91–100 of 214 posts
Honest, albeit very naive question: Why not start a college? Does he not want the additional headaches and costs, is he playing status games, does he think Stanford could do a better job running this school than him, or some combination of the three
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Isn't there a tax deduction aspect to a lot of these donations? Anyways, 100 more Nature-level articles about climate change is not going to change the situation if there is no political will (or if it seesaws every 4-8 years at best).
There are some loopholes with donations, mostly regarding difficult-to-value benefits and also around donating dificult-to-value things rather than cash, stocks, and/or bonds. But, if you donate $1.1 billion to an eligible charity (and claim to have gotten nothing in return), then the US government basically pretends that you never made that money, and your tax bill goes down by roughly your marginal tax rate times t…
I dont really know where to start.
There are circumstances where you cant get your name on a building from a donation, there are circumstances that circumvent that requirement. There are circumstances where there is no tax deduction because the donation already occurred from another non profit.
These wealthy people are going to run circles around the the general understanding for another 100 years. Bite the bullet and pay a nonprofit lawyer to understand whats possible.
There are things you can do with asset valuations it just isnt that relevant
Stanford's last major foray into this area was "The Global Climate and Energy Project"... a major sponsor was ExxonMobil. As you might guess, that didn't really do much in the way of producing renewable energy alternatives to fossil fuels... more like a green PR initiative. Somehow I don't think oil companies are thrilled about everyone driving EVs and seeing their market share collapse. https://gcep.stanford.edu/abo…
I'm with you on increasing domestic PV production at scale, but residential rooftop solar is not where you are going to get the most impact in terms of increased renewable generation. Residential rooftop LCOE is always 2-4x the cost of utility scale solar because of the sheer variety of roof types, more inverters per panel, and much higher per-watt soft costs (marketing, site analysis, permitting, etc).
Rooftop solar is good for reducing individual customer bills in many places though. In CA my PV array, which cost about $12k, reduces my annual electric bill by $1700/year, thanks to the rooftop solar-friendly net-metering system. If net metering incentives were reduced, the value proposition in pure $ would go down. These days, the main incentive to get solar PV in CA appears to be:
- Adding it to lower bills before net-metering is phased out (as has been proposed)
- Generating power for an EV
- Pairing with battery backup for power outage preparation
Earlier quoted context omitted.
99% of climate change effort is social signaling, the other 1% is engineers and scientists working on more efficient, cleaner technologies. What I see here is lots of money for talks, articles, conferences, and “awareness.” Climate conferences are always held in nice places that you have to fly to. They’d do more for the environment by taking that money and paying people to pick up trash on the side of the highway. O…
Thats simply not true. Engineering 'solutions' to climate change like more efficient or cleaner technologies, or things like direct air capture are also social signaling, although more veiled and perhaps self delusional. These solutions are the equivalent of building more lanes on a highway instead of going with public transportation solutions. If anything many of these technologies may end up making climate change d…
I am concerned about the incredible concentration of money and resources into a few academic institutions. Obviously Stanford is an incredible school, but I am not sure Stanford will do more with $1B than 10 2nd tier schools would do with $100M each.
Honest, albeit very naive question: Why not start a college? Does he not want the additional headaches and costs, is he playing status games, does he think Stanford could do a better job running this school than him, or some combination of the three
There's also the prestige aspect. Stanford carries weight in elite circles, so more bragging rights for the Doerr family I guess. It's why many rich people keep throwing money towards elite universities with tens of billions of dollars in their endowments already.
I am concerned about the incredible concentration of money and resources into a few academic institutions. Obviously Stanford is an incredible school, but I am not sure Stanford will do more with $1B than 10 2nd tier schools would do with $100M each.
Isn't there a tax deduction aspect to a lot of these donations? Anyways, 100 more Nature-level articles about climate change is not going to change the situation if there is no political will (or if it seesaws every 4-8 years at best).
Earlier quoted context omitted.
99% of climate change effort is social signaling, the other 1% is engineers and scientists working on more efficient, cleaner technologies. What I see here is lots of money for talks, articles, conferences, and “awareness.” Climate conferences are always held in nice places that you have to fly to. They’d do more for the environment by taking that money and paying people to pick up trash on the side of the highway. O…
Thats simply not true. Engineering 'solutions' to climate change like more efficient or cleaner technologies, or things like direct air capture are also social signaling, although more veiled and perhaps self delusional. These solutions are the equivalent of building more lanes on a highway instead of going with public transportation solutions. If anything many of these technologies may end up making climate change d…
I would say reducing the US population would be more effective then reducing human population in an undefined way
I am concerned about the incredible concentration of money and resources into a few academic institutions. Obviously Stanford is an incredible school, but I am not sure Stanford will do more with $1B than 10 2nd tier schools would do with $100M each.
Isn't there a tax deduction aspect to a lot of these donations? Anyways, 100 more Nature-level articles about climate change is not going to change the situation if there is no political will (or if it seesaws every 4-8 years at best).
The flaw with this logic is assuming the money came from their personal balance sheet this year, as opposed to growing in a tax deferred or tax exempt account for decades already
Even Mackenzie Bezos’ donations are not giving her current year tax deductions (some additional ones could, its just not what she's been doing and she's been doing a lot and her methods are very common)
the understanding of what ultrawealthy are doing and why is very far from reality. I think its not productive to grasp for a tax/financial ulterior motive
Earlier quoted context omitted.
> 99% of climate change effort is social signaling, the other 1% is engineers and scientists working on more efficient, cleaner technologies. China, India, Russia, Indonesia, Brazil, and Iran combined produce about four times the GHG emissions of the US (and nearly half of all world emissions). Move forward in time 30 years and add in countries with large populations like Pakistan, and it's clear that making alternat…
Why could any of those countries not make the same argument, saying all other countries + the US pollute a lot more than them therefore thats not really their business ?