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The founder of Craigslist has given away half a billion dollars

independent.co.uk

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

#251

Post by rayiner »

georgemcbay wrote: post #174
rayiner wrote: post #102

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> MacKenzie Scott What exactly has been achieved with the billions MacKenzie Scott has given away? She seems to do very little vetting of the organizations she donates to. And upon a cursory inspection, they mostly seem like the kinds of organizations where most of the donor dollars go to white collar non-profit employees that produce little in the way of results, with very little going to needy people. I feel like t…

Not really interested in arguing about whether or not she is giving her money away perfectly or to the best causes according to your (or my or anyone's) standards. She gets credit from me for doing actual philanthropy instead of just cosplaying it for tax purposes, which has been the norm even for quite a few of the other "giving pledge" donors. As far as bolstering government programs go, I'd love to see billionaire…

It seems odd to give someone credit for something while refusing to engage with whether those actions have a meaningful positive effect.

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

#252

Post by deadeye »

I don't have much love for this guy. He donated millions to the EFF to the point where CL owned the EFF.

When CL bullied people who lightly scraped their site with CFAA threats, the EFF would not help. Ultimately, they ended up on the wrong side of history.

While Musk has created hundreds of thousands of jobs and God knows how many millionaires, Newmark complains about him while having only created around 50 jobs. 50.

Instead of building something else and employing more people he watches TV and feeds pigeons.

Bravo. He's basically a beatnik who won the lottery.

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

#253

Post by laughing_man »

WalterBright wrote: post #76
wewtyflakes wrote: post #48

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is a byproduct of wild wealth disparity, not because the rich are so generous with paying the government.

And if you take away their money, then who is going to fund the government and all those wealth redistribution programs?

There are US state governments discovering this right now. I would have thought it was obvious.

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

#254

Post by laughing_man »

Varelion wrote: post #5
zuzululu wrote: post #2

good for him! but empty words to the american working class it may be too late, now ppl hate the rich

As they should. Money boils down to a finite resource, and a class of people have been flaunting their theft of the working class since the famous balcony champagne image taken during Occupy Wallstreet. That singular image should be the poster of this Epstein era.

Theft? I don't see any indication of widespread theft. The fact that you don't make as much as you wish you were making doesn't make you a victim of theft.

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

#255

Post by insane_dreamer »

rayiner wrote: post #16

We are almost two decades into the age of billionaire philanthropy and what’s results has it produced? Can you point to any area where it’s really changed the world? I think a fundamental problem is that the non-profit/NGO sector doesn’t have the same caliber of people as the private sector. There’s no Jeff Bezos equivalent working on inner city education. Bill Gates is really the only one who has tackled this, by in…

didn't it start with Carnegie and Rockefeller?

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

#256

Post by laughing_man »

Varelion wrote: post #82
WalterBright wrote: post #12

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Money boils down to a finite resource Musk more amply demonstrated how wealth is created.

Yeah, start by having enough to buy more influence with the right people, so they don't realize your assets are nowhere near a correct valuation.

The idea SpaceX is where it is because he bought influence with the right people is fanciful thinking on the part of Musk's detractors.

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

#257

Post by overfeed »

latency-guy2 wrote: post #241
overfeed wrote: post #236

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> They are in the top tax bracket They are not in the top bracket by choice - a luxury option unavailable to non-wealthy people in the working middle-class who actually are in the top tax bracket. As you helpfully noted in your second half of your comment, high wealth, deliberately low income[0] means they are not in the top tax bracket[1] on the basis of their carefully calculated, tax-optimized income. 0. Taxable e…

> As you helpfully noted in your second half of your comment, high wealth, deliberately low income[0] means they are not in the top tax bracket[1] on the basis of their carefully calculated, tax-optimized income. There is no optimization for anything actually, its just income. There's lots of different forms of taxes that the US government takes part in as you know. Quitting your day job removes the income part until…

> You can argue for a wealth tax

My footnotes are the entirety of my argument, and it's not even as radical as a wealth tax. My argument has 2 easy steps:

1. Remove the arbitrage between actual liquidity events and the limited set of what the IRS currently considers taxable events. Borrowing against securities not being taxable is an example of what's broken. Arbitrage using trusts or LLCs needs to be deleted, based on controlling interests and/or ultimate beneficiary.

2. Align tax rates on capital gains vs. income

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

#258

Post by insane_dreamer »

rayiner wrote: post #238
insane_dreamer wrote: post #225

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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")

People don’t build new companies after a successful exit to “make even more money.” You’re projecting.

> People don’t build new companies after a successful exit to “make even more money.”

They absolutely do. I interact with people who do just that.

> You're projecting.

LOL. The last thing I want to do is start a company or try to make $100's of millions.

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

#259

Post by rayiner »

keeda wrote: post #192
rayiner wrote: post #157

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> They don't really exist to "fix" problems, they are mostly a band-aid over the structural issues that lead to social problems. The long-term solutions to most of these problems involve policy changes rather than "spot fixes" Non-profits are 12% of GDP, over $3.5 trillion. Excluding hospitals, universities, and churches, leaves over $2 trillion in non-profit expenditures. Of that, about $300 billion comes from the g…

> That is more than enough money to solve structural issues. But that's the thing, the money is not helpful when it comes to policy issues. As the Gates Foundation MO and your dad's experience probably shows, lasting change comes down to political will. I can only surmise that the reason more US non-profits don't achieve lasting change is because they are not able to or they are not trying to. This is not to say they…

> As the Gates Foundation MO and your dad's experience probably shows, lasting change comes down to political will

Lasting change comes down to data-driven programs that work and the money to implement them. As long as you’re not asking for money and meet the community you’re working with where they are,[1] politics is mostly a red herring. My dad worked on projects that achieved incredible results in Bangladesh, for example, even though the government of the country was a complete clusterfuck the entire time.

> socioeconomic and racial factors, so solving that would require "solving" poverty and racism.

The way to eat an elephant is one bite at a time. There may be overarching “factors” that contribute to a result, but there’s usually an immediate cause of a problem that you can tackle directly with an effective program.

Mississippi, for example, is now #3 in the country for NAEP 4th grade reading and math scores for black students. It’s #1 for reading and #2 for math for Hispanic students: https://mdek12.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/59/2025/01/NAEPR.... Mississippi didn’t “solve poverty and racism.” It implemented a program that identified the immediate cause of certain problems and fixed them.

[1] Effective programs avoid creating political problems. When my dad was designing maternal health programs for Bangladeshi villagers, he met them where they were instead of where he thought they should be. For example, it turns out rural women wouldn’t use newly built clinics for giving birth because they didn’t trust “big city doctors.” So the program developed relationships with local midwives and traditional healers, who the women already trusted, and had them get training from the doctors and refer high risk pregnancies to the clinics while handling routine deliveries in the traditional way.

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

#260

Post by laughing_man »

rayiner wrote: post #157
keeda wrote: post #143

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is a common refrain of many people, but I believe it is rooted in a fundamental misunderstanding of philanthropy and charities in general. They don't really exist to "fix" problems, they are mostly a band-aid over the structural issues that lead to social problems. The long-term solutions to most of these problems involve policy changes rather than "spot fixes" Like, funding a homeless shelter or the Trevor Proj…

> They don't really exist to "fix" problems, they are mostly a band-aid over the structural issues that lead to social problems. The long-term solutions to most of these problems involve policy changes rather than "spot fixes" Non-profits are 12% of GDP, over $3.5 trillion. Excluding hospitals, universities, and churches, leaves over $2 trillion in non-profit expenditures. Of that, about $300 billion comes from the g…

It doesn't surprise men to find we spend trillions on nonprofits and get little in return. There is an enormous amount of corruption. More than forty years ago I knew a woman who was cold calling people to raise money for research into a canine disease.

If you donated a dollar, she got fifty cents. Her boss got twenty five cents, the company got their cut, the university took a little, so did the department and the professor. By the time it came down to some poor grad student looking at slides there was only a penny or two going to pay him/her. This kind of thing combines the worst of both government and private business.

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