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.
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.