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The least impactful way to spend $300M?

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

#261

Post by Retric »

jessekv wrote: post #183
charcircuit wrote: post #155

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I never said trickledown economics. I just said that inequality doesn't hurt people. Some rich person having a 5 star steak dinner doesn't take anything away from how much I enjoyed my own dinner. It's not a zero sum game where a rich person enjoying something takes away from what I enjoy.

I agree the zero-sum mentality sucks. It introduces really nasty dynamics in society and in the workplace. But extreme inequality is also very unhealthy for society. People with less get exploited. People with more feel entitled to exploit them.

There are many zero sum things people want. Costal beaches are more accessible to the general public when their rental property rather than empty billionaire vacation homes.

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

#262

Post by sokoloff »

carschno wrote: post #231
qeternity wrote: post #226

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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 ne…

I don't know that Uber turning a mere 14 years old is proof that the market economy isn't functioning. In a time of incredibly low interest rates and the resulting free-flowing money sloshing around looking for any possible return, I'd expect a lot of companies to reach their teens without that being proof that they can continue indefinitely without showing profits and returns to investors.

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

#263

Post by sokoloff »

bheadmaster wrote: post #245
pembrook wrote: post #232

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

> Liquidity and price discovery are useful things. Nobody would pay them otherwise. Is there any other evidence of their usefulness beyond "people pay for it"?

On the liquidity side, would you pay more for a security that you could easily and quickly sell with small slippage than you would for a security that could not be easily sold or only sold with a large slippage?

"People pay for [that]" because it's a genuinely useful property of an investment vehicle.

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

#264

Post by j0hnyl »

nmca wrote: post #230
j0hnyl wrote: post #107

Who cares what some rich guy's vanity spend is. You might argue it's not impactful, but it certainly doesn't hurt anyone.

Opportunity costs are real. Opportunity costs are real. Opportunity costs ARE REAL. OPPORTUNITY COSTS ARE REAL. ¡¡¡ OPPORTUNITY COSTS ARE REAL !!!

Ok, but the opportunity costs pertain solely to the spender, and even if not they are priced into the market. why do you feel entitled to the fortune that someone else decides to use for a vanity project.

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

#265

Post by snapplebobapple »

This article misses the point. Charity is a personal thing and the only person it has to be impactful for is the person doing the charity and this was definitely impactful for ken. His ego gets a huge stroking every time his building gets mentioned in anything and he gets to flex on all the students at Harvard who walk by and use his building every day. That it isn't maximizing social welfare is pretty irrelevant.

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

#266

Post by 27153 »

hackernewds wrote: post #239
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…

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

Think about the counterfactual: a student doesn’t go to Harvard, they instead go to Duke or a public Ivy. They’re only marginally worse off. All of these schools already have enough money to where families making under $75-$100k won’t be paying anything.

Donations to Harvard are exposed to extremely diminished marginal utility at this point.

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

#267

Post by HDThoreaun »

snapplebobapple wrote: post #265

This article misses the point. Charity is a personal thing and the only person it has to be impactful for is the person doing the charity and this was definitely impactful for ken. His ego gets a huge stroking every time his building gets mentioned in anything and he gets to flex on all the students at Harvard who walk by and use his building every day. That it isn't maximizing social welfare is pretty irrelevant.

The point is donating to worthless causes is morally repugnant and deserves to be derided. Sure he can do whatever he wants, and we can try to peer pressure him into making better decisions next time.

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

#268

Post by 27153 »

vintermann wrote: post #196
27153 wrote: post #84

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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?

Well, how do you count? One glaring obvious problem with the EA people, is that they double count. Say I give money for bed nets, and the bed nets save 100 lives. But say I only gave that money because Eliezer Yudkowsky convinced me to. Was it really him that saved 100 lives? Or do we divide them between us somehow? How many should go to the people who actually distributed the bed nets I paid for? You'd think the EA…

I don’t think EAs are focused on assigning credit here. It’s very consequentialist; they would say “it doesn’t matter who saved the 100 lives, it matters that they were saved.”

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

#270

Post by a4a4a4a4 »

adrianN wrote: post #260
a4a4a4a4 wrote: post #252

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm saying ads aren't "addictive", because they're pretty despised. They might be effective, when people see them, but I don't think anyone is "addicted" to ads.

Every influencer is basically an ad on two legs.

Are we talking about influencers, or “the world’s brightest minds”?
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