251–260 of 875 posts
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Why not "SF General Hospital"?
Because that's the Zuckerberg SF General Hospital and not just for kids. [0] [0] https://zuckerbergsanfranciscogeneral.org/
If there actually two general hospitals, do what Toronto East General Hospital did, subdivide by location.
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>Feeney seems like an awesome guy but sadly in 100 years nobody will know his name! I'm 99.9999999% certain that no one cares about their name when they're dead.
A lot of people care about their legacy.
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Using the 4% rule, $2 million gives you an income stream of $80,000 a year in retirement. Comfortable but hardly lavish.
$2 million in retirement savings puts him above 90th percentile for retirements savings for any age. The maximum 90th percentile I can find is $619,000.00 at ages 60-64. https://dqydj.com/retirement-savings-by-age-united-states/ If he's broke, then at least 90% of retirees are broke.
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There'd be less need for such trust if there were more democracy [1] as well. 1. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Liquid_democracy
It also depends on how much you trust the electorate. Recent developments around the world have shaken my faith a bit.
I for one don't have time in my life to be an expert on running an economy, creating an immigration policy, balancing the environmental and societal needs etc. I specialize in my area of expertise and use that money to employ others who specialize in their areas, and that includes government.
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There’s millions of people in this country that donate anonymously. People’s ability to agree where money should be given isn’t great. Worse so when the people who are giving the most have less say in where it goes. In my experience, most appeals like the above tend to be driven by the idea that they would make better decisions than the philanthropist.
In the end, donations are a form of political power, If only deciding what gets funded, and what doesn't, even before all the other self promotion stuff surrounding them. Whats a better model for deciding the distribution of political power, a democratic one, or a dictatorial one? At the very least I don't think its an unreasonable position to believe that democracy makes more sense.
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Namely something after yourself is tacky. But what should buildings be named after? Famous scientists? Planets? Feeney seems like an awesome guy but sadly in 100 years nobody will know his name!
John Harvard and Elihu Yale seemed to have avoided this fate. And Leland Stanford had the same name as his father, so maybe founding a university is the way to go here?
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>Feeney seems like an awesome guy but sadly in 100 years nobody will know his name! I'm 99.9999999% certain that no one cares about their name when they're dead.
A lot of people care about their legacy.
Mark Benioff donated $100M to the UCSF Benioff Children's Hospital and got his name on the INSTITUTION (not just a building). What many don't know is that donation was to complete a match of $125M offered by Chuck Feeney (who does not have his name on a building anywhere on the campus, AFAIK).[0]. That $125M was only part of the $394M Chuck ended up giving to UCSF.[1] [0] https://www.healthleadersmedia.com/finance/uc…
Namely something after yourself is tacky. But what should buildings be named after? Famous scientists? Planets? Feeney seems like an awesome guy but sadly in 100 years nobody will know his name!
I think it's a cultural thing. In some countries it would be considered very poor taste for someone to pay to get their name on a building. If it's an academic building, I think it makes more sense to name it after someone who contributed to the field. Or it could simply be the "CS building".
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Yeah, to put this in some context, giving to "education" sounds good, but then when you see over $1B or 12.5% of his fortune went to elite private universities (one of which, Stanford, already has the 3rd or 4th largest endowment in NA), that really stretches the definition of "philanthropy".
Doesn't it depend what the private universities do with the money? If it's spent on enabling people to attend who otherwise wouldn't be able to, that seems good (regardless of how large the endowment at that university is).
I think out of all possibilities for the attitudes and practices of billionaire philanthropists, Feeney is probably as close to the ideal as possible[0]. But it still makes me sad to see this sort of thing celebrated. A small number of ultra-rich people should not be deciding for society what causes get funded, no matter how pure their intentions are. The fact that individuals are able to amass this much money in the…
What's your proposed alternative to the amalgamated actions of rich individuals? I'm not sure what else could work better, and we've certainly seen worse collective approaches throughout history.