I don’t think I agree with the premise, but it’s a really weird comparison. “advantage over the field” is kind of meaningless for altruism, where the goal really should be cooperation with the field in improvements for (subsets of) people. Tech startups ALSO benefit from this attitude, in that you’re trying to align your company to provide more utility to customers, though it also includes more explicit competition among companies and individuals.
Tech startups (and lucrative employment in non-startups) ARE a much bigger arena, so the competitive parts have much stronger competition. I guess to that extent, I agree—altruism is easier, if you care about relative rank rather than absolute results. I don’t know the altruism world enough to know how much status competition there is, but the local food and employment charities I’ve been involved with don’t seem immune at all.
I don’t think I agree with the premise, but it’s a really weird comparison. “advantage over the field” is kind of meaningless for altruism, where the goal really should be cooperation with the field in improvements for (subsets of) people. Tech startups ALSO benefit from this attitude, in that you’re trying to align your company to provide more utility to customers, though it also includes more explicit competition among companies and individuals.
Tech startups (and lucrative employment in non-startups) ARE a much bigger arena, so the competitive parts have much stronger competition. I guess to that extent, I agree—altruism is easier, if you care about relative rank rather than absolute results. I don’t know the altruism world enough to know how much status competition there is, but the local food and employment charities I’ve been involved with don’t seem immune at all.