This is one of the laziest articles I've read. Let me boil down the author's entire argument into one sentence: "These tech billionaires want to help millions of people, not just the person next door. How heartless!" There are many valid critiques that could have been made. For example: "Zuckerberg claims that all lives have equal value, and hence, we should prioritize the countless future humans over existing ones.…
Is it horribly irrational to simply assume that the philanthropic gestures of the very wealthy are just targeted to achieve their own personal utility maximization? I think that it is normal to just assume self interest even in the case of philanthropy and this of course limits the type of philanthropy to that which has over-unity personal cost benefit ratio.
Often, people twist this into somehow being a bad thing. "Bill Gates isn't a good guy. He's just donating billions to charity and saving millions of lives because that makes him happy".
Problem is, you can twist any good deed into pure selfishness, using this chain of logic. "Your father wasn't a good man. Working hard to take care of his family, gave him great happiness, and that's why he did it".