A few thoughts on how we could mitigate some of these risks:
Have generous reimbursement policies at EA orgs but don’t pay exorbitant salaries.
I think most EAs should value their time higher and be willing to trade money for time, and in these cases, I think you can justify a business expense. I think this will help clarify which spending choices are meant to actually boost productivity and which are just for fun. To be clear, I think spending some fraction of your income on just “fun” things like vacations, concerts, and eating out is fine in moderation. But to me at least, the shallow pond thought experiment is still basically true and there is plenty of need left in the world, even with the current funding situation.
I think we systematically overestimate how much spending more on personal consumption will make us happy/productive. I know plenty of people in finance/consulting/tech who have convinced themselves that they “need” to spend hundreds of thousands on personal consumption every year. I’ve lived in NYC on <$50K after taxes and donating for 4 years and feel like I’ve been able to do basically everything I want to do.
Emphasize costly signals of altruism.
We should encourage people to take the GWWC pledge and go vegetarian/vegan because they’re probably good things to do on their merits and because they signal a commitment to making a sacrifice to help others.
A few thoughts on how we could mitigate some of these risks:
Have generous reimbursement policies at EA orgs but don’t pay exorbitant salaries.
I think most EAs should value their time higher and be willing to trade money for time, and in these cases, I think you can justify a business expense. I think this will help clarify which spending choices are meant to actually boost productivity and which are just for fun. To be clear, I think spending some fraction of your income on just “fun” things like vacations, concerts, and eating out is fine in moderation. But to me at least, the shallow pond thought experiment is still basically true and there is plenty of need left in the world, even with the current funding situation.
I think we systematically overestimate how much spending more on personal consumption will make us happy/productive. I know plenty of people in finance/consulting/tech who have convinced themselves that they “need” to spend hundreds of thousands on personal consumption every year. I’ve lived in NYC on <$50K after taxes and donating for 4 years and feel like I’ve been able to do basically everything I want to do.
Emphasize costly signals of altruism.
We should encourage people to take the GWWC pledge and go vegetarian/vegan because they’re probably good things to do on their merits and because they signal a commitment to making a sacrifice to help others.
Strong upvoted because of the clear distinction between productivity/business expenses and spending money for fun/personal consumption.