Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

The least impactful way to spend $300M?

passingtime.substack.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

231–240 of 291 posts

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

#231

Post by carschno »

qeternity wrote: post #226
onion2k wrote: post #214

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Luckily we already have this cool innovation called a market economy. We don't really though. There are companies, and individuals, with enough wealth and influence to compete with entire markets. A well-funded startup can undermine whole industries by spending VC money to run at a loss long enough that the rest of the market fails (Uber, AirBNB) or they can become so massive that there's absolutely no possibility of…

> so massive that there's absolutely no possibility of competing Scale has no value unless it offers something to your customer base. What you're ignoring is that Uber, Amazon et al are so huge and dominant because customers flock to them. I can summon a taxi to my location in most cities in the world with a single app. I can have pretty much any item delivered to my door within one or two days. These were unfathomab…

I think your argument is missing GP's point entirely. The point was that a functioning market economy would evolve so that companies that sell products or services at a self-sustaining price survive, whereas companies that lose money continuously die. However, this is clearly not the case, given that companies like Uber, as you mention, do survive without being profitable at all. Competitors that are not backed by near-infinite money cannot survive this competition, regardless of their product or efficiency.

Whether or not a functioning market economy could ever exist in reality if of course another question.

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

#232

Post by pembrook »

jwestbury wrote: post #228
bheadmaster wrote: post #213

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Luckily we already have this cool innovation called a market economy Market economy got us into the situation where the most brilliant minds in the world are researching best ways to make internet advertisements as addictive as they can be. Very cool innovation, indeed. Ever read The Space Merchants?

How about an even better -- and more salient -- example? Quant trading firms are gobbling up promising researchers in fields like physics and mathematics. These are people getting funded Ph.Ds at top universities (Oxford, Cambridge, Harvard, Yale, etc.), and they end up just going to companies which exist solely for the purpose of making rich people richer.

Quant firms provide value to society, hence why they are compensated for it.

Liquidity and price discovery are useful things. Nobody would pay them otherwise.

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

#233

Post by monkeydreams »

blackshaw wrote: post #197
koromak wrote: post #166

Earlier quoted context omitted.

God I just don't buy the "these people will go on to benefit humanity" argument anymore. We don't need more tech companies. We don't need more hedge funds. We don't need to feed our genuinely brightest minds into the wealth consolidation machine. Occasioanlly one of these people will find some one-off bit of brilliance that lifts an entire class of people out of poverty, but that ticket has an expiration date tied to…

> that ticket has an expiration date tied to the 19th century. Eventually those free spaces will run out. They're already starting to in the western world I'm sorry but I genuinely don't understand what you're saying here. What will expire? Which "free spaces" are running out where?

> Which "free spaces" are running out where?

Not OP but the college entrance scandal is a great example. With the super wealthy taking up all the philanthropic entrance positions the "just" wealthy set had to resort to cheating and rorts to ease little Johnny Blueblood's way into society.

There is only so much room at the top.

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

#234

Post by modo_mario »

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?

I'd say it leads to things like an average overinvestment in things that benefit shareholders rather than things that might benefit the company or society over the long term. Weirdly timed stock buybacks instead of money going to R&D or attracting talent and the like.

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

#235

Post by jabradoodle »

pembrook wrote: post #232
jwestbury wrote: post #228

Earlier quoted context omitted.

How about an even better -- and more salient -- example? Quant trading firms are gobbling up promising researchers in fields like physics and mathematics. These are people getting funded Ph.Ds at top universities (Oxford, Cambridge, Harvard, Yale, etc.), and they end up just going to companies which exist solely for the purpose of making rich people richer.

Quant firms provide value to society, hence why they are compensated for it. Liquidity and price discovery are useful things. Nobody would pay them otherwise.

If the definition of providing value to society = making a profit, then is selling heroin providing value to society?

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

#236

Post by irjustin »

fasterik wrote: post #208
irjustin wrote: post #69

I take issue with this article under the Effective Altruism concept. 100% agree with the title, that the it is very not impactive. But it isn't actively harmful, which there's a LOT of other ways to spend $300m and actually be harmful. So the article takes issue with buying status overall - agreed. But, saying that Griffin should have donated the money to "better things". Even the article writer points out that Griff…

Let's say charity X can save one life per $10,000 spent on average. Then $300M can save 30,000 lives. If you choose to burn that money instead of donating it to charity X, 30,000 people who could have survived are now dead. That doesn't seem like a fantastic outcome to me.

> If you choose to burn that money instead of donating it to charity X, 30,000 people who could have survived are now dead. That doesn't seem like a fantastic outcome to me.

This statement forgets that the person who donated doesn't care. They actively like to hurt companies who don't deserve it and profit from it (unlike Hindenburg Research).

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

#237

Post by boeingUH60 »

lordnacho wrote: post #184
bboygravity wrote: post #149

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Also a criminal who will likely end up in jail at some point. His companies aren't exactly uncontroversial. There's a reason people call this guy (Ken Griffin) Madoff 2.0

Why on earth would he end up in jail? No don't just tell us to Google it, obviously it won't turn up anything. What allegations are you referring to?

The person you're responding to is likely a member of the meme stock doomsday cult that keeps blaming Ken Griffin for their AMC/GameStop losses.

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

#238

Post by hackernewds »

55555 wrote: post #66
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

That is so obscene. So basically every American paid a dollar per day, I guess. (I know, ~most don't pay income taxes, but yeah.)

so basically the middle and upper middle class paid a lunch per day to fund the war into private coffers

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

#239

Post by hackernewds »

koromak wrote: post #166
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…

God I just don't buy the "these people will go on to benefit humanity" argument anymore. We don't need more tech companies. We don't need more hedge funds. We don't need to feed our genuinely brightest minds into the wealth consolidation machine. Occasioanlly one of these people will find some one-off bit of brilliance that lifts an entire class of people out of poverty, but that ticket has an expiration date tied to…

You don't think affording free education for majorly ridiculously hard working students is going to pay dividends? Please explain your cynicism

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

#240

Post by SilverBirch »

This is such a good demonstration of the problem with effective alturism. Does anyone in their right mind think that Ken Griffin made a calculation of what was going to provide the most efficient use of his capital when he made this decision?

Nope!

And this is a problem that EA has always suffered from - they view a complex social and emotional problem as a logic puzzle, and are often blind to their own idiosynchrasies. How much time does EA waste whining on about AI safety? Way too much! But from their actuarial perspective it's almost a divide by zero bug - "What's the chances of an AI? Some small number, what could it's impact be? Oh, infinite. Ok, guess we should dedicate every penny we have to that then...". EA doesn't meet charity on it's own terms.

Post reply on HN