Hey AGB, I remember thinking of the same point years ago and Robin Hanson explaining to me how it works. Basically it is the case that if someone left all their wealth in business equity to accumulate without any interference, they would slowly converge on owning all the wealth in the world (at least assuming a stable investment environment).
The difference is that social impacts like better health or education are not recaptured by the donor, and instead just diffuse outwards until the gains are spread across a wide range of people and projects. However a business investor gets to invest in whatever looks most likely to compound rapidly, then takes the surplus back as dividends or capital gains, and can then shift their investment to whatever other new project looks likely to compound most rapidly. They keep repeating this cycle indefinitely.
However, this never actually happens and in fact there are legal restrictions on trusts and endowments that make it unlikely. Instead, accumulated wealth is eaten away by withdrawals for consumption, ‘wastrel sons’, being divided between many heirs who eat it, destruction due to revolutions/inflation, and so on.
However, this never actually happens and in fact there are legal restrictions on trusts and endowments that make it unlikely. Instead, accumulated wealth is eaten away by withdrawals for consumption, ‘wastrel sons’, being divided between many heirs who eat it, destruction due to revolutions/inflation, and so on.
Is this a reason to be against the invention of anti-aging technologies, since they might result in a particular patient, long-lived investor with a midas touch swallowing the entire economy?
Basically it is the case that if someone left all their wealth in business equity to accumulate without any interference, they would slowly converge on owning all the wealth in the world (at least assuming a stable investment environment).
It’s actually pretty easy to see that this happens. If you buy and hold some stock and you always re-invest dividends, you will not lose stock unless all your companies go bankrupt, and you will slowly gain stock as you buy more from the dividend payouts.
I agree with you that the positions are not actually symmetric, and I think your second paragraph is close to word-for-word what I said in my penultimate paragraph. However, if you phrase it as you did in the OP (and this isn’t just you by any means), then your arguments are symmetric and so you’ve proved nothing. I think it’s worth explaining what makes actually these two cases different.
The reason I think it’s worth explaining is highlighted in my last paragraph; what might seem like me being pedantic actually has very significant implications for how you evaluate meta-activities, and indeed I’ve clashed with Robin Hanson on that exact issue.
I was only targetting this for donors focussed on global poverty—if you’re thinking about x-risk or movement building, I think other considerations dominate entirely.
Hey AGB, I remember thinking of the same point years ago and Robin Hanson explaining to me how it works. Basically it is the case that if someone left all their wealth in business equity to accumulate without any interference, they would slowly converge on owning all the wealth in the world (at least assuming a stable investment environment).
The difference is that social impacts like better health or education are not recaptured by the donor, and instead just diffuse outwards until the gains are spread across a wide range of people and projects. However a business investor gets to invest in whatever looks most likely to compound rapidly, then takes the surplus back as dividends or capital gains, and can then shift their investment to whatever other new project looks likely to compound most rapidly. They keep repeating this cycle indefinitely.
However, this never actually happens and in fact there are legal restrictions on trusts and endowments that make it unlikely. Instead, accumulated wealth is eaten away by withdrawals for consumption, ‘wastrel sons’, being divided between many heirs who eat it, destruction due to revolutions/inflation, and so on.
Is this a reason to be against the invention of anti-aging technologies, since they might result in a particular patient, long-lived investor with a midas touch swallowing the entire economy?
It’s actually pretty easy to see that this happens. If you buy and hold some stock and you always re-invest dividends, you will not lose stock unless all your companies go bankrupt, and you will slowly gain stock as you buy more from the dividend payouts.
I agree with you that the positions are not actually symmetric, and I think your second paragraph is close to word-for-word what I said in my penultimate paragraph. However, if you phrase it as you did in the OP (and this isn’t just you by any means), then your arguments are symmetric and so you’ve proved nothing. I think it’s worth explaining what makes actually these two cases different.
The reason I think it’s worth explaining is highlighted in my last paragraph; what might seem like me being pedantic actually has very significant implications for how you evaluate meta-activities, and indeed I’ve clashed with Robin Hanson on that exact issue.
I was only targetting this for donors focussed on global poverty—if you’re thinking about x-risk or movement building, I think other considerations dominate entirely.