Earlier quoted context omitted.
It's also one of the major things the destroyed newspapers. I'm not saying that's bad, just pointing out it happened.
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Well that kind of gating actually kept the scams out so I have mixed feelings about it.
The founder of Craigslist has given away half a billion dollars
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Re: The founder of Craigslist has given away half a billion dollars
#72> “They told me that I should treat people like I want to be treated,” he said. “I should know when enough is enough. And they told me I should be my brother's keeper or my sister's keeper. And that made sense to me.” Refreshing to see a multimillionaire+ who actually knows the meaning of the word "enough." The world seems to be run by people who don't even know of the word.
It's almost as if you can make $1 billion without intrusive, exploitative, sneaky data gathering and products that are a witches brew of dark patterns.
Re: The founder of Craigslist has given away half a billion dollars
#73Earlier quoted context omitted.
"The rest" is still quite wealthy, even by today's developed economy standards. Median household disposable income is higher in Mississippi, a state widely panned for its poverty, than Germany, the richest major EU nation. In American discourse, there's a ton of talk about inequality from the haves against the have-mores, pushing policy that often times will lead to worse outcomes for the have-nots.
median household income is not higher in missisippi vs germany, especially not true if you adjust for the value of healthcare, education, and social benefits including time off work.
There are, of course, many ways to measure this, some of which are slightly higher for Germany and some for Mississippi. Many are in the same ballpark, which is pretty crazy to think about. Many of these statistics take into account the taxpayer-funded programs you mentioned.
Broadly speaking, the median Mississippian is about as rich as the median German, with the tradeoff being that the Mississippian has greater access to private goods (e.g. a fishing boat or a big car), whereas the German has greater access to public goods (e.g. socialized insurance or college).
My point is that even "the poor" in America are really quite well off, and not just in historical terms.
Re: The founder of Craigslist has given away half a billion dollars
#74good for him! but empty words to the american working class it may be too late, now ppl hate the rich
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I've always been an advocate of the free market. And I'll tell you why.
When I was 9, my dad arranged a tour of East Berlin for his family. As part of the deal with the USSR when the 4 zones were partitioned, this was allowed for an Air Force officer. This was at the height of the Cold War.
The Wall is gone now, but it was something to behold in those days. There's the Wall, the kill zone, the tank traps, the dogs, the watchtowers, the barbed wire, and the machine guns. All on the east side.
We went through Checkpoint Charlie on a bus, and were searched by the East German guards entering and exiting. The guards ran a mirror under the bus. They were all carrying machine guns. You could sum up East Berlin in one word - grey.
There was a museum next to Checkpoint Charlie, which was about the Wall. It was loaded with pictures of east Germans being killed trying to escape to the west.
West Berlin built platforms next to the Wall, so you can stand on the platform and look over it and see what a freakin' abomination it was. I never heard of anyone using those platforms to "escape" to East Berlin.
In West Berlin, there was the Russian War Memorial. It was an island of East Berlin surrounded by the west. The memorial was surrounded by barbed wire. There were two guards on duty there, with machine guns, of course. We waved at them, and they grinned at us.
Then an officer came out and looked them up and down. Their faces turned to stone, looking straight ahead.
I asked my dad about it, he said the guards were a pair who didn't know each other, with strict orders to shoot the other if one attempted to get escape through the barbed wire.
It was pretty obvious to my 9 year old mind that people simply do not like living under communism.
I've read a lot of history books over the years. It's pretty clear that communes and communism and socialism do not work. They don't work when people do them freely, they don't work when people are forced into it.
And the more free market a country is, the more prosperous it is. The evidence is strong and everywhere.
Re: The founder of Craigslist has given away half a billion dollars
#75Is Craigslist still the go-to classifieds site in some places? Around here it’s (very sadly IMO) been almost completely replaced by Facebook Marketplace, to the extent that people make Facebook accounts just to use Marketplace.
I use ND first, then CL. I've used FB a few times, but mostly it's been scammers (though I have friends who swear by it).
Re: The founder of Craigslist has given away half a billion dollars
#76Earlier quoted context omitted.
The top 1% of America pays 40% of the federal income taxes. Getting rid of the rich is probably a pretty bad idea for the rest of us.
This is a byproduct of wild wealth disparity, not because the rich are so generous with paying the government.
And if you take away their money, then who is going to fund the government and all those wealth redistribution programs?
Re: The founder of Craigslist has given away half a billion dollars
#77Earlier quoted context omitted.
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Well that kind of gating actually kept the scams out so I have mixed feelings about it.
You can't have lived through that era and believe that print classifieds were scam-free. I'm sure the rate is higher today, but in the newspaper era it wasn't zero. In fact there's an unbroken lineage going back decades of the exact same fake rental scam prevalent on Craigslist today.
Re: The founder of Craigslist has given away half a billion dollars
#78The side takeaway from this is that most rich people won't voluntarily give away their wealth, so it will have to be taken.
Re: The founder of Craigslist has given away half a billion dollars
#79Earlier quoted context omitted.
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It's easy for some to give away money if they have it, but it's hard to accumulate that much money if you're one of those people. Newmark maybe representing the occasional exception, most people who accumulate great wealth through their effort and ideas are afflicted with an addiction problem and have a hard time saying "this is enough for me". They become attached to how much more wealth they might be able to gather…
> Even if they somehow imagine themselves as philanthropists or minimalists, they tend to put off giving away too much too soon under the rationale that they'll be able to eventually share more if they hold out and use it more practically.
What you're describing sounds exactly like Effective Altruism. The issue is that the expected value of an act that happens at an unspecified time in the future is zero.
Re: The founder of Craigslist has given away half a billion dollars
#80It's too bad the pimps and prostitutes ruined casual encounters. Craigslist had to remove it because some people were using it for prostitution. It was a safe place to arrange experiences that you would never have had otherwise.