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Why a German billionaire says that pledges like Mark Zuckerberg’s are really bad

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Re: Why a German billionaire says that pledges like Mark Zuckerberg’s are really bad

#81

Post by anon4 »

lloyddobbler wrote: post #15

> I find the US initiative highly problematic. You can write donations off in your taxes to a large degree in the USA. So the rich make a choice: Would I rather donate or pay taxes? The donors are taking the place of the state. That's unacceptable. Or flip that around - is Krämer's implied solution not a case of the state taking the place of the individual? Put another way, if you founded a company, created thousands…

No single man should wield so much power. That's part of the foundation of modern democracy -- we don't want any single person having unchecked power to do as he or she wants. Krämer's solution is the state taking the place of the individual, as intended in the democratic model. Otherwise you have an effective monarchy, with the only difference that power isn't only inherited, but can be acquired via mercantile means. I don't want the shape of my country to be decided by the whims of a super-rich elite.

Re: Why a German billionaire says that pledges like Mark Zuckerberg’s are really bad

#82

Post by jMyles »

HiLo wrote: post #55
jMyles wrote: post #44

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I upvoted you, but disagree with your assessment. > wouldn't it be better to have all this power be in the hands of the democratically chosen In a word: no. Although the state spends some money on things that aren't abhorrent - broken clock politics as it were - it also spends money killing, torturing, and imprisoning people. So I think it's a very defensible moral stand to give the state as little money as possible.

Private companies used to spend money killing, torturing, imprisoning, exploiting, robbing, and oppressing people, until the public stopped them through the means available to them in government. And you're saying this is a bad thing, and the power should mostly rest with private companies? At least with the government, the people staffing the bureaucracies and agencies don't have their (non-existent) bonus tied to h…

> And you're saying this is a bad thing

Where did I say that?

I'm not the cynic you seem to whom you seem to be responding; I believe that the internet age will empower nonviolence from non-state actors as well as an end to the violence of government.

Although we may have needed government to stifle private violence in the past, I don't think we do any longer.

> the people staffing the bureaucracies and agencies don't have their (non-existent) bonus tied to how hard they fucked a customer over.

For most reasonable definitions of "bonus" for a bureaucrat, I think that this statement is false. Oliver North and John Yoo is not in prison. Hillary Clinton is running for President. These people all received bonuses for wrecking havoc on a level about which no private entity can dream.

Re: Why a German billionaire says that pledges like Mark Zuckerberg’s are really bad

#83

Post by HiLo »

marknutter wrote: post #79
HiLo wrote: post #22

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Because the structure that enabled you to amass that amount of wealth is flawed, and disproportionately rewards "you" over the network that actually did much of the heavy lifting. Nobody is saying they shouldn't be richly rewarded, just that it's gotten fucking ridiculous.

> Because the structure that enabled you to amass that amount of wealth is flawed, and disproportionately rewards "you" over the network that actually did much of the heavy lifting This thinking is so poisonous and destructive and pervasive that I'm starting to wonder if it is either due to some natural law of human nature or some grand conspiracy to destroy modern society. Businesses are not built on the charity of…

I could say the same about your black and white thinking using outdated Chicago/Neoclassic economic theories when applied to aggregate economies, but I digress.

I didn't say they were built on the charity of the system, just that they were built using the system.

You act like the first 50 employees of your stupid app company aren't taking a risk too. But they get 0.01%, while the founders get...? Fairly early on, you literally don't have enough time in a day to do it all yourself, even if you wanted to, so you're quite literally taking credit for more risk than you were actually able to take.

Considering Paul Graham's essay about how most of the work is ahead of you even when you start adding employees, how is the risk so skewed towards initial conditions versus the long path ahead?

This toxic thinking that a twentysomething takes more risk by trying to start his own company while early in his career deserves orders of magnitude better compensation for the risk he took, over many career people that will have to be persuaded to risk their career and reputations on this new company, who have families, mortgages, and serious obligations to others?

He really took 1,000x more risk? Bullshit dude.

Re: Why a German billionaire says that pledges like Mark Zuckerberg’s are really bad

#84

Post by ucha »

The maximum estate tax rate in the US is 40%. Sure, donations are tax free, but the donated assets amount to at least 2.5 times what the government would have gotten.

Is it acceptable to have the privilege to choose where your fortune will be allocated when you give away a supplemental 150% of it? Maybe it's not or maybe it is; I would strongly lean towards the latter.

Re: Why a German billionaire says that pledges like Mark Zuckerberg’s are really bad

#85

Post by JoshTriplett »

bmmayer1 wrote: post #26
HiLo wrote: post #9

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You take it as a given that the private sector is well-run and wise. Nobody is saying either solution is great. All it's saying is that: wouldn't it be better to have all this power be in the hands of the democratically chosen, versus billionaires who may or may not be making relevant investments? edit: Just downvotes, no response?

"wouldn't it be better to have all this power be in the hands of the democratically chosen" This assumes the money in question belongs to the state to begin with, and we're merely deciding how it is to be allocated. That is not the case. This is not the rich deciding what to do with the public money, it's the rich deciding what to do with their own money. I think we would all agree, regardless of level of income, we…

> I think we would all agree, regardless of level of income, we would rather our own money be allocated to the causes that we support, rather than the causes that 51% of people support.

Exactly. Nobody thinks that the government can make better use of their own money; however, many people want to use the government to tell other people what to do with their money.

Re: Why a German billionaire says that pledges like Mark Zuckerberg’s are really bad

#86

Post by kuschku »

jeffdavis wrote: post #61

The trade is this: if you made $100 and your marginal tax rate is 20%, you can either (a) let the government spend $20 however it sees fit and you spend $80 however you see fit (which may be an $80 bottle of wine); or (b) you spend $100 on any charitable cause you see fit (which must meet certain requirements). That doesn't seem like a bad trade to me, especially since rich people have fairly low marginal tax rates.

And that’s how the US ends up with horrible roads, transit quality going down, and so on.

Re: Why a German billionaire says that pledges like Mark Zuckerberg’s are really bad

#87

Post by dorfsmay »

username223 wrote: post #54
Afforess wrote: post #33

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> He said that having a few very wealthy people decide what were the most important causes was bad compared to having the democratically elected government decide. This sentence is really amusing to me, because our democratically elected government, at least at the congressional level, is nearly all wealthy millionaires. So either way, important causes are decided by the wealthy.

Congressmen are mostly rich people rented by richer ones, but a small amount of plebian influence is surely better than none at all if you're into that whole "democracy" thing.

In terms of how to spend "extra money", I would have agreed with you before Bill Gates' foundation delivered result few governments ever did.

Heck, I'm in Alberta where we've had a government returning taxes when we had budget surplus... just before the election.

Re: Why a German billionaire says that pledges like Mark Zuckerberg’s are really bad

#88

Post by mnx »

jessriedel wrote: post #17

Anyone who thinks that the federal government will spend money better than a charity is free to give it to the IRS. They accept donation. But no one believes this is a good idea, as evidenced by the fact that such donations are many orders of magnitude less than Americans donate to charity.

This is a really important point to make. The government may be democratically elected, but that doesn't mean that much, because of how the political system works. When people have the choice directly, they don't vote for the government. Also, comparing track records, the government has a really bad one when it comes to actually helping the poor, not just giving them enough money not to die.

Re: Why a German billionaire says that pledges like Mark Zuckerberg’s are really bad

#90

Post by s73v3r »

Afforess wrote: post #2

There is no real explanation for why the pledge is "bad" except for the tired argument that the state is good and private foundations imitating the state are bad . There is no further clarification or explanation; We are supposed to accept this as some sort of given, without pretext or afterthought. Articles like this are bad .

I have a say in what state agencies do. I have absolutely no say in what a private foundation does.
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