I don’t like flattering, and I disliked most of the proposals, but this is the post of the month for me. Do you produce a kind of spreadsheet with those proposals? With a column for pros, cons, and maybe even something like “historical or fictional examples/analogies”
On the other hand, I look at the small savings rate in most countries – even OECD countries usually save less than 15% of GDP (exceptions: Korea, Norway, Chile)… It’s hard to think that, given such high individual discount rates, people could become more long-term concerned. I wonder how much of this is due to scarcity and uncertainty about one’s own welfare; so perhaps the first step forward would be to mitigate present day inequality? Besides encouraging people into long-term investment, but still within their life span – maybe Tobias’s proposal of longterm securities could work with a 50y term (if we could define a matching liability, as Larks notices).
Interesting point re: savings rate. It wouldn’t surprise me if economists have done research into what factors cause an increase in the savings rate. (If no research has been done so far, it seems like such research would fill a valuable gap in the literature.) Anyway, it seems plausible to me that some things which cause an increase in the savings rate also increase longtermism more generally. (This is another topic which we could gather information about by checking to see if people who save a lot of money are more longtermist generally.) My personal guess would be that economic and political stability predicts savings rate better than equality. I suspect drastic efforts to mitigate present day inequality would probably decrease savings rate if anything. What’s the point in saving money if the government might randomly take it at some point in the future? [Edit: If you replace “reducing inequality” with “ensuring more people have lower levels on Maslow’s hierarchy met” then I’d be more convinced.]
More broadly, I’d be interested to see people tackling longtermism as a psychological rather than a political project—what are the correlates of longtermist outlook that could feasibly be affected through interventions?
I’d gladly replace “inequality” with “ensuring more people have lower levels on Maslow’s hierarchy met”—I was thinking about inequality world-wide and the negative psychological effects of scarcity and risk-aversion. And I do agree that egalitarian reforms may often harm private investment.
I don’t advocate equality as a good per se; however, I guess too much inequality may also increase a feeling, at least for some people, that some goods “are not for them”—that there’s no point in saving, because the future will be (best case scenario) just like the present, for them and for their descedants. There’s no point in long-term planning for these people, and I guess they don’t care very much about future generations.
I don’t like flattering, and I disliked most of the proposals, but this is the post of the month for me. Do you produce a kind of spreadsheet with those proposals? With a column for pros, cons, and maybe even something like “historical or fictional examples/analogies”
On the other hand, I look at the small savings rate in most countries – even OECD countries usually save less than 15% of GDP (exceptions: Korea, Norway, Chile)… It’s hard to think that, given such high individual discount rates, people could become more long-term concerned. I wonder how much of this is due to scarcity and uncertainty about one’s own welfare; so perhaps the first step forward would be to mitigate present day inequality? Besides encouraging people into long-term investment, but still within their life span – maybe Tobias’s proposal of longterm securities could work with a 50y term (if we could define a matching liability, as Larks notices).
Interesting point re: savings rate. It wouldn’t surprise me if economists have done research into what factors cause an increase in the savings rate. (If no research has been done so far, it seems like such research would fill a valuable gap in the literature.) Anyway, it seems plausible to me that some things which cause an increase in the savings rate also increase longtermism more generally. (This is another topic which we could gather information about by checking to see if people who save a lot of money are more longtermist generally.) My personal guess would be that economic and political stability predicts savings rate better than equality. I suspect drastic efforts to mitigate present day inequality would probably decrease savings rate if anything. What’s the point in saving money if the government might randomly take it at some point in the future? [Edit: If you replace “reducing inequality” with “ensuring more people have lower levels on Maslow’s hierarchy met” then I’d be more convinced.]
More broadly, I’d be interested to see people tackling longtermism as a psychological rather than a political project—what are the correlates of longtermist outlook that could feasibly be affected through interventions?
I’d gladly replace “inequality” with “ensuring more people have lower levels on Maslow’s hierarchy met”—I was thinking about inequality world-wide and the negative psychological effects of scarcity and risk-aversion. And I do agree that egalitarian reforms may often harm private investment.
I don’t advocate equality as a good per se; however, I guess too much inequality may also increase a feeling, at least for some people, that some goods “are not for them”—that there’s no point in saving, because the future will be (best case scenario) just like the present, for them and for their descedants. There’s no point in long-term planning for these people, and I guess they don’t care very much about future generations.