With some people having so much wealth, why are we not seing them put more money into society? Helping out where their money really can make big difference.
Ask HN: Why are billionaires not giving more money away?
1–10 of 49 posts
Re: Ask HN: Why are billionaires not giving more money away?
#2False premise - you cannot know the full aggregate of those who actively give to charity regularly.
A great number of people including some very wealthy ones prefer to give anonymously and often stipulate that as condition of their giving.
Furthermore, even with public donations, there is no mechanism to track all of it for various reasons (e.g. many agencies may release totals but not donor/donation details), so you can't know the totals, much less judge the rate changes of that.
Re: Ask HN: Why are billionaires not giving more money away?
#3False premise - you cannot know the full aggregate of those who actively give to charity regularly. A great number of people including some very wealthy ones prefer to give anonymously and often stipulate that as condition of their giving. Furthermore, even with public donations, there is no mechanism to track all of it for various reasons (e.g. many agencies may release totals but not donor/donation details), so you…
Nor is giving away money necessarily an unalloyed good; it can create dependency.
Re: Ask HN: Why are billionaires not giving more money away?
#4I'm going to guess that what the question is referring to is not random charitable donations, but large projects in the old Rockefeller/Carnegie mold. Bill Gates and Warren Buffet have done this, but not too many others. Eli Broad has dedicated major funding for medical research. Peter Thiel seems to be determined to destroy society. I guess it depends on how much the feel themselves to be a part of society, and want to keep it going.
Re: Ask HN: Why are billionaires not giving more money away?
#5I wrote about this a while back [1]. Thinking that more charitable donations will create more upliftment is a false premise. Don't get me wrong, charities do serve a function. But most of the human suffering emanates from greedy politics, corruption, and dumb policies. Most of the world problems can't be solved with capital alone.
Poor African countries, for instance, have received trillion dollars in aid, and yet because of the incompetence of their leaders, poverty is still wide-spread. I don't think if billionaires doubled their donations, it'll create a change the situation significantly.
[1]: https://shubhamjain.co/2016/10/02/fallacy-of-hating-the-rich...
Re: Ask HN: Why are billionaires not giving more money away?
#6I'm going to guess that what the question is referring to is not random charitable donations, but large projects in the old Rockefeller/Carnegie mold. Bill Gates and Warren Buffet have done this, but not too many others. Eli Broad has dedicated major funding for medical research. Peter Thiel seems to be determined to destroy society. I guess it depends on how much the feel themselves to be a part of society, and want…
> Peter Thiel seems to be determined to destroy society.
Lmao, why do you say this? Besides being Pro-Trump (which is pretty bad), does he have an active role in any ventures that makes you think he wants to destroy society?
Re: Ask HN: Why are billionaires not giving more money away?
#7Helping out where their money really can make big difference.
First do no harm. We don't necessarily know what works. We have rich folks who are pro UBI and that ticks me off. I don't think it is a good solution. I think it just helps salve their guilt at helping to destroy jobs. I don't want their guilt salved. I want them to focus on redistributing work. We should view the trend towards automation as the Second Industrial Revolution, not the start of making most people charity cases dependent on a handful of "generous" rich people or some nonsense.
I was homeless for nearly 6 years. Most programs to help the homeless are completely sucky. I am against growing more homeless services. I am trying to come up with answers that shrink the problem of homelessness.
But a lot of people are not interested in shrinking the problem. Many are fine with growing it, because it serves some sick emotional need of theirs.
I recently talked to someone who wanted to 'share their vision' of taking over an entire downtown block with homeless services. I cut them off with "I have an appointment. I gotta go."
This person said they had "a heart for the homeless." Sounds more like some sick hard on for the homeless. That isn't actually caring about the welfare of other people. That's some twisted desire to make them feel good about themselves. If you care about other people, help them get off the fucking street. Come up with solutions that shrink homelessness, don't build more soup kitchens. Geez.
But solutions that shrink the problem of homelessness are hard to create. It is a hard problem to solve. In contrast, programs to "help the homeless" (like soup kitchens) are easy to dream up, but often help entrench the problem rather than resolve it.
No matter who you are, trying to find something that actually works is challenging.
Bill Gates said that automation of an efficient system magnifies the efficiency. Automation of an inefficient system magnifies the inefficiency.
I think that same paradigm applies to throwing money at problems. I would hate to guilt rich folks into throwing more money at programs that actually make the problems worse and entrench them. They can just keep stuffing it under their mattress or whatever until we have some concepts for how to actually improve things. Then someone can go try to convince rich folks to invest money in real solutions.
Re: Ask HN: Why are billionaires not giving more money away?
#8Which societal problems do you think are caused by a lack of capital?
Re: Ask HN: Why are billionaires not giving more money away?
#9I wrote about this a while back [1]. Thinking that more charitable donations will create more upliftment is a false premise. Don't get me wrong, charities do serve a function. But most of the human suffering emanates from greedy politics, corruption, and dumb policies. Most of the world problems can't be solved with capital alone. Poor African countries, for instance, have received trillion dollars in aid, and yet be…
I wish to confirm what you have written about African countries. I speak about sub-saharan Africa here. Even without donations Africa has enormous unrealised wealth and potential (minerals, gas, agricultural potential). Geopolitically also well positioned. With the exception of places like Nigeria, also comparatively underpopulated. Money is not the main problem here - an educated populace and strong institutions like proper independent courts, etc are needed. Without them, a very predictable form of feudalism emerges frighteningly fast. The west does work differently, but there are important lessons to be learned by watching what's happening here.
Re: Ask HN: Why are billionaires not giving more money away?
#10Helping out where their money really can make big difference. First do no harm. We don't necessarily know what works. We have rich folks who are pro UBI and that ticks me off. I don't think it is a good solution. I think it just helps salve their guilt at helping to destroy jobs. I don't want their guilt salved. I want them to focus on redistributing work. We should view the trend towards automation as the Second Ind…
You were homeless for nearly 6 years and now you're posting on hackernews that you think UBI is a much worse solution than the "Second Industrial Revolution"?
Honestly