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The founder of Craigslist has given away half a billion dollars

independent.co.uk

221–230 of 341 posts

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

#221

Earlier quoted context omitted.

it was an intentional choice to not go big. I can seriously respect that. I feel like all these "big tech leaders" like Zuck or Musk have some pretty blatant mental health issues, its a path with significant drawbacks because that level of absurd wealth causes issues.

As if casually having the ability to give away half a billion dollars is not absurd wealth?

the cure for hoardcurse is to give it away, yes.

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

#222

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I mean he owns craigslist I am sure he can summon many people to do his bidding.

True—-but half of them forget to actually show up and many of the ones that do try to renegotiate the deal.

If you meme it well enough, you could get people to show up for free and still do it.

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

#223

Craigslist is often held up as an example of a company "doing it right", but what is never mentioned in these posts is that a large portion of their revenue comes from facilitating scams. Around 25% of rooms/apartments I contact are scams, and Craigslist has so far done nothing to prevent these. A common scam is to take pictures from a real estate site of a house that recently sold and advertise it as for rent, but t…

> a large portion of their revenue comes from facilitating scams. Around 25% of rooms/apartments I contact are scams

they don't charge for rental posts in most cities, so your conclusion is false

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

#224

I think he has given away a whole lot more than half a billion dollars when you think of the opportunity squandered to grow CL the way other unicorney companies grew

> opportunity squandered to grow CL the way other unicorney companies grew

squandered?

how about: decided not to become an asshole billionaire like many of the other unicorn asshole billionaires, and help other people instead

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

#225

> “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.

> 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. What makes you think rich people keep working to make more money, instead of doing it because they want to build things and want to have the capital to do it? We don't exactly live in the era of inherited wealth anymore.

maybe because we don't see many of said rich people (unless by "build things" you mean "start another company that they can sell and make them even more money")

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

#226

Craigslist is often held up as an example of a company "doing it right", but what is never mentioned in these posts is that a large portion of their revenue comes from facilitating scams. Around 25% of rooms/apartments I contact are scams, and Craigslist has so far done nothing to prevent these. A common scam is to take pictures from a real estate site of a house that recently sold and advertise it as for rent, but t…

Even beyond scams they are one of the biggest factors leading to the collapse of the local news industry that was funded by local classified ads. So it’s hard at a macro level to view them as doing it right in a global sense, but they did make Craig rich.

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

#227
post #69
post #40

Earlier quoted context omitted.

[flagged]

Indeed, conflating local news with local newspapers is a mistake. They were able to support news gathering by monopolizing print advertising. They were also overly dependent on the municipal government and police for access, and were therefore often timid on certain subjects.

I’m confused. Are you saying that local news is in a better place with the demise of local newspapers. What better has taken their place?

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

#229

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Why is the median considered "poor"? The true poor in Mississippi are way worse off than those in Germany. If you neglect everything it takes to live a good life like public capital, education, healthcare, time off with family, a retirement, total years on this earth and ignore the insane inequality in Mississippi then sure the median numbers are not that far off.

> Why is the median considered "poor" Because most big-city coastal Americans think of the median Mississippian as that way. > If you neglect everything it takes to live a good life [...] We're speaking past each other somewhat. You seem to have a belief system that says a good life is not possible without the stuff that Germany provides via taxation and redistribution. Whether that stuff is a necessary or sufficient…

Emigration of Germans to the USA is only 10,00-15,000 people per year since 2000 and is trending down especially since 2016 to lowest levels ever. Emigration of US citizens to Germany started from almost nothing around the same time and is now trending up to almost 1,500 people a year. We are talking about a small number of decidedly non median people in either case but even then the rate of change is clear, neglecting the fact that Germans learn English in public school while Americans typically don't have public schooling in German. My family is descended from German immigrants who came during the 1930s to escape right wing authoritarianism.

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

#230
post #147

Sadly, I think Craig might have done MORE for society by simply improving Craig's List and removing/reducing the amount of spam and junk posts it allows. I can't claim the changes would be easy to implement, but if they made a FEW small changes the result would be 1000x better. For example if you want to sell something on Craig's List they do some "you can't make this post because it looks too similar to a previous p…

This is right. The good he was doing society was the product Craigslist.org. It touched hundreds of millions of lives for the better and, sometimes, worse. He had no great lever. I'm skeptical the non-profits/charities had any where near the societal benefit. The article seems light on what he actually accomplished by giving away $500M
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