Dre comments on A Challenge for LessWrong - Less Wrong

16 Post author: simplicio 29 June 2010 11:47PM

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Comment author: Mass_Driver 01 July 2010 05:58:45AM 2 points [-]

Roko, do you think you could lay out, in some detail, the argument for why rational people should busy themselves with getting rich? I'm familiar with some of the obvious arguments at a basic level (entrepreneurship is usually win-win, money can be used to help fund or attract attention for just about any other project or argument you care to have succeed, getting rich should be relatively easy in a world full of both arbitrage opportunities and irrational people), but still don't quite find them convincing.

Comment author: Dre 01 July 2010 06:53:35AM 3 points [-]

As I understand it, it is a comparative advantage argument. More rational people are likely to have comparative advantage in making money as compared to less rational people, so the utility maximizing setup is for more rational people to make money and pay less rational people to do the day to day work of implementing the charitable organization. Thats the basic form of the argument at least.