Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Stanford gets $1.1B for new climate school from John Doerr

nytimes.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

101–110 of 214 posts

Re: Stanford gets $1.1B for new climate school from John Doerr

#101

Post by olivermarks »

tofuahdude wrote: post #90
wolverine876 wrote: post #85

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Cynical paranoia is not helping. I agree. > Taking private money and making it public for the purpose of combating a global crisis is objectively a good thing. It doesn't necessarily work out that way. It can distort the market and consume resources. For example (and IIRC from a journal article about 10 years ago), in western Africa philanthropic funding from a foundation went toward treatment for a disease (AIDS?)…

Is there any negative externality in this particular version? Opening a new school to educate future generations such that they contribute new solutions seems totally positive to me.

positive and thoughtful paranoia, not 'cynical'...capitalism...

Re: Stanford gets $1.1B for new climate school from John Doerr

#103

Post by aww_dang »

wolverine876 wrote: post #77
ensan wrote: post #23

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Isn't there a tax deduction aspect to a lot of these donations? Anyways, 100 more Nature-level articles about climate change is not going to change the situation if there is no political will (or if it seesaws every 4-8 years at best).

> 100 more Nature-level articles about climate change is not going to change the situation if there is no political will All the political will does nothing without research. We need both.

Getting back to the above comment, then perhaps donating to a politically influential, ivy league school makes sense.

Re: Stanford gets $1.1B for new climate school from John Doerr

#104

Post by _vdpp »

RosanaAnaDana wrote: post #83
_vdpp wrote: post #41

Earlier quoted context omitted.

99% of climate change effort is social signaling, the other 1% is engineers and scientists working on more efficient, cleaner technologies. What I see here is lots of money for talks, articles, conferences, and “awareness.” Climate conferences are always held in nice places that you have to fly to. They’d do more for the environment by taking that money and paying people to pick up trash on the side of the highway. O…

Thats simply not true. Engineering 'solutions' to climate change like more efficient or cleaner technologies, or things like direct air capture are also social signaling, although more veiled and perhaps self delusional. These solutions are the equivalent of building more lanes on a highway instead of going with public transportation solutions. If anything many of these technologies may end up making climate change d…

I see a lot of people saying “society needs to be more comfortable with less.” I never see anyone saying “I need to be comfortable with less.”

Re: Stanford gets $1.1B for new climate school from John Doerr

#105

Post by rayiner »

supersync wrote: post #20
daterdots wrote: post #11

I am concerned about the incredible concentration of money and resources into a few academic institutions. Obviously Stanford is an incredible school, but I am not sure Stanford will do more with $1B than 10 2nd tier schools would do with $100M each.

This is a very fair concern. First off, most of this funding will go to a building. The rest will go mostly to an endowment. The concentration of mega-gifts at the top has very perverse impacts. Harvard built a $100M building a few years ago that is used by a total of 100 people a year. Philanthropy combines prestige, PR, and “legacy” in a way that massively overvalued those three vs. any kind of measurable impact. T…

> First off, most of this funding will go to a building.

What a waste.

Re: Stanford gets $1.1B for new climate school from John Doerr

#106

Post by KMag »

vmception wrote: post #92
KMag wrote: post #59

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There are some loopholes with donations, mostly regarding difficult-to-value benefits and also around donating dificult-to-value things rather than cash, stocks, and/or bonds. But, if you donate $1.1 billion to an eligible charity (and claim to have gotten nothing in return), then the US government basically pretends that you never made that money, and your tax bill goes down by roughly your marginal tax rate times t…

This is very inaccurate. I dont really know where to start. There are circumstances where you cant get your name on a building from a donation, there are circumstances that circumvent that requirement. There are circumstances where there is no tax deduction because the donation already occurred from another non profit. These wealthy people are going to run circles around the the general understanding for another 100…

To be clear, you're asserting that by donating $1.1 billion in cash, they're likely getting more than that sum multiplied by their marginal tax rate in tax reduction?

I'm honestly curious what the loopholes would be.

Re: Stanford gets $1.1B for new climate school from John Doerr

#107

Post by ramesh31 »

supersync wrote: post #20
daterdots wrote: post #11

I am concerned about the incredible concentration of money and resources into a few academic institutions. Obviously Stanford is an incredible school, but I am not sure Stanford will do more with $1B than 10 2nd tier schools would do with $100M each.

This is a very fair concern. First off, most of this funding will go to a building. The rest will go mostly to an endowment. The concentration of mega-gifts at the top has very perverse impacts. Harvard built a $100M building a few years ago that is used by a total of 100 people a year. Philanthropy combines prestige, PR, and “legacy” in a way that massively overvalued those three vs. any kind of measurable impact. T…

>But the “brand” game has won vs the execution game, esp. in higher Ed.

I can remember seeing this in action at Stanford. Companies will fall over themselves and pay anything to have their name associated with absolutely anything that has the name Stanford on it. And the students know this, so they play the game. Every student group, organization, club, etc. no matter how small or meaningless is heavily sponsored by relevant corporate donors as a result.

Re: Stanford gets $1.1B for new climate school from John Doerr

#108

Post by rayiner »

RosanaAnaDana wrote: post #83
_vdpp wrote: post #41

Earlier quoted context omitted.

99% of climate change effort is social signaling, the other 1% is engineers and scientists working on more efficient, cleaner technologies. What I see here is lots of money for talks, articles, conferences, and “awareness.” Climate conferences are always held in nice places that you have to fly to. They’d do more for the environment by taking that money and paying people to pick up trash on the side of the highway. O…

Thats simply not true. Engineering 'solutions' to climate change like more efficient or cleaner technologies, or things like direct air capture are also social signaling, although more veiled and perhaps self delusional. These solutions are the equivalent of building more lanes on a highway instead of going with public transportation solutions. If anything many of these technologies may end up making climate change d…

Colleges should offer a Bachelor of Science in Social Engineering. It would consist of spending four years writing “social engineering does not work” on a blackboard over and over.

Re: Stanford gets $1.1B for new climate school from John Doerr

#109

Post by vmception »

KMag wrote: post #106
vmception wrote: post #92

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is very inaccurate. I dont really know where to start. There are circumstances where you cant get your name on a building from a donation, there are circumstances that circumvent that requirement. There are circumstances where there is no tax deduction because the donation already occurred from another non profit. These wealthy people are going to run circles around the the general understanding for another 100…

To be clear, you're asserting that by donating $1.1 billion in cash, they're likely getting more than that sum multiplied by their marginal tax rate in tax reduction? I'm honestly curious what the loopholes would be.

To be clear, I'm not asserting that.

Re: Stanford gets $1.1B for new climate school from John Doerr

#110

Post by jayzalowitz »

devoutsalsa wrote: post #84
supersync wrote: post #20

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is a very fair concern. First off, most of this funding will go to a building. The rest will go mostly to an endowment. The concentration of mega-gifts at the top has very perverse impacts. Harvard built a $100M building a few years ago that is used by a total of 100 people a year. Philanthropy combines prestige, PR, and “legacy” in a way that massively overvalued those three vs. any kind of measurable impact. T…

John wanted his name on the Doerr.

Words cannot describe, should have sent a poet.
Post reply on HN