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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

#141

Post by abandonliberty »

cjbenedikt wrote: post #102

There are two trains of thought in the comment section: one that argues because the billionaire made the money himself (unless he/she inherited it) he/she should be entitled to distribute it and the other that he/she may be better positioned to do so than the state. You can argue that the billionaire was only able to make so much money because the country/state he/she lives in provided the necessary infrastructure an…

Tangent: >leave it to the billionaires to decide who rules - which is almost the case in the US, isn't it?

I realized a few years ago that this is the end result in any organization, but some German beat me to it in 1911.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Iron_law_of_oligarchy

>Michels theory states that all complex organizations, regardless of how democratic they are when started, eventually develop into oligarchies.

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

#142

Post by rayiner »

Afforess wrote: post #33
thomnottom wrote: post #14

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's not what the article said at all - nor the German billionaire. 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. You may disagree with that, but it is quite different from simply saying public good and private bad.

> 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.

That's pretty misleading. The median net worth of a member of Congress is about $1 million: http://www.opensecrets.org/news/2014/01/millionaires-club-fo....

You also have to take into account that the average age of Congress is almost 60. I.e. they have been working and accumulating assets for decades. Adjusted for age, the net worth of the median Congressman is at the 80th percentile: http://www.census.gov/people/wealth/files/Wealth%20distribut.... Is 80th percentile "wealthy"? It's within one standard deviation of the median. I'd call that upper middle class.

Fun fact: the median doctor is worth over $1 million by age 50, and about $2 million by age 65: http://www.medicalpracticeinsider.com/news/which-doctors-sta....

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

#143

Post by Retra »

krisroadruck wrote: post #58
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?

Billionaires ARE democratically chosen. Think that all the way through. What is more democratic than direct voting with ones dollars? Politicians in the US are actually not all that democratically chosen. The individual vote accounts for almost nothing. Look into how the electoral college system works for example. There are 2 great ways to learn a bit more about this, one in the form of an Adam Ruins Everything episo…

>What is more democratic than direct voting with ones dollars?

Are you serious? How about voting with your voice. Next you'll be arguing that we should vote with bullets and that'll make a democracy.

There are things that you simply can't "vote with your dollars" for. And you sure as shit can't do it if you don't have any money.

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

#144

Post by henrikschroder »

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…

> Businesses are not built on the charity of the "system".

From where does the business get the college-educated workforce so that it can be viable in the first place?

The answer is that hundreds of years of prosperity has created a system where enough people are middle class, value education, foster happy and curious children that don't need to work, and can send them off to college for an education because they don't need to enter the labour force until they're twenty-something.

We stand on the shoulders of giants in many, many, many ways.

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

#145

Post by merpnderp »

HiLo wrote: post #136
merpnderp wrote: post #105

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Makes sense as the PhD's and government "experts" in education gave us the unpopular and widely criticized No Child Left Behind and Common Core, which hasn't done anything to stem the flood of unprepared kids going to college and the work force.

Yes, I'm sure GWB staffed his cabinet with "experts." Yes.

Well Obama has had 6 years to fix it. Which makes this less of a republican/democrat issue than a "why the hell aren't we copying Finland" issue. You know like why would government spend all this money on contractors and consultants to figure out a new way to do things when they could just copy a highly functional and successful system? Oh, corruption. Right.

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

#146

Post by saosebastiao »

HiLo wrote: post #106
saosebastiao wrote: post #96

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Do silly and subjective comparisons of handpicked outliers come in Econ 102? What exactly did I say that has anything to do with Econ 101? It isn't even an economic argument.

>All that is necessary is for the private sector to be better run and wiser than the government. Many economists would consider this to be a problem that falls under their realm of expertise. Can you provide counterexamples? If you look, there is plenty of competency in both sectors.

> Many economists would consider this to be a problem that falls under their realm of expertise.

Econ 101 doesn't opine on the relative efficiency merits of government vs private sectors...makes me wonder if you have ever even taken an economics course. You misrepresent both Economics as a field of study and the argument I was trying to make (which was an argument by logical reasoning, not economic reasoning). If you'll notice, I even mentioned a specific government (the german government) as one I would entrust my money to, so it should be pretty fucking obvious the argument never was about government vs private, but rather our government vs private.

> Can you provide counterexamples? If you look, there is plenty of competency in both sectors.

Yes, I can provide counterexamples, but that I'm not gonna beat up your straw man for you. There is plenty of competency in both sectors, but you can't deny that if my money goes to the US government, that a significantly large portion of it will go to extremely bad ideas, such as blowing arabs up and funding the militaries of foreign governments that will help blow up more arabs, subsidizing millionaire farmers, subsidizing automobile travel, creating laws that imprison people for victimless crimes and building the expensive prisons to house them for mandatory minimum amounts of time, etc.

Sure, we democratically elected this shit, but we could democratically elect any pile of shit and it would still be a pile of shit. I see no utilitarian value in respecting the whims of 51% of the population.

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

#147

Post by moultano »

HiLo wrote: post #9
jey wrote: post #3

This guy takes it as a given that the Government is well-run and wise. But what's the practical alternative for someone who instead thinks that the current political environment is toxic and insane?

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?

Ensemble models always win. The democratically chosen already have almost all of the power. It's ok that a few other people have a little as a hedge in case that works better.

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

#148

Post by [deleted] »

dorfsmay wrote: post #87
username223 wrote: post #54

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

[deleted]

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

#149

Post by basaah »

Someone recently suggested this book [1] to me. I'm still reading it, but enjoying the ride so far.

The 'shift of power away from the government' argument is just one of the arguments made in the book, and author Linsey McGoey discusses it much more thoroughly than the article does. See quote /a/

[1] http://www.versobooks.com/books/1959-no-such-thing-as-a-free...

/a/ The second concern is that philanthropy, by channelling private funds towards public services, erodes support for governmental spending on health and education. Outspoken observers such as Michael Edwards, a former executive at the Ford Foundation, point out that private philanthropy is no substitution for hard-fought battles over labour laws and social security, in part because philanthropy can be retracted on a whim, while elected officials, at least in theory, have citizens to answer to.

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

#150

Post by zardo »

applecore wrote: post #93
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.

Your argument makes no sense: the people control everything in a democracy, literally, by voting for their representation in government.

Do you feel like you have $8k worth of influence over your share of the US budget?

What about Bill Gates or Charles Koch, do you think they have about $8k worth of influence?

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