Even with attempts to prevent it, I think annual risk of value drift for me is greater than the annual expected real return on equities, which tends to defeat the usual argument for giving later.
Another exercise I’ve done occasionally is to look at my donations from say 5-10 years ago and muse on whether I would rather have invested the money and given now. So far that hasn’t been close to true, and that’s in spite of an impressive bull market in stocks over the last decade. Money was just so much more of an issue back then. I thought this from Will MacAskill was a good reflection on just how money-constrained things were ‘in the old days’, for those who didn’t see it:
At the time, there was very little funding available in EA. Lunch was the same, every day: budget baguettes and plain hummus. The initial salaries offered by CEA were £15,000/​yr pre-tax. When it started off, CEA was only able to pay its staff at all because I loaned them £7,000 — my entire life savings at the time. One of our first major donations was from Julia Wise, for $10,000, which was a significant fraction of the annual salary she received from being a mental health social worker at a prison.
Of course the directly relevant question is: When I look back on this relatively abundant period in 2034, will I feel the same way? I honestly don’t know, realistically the biggest factors will be what Good Ventures decides to do with their money and how well EA attracts other money.
Even with attempts to prevent it, I think annual risk of value drift for me is greater than the annual expected real return on equities, which tends to defeat the usual argument for giving later.
Another exercise I’ve done occasionally is to look at my donations from say 5-10 years ago and muse on whether I would rather have invested the money and given now. So far that hasn’t been close to true, and that’s in spite of an impressive bull market in stocks over the last decade. Money was just so much more of an issue back then. I thought this from Will MacAskill was a good reflection on just how money-constrained things were ‘in the old days’, for those who didn’t see it:
Of course the directly relevant question is: When I look back on this relatively abundant period in 2034, will I feel the same way? I honestly don’t know, realistically the biggest factors will be what Good Ventures decides to do with their money and how well EA attracts other money.
Would value drift be mitigated by donating to a DAF and investing there? Or are you afraid your views on where to donate might also shift