Rather than thinking in terms of wages, w(t), I think we should just think in terms of time-value or marginal utility, u(t). Clearly everything you say applies to all value-we-can-get-from-time, not just wages.
Some of your conclusions (e.g., “if you would be willing to trade an hour for $1000 in the future [i.e., and gain the hour], you should also be willing to do so now”) only apply when the following is true: for the rest of the person’s life, their value-from-time is a (nondecreasing) function of their time spent working in the past. This is a plausible approximation in many cases. But both of the following are plausible:
working/experience will have a greater effect on u in the future, after I’m better-credentialed (I’m currently an undergraduate; the same number of hours experience counts for more if it’s done in a higher-status position at a higher-status organization; first working in a lower-status way has some career benefits but its not like the next t hours of my work experience will have the same effect on my long-term prospects regardless of whether I get a low-status job now or a high-status job after college)
I will have higher direct time-value in the future due to reasons that are nearly independent of how I spend my marginal time now.
More generally, it seems sometimes true that e.g. doing 60 hrs/wk for 1 year is less valuable for u than 30 hrs/wk for 2 years (because value from work is generally a function not just of experience/productivity but also legibility-of-experience). If I could save up marginal time now to spend later, I would (not just because I expect some future time to be higher-leverage because of TAI, but also because I expect to have higher direct time-value in the future in a way that I largely can’t affect by spending more time productively now); I’m not sure where I’d draw the line, but I’m pretty sure I’d save up time even if it cost 2 hours to give a single hour to future me.
(I’m not great at Markdown; please let me know if there’s a way to make the above paragraph part of the second bullet point)
I mostly agree. Two thoughts:
Rather than thinking in terms of wages, w(t), I think we should just think in terms of time-value or marginal utility, u(t). Clearly everything you say applies to all value-we-can-get-from-time, not just wages.
Some of your conclusions (e.g., “if you would be willing to trade an hour for $1000 in the future [i.e., and gain the hour], you should also be willing to do so now”) only apply when the following is true: for the rest of the person’s life, their value-from-time is a (nondecreasing) function of their time spent working in the past. This is a plausible approximation in many cases. But both of the following are plausible:
working/experience will have a greater effect on u in the future, after I’m better-credentialed (I’m currently an undergraduate; the same number of hours experience counts for more if it’s done in a higher-status position at a higher-status organization; first working in a lower-status way has some career benefits but its not like the next t hours of my work experience will have the same effect on my long-term prospects regardless of whether I get a low-status job now or a high-status job after college)
I will have higher direct time-value in the future due to reasons that are nearly independent of how I spend my marginal time now.
More generally, it seems sometimes true that e.g. doing 60 hrs/wk for 1 year is less valuable for u than 30 hrs/wk for 2 years (because value from work is generally a function not just of experience/productivity but also legibility-of-experience). If I could save up marginal time now to spend later, I would (not just because I expect some future time to be higher-leverage because of TAI, but also because I expect to have higher direct time-value in the future in a way that I largely can’t affect by spending more time productively now); I’m not sure where I’d draw the line, but I’m pretty sure I’d save up time even if it cost 2 hours to give a single hour to future me.
(I’m not great at Markdown; please let me know if there’s a way to make the above paragraph part of the second bullet point)