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Which billionaires are doing the most good?

billionaireboard.com

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Re: Which billionaires are doing the most good?

#41

Post by caymanjim »

kemiller2002 wrote: post #6

I don't like rankings like this. I'm not saying all of them, but at least a few made their money off of the backs of others, being ruthless in business, etc. How gracious of them to give money to people they hurt in the first place. I'm glad they are doing good, but let's not pretend they were completely altruistic. Also, a number of these people donated money years ago to avoid taxes, and the money was invested and…

Altruism doesn't exist. There are a lot of reasons people do things that are helpful to others, but they're all selfish. Maybe they're trying to assuage guilt; maybe they're doing it for attention; maybe they're doing it to deflect bad PR or engender good PR for their organization; maybe it's a pragmatic financial decision; maybe it's political; maybe it just pumps up their endorphins. No matter what, it's done because they get something out of it.

This doesn't make giving bad. You can be selfish and do a tremendous amount of good for others. There's nothing wrong with feeling good or being socially rewarded for helping. This idea that some forms of giving are "altruistic" and others are schemes or manipulations isn't helpful. Attacking a generous person's character because you suspect their motives are somehow impure for unrelated reasons isn't helpful.

By all means, call people out for their bullshit when their motives are hypocritical and transparent, but don't beatify some and demonize others because of unrelated faults in their character. They're all giving for selfish reasons.

Re: Which billionaires are doing the most good?

#42

Post by DrScientist »

dominotw wrote: post #23

Public's perception of Warren Buffet is really puzzling to me. He seems to largely escape the scorn for billionaires, even looked at as a 'good guy'. Whats his secret? We seem to hold CEO of coke more culpable for filling oceans with plastic than coke's shareholders like buffet who profit more from it than the CEO. Really bizarre phenomenon.

Well one thing - as an just an investor rather than a company owner, he doesn't get flack for the stuff 'his' companies do.

Perhaps he should - he owns a large stake in Coca cola - one of the largest plastic polluters in the world.

He also is a 'good investor' - ie an actual investor, helping to build conpanies over a long time, rather than a speculator.

Personality - being soft spoken and all that - has probably a big part to play as well.

Re: Which billionaires are doing the most good?

#43

Post by [deleted] »

0x262d wrote: post #13

I'm not sure how they can be considered to be doing much, or any, good, when effectively they are passively siphoning off profits and despite all the "good" they do, as a class they get rapidly richer every year. That has always been a conundrum behind Bill Gates' charity. Of course, it's not really a conundrum. The charity is just tax-advantaged PR or tax-advantaged complementary investment masquerading as goodwill.

[deleted]

Re: Which billionaires are doing the most good?

#45

Post by qqssccfftt »

forgot_my_pwd wrote: post #22

It is often the case that soft social pressure is the best way to enforce desirable behaviors amongst people. Within friend groups where there are no formally established laws or codes of conduct, there are certain implicit standards of behavior people are expected to abide by, and part of why they do is because of the threat of social ostracism. In a broader scope, in ancient societies social ostracism was often use…

If I was a billionaire I would not care about being a social outcast. For starters, I could just buy friends, or buy hitmen.

Re: Which billionaires are doing the most good?

#46

Post by 0xebfc »

Since the angle this website introduces itself with is:

"These are the world's most powerful people. Let's track their impact & inspire them to do more good"

This doesn't seem like a good motivator, because doing something for the sake of reputation doesn't directly incentivize solving a problem in an effective way.

And w.r.t. the title of the post, it seems like there are a few steps critical steps being omitted in the relationship between money donated and "doing good". For instance, not all organizations are as effective as others; if the motivator is to increase the $ count of donation, then what's the point in thinking about "doing good"?

Can I be ranked as "doing the most good" by contributing more money than anyone else in the list, while still doing measurable damage to parts of society that aren't being included in the metric?

See, if this website were neutral -- if it just showed the damn numbers without injecting it with an arbitrary value judgement, this would have been great. Instead, this serves to create anxiety to those who view it to do something for the wrong reasons.

The more I think about this, the more banal this site seems to me. I'd appreciate being pointed out if I'm missing something, but otherwise this website tells me more about the mindset of the authors than anything else.

Re: Which billionaires are doing the most good?

#47

Post by mikejulietbravo »

andrepd wrote: post #30
kemiller2002 wrote: post #6

I don't like rankings like this. I'm not saying all of them, but at least a few made their money off of the backs of others, being ruthless in business, etc. How gracious of them to give money to people they hurt in the first place. I'm glad they are doing good, but let's not pretend they were completely altruistic. Also, a number of these people donated money years ago to avoid taxes, and the money was invested and…

Imagine an analog of such a ranking from 300 years ago. "Which of our Gracious Lords are doing the moste Good?"

This made me chuckle

Re: Which billionaires are doing the most good?

#49

Post by warent »

nacho2sweet wrote: post #2

Just tax them.

I've wondered about this. Would it be possible to have an income/asset tax such that it introduces a wealth cap of some amount which can never be reached?

For example, the limit could be $30,000,000 so if you're making more than that in pretax income, your income would be $29,999,999.999 etc. with the fractional cent increasing so people could still compete on a scoreboard.

Also, it seems like one of the biggest arguments against capping wealth is that it would disincentive innovation. But just about every person who became billionaires through innovation never had that intention to begin with. I firmly believe Jeff Bezos would still be running Amazon if he had a wealth cap. Mark Zuckerberg would still be running Facebook. No?

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