, controlling all resources seems like we’ve largely ‘won’, and having more financial returns on top of this seems fairly negligible by comparison. In many cases I’d gladly trade absolute financial returns for controlling a greater fraction of the world’s resources sooner.
Second, the target you need to hit is arguably pretty narrow. The objection only applies conclusively to things that basically create cause-agnostic, transferable resources that are allocated at least as well as if allocated by your future self. If resources are tied to a particular cause area, are not transferable, or are more poorly allocated, they count less.
Speaking to movement-building as an alternative to financial investment in particular:
It feels to me like quality-adjusted longtermists are more readily transferable and cause-agnostic than money on short time-scales, in the sense that they can either earn money or do direct work, and at least right now, we seem to be having trouble effectively turning money into direct work.
It’s definitely a lot less clear whether there’s a compounding effect to longtermists and how readily they can be transferred into the longer-term future. For what it’s worth, I’d guess there is such a compounding effect, and they can be transferred, especially given historical evidence of transfer of values between generations. Whether this is true / consistent / competitive with stock market returns is definitely debateable and a matter of ‘messy empirics’, though.
(These are more additional considerations, not intended to be counterarguments given that your post itself was mostly pointing at additional considerations.)
Given that longtermists are generally concerned with trajectory changes, controlling all resources seems like we’ve largely ‘won’, and having more financial returns on top of this seems fairly negligible by comparison. In many cases I’d gladly trade absolute financial returns for controlling a greater fraction of the world’s resources sooner.
Speaking to movement-building as an alternative to financial investment in particular:
It feels to me like quality-adjusted longtermists are more readily transferable and cause-agnostic than money on short time-scales, in the sense that they can either earn money or do direct work, and at least right now, we seem to be having trouble effectively turning money into direct work.
It’s definitely a lot less clear whether there’s a compounding effect to longtermists and how readily they can be transferred into the longer-term future. For what it’s worth, I’d guess there is such a compounding effect, and they can be transferred, especially given historical evidence of transfer of values between generations. Whether this is true / consistent / competitive with stock market returns is definitely debateable and a matter of ‘messy empirics’, though.
Yes, with how under invested in GCR mitigation is now, I think it is better to have many resources for longtermism sooner.