This would put you in a good, but not great position to invest to give.
Overall it seems to me as if you’re trying to speedrun getting incredibly wealthy in 4 years. This is generally not possible with salaried work (the assumption above put you around the 99-99.5 percentile of salaries), but might be more feasible through entrepreneurship.
Some other considerations:
Working in such a high paying job, even in financial services, will probably not allow you to study and practice investing. You will not be an expert on AI investing and investing in general in 2030, which would be a problem if you believe such expertise was necessary for you to invest to give.
Quite a lot of EAs will be richer than this in 2030. My rough guess is more than 500. Your position might be useful but is likely to be far from unique.
You might want to think through your uncertainties about how useful money will be to achieve your goals in 2030-2040. If there’s no more white collar jobs in 2030, in 2035 the world might be very weird and confusing.
If there is a massive increase of overall wealth in 2030-2040 due to fast technological progress, a lot of problems you might care about will get solved by non-EAs. Charity is a luxury good for the rich, more people will be rich, charity on average solves much more problems than it creates.
Technological progress itself will potentially solve a lot of the problems you care about.
The way I understood his post was that even a few hundred thousand or a few million dollars, if invested pre-explosive growth, might become astronomical wealth post-explosive growth. Whereas people without those investments may have nothing due to labor displacement. Which is an interesting theory? Maybe we need a hedge fund for EAs to invest in AI lol, though that would create hairy conflicts of interest!
That was the point I had meant to convey, Aaron. Thanks for clarifying that.
This seems like an important critique, Tobias, and I thank you for it. It was a useful readjustment to realise I wouldn’t be exceptionally wealthy for doing this in either society at large or the EA community. My sense is still that even being in the 92nd percentile of the UK going into this would be really valuable. Not world-changing valuable, but life-changing for many. That everything might get solved by technology and richer people is plausible, given the challenges in predicting how the future will pan out. I see this strategy mainly as a backstop to mitigate the awfulness of the most S-risk intensive ways this could go.
Some simplifying assumptions:
£50k starting net worth
Only employed for the next 4 years
£300k salary, £150k after tax, £110k after personal consumption
10% interest on your savings for 4 years
Around £635k at end of 2030
This is only slightly more than the average net worth of for UK 55 to 64 year olds.
Overall, if this plan worked out near perfectly, it would place you in around the 92 percentile of wealth in the UK.
This would put you in a good, but not great position to invest to give.
Overall it seems to me as if you’re trying to speedrun getting incredibly wealthy in 4 years. This is generally not possible with salaried work (the assumption above put you around the 99-99.5 percentile of salaries), but might be more feasible through entrepreneurship.
Some other considerations:
Working in such a high paying job, even in financial services, will probably not allow you to study and practice investing. You will not be an expert on AI investing and investing in general in 2030, which would be a problem if you believe such expertise was necessary for you to invest to give.
Quite a lot of EAs will be richer than this in 2030. My rough guess is more than 500. Your position might be useful but is likely to be far from unique.
You might want to think through your uncertainties about how useful money will be to achieve your goals in 2030-2040. If there’s no more white collar jobs in 2030, in 2035 the world might be very weird and confusing.
If there is a massive increase of overall wealth in 2030-2040 due to fast technological progress, a lot of problems you might care about will get solved by non-EAs. Charity is a luxury good for the rich, more people will be rich, charity on average solves much more problems than it creates.
Technological progress itself will potentially solve a lot of the problems you care about.
(Also agree with Marcus’s point.)
The way I understood his post was that even a few hundred thousand or a few million dollars, if invested pre-explosive growth, might become astronomical wealth post-explosive growth. Whereas people without those investments may have nothing due to labor displacement. Which is an interesting theory?
Maybe we need a hedge fund for EAs to invest in AI lol, though that would create hairy conflicts of interest!
That was the point I had meant to convey, Aaron. Thanks for clarifying that.
This seems like an important critique, Tobias, and I thank you for it. It was a useful readjustment to realise I wouldn’t be exceptionally wealthy for doing this in either society at large or the EA community. My sense is still that even being in the 92nd percentile of the UK going into this would be really valuable. Not world-changing valuable, but life-changing for many. That everything might get solved by technology and richer people is plausible, given the challenges in predicting how the future will pan out. I see this strategy mainly as a backstop to mitigate the awfulness of the most S-risk intensive ways this could go.