I hadn’t thought of this and found it quite compelling.
“When markets are doing unusually well, other funders have unusually much to spend on services for the poor, and the poor probably have more to spend on themselves as well. So it probably gets more costly to increase their wellbeing.”
And the flipside that if the market crashes, that money sitting in the bank could become so much more valuable as philanthropy than its face dollar value. Nice one!
“and An EA-aligned endowment held in safe bonds would not have lost value, and so would have done a lot more good now that the marginal utility to “EA spending” is (presumably permanently) higher than it otherwise would have been.
Thanks! As others have commented, the strength of this consideration (and of many of the other considerations) is quite ambiguous, and I’d love to see more research on it. But at least qualitatively, I think it’s been underappreciated by existing discussion.
I hadn’t thought of this and found it quite compelling.
“When markets are doing unusually well, other funders have unusually much to spend on services for the poor, and the poor probably have more to spend on themselves as well. So it probably gets more costly to increase their wellbeing.”
And the flipside that if the market crashes, that money sitting in the bank could become so much more valuable as philanthropy than its face dollar value. Nice one!
“and An EA-aligned endowment held in safe bonds would not have lost value, and so would have done a lot more good now that the marginal utility to “EA spending” is (presumably permanently) higher than it otherwise would have been.
Nice one.
Thanks! As others have commented, the strength of this consideration (and of many of the other considerations) is quite ambiguous, and I’d love to see more research on it. But at least qualitatively, I think it’s been underappreciated by existing discussion.