Under log returns to money, personal savings still matter a lot for selfish preferences. Suppose the material comfort component of someone’s utility is 0 utils at an consumption of $1/day. Then a moderately wealthy person consuming $1000/day today will be at 7 utils. The owner of a galaxy, at maybe $10^30 / day, will be at 69 utils, but doubling their resources will still add the same 0.69 utils it would for today’s moderately wealthy person. So my guess is they will still try pretty hard at acquiring more resources, similarly to people in developed economies today who balk at their income being halved and see it as a pretty extreme sacrifice.
True, though I think many people have the intuition that returns diminish faster than log (at least given current tech).
For example, most people think increasing their income from $10k to $20k would do more for their material wellbeing than increasing it from $1bn to $2bn.
I think the key issue is whether new tech makes it easier to buy huge amounts of utility, or that people want to satisfy other preferences beyond material wellbeing (which may have log or even close to linear returns).
Under log returns to money, personal savings still matter a lot for selfish preferences. Suppose the material comfort component of someone’s utility is 0 utils at an consumption of $1/day. Then a moderately wealthy person consuming $1000/day today will be at 7 utils. The owner of a galaxy, at maybe $10^30 / day, will be at 69 utils, but doubling their resources will still add the same 0.69 utils it would for today’s moderately wealthy person. So my guess is they will still try pretty hard at acquiring more resources, similarly to people in developed economies today who balk at their income being halved and see it as a pretty extreme sacrifice.
True, though I think many people have the intuition that returns diminish faster than log (at least given current tech).
For example, most people think increasing their income from $10k to $20k would do more for their material wellbeing than increasing it from $1bn to $2bn.
I think the key issue is whether new tech makes it easier to buy huge amounts of utility, or that people want to satisfy other preferences beyond material wellbeing (which may have log or even close to linear returns).