Generally, I wouldn’t worry too much about longtermist. In macroeconomics there’s the ‘Tinbergen Rule—a basic principle of effective policy, which states that to achieve n independent policy targets you need at at least n independent policy instruments).’
Why have you categorised monetary policy as a neartermist intervention? Why not a longtermist? There’s a very clear and direct impact on economic growth which will naturally see the vast majority of value/disvalue in the future. For me this puts monetary policy in the longtermist intervention camp.
Other cause areas that focus on saving lives or reducing suffering in the short-term might naturally be seen to be neartermist cause areas because the link to economic growth / x-risk is very unclear. In this case a somewhat credible argument can be made that you can ignore future effects because you have no clear what they are (although some have pushed back against this view).
It seems to me however that judging an intervention that has a clear impact on economic growth based solely on very short-term effects is wholly inadequate. You’re ignoring too much in doing so!
I take your point. I agree that this is important, that’s why I engaged with this topic because it’s quite a large lever. However, ultimately, I see the first order effects of the advocacy on the macroeconomy are perhaps not as important as the second order effects of making suboptimal grants on OpenPhil and the wider EA community (including reputational effects). This because the overall amount of grants in 2021 were perhaps relatively low and likely didn’t cause contribute in a massive way to current inflation. Put simply, I’m not saying that OpenPhil is a major cause of current inflation. Maybe it’s important not to conflate magnitude of effect with whether something is longtermist (if you speed up growth by a tiny amount through macroeconomic policy, then surely it’s less important on the longterm future, than say, curing all disease).
Generally, maybe the difference between longtermist and neartermist interventions is a bit fuzzy and ill-defined at this stage.
Why have you categorised monetary policy as a neartermist intervention? Why not a longtermist? There’s a very clear and direct impact on economic growth which will naturally see the vast majority of value/disvalue in the future. For me this puts monetary policy in the longtermist intervention camp.
Other cause areas that focus on saving lives or reducing suffering in the short-term might naturally be seen to be neartermist cause areas because the link to economic growth / x-risk is very unclear. In this case a somewhat credible argument can be made that you can ignore future effects because you have no clear what they are (although some have pushed back against this view).
It seems to me however that judging an intervention that has a clear impact on economic growth based solely on very short-term effects is wholly inadequate. You’re ignoring too much in doing so!
I take your point. I agree that this is important, that’s why I engaged with this topic because it’s quite a large lever. However, ultimately, I see the first order effects of the advocacy on the macroeconomy are perhaps not as important as the second order effects of making suboptimal grants on OpenPhil and the wider EA community (including reputational effects). This because the overall amount of grants in 2021 were perhaps relatively low and likely didn’t cause contribute in a massive way to current inflation. Put simply, I’m not saying that OpenPhil is a major cause of current inflation. Maybe it’s important not to conflate magnitude of effect with whether something is longtermist (if you speed up growth by a tiny amount through macroeconomic policy, then surely it’s less important on the longterm future, than say, curing all disease).
Generally, maybe the difference between longtermist and neartermist interventions is a bit fuzzy and ill-defined at this stage.
A few random thoughts on this:
Maybe the difference is more that of broad vs. narrow interventions
Relatedly, Why Charities Usually Don’t Differ Astronomically in Expected Cost-Effectiveness
At OpenPhil, the macroeconomics program is not in the Longtermist department.