Generally this discussion, even within EA circles, is much too short-termist.
Most people in EA don’t discount the future much, if at all. This means they will care about timescales of thousands or millions of years. The compounding nature of economic growth means that increased growth could result in people in the mid-far future becoming much richer than they otherwise would have been. So even a small impact of a typical annual rate of economic growth on happiness can mean a lot of extra happiness over a long time frame. This impact, you rightly imply, may not be able to be matched by other interventions.
The best counterarguments to this are:
We cannot sustain our current rates of growth for very long before reaching physical limits. So growth can only do so much, even over the long-term
Diminishing marginal utility means we may reach a limit to the extent to which being wealthier can make one happier. We might even be nearing this point now (considering more developed countries). At this point we would need an alternative approach to increasing wellbeing, or we could just make more and more people to increase total happiness. An alternative approach I would be interested in is research into psychedelics—this might help us make everyone incredibly happy indeed. Then it would just be a matter of increasing the number of people!
For the record I still think from a longtermist point of view we shouldn’t be thinking of happiness at all, and instead about navigating between lock-in scenarios a la MacAskill/Ord. When/if we reach existential security we can then think about happiness.
First let me say that I agree with you that the impacts of economic growth are likely to be much higher than those implied by the conservative 40 years I chose to consider in order to present something like a lower bound on impacts.
But then let me follow you in presenting two additional counter-arguments to the more long-termist framing:
It is possible that we should expect any growth our interventions generate to be canceled by a dip at some point in the future. I don’t know much about the topic, but I believe the economics literature leans towards suggesting this is generally not the case. However, it seems plausible that an intervention that drove a country to operate above its productive capacity would likely be canceled in the future.
The kinds of interventions I imagine to be effective at stimulating growth would likely be interventions to help a poorer country catch up with the productive frontier. In those cases, an intervention would potentially simply help a country get to that frontier faster, and after that growth would be slower than it would otherwise have been. I still think we would get far more than 40 years of benefit out of these kinds of interventions, but they would not propagate into the long-term.
I am also interested in your comment about reaching diminishing marginal utility of GDP in more developed countries today. I ran a quick regression of the developed countries in Easterlin’s dataset, and the coefficient on GDP growth actually increases. This implies that an income doubling actually matters more in rich countries today than it does for poorer countries. I believe I’ve seen economists who have looked at the data noting the same. This result is surprising to me, so I would be interested for your thoughts.
Lastly, I share the intuition that we should not worry as much about happiness as existential security. This may be another argument against thinking too much about stimulating the kind of growth that would compound into the long-term. That kind of growth would likely be frontier growth, potentially increasing existential risk as we develop new technologies.
I don’t see how your two counterarguments are arguments against a longtermist framing. Rather they seem to be arguments against the benefits of economic growth if one has accepted a longtermist framing (maybe this is what you meant?). If you’re saying the benefits of economic growth don’t stretch into the long-term then that acts against economic growth, although for the record I’m not convinced on the truth of claim (1).
I ran a quick regression of the developed countries in Easterlin’s dataset, and the coefficient on GDP growth actually increases. This implies that an income doubling actually matters more in rich countries today than it does for poorer countries.
How long can this continue? That’s what I wonder. When we’re all rich enough to have a pretty nice set of material possessions, is more growth going to continue to boost our happiness? Certainly in my own life I don’t want more material goods—I want better relationships and more meaning. Also there have been criticisms of using SWB data in low-income settings—see my comment here.
Lastly, I share the intuition that we should not worry as much about happiness as existential security. This may be another argument against thinking too much about stimulating the kind of growth that would compound into the long-term. That kind of growth would likely be frontier growth, potentially increasing existential risk as we develop new technologies.
For the record, some have argued that technological progress and economic growth can lower existential risk. This is because we can develop technologies that can allow us to reduce risks, as well as becoming richer making us more concerned with safety. See here and also Will MacAskill’s new book What We Owe the Future which discusses the risks of stagnation.
Yep, you are correct about what I meant by a longtermist framing. I meant to say that arguing for economic growth based on its long term effects is a little controversial. I am only 60% certain that economic growth is good after 40 years in the future, but I am more like 80% certain that it’s good in the 40 year time-frame.
On how long can wealthy countries continue to benefit from growth:
Looking at individual life satisfaction data, it looks like income doublings may continue to steadily increase life satisfaction at incomes that are at least 8x today’s United States median income. Considering that median wages in developed countries have been growing pretty slowly the past few decades, it seems likely that we have another few centuries of growth in the richest countries before we have to start worrying about reaching a limit.
More speculatively, I am also not sure that we ever have to reach a limit. It seems like there should be biological limits to how happy you can feel in the moment, but it might be possible to be 10x as satisfied with your life as you are right now. I agree with you that relationships and meaning are more likely to get you there than material goods. But richer people in the US seem to participate in communities more and have better relationships, and I believe people in richer countries broadly have more close relationships than people in poorer ones.
On frontier growth lowering existential risk:
I definitely think it’s plausible. But technological progress so far has only seemed to consistently increase existential risk. I think there is a large burden of proof on the claim that going forward things will be different. I think the EA community should be especially suspicious of such claims considering how much we discuss mechanisms of how further developments in synthetic biology or AI could pose an existential risk.
Most people in EA don’t discount the future much, if at all.
In the latest EA Survey (from 2020, admittedly), global poverty (not a longtermist cause) still ranked as the top cause among respondents. I personally find analyses that compare economic growth to global health interventions in terms of short-term impact valuable for people prioritizing within the global poverty cause area.
Prioritising global poverty doesn’t necessarily mean you discount the future. You might prioritise it because you don’t think the leading longtermist interventions are tractable or for other reasons e.g. population ethics.
I personally don’t find just considering short-term impact to be helpful but appreciate others disagree.
To be clear, I’m most interested in the far future with this question. I can still imagine growth being slow for some time with AGI (although I’m not sure), but it would still lead to a kind of economic transition that isn’t very sensitive to current capital and resource levels and composition, because we’ll have much better ways to acquire capital and resources with AGI, including also the capital and resources most useful to AGI. Almost all of the impact on the far future of economic growth seems like it would be through how it affects AGI or other lock-ins like extinction:
It’s useful to AGI and has ambiguous value (could be risky to give more resources to AGI).
It could be used to prepare us against unaligned AGI or other existential risks.
It doesn’t affect AGI or other risks, and the impact doesn’t go through to the far future, because of the economic transition with AGI (or extinction/collapse).
I agree that the impact would not go far beyond the arrival of AGI. That was part of the reason I chose a 40 year time frame, to make the argument less controversial for people who think the arrival of AGI is very probable this century.
However, I think the arrival of AGI this century is just too extreme of an outcome relative to all of our history to have more than a 30% confidence in. So I still think over 70% of the long-term value of growth (positive or negative) would be realized in expectation.
In response to your three scenarios for the impacts of growth on AGI, I think growth in the United States or China is most likely to lead to (1). However, the kind of growth I would advocate for, in low income countries, would be more (3). Although there is a good chance that the benefits of AGI will be captured by developed nations, and low income countries will benefit from any growth they can get now even in a world of AGI.
So even a small impact of a typical annual rate of economic growth on happiness can mean a lot of extra happiness over a long time frame.
Another counterargument to this is that a small impact on the annual rate of growth could be essentially noise over the long term with no long term impact, rather than necessarily compounding for thousands or millions of years.
Generally this discussion, even within EA circles, is much too short-termist.
Most people in EA don’t discount the future much, if at all. This means they will care about timescales of thousands or millions of years. The compounding nature of economic growth means that increased growth could result in people in the mid-far future becoming much richer than they otherwise would have been. So even a small impact of a typical annual rate of economic growth on happiness can mean a lot of extra happiness over a long time frame. This impact, you rightly imply, may not be able to be matched by other interventions.
The best counterarguments to this are:
We cannot sustain our current rates of growth for very long before reaching physical limits. So growth can only do so much, even over the long-term
Diminishing marginal utility means we may reach a limit to the extent to which being wealthier can make one happier. We might even be nearing this point now (considering more developed countries). At this point we would need an alternative approach to increasing wellbeing, or we could just make more and more people to increase total happiness. An alternative approach I would be interested in is research into psychedelics—this might help us make everyone incredibly happy indeed. Then it would just be a matter of increasing the number of people!
For the record I still think from a longtermist point of view we shouldn’t be thinking of happiness at all, and instead about navigating between lock-in scenarios a la MacAskill/Ord. When/if we reach existential security we can then think about happiness.
Thanks so much for the thoughtful reply.
First let me say that I agree with you that the impacts of economic growth are likely to be much higher than those implied by the conservative 40 years I chose to consider in order to present something like a lower bound on impacts.
But then let me follow you in presenting two additional counter-arguments to the more long-termist framing:
It is possible that we should expect any growth our interventions generate to be canceled by a dip at some point in the future. I don’t know much about the topic, but I believe the economics literature leans towards suggesting this is generally not the case. However, it seems plausible that an intervention that drove a country to operate above its productive capacity would likely be canceled in the future.
The kinds of interventions I imagine to be effective at stimulating growth would likely be interventions to help a poorer country catch up with the productive frontier. In those cases, an intervention would potentially simply help a country get to that frontier faster, and after that growth would be slower than it would otherwise have been. I still think we would get far more than 40 years of benefit out of these kinds of interventions, but they would not propagate into the long-term.
I am also interested in your comment about reaching diminishing marginal utility of GDP in more developed countries today. I ran a quick regression of the developed countries in Easterlin’s dataset, and the coefficient on GDP growth actually increases. This implies that an income doubling actually matters more in rich countries today than it does for poorer countries. I believe I’ve seen economists who have looked at the data noting the same. This result is surprising to me, so I would be interested for your thoughts.
Lastly, I share the intuition that we should not worry as much about happiness as existential security. This may be another argument against thinking too much about stimulating the kind of growth that would compound into the long-term. That kind of growth would likely be frontier growth, potentially increasing existential risk as we develop new technologies.
I don’t see how your two counterarguments are arguments against a longtermist framing. Rather they seem to be arguments against the benefits of economic growth if one has accepted a longtermist framing (maybe this is what you meant?). If you’re saying the benefits of economic growth don’t stretch into the long-term then that acts against economic growth, although for the record I’m not convinced on the truth of claim (1).
How long can this continue? That’s what I wonder. When we’re all rich enough to have a pretty nice set of material possessions, is more growth going to continue to boost our happiness? Certainly in my own life I don’t want more material goods—I want better relationships and more meaning. Also there have been criticisms of using SWB data in low-income settings—see my comment here.
For the record, some have argued that technological progress and economic growth can lower existential risk. This is because we can develop technologies that can allow us to reduce risks, as well as becoming richer making us more concerned with safety. See here and also Will MacAskill’s new book What We Owe the Future which discusses the risks of stagnation.
Yep, you are correct about what I meant by a longtermist framing. I meant to say that arguing for economic growth based on its long term effects is a little controversial. I am only 60% certain that economic growth is good after 40 years in the future, but I am more like 80% certain that it’s good in the 40 year time-frame.
On how long can wealthy countries continue to benefit from growth: Looking at individual life satisfaction data, it looks like income doublings may continue to steadily increase life satisfaction at incomes that are at least 8x today’s United States median income. Considering that median wages in developed countries have been growing pretty slowly the past few decades, it seems likely that we have another few centuries of growth in the richest countries before we have to start worrying about reaching a limit. More speculatively, I am also not sure that we ever have to reach a limit. It seems like there should be biological limits to how happy you can feel in the moment, but it might be possible to be 10x as satisfied with your life as you are right now. I agree with you that relationships and meaning are more likely to get you there than material goods. But richer people in the US seem to participate in communities more and have better relationships, and I believe people in richer countries broadly have more close relationships than people in poorer ones.
On frontier growth lowering existential risk: I definitely think it’s plausible. But technological progress so far has only seemed to consistently increase existential risk. I think there is a large burden of proof on the claim that going forward things will be different. I think the EA community should be especially suspicious of such claims considering how much we discuss mechanisms of how further developments in synthetic biology or AI could pose an existential risk.
I don’t think this is true:
In the latest EA Survey (from 2020, admittedly), global poverty (not a longtermist cause) still ranked as the top cause among respondents. I personally find analyses that compare economic growth to global health interventions in terms of short-term impact valuable for people prioritizing within the global poverty cause area.
Prioritising global poverty doesn’t necessarily mean you discount the future. You might prioritise it because you don’t think the leading longtermist interventions are tractable or for other reasons e.g. population ethics.
I personally don’t find just considering short-term impact to be helpful but appreciate others disagree.
Do you expect a marginal increase in growth now to affect things much past the arrival of AGI? I would guess it wouldn’t.
To be clear, I’m most interested in the far future with this question. I can still imagine growth being slow for some time with AGI (although I’m not sure), but it would still lead to a kind of economic transition that isn’t very sensitive to current capital and resource levels and composition, because we’ll have much better ways to acquire capital and resources with AGI, including also the capital and resources most useful to AGI. Almost all of the impact on the far future of economic growth seems like it would be through how it affects AGI or other lock-ins like extinction:
It’s useful to AGI and has ambiguous value (could be risky to give more resources to AGI).
It could be used to prepare us against unaligned AGI or other existential risks.
It doesn’t affect AGI or other risks, and the impact doesn’t go through to the far future, because of the economic transition with AGI (or extinction/collapse).
I agree that the impact would not go far beyond the arrival of AGI. That was part of the reason I chose a 40 year time frame, to make the argument less controversial for people who think the arrival of AGI is very probable this century.
However, I think the arrival of AGI this century is just too extreme of an outcome relative to all of our history to have more than a 30% confidence in. So I still think over 70% of the long-term value of growth (positive or negative) would be realized in expectation.
In response to your three scenarios for the impacts of growth on AGI, I think growth in the United States or China is most likely to lead to (1). However, the kind of growth I would advocate for, in low income countries, would be more (3). Although there is a good chance that the benefits of AGI will be captured by developed nations, and low income countries will benefit from any growth they can get now even in a world of AGI.
Another counterargument to this is that a small impact on the annual rate of growth could be essentially noise over the long term with no long term impact, rather than necessarily compounding for thousands or millions of years.