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The least impactful way to spend $300M?

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Re: The least impactful way to spend $300M?

#111

Post by scythe »

27153 wrote: post #84
nonethewiser wrote: post #56

Earlier quoted context omitted.

But what? What would be lost without the 300 million? If you can’t be specific then I think it’s to the authors point. I mean, just consider that he spent 300 million and the impact isn’t obvious. At least in your fish example they used it for the intended purpose for some period of time and there is still some low utilization for dried fish. It’s also half of 300 million so it seems they did more with less despite i…

You don’t think doing more good with the same resources is a good thing? Is it not better to save two lives than one life, all else equal?

Considering the infrastructure deficiencies, I think a canning facility would have been better.

Re: The least impactful way to spend $300M?

#112

Post by kjghkjghkjgh »

jimbokun wrote: post #51
crazygringo wrote: post #24

I definitely don't think the big schools like Harvard/Yale/etc. need any more money, but I will play devil's advocate here. > "he donated $300 million in such as a way as to do as close as possible to zero good with it." Oh there are a lot worse ways to spend it with the best of intentions. The Turkana frozen-fish plant is a classic example, a charitable project where back in around 1975 around $150 million (in today…

Harvard produced many of the people that built a society with staggering and increasing levels of income inequality. Consultants, hedge fund managers, architects of super addictive social media platforms, politicians who write laws favoring corporations over workers, etc. etc.

Yeah, all those vaccine inventors from Harvard that became staggeringly rich are what's wrong with society. /s

Re: The least impactful way to spend $300M?

#113

Post by tempestn »

VanTheBrand wrote: post #110
tempestn wrote: post #55

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'd go one further. There are plenty of actively harmful donations one could make. As one example, most people would probably feel that way about roughly half of political donations.

Political contributions are not donations and are not tax deductible.

The OP didn't ask what was the least impactful tax deductible way to spend.

Re: The least impactful way to spend $300M?

#114

Post by kjghkjghkjgh »

elcritch wrote: post #98
jimbokun wrote: post #51

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Harvard produced many of the people that built a society with staggering and increasing levels of income inequality. Consultants, hedge fund managers, architects of super addictive social media platforms, politicians who write laws favoring corporations over workers, etc. etc.

Partly, but it was Milton Friedman at the University of Chicago who helped lay the framework for the "shareholder primacy" theory that really paved the way for the poor longterm corporate management of the last couple of decades.

"Shareholder primacy" led to the invention of modern vaccines and mRNA discoveries. Was this a poor longterm corporate investment?

Re: The least impactful way to spend $300M?

#115

Post by matthew9219 »

PragmaticPulp wrote: post #64

I like the idea of Effective Altruism (EA), but it’s ironic to use EA to call out ineffective charitable spending in the wake of all the Effective Altruism ridiculousness of recent years. EA was a key part of SBF’s cover story to make his frauds appear to be coming from a philanthropic angle. An EA figurehead recently spent multiple millions, some of which was FTX donations, on a castle/chateau to “host events”, whic…

30k is 0.01% of 300m, or 1 part in 10,000. It was also just a small part of 900k of grants given out to many different works.

This is how art grants work. They are tiny - in the 10k to 50k range, a few thousand are given out. Some of these artists produce great works and some don't. But it's cheap as heck compared to other things, and if we spend nothing on art, we don't get any great art. Are you also one of those people that hates federal arts funding?

Btw HPMOR is also pretty good. Harvard probably spent more than 30k on their sign and got a lot less.

Re: The least impactful way to spend $300M?

#116

Post by samdcbu »

elcritch wrote: post #98
jimbokun wrote: post #51

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Harvard produced many of the people that built a society with staggering and increasing levels of income inequality. Consultants, hedge fund managers, architects of super addictive social media platforms, politicians who write laws favoring corporations over workers, etc. etc.

Partly, but it was Milton Friedman at the University of Chicago who helped lay the framework for the "shareholder primacy" theory that really paved the way for the poor longterm corporate management of the last couple of decades.

and then in 2017 Friedman’s former department was renamed the Kenneth C. Griffin Department of Economics after he donated 150m

Re: The least impactful way to spend $300M?

#117

Post by scythe »

tomjakubowski wrote: post #49
moneycantbuy wrote: post #26

the war in afghanistan cost taxpayers $300,000,000 per day every day for 20 years, for a total of ~$2,000,000,000,000

For less than the cost of a cup of coffee a day (per taxpayer)...

I make my coffee at home because the shops are too expensive

Re: The least impactful way to spend $300M?

#118

Post by pinewurst »

kjghkjghkjgh wrote: post #114
elcritch wrote: post #98

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Partly, but it was Milton Friedman at the University of Chicago who helped lay the framework for the "shareholder primacy" theory that really paved the way for the poor longterm corporate management of the last couple of decades.

"Shareholder primacy" led to the invention of modern vaccines and mRNA discoveries. Was this a poor longterm corporate investment?

Why is that true? It certainly led to the crippling of general corporate scientific research.

Re: The least impactful way to spend $300M?

#119

Post by thfuran »

kjghkjghkjgh wrote: post #114
elcritch wrote: post #98

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Partly, but it was Milton Friedman at the University of Chicago who helped lay the framework for the "shareholder primacy" theory that really paved the way for the poor longterm corporate management of the last couple of decades.

"Shareholder primacy" led to the invention of modern vaccines and mRNA discoveries. Was this a poor longterm corporate investment?

Did it really? Wasn't the research leading to mRNA vaccines performed in a grant-funded university lab?

Re: The least impactful way to spend $300M?

#120

Post by krainboltgreene »

matthew9219 wrote: post #115
PragmaticPulp wrote: post #64

I like the idea of Effective Altruism (EA), but it’s ironic to use EA to call out ineffective charitable spending in the wake of all the Effective Altruism ridiculousness of recent years. EA was a key part of SBF’s cover story to make his frauds appear to be coming from a philanthropic angle. An EA figurehead recently spent multiple millions, some of which was FTX donations, on a castle/chateau to “host events”, whic…

30k is 0.01% of 300m, or 1 part in 10,000. It was also just a small part of 900k of grants given out to many different works. This is how art grants work. They are tiny - in the 10k to 50k range, a few thousand are given out. Some of these artists produce great works and some don't. But it's cheap as heck compared to other things, and if we spend nothing on art, we don't get any great art. Are you also one of those p…

> Some of these artists produce great works and some don't. But it's cheap as heck compared to other things, and if we spend nothing on art, we don't get any great art. Are you also one of those people that hates federal arts funding?

Ignoring the fact that you don't know how art grants work, you seem to be (carefully) ignoring the entire proposed idea behind Effective Altruism.

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