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Join Wall Street. Save the world

washingtonpost.com

71–80 of 105 posts

Re: Join Wall Street. Save the world

#71

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't think he's planning to start a foundation, he's donating to existing ones, like the against malaria foundation.

Sure - I'm not saying it's bad. Far better than most people! It's just that it's sub-optimal if he can actually run an org to solve the problems. Especially the risk of not increasing donation size with increased conspicuous consumption. You can get soft quickly if you're not thinking lean...

How is it suboptimal? $2,500 per life saved is pretty good, let's say that's 10 lives a year for him. How could you do better than that?

Re: Join Wall Street. Save the world

#73
post #19

If you're interested in effective altruism, you might be interested in the Effective Altruism Summit, which will be held from June 30 to July 6 in San Francisco. All four of the effective altruism organizations mentioned in the article (GiveWell, Giving What We Can, The Life You Can Save, and 80,000 Hours) are participating, along with some not mentioned. Peter Singer, Peter Thiel, and Jaan Tallinn (co-creator of Kaz…

At a similar event on Efficient Charity at the Berkeley Faculty Club, Robin Hanson made some interesting (and unsettling) points about how most charities operate. [1] For example, he claims that most charitable contributions are actually about status signalling and not about maximizing impact. Because if someone truly wanted to do the Most Helpful Thing, they would save all their money and donate a single lump sum to…

An interesting idea, but I think this argument leaves out an important fact: money in the present is more useful than money in the future. This is often captured in accounting by use of a "discount rate". A pretty conventional number is 10% per year: waiting an extra year to receive some money makes it worth 10% less, all else equal. Comparing a typical interest rate and a typical discount rate, I would conclude that you should donate now.

Furthermore, if this is really the best way to do charity... well, charities could just invest the donations they receive and cash out when the time is "right". But since organizations don't die, when would that ever be?

Lastly, the idea that you should invest in a single "best" charity entails the idea that your donation is too small to make much difference in which charity is best. But some problems have already been solved! More problems will surely be solved in the future. It seems that charities could face diminishing returns -- like most other investments -- so your most effective strategy should sometimes be to split among more than one. Especially if you have followed the advice to invest for your entire life, and you do have a huge sum to donate.

Re: Join Wall Street. Save the world

#74
post #37

Interesting note: Goldman Sachs donated $377m in cash last year. At $2,500 per life saved, that's 150,000 live saved per year.

Goldman Sachs did not donate to the charity that plausibly saves lives at a price of $2500 (Against Malaria Foundation). If I had to guess, they gave it to groups who don't even try to save lives, or to groups who save lives at a cost 100 times or more greater than $2.5k/life.

Re: Join Wall Street. Save the world

#75
post #71

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Sure - I'm not saying it's bad. Far better than most people! It's just that it's sub-optimal if he can actually run an org to solve the problems. Especially the risk of not increasing donation size with increased conspicuous consumption. You can get soft quickly if you're not thinking lean...

How is it suboptimal? $2,500 per life saved is pretty good, let's say that's 10 lives a year for him. How could you do better than that?

Again, I'm not saying he's wrong, but he's doing what anyone could do with money. What about the problems that aren't being solved at all?

If you want to do ROI calculations on problems spaces - there's a group that publishes strategies for these:

Copenhagen Consensus [PDF]:

http://www.copenhagenconsensus.com/sites/default/files/Outco...

Re: Join Wall Street. Save the world

#76
post #17

Is it really that simple? If your main concern is net "good" to the world, don't you have to balance that against any "bad" generated by your job? Wall Street certainly is capable of damaging people's lives, and HFT does get some of the blame. Also, is net gain the only concern - if an assassin donates his profits to charity and in the process saves more lives than he takes, is does his net "good" make him moral?

HFT seems fairly neutral; it makes trades more efficient, but is an "arms race" for all the traders.

Re: Join Wall Street. Save the world

#77
post #23

His logic is simple: The more he makes, the more good he can do. It may be his logic, but it's not mine. And it doesn't have to be yours, either. I believe "doing good" is something to be done all the time. If you wait until the time is right or the conditions are right or you have enough money or time or something else, you will probably never get around to doing good. And even if you do, how much good will not get…

Agreed in general that you don't need to be a millionaire to do good. But his words "The more he makes, the more good he can do" still makes sense. He is using the word "more" and talking purely in terms of financial ability. In order to do good, money comes second because you have to be *willing" first. But once money comes in the picture, it makes it a hell of a lot easier for someone who makes $100K compared to so…

The article could have been titled "Get Rich, Save the World" since it really has nothing to do with Wall Street. Which, when you look at Bill Gates and Warren Buffet, is pretty hard to disagree with.

Unfortunately, I think most people in this thread are unwilling to pass up an opportunity to bash Wall Street. Which is a shame, because they are rallying against a viable form of altruism.

Re: Join Wall Street. Save the world

#78
post #12

Earlier quoted context omitted.

A lot of the activities that take place on Wall Street are fairly harmless. Some might even be considered socially productive.

> A lot of the activities that take place on Wall Street are fairly harmless. Most of those harmless activities do not include trading stocks, bonds, derivatives and commodities. Wall-Street is like a very powerful diesel engine, it generates enormous amounts of power and it generates enormous amounts of pollution. Hard to get the one without the other.

What's wrong with trading commodities? Remember, derivatives were invented by farmers to address very practical problems in that domain.

Re: Join Wall Street. Save the world

#79
post #53

Local governments are also involved in the stock market. High frequency traders make money by acting as an intermediary between buyers and sellers, and thus not creating actual wealth. Instead their supposed value is the "liquidity" they add. That means that the price of "adding liquidity" is a lower return on a stock or bond invested by a local government. Which in turn means that the local government might have to…

Wait, do you think intermediaries never create actual wealth?

No, I don't think that. I also don't think that HFT is necessary for an intermediary to create wealth.

Re: Join Wall Street. Save the world

#80
post #23

His logic is simple: The more he makes, the more good he can do. It may be his logic, but it's not mine. And it doesn't have to be yours, either. I believe "doing good" is something to be done all the time. If you wait until the time is right or the conditions are right or you have enough money or time or something else, you will probably never get around to doing good. And even if you do, how much good will not get…

I agree with everything you've said, but given that Against Malaria Foundation can save a life for $2,500, does treating your co-workers well and writing quality code really compare?
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