[Epistemic status: have never thought about this issue specifically in a focused way.]
I think as a super rough first pass it makes sense to think that, all else equal, smaller populations mean more hinginess.
I feel uncertain to what extent this is just because we should then expect any single person to own a greater share of total resources at some point in time. One extreme assumption would be that the relative distribution of resources at any given point in time is the prior for everyone’s influence over the long-run future, perhaps weighted by how much they care about the long run. On that extreme assumption, this would probably mean that the maximum influence over all agents is higher today because global inequality is presumably higher than during population bottlenecks or in fact any past period. However, I think that assumption is too extreme: it’s not the case that every generation can propagate their values indefinitely, with the share of their influence staying constant; for example, it might be that certain developments are determined by environmental conditions or other factors that are independent from any human’s values. This turns on quite controversial questions around environmental/technological determinism that probably have a nuanced rather than simple answer.
[Epistemic status: have never thought about this issue specifically in a focused way.]
I think as a super rough first pass it makes sense to think that, all else equal, smaller populations mean more hinginess.
I feel uncertain to what extent this is just because we should then expect any single person to own a greater share of total resources at some point in time. One extreme assumption would be that the relative distribution of resources at any given point in time is the prior for everyone’s influence over the long-run future, perhaps weighted by how much they care about the long run. On that extreme assumption, this would probably mean that the maximum influence over all agents is higher today because global inequality is presumably higher than during population bottlenecks or in fact any past period. However, I think that assumption is too extreme: it’s not the case that every generation can propagate their values indefinitely, with the share of their influence staying constant; for example, it might be that certain developments are determined by environmental conditions or other factors that are independent from any human’s values. This turns on quite controversial questions around environmental/technological determinism that probably have a nuanced rather than simple answer.