While Sam Bowman is interesting and seems ideologically similar to many EAs, it’s not obvious to me why he’s on the 80k podcast. Does 80k think UK housebuilding is one of the world’s most pressing problems? Is there something else I’m missing?
A lossy compression of the idea is that if you fix the housing crisis in Western Economies, you’ll unlock positive outcomes across economic, social, and political metrics which you can then have high positive impact.
A sketch, for example, might be that you want the UK government to do lots of great stuff in AI Safety. But UK state capacity in general might be completely borked until it sorts out its housing crisis.
I’ve never seen a BOTEC of DALYs/$ for land use reform so unsure how it compares to other interventions, but my impression is that it is in the EA discourse because OP funds it. I lean towards it not being an effective use of funds, but I have low confidence in that.
While Sam Bowman is interesting and seems ideologically similar to many EAs, it’s not obvious to me why he’s on the 80k podcast. Does 80k think UK housebuilding is one of the world’s most pressing problems? Is there something else I’m missing?
The underlying idea here is the Housing Theory of Everything.
A lossy compression of the idea is that if you fix the housing crisis in Western Economies, you’ll unlock positive outcomes across economic, social, and political metrics which you can then have high positive impact.
A sketch, for example, might be that you want the UK government to do lots of great stuff in AI Safety. But UK state capacity in general might be completely borked until it sorts out its housing crisis.
Similar to the reasoning behind Open Phil funding YIMBY groups.
I’ve never seen a BOTEC of DALYs/$ for land use reform so unsure how it compares to other interventions, but my impression is that it is in the EA discourse because OP funds it. I lean towards it not being an effective use of funds, but I have low confidence in that.
https://www.openphilanthropy.org/focus/land-use-reform/