I think that’s a good point, though credit card debt can be very expensive, so you’d need to factor that in, and this strategy significantly increases your risk of bankruptcy.

I suppose if things went really badly, such a strategy could result in a poor credit score and large interest payments. But it seems that credit should count for at least something, and I didn’t see it mentioned.

Also note that equity remaining in a property is counted as savings, if you’re not living in said property. So you would be worse off if you let out your home and moved to another part of the country.

there was a long discussion thread on the CFAR alumni mailing list last year about starting a ‘mutual aid society’ (MAS). Someone suggested it could be for CFAR alumni, rationalists, and effective altruists. I think in practice that could turn out to be thousands of people who don’t have a common affiliation, so it would be unmanageable. It would just exacerbate the challenges listed above. I think the CFAR community if it starts its own MAS will thus limit it to alumni only. This is a position I would endorse.

Another barrier to an MAS for even just CFAR alumni may be, due to legal limitations, it might be limited to residents of the United States as an official or incorporated organization. This would making an MAS for all CFAR alumni less feasible as the community is increasingly becoming international. I was going to look into it, but I never did since the thread died. Anyway, you can search the CFAR google group for the discussion. There were good discussions of pros and cons which could inform the potential of a community in the same reference class as ‘effective altruism’ or ‘80,000 Hours members’ on the value of a community insurance scheme. Anyway, you could revive that thread, or start a new one discussing a community insurance scheme for 80k and/or CFAR members, and see what the hivemind thinks.

If there was some startup or preferred for-profit insurance company for the rationality and effective altruism communities, it could solve the other problems, but, like you wrote, it would be more expensive.

Also, some of the cases given would render you potentially ineligible for welfare where the welfare is essentially conditional on taking the first job that you can find (e.g. taking a year out to deliberately build career capital in a particular field).