I've been incubating some thoughts for a while and can't seem to straighten them out enough to make a solid discussion post, much less a front page article. I'll try to put them down here as succinctly as possible. I suspect that I have some biases and blindspots, and I invite constructive criticism. In other cases, I think my priors are simply different than the LW average, because of my life experiences.
Probably because of how I was raised, I've always held the opinion that the path to world-saving should follow the following general steps: 1) Obtain a huge amount of personal wealth. 2) Create and/or fund the types of organizations that you believe are likely to save the world.
Other pathways feel (to me) like attempts to be too clever. I admit a likely personal bias here, but it looks like it should be easier to become wealthy by any available means than it is to singlehandedly solve all the world's important problems. If you do not agree with this assessment, I humbly suggest that perhaps you haven't thought long enough about how easy it might actually be to become ultra-rich if you actually set out with that goal in mind. I think that generally speaking very few people are actually trying to become wealthy; most people just try to match their parents' socioeconomic tier and then stop.
I humbly suggest that perhaps you haven't thought long enough about how easy it might actually be to become ultra-rich if you actually set out with that goal in mind.
Any arguments that legitimately push you towards that conclusion should be easily convertible into actual advice about how to become ultra-rich. I think you're underestimating the difficulty of turning vague good-sounding ideas into effective action.
If it's worth saying, but not worth its own post (even in Discussion), then it goes here.
(I plan to make these threads from now on. Downvote if you disapprove. If I miss one, feel free to do it yourself.)