In most cases, especially high-stakes cases, cost of living is small relative to prioritization/productivity/information benefits. (View not justified here.)

 As someone who spent six months in Oxford and four years in London and has now moved back home to Melbourne, for me I suspect there has been a large drop in impact. Even though I go to conferences once or twice a year, I think the difference in quality of networking, deeper connections, more fruitful conversations at the watercooler, etc is quite dramatic.

Also being outside of a hub but in the same timezone and same country as a lot of EA employers is less of a hit to impact than living in a different country and a very different time zone, where it's harder to schedule meetings and there are far fewer jobs that would be willing to hire. 

I saw you linked to a previous comment of mine. My personal strategy in life these last few years has been:

• Move to Paraguay, which is extremely low cost of living, extremely low tax rate
• Save 80-90% of my earnings while there
• Use the slack to be able to do illegible bets (e.g., early on I incubated Sentinel with my consulting profits, though eventually I did raise funding)
• Visit the US/Europe for a bit in the summer (also modellable as consumption).

This has had tradeoffs. Ultimately my impact might have been higher in the US if this had resulted in me raising more funding/coordinating more with donors, but I didn't really feel particularly welcome (as opposed to evaluated) when I visited.

I used to think the same, but I recently changed my mind, for reasons similar to Zach's

Some quick thoughts:

Significant additional spare money

I agree money is great, but I think moving to a HCOL area will often increase the amount of money you can earn/save for most people, by giving you higher-earning job opportunties. Even if you're doing self-funded research, the amount of money you can influence will likely increase enough by moving to a HCOL area to compensate your higher costs. It's much easier to help people give more and give better if they're wealthy.

I agree that the above often doesn't apply if you work in a field with a capped low salary, where living in a HCOL area would cause financial distress

only go to two or fewer EA events per month

This is a lot of events, 10-20 per year. Similarly "often barely talking" to others in a coworking space imho doesn't mean that there isn't a lot of valuable talking happening per year in absolute terms.

elitism

Hot take: I think elitism can be as much of an asset as it is an issue image-wise. Lots of fancy enterprises proudly boast their "talent density"

How can they claim to care about cost-effectiveness if they spend all their time in the most expensive parts of the country?

Because that way they can influence more resources to go towards solving the most important issues of our time

Basically:

• I think people can earn and donate much more in HCOL areas, compensating the higher costs
• I think people can have a ton of impact by influencing the actions of EAs and non-EAs around them, and in HCOL areas those are 1. more likely to find EA useful, 2. have more resources (both money and career-wise) to dedicate to it
• I think you're downplaying the influence of "only <2 events per month" or only a few conversations per week at a coworking space

Shoutouts to the EA Impact Hubs! 
"Impact Hubs are affordable, temporary coworking and coliving setups for EAs and impact-focused people. The idea is to make it easier to do focused work and build connections with other EAs without having to be in an expensive EA hub like London or SF."

I think the strongest case for this is if you're aiming for "ramen profitable" - deliberately keeping burn low while you explore ideas, so that you're not beholden to finding a job immediately, or pitching a funder on something legible but not moonshot-y.

But I think there's ultimately a lot more upside to be gained from being more productive/impactful, than money you can possibly save by being frugal. Toy model: you can at most reduce your own expenses by 1x, but you can increase earnings/impact by 10x or more. So I encourage people to move to the boomtown for their field (SF if you're in AI, Berkeley/London if safety, DC for governance, NY for finance, etc).

See also Paul Graham on cities.

I 100% agree! I’m a digital nomad, and I tend to stay in relatively affordable places, like Southeast Asia and the Balkans. My expenses are usually around $2k–$3k a month for a pretty high standard of living as a nomad.

I do a lot of networking online and travel to in-person conferences when it makes sense. It definitely makes it easier for me to focus on building my consulting business, where I work on marketing with EA organizations, with a bit less financial pressure 🙏

I feel like not many people really have "a job that can mostly be done from anywhere", and a lot hinges on that assumption here. If you're full time remote then sure, the case for being in a high COL area is weaker. But I suspect the majority of jobs have some expectation of being in the office at least sometimes.

If your organisation pays people less if they do the same work from a cheaper area, consider if you are creating weird incentives

If your org takes the view than collaborating in person is better than working fully remote (and plenty of orgs do take this view, and quite reasonably) then that org should be willing to put their money where their mouth is and pay people more if they're coming into the office. This is what we did when I was running a fintech startup. By extension you should be willing to take a lower salary if you're going to work remotely from a cheaper place.

I think your piece treats being in a high COL place as solely an EA move; in reality EA hubs are not picked from a random list and are attractive places in themselves. People want to be in e.g. London for lots of reasons (more connections, friends, fun things going on) and it being an EA hub is a nice side benefit. I was based in London for many years and wouldn't for example make the move out to a cheaper UK city, leaving behind friends and family and a large dating pool - there would need to be a strong draw to overcome the cost of doing that beyond just lower cost of living.

I think another important consideration is risk. With AI compressing timelines, if one believes there is a 1% per year higher risk of dying due to nuclear war or extreme pandemic in a big city in NATO versus a safer place, and one values one's life at ~$10 million, that is $100,000 per year incentive not to live there (not including family members). Furthermore, if one thinks there is some chance of radical life extension, this number would be significantly larger. This risk can be mitigated to some extent with leaving quickly, but I haven't found many people who have such a plan.

I like this post, it raises some good points. But I can think of several reasons not mentioned for why big cities are natural hubs:

• EAs who work on policy have to work in capitals (like London).
• EAs generally benefit from being adjacent to tech (AI safety, alt proteins) and field experts (e.g. in biosecurity), both of which tend to be found in big cities.
• England is a bit unusual in how easy it is to get into London. Living outside of San Fran or most other big cities outside of Europe will not offer the same access.
• Although rent is high in big cities, the ability to save is often greater due to high salaries (for high skilled jobs outside EA). So you can do even better there - for example, @Imma🔸 moved to Zurich to earn to give, which has some of the highest salaries in the world.

That all said, why not both? It might make sense to push for hubs in cheap cities for those who can work remotely, and also have hubs in big cities for those who need the network and opportunities. So I don't think the above necessarily contradict your argument. 
 

Shout-out for also living in the North of England - housing is cheap and you're actually really near London - certainly near enough that that anything in London you particularly want to get to, you can get to.

One thing that is notable, and to me still a bit puzzling, is that despite the advances in telecommunications over the last few decades, urban concentration is more important to the economy than ever. I wrote about it as part of my Scaling in Human Societies Living Literature Review over the last few weeks (see this and this).

It is an open question in my mind how the EA movement transforms culture and politics to a large degree. That requires influencing more than a handful of superstar cities. For that, it's not just a matter of moving to mid-sized cities in middle income countries, but building a movement there, and that takes a special skill that a minority of us have.

A closely related problem is what you touched on regarding "elitism". Yes, there is the perception, which is not entirely baseless, that the EA movement is primarily for 23 year old Ivy League graduates, and finding work in the field is difficult if you don't fit into this narrow demographic. If the movement was more geographically dispersed, so would be the job opportunities, and there would be meaningful opportunities for people outside of the elite.

I resonate with this but would lightly push back. As someone who oscillates between being hosted by relatives in a city with 2 other EAs in total, and big, expensive hubs, I feel like the COL difference isn't that drastic if you are enthusiastic on frugal lifestyles (not saying people who feel differently are not frugal - there may be other factors, like getting lucky in finding accommodation). 

I'm currently in San Francisco for a few months in a coworking office, and my COL difference from a non-hub place in Europe is around $1.1K per month, more than half of which comes from the office membership. I sleep in a very cheap shared flat, and live on a mix of beans, protein powder, and leftovers from the office. And the productivity benefits from the office space are quite strong (beyond any sort of networking value), though I can't confidently claim they're worth $1.1K a month.

I agree that the benefits of living in a hub can be overstated, having oscillated between both. If you have enough savings to attend a few conferences a year, and are proactive virtually, you can absolutely achieve 80/20 networking outcomes (in most cases, it might be harder when your job is very network-based).

I think "don't live in a hub" is more important advice if you want to start a family or find a stable place to live, as in those cases, it can definitely lock in cost increases that are much larger.

(On the other hand, if you could actually do your job from anywhere and don't benefit from networks much, I think people should maximize. European founder should envision the cheapest EU countries, while software engineers doing earn to give should try their best to work in Switzerland or California)