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MacKenzie Scott's giving, in quality-adjusted life years

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Re: MacKenzie Scott's giving, in quality-adjusted life years

#21

Post by smt88 »

rescripting wrote: post #19
reinitctxoffset wrote: post #9

Speaking for myself, just knowing there is someone in the billionaire class who is still an incandescent beacon of humanity, humility, and hope has in some nontrivial way increased the quality of my years since she started on this path. She is an existence proof that a now-inevitable extreme inequality regime is not by construction maximally cynical and extractive.

She is an outlier in the sense that she is both “new money” and also “old money” (she did the equivalent of inheriting money in her settlement with Bezos). She was, at one time, a normal person, with normal friends and normal parents. However unlike most other “new money” billionaires she acquired her wealth without the corrupting influence of being a master of the universe business person where everyone in your circ…

She wasn’t a passive housewife who inherited money in a divorce. She was an early Amazon investor and helped build the first stage of the company. She’d be a billionaire even without the divorce.

Re: MacKenzie Scott's giving, in quality-adjusted life years

#22

Post by Schiendelman »

reinitctxoffset wrote: post #10
Schiendelman wrote: post #6

Earlier quoted context omitted.

No, these are the right metrics. You're missing choice . When a woman chooses to have a child, or chooses to not have a child, we ascribe the economic impact based on her intent.

I think a great many women and a great many economists (and women who are economists for that matter) would take issue with the notion that raising a child is the alternative to being productive. Ask any policy maker in South Korea how they feel about the social value in raising children. It's not a film adaptation of a book starring Clive Owen and Julianne Moore, it's 2055 or thereabouts in the China, the US isn't s…

I was not in any way intending to imply I thought that, I was using the language above about economic value. I've edited my post to avoid the misunderstanding, I think you and I are aligned.

Re: MacKenzie Scott's giving, in quality-adjusted life years

#23

Post by oklahomasports »

reinitctxoffset wrote: post #9

Speaking for myself, just knowing there is someone in the billionaire class who is still an incandescent beacon of humanity, humility, and hope has in some nontrivial way increased the quality of my years since she started on this path. She is an existence proof that a now-inevitable extreme inequality regime is not by construction maximally cynical and extractive.

the worlds GDP is like $120,000,000,000,000. Her work is worthless in comparison. the only possible benefit of concentrated wealth is taking concentrated bets on a new research or technology or social organization. But to give to generic charities is a waste of time and reveals a profound lack of creativity on her part.

Re: MacKenzie Scott's giving, in quality-adjusted life years

#24

Post by rescripting »

smt88 wrote: post #21
rescripting wrote: post #19

Earlier quoted context omitted.

She is an outlier in the sense that she is both “new money” and also “old money” (she did the equivalent of inheriting money in her settlement with Bezos). She was, at one time, a normal person, with normal friends and normal parents. However unlike most other “new money” billionaires she acquired her wealth without the corrupting influence of being a master of the universe business person where everyone in your circ…

She wasn’t a passive housewife who inherited money in a divorce. She was an early Amazon investor and helped build the first stage of the company. She’d be a billionaire even without the divorce.

I’m not trying to dismiss the investments she made (both time and money), but more point out that she was not driven by the same corrupting motivations you get with typical billionaires. If she was, she’d have taken her wealth and done more capitalism with it.

Re: MacKenzie Scott's giving, in quality-adjusted life years

#25

Post by npunt »

Another thing that this does not measure is philanthropic effectiveness. If there are lessons to be learned in terms of what kinds of philanthropy works better than others, then those learnings may cause other philanthropic endeavors to have greater success. I've had a bit of experience working with several big foundations and seeking out effective ways to spend lots of money is an extremely hard problem and they're all aware of it, and they treat each investment as an experiment.

Of course, the effectiveness of each type of investment is not fixed, and will inevitably drop off. I believe the whole 'just buy malaria nets' first-order thinking was part of discourse for a while before people wised up.

Re: MacKenzie Scott's giving, in quality-adjusted life years

#27

Post by IncreasePosts »

ks2048 wrote: post #15

Even if all her donations were a complete waste, one can argue every $1B taken from the oligarch class is a win - less money to buy media outlets and politicians.

Vanguard, black rock, fidelity etc own /manager 3x the AMZN that bezos does, so more concretely you're taking $3 out of random Americans retirement funds for every dollar you take out of bezos' pocket

Re: MacKenzie Scott's giving, in quality-adjusted life years

#29

Post by cindyllm »

oklahomasports wrote: post #23
reinitctxoffset wrote: post #9

Speaking for myself, just knowing there is someone in the billionaire class who is still an incandescent beacon of humanity, humility, and hope has in some nontrivial way increased the quality of my years since she started on this path. She is an existence proof that a now-inevitable extreme inequality regime is not by construction maximally cynical and extractive.

the worlds GDP is like $120,000,000,000,000. Her work is worthless in comparison. the only possible benefit of concentrated wealth is taking concentrated bets on a new research or technology or social organization. But to give to generic charities is a waste of time and reveals a profound lack of creativity on her part.

[dead]

Re: MacKenzie Scott's giving, in quality-adjusted life years

#30

Post by mattgrice »

xhevahir wrote: post #28

Smells like EA. The "Evidence stance" measure in particular, which purports to gauge a study's rigorousness as a simple percentage, is rank pseudoscience.

It's just trying to visualize bang for buck. Not science, much less pseudoscience.

EA ended up getting coopted by people who weren't interested in altruism at all but that doesn't seem like this.

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