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The founder of Craigslist has given away half a billion dollars

independent.co.uk

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Re: The founder of Craigslist has given away half a billion dollars

#101

Post by jmalicki »

dyauspitr wrote: post #44
socalgal2 wrote: post #30

Earlier quoted context omitted.

[flagged]

Giving away money is stupid. With that much money I would rather fund companies that push the frontier on something. If it fails no biggie, if it succeeds it will probably end up employing people and giving them a source of income for life while simultaneously contributing to human progress.

You're saying charities like OpenAI that people have given money to haven't pushed the frontier on anything?

You'd rather vibecode a SaaS or start a dropshipping business because that is somehow pushing the frontier more than a charity like OpenAI people gave away money to?

Re: The founder of Craigslist has given away half a billion dollars

#102

Post by rayiner »

georgemcbay wrote: post #53
socalgal2 wrote: post #30

Earlier quoted context omitted.

[flagged]

> it's easy to give away money if you have it. You'd think that, and yet so few of them give anything significant away (unless you count political donations). For every one Newmark or MacKenzie Scott who does give there are hundreds who only use charitable trusts as a tax haven, if at all. So when one of them manages to avoid the extreme-wealth-to-meanness pipeline theorized by Paul Piff (et al) I'm happy to recogniz…

> MacKenzie Scott

What exactly has been achieved with the billions MacKenzie Scott has given away? She seems to do very little vetting of the organizations she donates to. And upon a cursory inspection, they mostly seem like the kinds of organizations where most of the donor dollars go to white collar non-profit employees that produce little in the way of results, with very little going to needy people.

I feel like the billions might be better used to piggyback on government programs that have already identified need. For example, we could offer universal school lunch for an incremental $11 billion a year (on top of the $18 billion the government already spends). I bet a few of these “giving pledge” billionaires could just fund such a program in perpetuity.

Re: The founder of Craigslist has given away half a billion dollars

#103

Post by standardUser »

comrade1234 wrote: post #80

It'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.

It's also too bad our society shares in the collective delusion that sex work can be prevented. It not only makes sex work far more dangerous, but it tramples on these exact kinds of novel spaces for sex/intimacy.

Re: The founder of Craigslist has given away half a billion dollars

#104

Post by jazz9k »

socalgal2 wrote: post #30
jmalicki wrote: post #21

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It is both absolutely gorgeous and luxurious, yet still at less than $6 million, pretty modest for someone capable of giving away half a billion.

[flagged]

I find that the people complaining the most about billionaires, don't put much effort into help others.

You can always give away labor, in the form of volunteering.

Re: The founder of Craigslist has given away half a billion dollars

#105

Post by WalterBright »

WalterBright wrote: post #74
WalterBright wrote: post #14

Earlier quoted context omitted.

[flagged]

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, t…

Some time ago, an American leftist told me that the Berlin Wall was necessary to keep the West out of East Berlin. he wasn't happy when I started laughing. I said that even to a 9 year old, it was clear the tank traps were set up to stop people fleeing to the West.

It's too bad the Westerners did not leave a section of the Wall standing. It would stop people from rewriting the truth about it.

Re: The founder of Craigslist has given away half a billion dollars

#106

Post by rayiner »

Forgeties79 wrote: post #99
dyauspitr wrote: post #44

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Giving away money is stupid. With that much money I would rather fund companies that push the frontier on something. If it fails no biggie, if it succeeds it will probably end up employing people and giving them a source of income for life while simultaneously contributing to human progress.

Why wouldn’t you fund nonprofits and artists?

A lot of non-profits are just jobs programs for people who run in the same educational/social circles as the wealthy people. Not all non-profits obviously. But a shocking amount when you get close to it.

Re: The founder of Craigslist has given away half a billion dollars

#107

Post by 83 »

apparent wrote: post #75
jrmg wrote: post #38

Is 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).

ND?

Re: The founder of Craigslist has given away half a billion dollars

#108

Post by jubilanti »

wyre wrote: post #96
jedberg wrote: post #54

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Craigslist doesn't make any money from those scams because they don't charge for rental listings. It sucks that it's there, but for them to hire staff to deal with it, they'd have to charge for the rental listings. Right now they rely on volunteers to combat that problem, in the form of legit landlords reporting the scams.

So why not charge for rental listings? i'm sure the number of scams would go down, while posting would still be of good value for someone looking to rent out a $3000/mo apartment.

They do in some markets like NYC specifically because of scams.

Re: The founder of Craigslist has given away half a billion dollars

#109

Post by rozap »

Zigurd wrote: post #65

Meh. Haven't the "effective altruism" people proved that conventional philanthropy is less effective?

Ea appears to primarily be a post hoc rationalization for someone's unhinged drive for money and power. A way for people who see themselves as good, but act according to a different set of principles, to launder their consciousness through a compelling sounding framework. Now, this isn't to say that all EA practicioners are like this, or that it's bad (I think doing some good is better than doing none, if we can quantify good...), or even that there's a better alternative in the system that we live in. But the whole thing just feels inauthentic and handwaves externalities in a way that always felt uncomfortable. So I'd hardly say EA has "proved" anything.

Re: The founder of Craigslist has given away half a billion dollars

#110

Post by Varelion »

zuzululu wrote: post #13
Varelion wrote: post #5

Earlier quoted context omitted.

As they should. Money boils down to a finite resource, and a class of people have been flaunting their theft of the working class since the famous balcony champagne image taken during Occupy Wallstreet. That singular image should be the poster of this Epstein era.

The reason there is cynicism around philanthropy by America's elite class is perhaps the obliviousness to the methods and means it is created and supported. "Here is a few billion dollar to a non profit company I control but you better not write that in the article" or "I didn't care for social consequences, I was just another player, it was ultimately for you" vibes it just doesn't have the impact it used to, ironic…

You do not become a Billionaire without abusing and taking advantage of others. It would be foolish to think that anyone with that pattern of behavior would or could be philanthropic.

The one exception I had for this was Bill Gates.

Then I looked into the past behavior of Microsoft, and what he was going with Jeffery Epstein.

I no longer hold him as an exception.

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