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Andreessen Horowitz to give half their earnings to charity

finance.fortune.cnn.com

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Re: Andreessen Horowitz to give half their earnings to charity

#101

Post by toomuchtodo »

tptacek wrote: post #100
toomuchtodo wrote: post #84

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Zuck paid, what, a cool billion for Instagram? Elon spent $800 million, and has an orbital vehicle that can dock with the ISS. And SpaceX is actually profitable . So, yeah, you can be for-profit and change the world. Or be for-profit and help people share photos. Changing the world is a pretty big grey area.

I'm not sure what these two things have to do with each other. Elon Musk's goals with SpaceX are entirely different than Facebook's goals with Instagram. No business purpose of Facebook's would have been served by building orbital vehicles. Facebook hasn't even gone public yet; the money we're talking about isn't yet Zuckerberg's to spend randomly .

Zuckerberg has majority ownership of Facebook shares; he has defacto control of whatever capital Facebook has available to it, whether it's "his" money or not. Was there not discusion that he didn't confer with Facebook's board before completing the Instagram purchase?

Re: Andreessen Horowitz to give half their earnings to charity

#102

Post by tfb »

jgmmo wrote: post #14
yesbabyyes wrote: post #13

Earlier quoted context omitted.

How about you decide what you do with your money, and Bill Gates and Marc Andreessen decide what they do with their money?

Well of course I'm not suggesting we forcibly make them do anything with their money. I am just saying, in terms of societal net benefit, we are probably much better off if our most successful investors continue investing in more businesses rather than charities. Not a fan of thought experiments?

You can only build so many businesses within a given period of time; and when the business leaders have more money than is required to do so is when they donate to charity.

Donations like the one outlined in this article give me faith in humanity. It's nice to see us looking out for one another.

As for me, I strive to build business(es) so I can do the same, whether the most effective way to raise the standard of living for everyone is donating, building, or most likely both.

Re: Andreessen Horowitz to give half their earnings to charity

#103

Post by tptacek »

toomuchtodo wrote: post #101
tptacek wrote: post #100

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm not sure what these two things have to do with each other. Elon Musk's goals with SpaceX are entirely different than Facebook's goals with Instagram. No business purpose of Facebook's would have been served by building orbital vehicles. Facebook hasn't even gone public yet; the money we're talking about isn't yet Zuckerberg's to spend randomly .

Zuckerberg has majority ownership of Facebook shares; he has defacto control of whatever capital Facebook has available to it, whether it's "his" money or not. Was there not discusion that he didn't confer with Facebook's board before completing the Instagram purchase?

No: majority shareholders of corporations continue to owe fiduciary duty to the minority. This is obviously tangential to the real point, though. Google paid more than 12 SpaceX's for Motorola. Would docking with the ISS help with the Android patent problem?

Re: Andreessen Horowitz to give half their earnings to charity

#104

Post by creamyhorror »

poorpointofview wrote: post #98

The emotions of man are stirred more quickly than man’s intelligence; and, as I pointed out some time ago in an article on the function of criticism, it is much more easy to have sympathy with suffering than it is to have sympathy with thought. Accordingly, with admirable, though misdirected intentions, they very seriously and very sentimentally set themselves to the task of remedying the evils that they see. But the…

This is a subtle comment, with the key statement being "The proper aim is to try and reconstruct society on such a basis that poverty will be impossible."

I'm not so sure socialism is the answer there, but it's definitely a goal to have for the long term.

Re: Andreessen Horowitz to give half their earnings to charity

#105

Post by waterlesscloud »

toomuchtodo wrote: post #84
paul wrote: post #59

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Some changes are best made via a for-profit venture, and some aren't. I'm interested in both kinds of change, and that means that I'm involved in both worlds.

Zuck paid, what, a cool billion for Instagram? Elon spent $800 million, and has an orbital vehicle that can dock with the ISS. And SpaceX is actually profitable . So, yeah, you can be for-profit and change the world. Or be for-profit and help people share photos. Changing the world is a pretty big grey area.

This line of argument the last week or so has made no sense to me.

Whether you agree with him or not, Zuckerberg's motivation for Facebook buying Instagram was related to the business of Facebook. Elon didn't make PayPal or Tesla start a rocket division, he set up a completely separate venture with its own goals.

Re: Andreessen Horowitz to give half their earnings to charity

#106

Post by shantanubala »

daenz wrote: post #83
shantanubala wrote: post #72

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's not a very good question -- how can we know someone is a "genius" unless they have the resources to thrive? We can debate on the meaning of genius, but regardless of how you view it, a person simply cannot reach their full potential if they have to constantly worry about feeding themselves or a family. Before we can even identify someone as a genius, they have to have been successful in some way. For them to b…

I'm not disagreeing with you. I'm just asking for examples that back his claim "It's unbelievable how much genius is wasted in poverty." The statement he made is unnecessary to his overall point, which is that charity can help people. His claim about the "unbelievable" number of geniuses being squandered has no real basis in fact.

But aren't you ignoring a potential reason why it has no "basis in fact"? The reason why we can't find examples of "genius being wasted in poverty" is simple: how can we identify someone as a "genius" until they've actually produced something notable? How can someone with little to no resources produce something notable? It's possible, but the odds are skewed a lot.

The statement was very necessary. If we operate on the assumption that a person's ability is largely defined by their upbringing (and from what we understand so far in the social sciences, this is a pretty fair assumption to make!), it's essential to point out that poverty prevents people from achieving their full potential, and the number of people it affects is in the billions.

Just because it can't be accurately measured doesn't automatically make the point invalid: if you're trying to argue that the population of (over a billion!) people without ready access to food or clean water doesn't contain the same number of potential geniuses as our population, then you have the burden of proof because every bit of understanding we have about nature vs. nurture indicates that improving a person's upbringing allows them to accomplish more.

In other words, he doesn't have to prove with hard statistics that poverty prevents genius from emerging, because our existing knowledge of human behavior and development clearly demonstrates this without having to answer: "exactly how many geniuses were lost?"

Re: Andreessen Horowitz to give half their earnings to charity

#107

Post by waterlesscloud »

paul wrote: post #97
toomuchtodo wrote: post #84

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Zuck paid, what, a cool billion for Instagram? Elon spent $800 million, and has an orbital vehicle that can dock with the ISS. And SpaceX is actually profitable . So, yeah, you can be for-profit and change the world. Or be for-profit and help people share photos. Changing the world is a pretty big grey area.

It's not yet clear which venture will have a greater impact on the world. People here consistently underestimate the significance of democratizing the media.

SpaceX is part of the first wave in its field, Instagram is at least second wave of democratizing media.

Re: Andreessen Horowitz to give half their earnings to charity

#108

Post by xenophanes »

_delirium wrote: post #82
javert wrote: post #73

Earlier quoted context omitted.

you don't need to preach to me on the benefits of business OK... fine. But if you aren't going to fully understand Ayn Rand's work, then you don't need to preach to us about how misguided you think it is. The whole point of discussions like this is to have an intellectual discussion. To dismiss people who disagree with you by accusing them of "preaching" (when they aren't) has no place on HN. (As I'm sure you well kn…

I like to think I'm fairly familiar with Ayn Rand's work, though I'm by no means an expert. I'm a computer scientist, but my philosophy minor was supervised by one of the few tenured professors who specializes in Rand scholarship in academia (and he is a fan of hers). I don't really see this as far off, though. Rand really did believe that it was unethical to be altruistic. Not because it led to negative outcomes, or…

You neglect to mention why Rand opposed altruism and considered it inherently immoral: because it means putting other people above oneself and therefore self-sacrificing for others.

Re: Andreessen Horowitz to give half their earnings to charity

#109

Post by yesbabyyes »

daenz wrote: post #93
yesbabyyes wrote: post #90

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Thanks, daenz. That's what "usually I don't do this" was referring to -- which is a lazy cop out, I agree. Usually I don't do that , either. My bad. It may not make it better, but I think I did it because jimmyvanhalen's argument was, to me, so... Preposterous. As I understand him, he is basically arguing that if you feel that you have money to give to charity, you should give that to whomever gave you that money. I…

Yeah, it's a difficult subject. People are passionate about money. But kudos for owning up to your post... I made a ad hominem awhile back and someone was kind enough to point it out, thought I'd pass around the favor :)

I take it you think one should donate to charity anonymously, but humblebrags are ok? ;)

I just wanted to add that I actually think wealth and investment accomplishments are somewhat relevant in this discussion, regarding your comment on fallacies. Especially given jimmyvanhalen's very strong opinions on what "a VCs job" is, what a16z "should" do, and his confused ending statement on that what they did would be fine by him if they did... Exactly what they are doing.

Don't you agree?

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