Another relevant consideration along these lines is that people who selfishly desire high wealth might mostly care about positional goods which are similar to current positional goods. Usage of these positional goods won’t burn much of any compute (resources for potential minds) even if these positional goods become insanely valuable in terms of compute. E.g., land values of interesting places on earth might be insanely high and people might trade vast amounts of comptuation for this land, but ultimately, the computation will be spent on something else.
Hmm true, I think I agree that this means the dynamics I describe matter less in expectation (because the positional goods-oriented people will be quite marginal in terms of using the resources of the universe).
Another relevant consideration along these lines is that people who selfishly desire high wealth might mostly care about positional goods which are similar to current positional goods. Usage of these positional goods won’t burn much of any compute (resources for potential minds) even if these positional goods become insanely valuable in terms of compute. E.g., land values of interesting places on earth might be insanely high and people might trade vast amounts of comptuation for this land, but ultimately, the computation will be spent on something else.
Hmm true, I think I agree that this means the dynamics I describe matter less in expectation (because the positional goods-oriented people will be quite marginal in terms of using the resources of the universe).