I have been thinking along similar lines. My current angle is to try and connect EA with the FIRE (Financial Independence Retire Early) community, as I think having as many EAs as possible free to work on whatever they find most valuable would be extremely beneficial.
The FIRE movement seems philosophically somewhat EA-adjacent, in that they’re explicitly optimizing finances. Some of them have, once they’re personally set for life, moved to philanthropy. They also have lots of free time on their hands, and some might be happy to consult with EAs who want to optimize their finances.
The name I’ve been thinking of this under is “Efficient Altruism”, and I think it gets back to EA’s roots.
Happy to have a call if you’re interested in bouncing ideas around.
There are a lot of topics that would apply to EA. And honestly I think that EA should be promoting FIRE and devotion of time, along with DAF which spit off a 3.25% annual return. Then an individuals nest egg grows larger than needed → more money to DAF. All while devoting ones life to an 80k hrs spot of volunteer position.
Seems the most optimized method to me. Check out BigERN’s series of safe withdraws. It should apply to DAF and be perpetual. 3.25% is generally safe.
Great! I’d be interested to talk, you can book to my calendly, and I’d also suggest talking with Nicole Janeway as it seems likely she’ll be coordinating this.
Awesome! Feel free to loop me in on docs and plans, and I’ll suggest this as something to a few other people as a possible intervention. Would you like me to connect them with you if they’re interested, with you coordinating?
It seems likely to me that FIRE is a bit antithetical to EA or at least falls closer to the effective egoist camp than to the EA camp.
I’d be surprised if the path to doing a lot of good in your life should spend the first 5-10 years simply accumulating capital for yourself up to some number and then switching to philanthropy where you miss out on 5-10 years of skill building and quite frankly results from simply working directly on a cause and getting paid enough to live on for that work. If you are going more along the earn-to-give route, you likely want to be doing something far more riskier where the median amount you donate could be near $0.
FIRE is not EA directly, you’re right, but they are competently optimizing for high saving rate which is very similar practically to optimizing for high donation rate. I’d also feel much more comfortable about EA’s stability if a good portion of highly engaged EAs were financially independent, and could focus on whatever they thought was the most valuable without any worry about needing to rely on funding applications.
My read is many of the best projects are started by enthusiasts in their free time, like ALLFED, because there’s no need to worry about proving yourself to funders immediately so you can just focus on doing the most good. And an even larger fraction of the best projects are by groups with enough financial slack that they’re not forced into short-term thinking by finances.
This implies that something we should be doing is giving committed, highly engaged EAs something like a $2M unconditional grant for personal use so they could focus on whatever they thought was most valuable.
I did. And I’m not saying it can’t be done. But let’s say you are a 22-year-old, fresh out of college, seeking to do as much good as possible. Would you recommend they do 8 years of software engineering until they have saved up enough to dedicate their lives to effective altruism?
Of course, if someone discovers EA at 30 years old, it’s better for them to have a higher net worth than a lower one, all things equal, but for the vast majority of people, I think they will have far less impact if they go down a FIRE path.
Also, especially as EA is growing, delaying involvement on direct work is likely to come at a pretty high opportunity cost in terms of advancing EA goals.
I have been thinking along similar lines. My current angle is to try and connect EA with the FIRE (Financial Independence Retire Early) community, as I think having as many EAs as possible free to work on whatever they find most valuable would be extremely beneficial.
The FIRE movement seems philosophically somewhat EA-adjacent, in that they’re explicitly optimizing finances. Some of them have, once they’re personally set for life, moved to philanthropy. They also have lots of free time on their hands, and some might be happy to consult with EAs who want to optimize their finances.
The name I’ve been thinking of this under is “Efficient Altruism”, and I think it gets back to EA’s roots.
Happy to have a call if you’re interested in bouncing ideas around.
There are a lot of topics that would apply to EA. And honestly I think that EA should be promoting FIRE and devotion of time, along with DAF which spit off a 3.25% annual return. Then an individuals nest egg grows larger than needed → more money to DAF. All while devoting ones life to an 80k hrs spot of volunteer position.
Seems the most optimized method to me. Check out BigERN’s series of safe withdraws. It should apply to DAF and be perpetual. 3.25% is generally safe.
I’d be pretty interested in working on something in this area, if you’d like to chat.
Great! I’d be interested to talk, you can book to my calendly, and I’d also suggest talking with Nicole Janeway as it seems likely she’ll be coordinating this.
I’m currently coordinating a Personal Finance for Software Engineers talk to be held in Q1 2023.
I don’t have plans to develop content specific to FIREA and I’m about maxed out on projects at the moment.
Feel free to reach out in a message here on the Forum if I can provide any guidance on a draft or project plan.
Just a quick note to say there will be two talks on this topic coming up later this month:
Tue, 2⁄21 at 7pm EST—Personal Finance (option 1)
Thu, 2⁄23 at 12pm EST—Personal Finance (option 2) with @Rebecca Herbst (Yield & Spread and EA Salt Lake City)
📅 Subscribe to the EA Software Engineers’ calendar to never miss an event
Check out Rebecca’s awesome “Fi-lanthropy” Calculator
plex, you always have the most interesting projects.
I am personally working toward something that shall henceforth be referred to as FIREA — Financial Independence Retire and EA.
Agreed it’s helpful to have a bit of a cushion and then go into direct work, balancing that with plans to donate GWWC too.
Thanks for raising this topic.
Thanks :)
Awesome! Feel free to loop me in on docs and plans, and I’ll suggest this as something to a few other people as a possible intervention. Would you like me to connect them with you if they’re interested, with you coordinating?
Also, I joined what appears to be the main public-facing FIRE Discord, might be a good place to make contact or scout for who to talk to?
It seems likely to me that FIRE is a bit antithetical to EA or at least falls closer to the effective egoist camp than to the EA camp.
I’d be surprised if the path to doing a lot of good in your life should spend the first 5-10 years simply accumulating capital for yourself up to some number and then switching to philanthropy where you miss out on 5-10 years of skill building and quite frankly results from simply working directly on a cause and getting paid enough to live on for that work. If you are going more along the earn-to-give route, you likely want to be doing something far more riskier where the median amount you donate could be near $0.
FIRE is not EA directly, you’re right, but they are competently optimizing for high saving rate which is very similar practically to optimizing for high donation rate. I’d also feel much more comfortable about EA’s stability if a good portion of highly engaged EAs were financially independent, and could focus on whatever they thought was the most valuable without any worry about needing to rely on funding applications.
My read is many of the best projects are started by enthusiasts in their free time, like ALLFED, because there’s no need to worry about proving yourself to funders immediately so you can just focus on doing the most good. And an even larger fraction of the best projects are by groups with enough financial slack that they’re not forced into short-term thinking by finances.
This implies that something we should be doing is giving committed, highly engaged EAs something like a $2M unconditional grant for personal use so they could focus on whatever they thought was most valuable.
Marcus, did you read the other comments about how someone could achieve FIRE and then volunteer in a very effective role?
I did. And I’m not saying it can’t be done. But let’s say you are a 22-year-old, fresh out of college, seeking to do as much good as possible. Would you recommend they do 8 years of software engineering until they have saved up enough to dedicate their lives to effective altruism?
Of course, if someone discovers EA at 30 years old, it’s better for them to have a higher net worth than a lower one, all things equal, but for the vast majority of people, I think they will have far less impact if they go down a FIRE path.
Also, especially as EA is growing, delaying involvement on direct work is likely to come at a pretty high opportunity cost in terms of advancing EA goals.