The Survival and Flourishing Fund, a virtual fund backed by philanthropist Jaan Tallinn, is organizing the distribution of approximately $14-28MM in grants via the S-Process Main the Theme Rounds through this Fall with applications from orgs due throughout this summer. Applications are essential to enabling the grant recommendation team to learn about and debate the pros and cons of each organization under consideration, both old and new. So, please encourage applications from any awesome charitable projects you know about that are trying to support humanity’s long-term survival and flourishing! Check out our complete announcement to learn more about the deadlines, updates, and details about the round: https://survivalandflourishing.fund/2026/application
I provide evidence for the following claims on the adverse effects of looser macroeconomic policy:
Very strong claim: The first-order effects of too loose policy on the '21 margin were unequivocally bad and will leave most worse off, even the poor, because we way overshot on inflation. Policy in ‘21 added few jobs and real wages are down even for the poor (who suffer the most when their real wages go down even by a little). The second-order effects are that Dems will lose House, Senate, and Presidency. Populists (like Trump) will be elected, whose incompetence will make things even worse. The effects of looser policy in richer countries spill over into poorer countries, where inflation is higher, more persistent (hyperinflation), which leads to less growth, wellbeing, populism and instability.
Medium strength claim: Looser policy on the '21 margin was good for the poorest 10% Americans (~30m) as it created more jobs and higher wages, but bad for the middle class (~150m) as their real wages went down. The first-order effects for wellbeing are still positive on average, as the poorest benefit much more than the middle class lost (a simple rule of thumb is that $1 is worth 1/X times as much if you are X times richer and poorest Americans are more than 5x poorer [utility is logarithmic in consumption]). However, because 150m have lost in terms real income, which can predict midterms and naïve extrapolation of current income decline predict Dems losing 50+ seats, the resulting populist incompetence will have, at the very least, high downside risks (like Trumpists starting trade wars). This will harm everyone (in expectation), even the poorest, in the longer-run.
Weak claim: Looser policy, even on the ‘21 margin, was good for all Americans as it created jobs, increased real wages for most Americans (at least over the medium run) and led to GDP growth in the US and even for the world economy. However, even if real wages increased and inflation is transitory and mild over the medium-run, because voters are too sensitive to high short-term inflation, and inflation coincides with the midterms, and think it’s more persistent than the market, Dems will lose at least the House. Renewed gridlock and polarization will have bad effects and we could have avoided this by moving more slowly to a higher inflation target and being more expansionary under the curve in the longer-term.
I also highlight some general issues with macroeconomic advocacy like reducing central bank independence, problems with lobbying foreign central banks, and having to be very careful and do a lot of analysis before making grants that might have a lot of leverage and are not robustly good (like improving health).
Aschenbrenner and his investors will gain financially from more and accelerated AGI progress.
Not necessarily - they could just invest in publicly traded company where the counterfactual impact is not very large (even a large hedge fund buying some say Google stock wouldn't much move the market cap). They could also be shorting certain companies which might reduce economically inefficient overinvestment into AI, which might also have x-risk externalities. It would be different if he ran a VC fund and invested in getting the next, say, Anthropic off the ground. Especially if the profits are donated and used for mission hedging, this might be good.
The hedge fund could position Aschenbrenner to have a deep understanding of and connections within the AI landscape, making the think tank outputs very good, and causing important future decisions to be made better.
Yes, the outputs might be better as the incentives are aligned: the hedge fund / think tank has 'skin in the game' to get the correct answers on the future of AI progress (though maybe some big banks are also trying to move markets with their publications).
Fair point, but as I wrote, this is just the optimistic the 'business as usual' boring scenario in the absence of catastrophes (e.g. a new cold war). I still think it's a somewhat likely outcome.
Excellent point- I do cite the article from Our World in Data "Meat consumption tends to rise as we get richer", that includes the figure you pasted.
I agree that we should try to decouple this trend - I think the most promising approach is increasing alternative protein R&D (GFI.org is working on this).
The Survival and Flourishing Fund, a virtual fund backed by philanthropist Jaan Tallinn, is organizing the distribution of approximately $14-28MM in grants via the S-Process Main the Theme Rounds through this Fall with applications from orgs due throughout this summer. Applications are essential to enabling the grant recommendation team to learn about and debate the pros and cons of each organization under consideration, both old and new. So, please encourage applications from any awesome charitable projects you know about that are trying to support humanity’s long-term survival and flourishing! Check out our complete announcement to learn more about the deadlines, updates, and details about the round: https://survivalandflourishing.fund/2026/application
I wrote a couple of related blog posts recently here:
Also, in some secondary markets Anthropic is trading at record highs (e.g. https://notice.co/c/anthropic )
Ironically, this area has contributed to the current crisis as I argued in 2022:
Excellent post!
What's your production function?
Not necessarily - they could just invest in publicly traded company where the counterfactual impact is not very large (even a large hedge fund buying some say Google stock wouldn't much move the market cap). They could also be shorting certain companies which might reduce economically inefficient overinvestment into AI, which might also have x-risk externalities. It would be different if he ran a VC fund and invested in getting the next, say, Anthropic off the ground. Especially if the profits are donated and used for mission hedging, this might be good.
Yes, the outputs might be better as the incentives are aligned: the hedge fund / think tank has 'skin in the game' to get the correct answers on the future of AI progress (though maybe some big banks are also trying to move markets with their publications).
Good point.
Fair point, but as I wrote, this is just the optimistic the 'business as usual' boring scenario in the absence of catastrophes (e.g. a new cold war). I still think it's a somewhat likely outcome.
On environment / energy: perhaps we'll decouple growth and environmental externalities.
The models from consultancies are based on standard growth models and correlate strongly with IMF projections.
Excellent point- I do cite the article from Our World in Data "Meat consumption tends to rise as we get richer", that includes the figure you pasted.
I agree that we should try to decouple this trend - I think the most promising approach is increasing alternative protein R&D (GFI.org is working on this).