I agree that there are some psychological and practical benefits to making and having more money, but I don’t think you’re “essentially donating 98–99%,” since even if you create value 50–100 times your salary, there’s no way for you to capture 50–100 times your salary, even if you were totally selfish. The fraction you’re “essentially donating” is more like 1−actual salarymax possible salary, where “max possible salary” is the amount you would earn if you were totally selfish.
I think what I was going for is: say someone is day trading and making tens of millions of $/year. It would be pretty unreasonable to expect them to donate 98%, especially because time-money tradeoffs mean they can probably donate more if donating only 90%.
This is not necessarily equivalent to a situation where someone is producing tens of millions of research value per year, but it’s similar in a few respects:
Keeping all the value for themself isn’t on the table for an altruist
Barring optics, taxes, etc. the impact calculation is similar
Pay provides incentives and a signal of value in both cases
Deviating from the optimum is deadweight loss
I don’t think salary norms in these circumstances should be identical, but there’s a sense in which having completely unrelated salary norms for each case bothers me. It’s a wrong price signal, like a $1000 bottle of wine that tastes identical to $20 wine, or a Soviet supermarket filled with empty shelves due to price controls.
By 1−actual salarymax possible salary I’m probably “essentially donating” only around 94%, though it does get closer to 99% if you count equity from possible startups.
I agree that there are some psychological and practical benefits to making and having more money, but I don’t think you’re “essentially donating 98–99%,” since even if you create value 50–100 times your salary, there’s no way for you to capture 50–100 times your salary, even if you were totally selfish. The fraction you’re “essentially donating” is more like 1−actual salarymax possible salary, where “max possible salary” is the amount you would earn if you were totally selfish.
I agree that this is more accurate.
I think what I was going for is: say someone is day trading and making tens of millions of $/year. It would be pretty unreasonable to expect them to donate 98%, especially because time-money tradeoffs mean they can probably donate more if donating only 90%.
This is not necessarily equivalent to a situation where someone is producing tens of millions of research value per year, but it’s similar in a few respects:
Keeping all the value for themself isn’t on the table for an altruist
Barring optics, taxes, etc. the impact calculation is similar
Pay provides incentives and a signal of value in both cases
Deviating from the optimum is deadweight loss
I don’t think salary norms in these circumstances should be identical, but there’s a sense in which having completely unrelated salary norms for each case bothers me. It’s a wrong price signal, like a $1000 bottle of wine that tastes identical to $20 wine, or a Soviet supermarket filled with empty shelves due to price controls.
By 1−actual salarymax possible salary I’m probably “essentially donating” only around 94%, though it does get closer to 99% if you count equity from possible startups.