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Overcoming Bias Commenter's avatar

Another example:

If you could either be productive or rent-seeking, and rent-seeking would be slightly better for you all factors considered, be productive instead.

(This assumes that GDP will be used for what you think is good rather than evil; otherwise just flip the argument)

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Overcoming Bias Commenter's avatar

>If you have market power when you sell your labor, lower your wage a bit.

What's the mechanism you have in mind for how this help works (i.e., why this doesn't just cause a simple transfer from you to your employer)? Is it something like the following:

Suppose you have two potential employers. You know B is willing to pay $10, and A is willing to pay anywhere between $10 and $20 with uniform probability. A wants to know your salary requirement. The more you ask for, the lower the chance of A hiring you but the more money you get if A does hire you. The selfishly optimal choice is to ask for $15 since that maximizes expected utility, assuming utility linear in money, but the socially optimal choice is to ask for $10 since that minimizes the probability of a wasteful outcome where you end up working for B.

Assuming this is what you have in mind, how often do people actually end up not working at their most productive job due to asking for too high a salary, and how much waste does that cause on average when it does happen? If we multiply these two we should find the maximum possible effect of this "charity" for an average person, correct?

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