Re 1: if I’m understanding you right, this would just lower the interest rate from r to r—capital ‘depreciation rate’. So it wouldn’t change any of the qualitative conclusions, except that it would make it more plausible that the EA movement (or any particular movement) is, for modeling purposes, “impatient”. But cool, that’s an important point. And particularly relevant these days; my understanding is that a lot of Will’s(/etc) excitement around finding megaprojects ASAP is driven by the sense that if we don’t, some of the money will wander off.
Re 2: another good point. In this case I just think it would make the big qualitative conclusion hold even more strongly—no need to earn to give because money is even easier to come by, relative to labor, than the model suggests. But maybe it would be worth working through it after adding an explicit “wealth recruitment” function, to make sure there are no surprises.
Re 3: I agree, but I suspect—perhaps pessimistically—that the asymptotics of this model (if it’s roughly accurate at all) bite a long time before EA wealth is a large enough fraction of global capital to push down the interest rate! Indeed, I don’t think it’s crazy to think they’re already biting. Presumably the thing to do if you actually got to that point would be to start allocating more resources to R&D, to raise labor productivity and thus the return to capital. There are many ways I’d want to make the model more realistic before worrying about the constraints you run into when you start owning continents (a scenario for which there would presumably be plenty of time to prepare...!); but as noted, one of the extensions I’m hoping gets done before too long is to make (at least certain kinds of) R&D endogenous. So hopefully that would be at least somewhat relevant.
Thanks! A lot of good points here.
Re 1: if I’m understanding you right, this would just lower the interest rate from r to r—capital ‘depreciation rate’. So it wouldn’t change any of the qualitative conclusions, except that it would make it more plausible that the EA movement (or any particular movement) is, for modeling purposes, “impatient”. But cool, that’s an important point. And particularly relevant these days; my understanding is that a lot of Will’s(/etc) excitement around finding megaprojects ASAP is driven by the sense that if we don’t, some of the money will wander off.
Re 2: another good point. In this case I just think it would make the big qualitative conclusion hold even more strongly—no need to earn to give because money is even easier to come by, relative to labor, than the model suggests. But maybe it would be worth working through it after adding an explicit “wealth recruitment” function, to make sure there are no surprises.
Re 3: I agree, but I suspect—perhaps pessimistically—that the asymptotics of this model (if it’s roughly accurate at all) bite a long time before EA wealth is a large enough fraction of global capital to push down the interest rate! Indeed, I don’t think it’s crazy to think they’re already biting. Presumably the thing to do if you actually got to that point would be to start allocating more resources to R&D, to raise labor productivity and thus the return to capital. There are many ways I’d want to make the model more realistic before worrying about the constraints you run into when you start owning continents (a scenario for which there would presumably be plenty of time to prepare...!); but as noted, one of the extensions I’m hoping gets done before too long is to make (at least certain kinds of) R&D endogenous. So hopefully that would be at least somewhat relevant.