Backing up civilization by colonizing Mars or other space efforts. (So far, SpaceX has been very successful as a for-profit business, but maybe there are aspects of space colonization where philanthropy could help. I also think a serious bunker-building operation, with higher standards than most bunker construction today, could potentially be run as a profitable business selling to governments, prepper billionaires, etc.)
To the extent that long-run economic growth is a longtermist goal and isn’t totally overshadowed by X-risk, there are lots of ways we might encourage a faster pace of economic development:
Lobbying for generally neoliberal pro-growth policies, including things like free trade, immigration, lighter regulation especially in cost-diseased sectors like healthcare and housing, etc. (Although like all politics, this is controversial and does not have the “everyone agrees it is helping” property of Givewell charities.)
Experimenting with promising new economic systems like quadratic funding of public goods, Georgist land taxes, etc. Trying to improve governance, social technology, and institutional decision-making by supporting things like prediction markets and charter cities. (Although experimentation is necessarily a “hits-based” business, thus doesn’t have the guaranteed-impact aspect of Givewell charities).
It would be great if we had some way of putting money towards reducing “existential risk factors”—if improving US-China relations was as straightforward as buying carbon offset credits, I think that would attract a hell of a lot of funding.
Some relatively measurable, concrete megaprojects that might help the long-term future (super-high cost effectiveness not necessarily guaranteed):
Backing up civilization by constructing giant underground bunkers and the like.
Backing up civilization by colonizing Mars or other space efforts. (So far, SpaceX has been very successful as a for-profit business, but maybe there are aspects of space colonization where philanthropy could help. I also think a serious bunker-building operation, with higher standards than most bunker construction today, could potentially be run as a profitable business selling to governments, prepper billionaires, etc.)
To the extent that long-run economic growth is a longtermist goal and isn’t totally overshadowed by X-risk, there are lots of ways we might encourage a faster pace of economic development:
Lobbying for generally neoliberal pro-growth policies, including things like free trade, immigration, lighter regulation especially in cost-diseased sectors like healthcare and housing, etc. (Although like all politics, this is controversial and does not have the “everyone agrees it is helping” property of Givewell charities.)
Experimenting with promising new economic systems like quadratic funding of public goods, Georgist land taxes, etc. Trying to improve governance, social technology, and institutional decision-making by supporting things like prediction markets and charter cities. (Although experimentation is necessarily a “hits-based” business, thus doesn’t have the guaranteed-impact aspect of Givewell charities).
Trying to advance scientific fields either by directly funding promising areas, or by trying to improve the functioning of academia and science grantmakers as institutions. (Although the opportunities here are probably less scalable than elsewhere.)
It would be great if we had some way of putting money towards reducing “existential risk factors”—if improving US-China relations was as straightforward as buying carbon offset credits, I think that would attract a hell of a lot of funding.
Could you break this up into separate comments for each idea please.