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.
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.