Pledging another $400k to the Zig software foundation • Hacker News Board

Re: Pledging another $400k to the Zig software foundation

#291

Post by trollbridge » Tue, Jun 23, 2026, 7:03 PM UTC

__turbobrew__ wrote: post #125

sph wrote: post #38

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You can 'throw' what you can afford and it will feel as satisfying. Just try it.

If you assume Hashimotos net worth is one billion dollars, a $400k donation is equivalent to a $400 donation if your net worth is one million dollars. I don’t believe donating $400 really feels that satisfying, the impact is fairly negligible in most contexts whereas donating $400k can very visibly improve a lot of lives. I think this illustrates just how much a billion dollars is and maybe why a very small wealth ta…

I spent $120 on an alternator for someone and it made a very big difference in his life. So it can be meaningful.

Re: Pledging another $400k to the Zig software foundation

#292

Post by trollbridge » Tue, Jun 23, 2026, 7:10 PM UTC

rpearl wrote: post #157

jjtheblunt wrote: post #135

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I think this illustrates ... why a very small wealth tax can be used for a lot of good in society. isn't the accrued billion dollars what remains after a much larger amount was taxed at roughly 50%? (of course could be spread across multiple years, but the essence remains) How would the "very small wealth tax" be calculated, that you propose?

> How would the "very small wealth tax" be calculated, that you propose? It is possible to tax unrealized assets. We already do. For example, a property owner pays property tax based on the value of their property, even when they are not selling it. It is possible for billionaires to borrow against their held assets. It is therefore also possible to calculate a tax on them.

It's possible to do so, but also makes a hostile environment for investment, which is why America hasn't done so yet.

If the idea of taxing unrealised gains and investments excites you, there is the EU... which here on HN is constantly being decried as unable to innovate in the startup space, get good startups going, accomplish anything with AI, and so forth.

Re: Pledging another $400k to the Zig software foundation

#293

Post by trollbridge » Tue, Jun 23, 2026, 7:14 PM UTC

PaulDavisThe1st wrote: post #192

throwitaway222 wrote: post #145

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The problem is that when government spends $1,000,000 on your halfway house, it provides instant relief. It creates beds. The next year the government does it, the number of employees has doubled and it creates 20% more beds instead of the original amount. The third year it creates no beds and we find that 10% of the beds are gone, and the number of employees is now 1000. The government didn't care how well the money…

This is just bad government, not government. Public spending on things that require (a) maintainance (as almost all things do) (b) are massively less functional if the investment is not sustained (as many things are) is inherently going to lead to suboptimal results. It's equally bad if private entities do this, but for one reason or another, people seem to bitch about this less, because, well "freedom" etc. Public s…

It seems reasonable, though, to observe that some areas of government spending seem to largely get funnelled into contracts with the private sector where a great deal of money is spent, yet the actual problem is seemingly never fixed. An example of this is L.A.'s "homeless industry"; billions of dollars are spent, yet the problem gets worse and worse. Eventually, one considers that the purpose of the system is what it does - create cushy jobs for those administering the private-sector agencies that receive the lion's share of this government spending, away from any public accountability.

Re: Pledging another $400k to the Zig software foundation

#294

Post by trollbridge » Tue, Jun 23, 2026, 7:15 PM UTC

bluecalm wrote: post #155

__turbobrew__ wrote: post #136

Earlier quoted context omitted.

How is it out of touch? I donated much more than Hashimoto did relative to our net worths, but I cannot deny that I would have felt much more satisfied making a 1000x impact if I was a billionaire. I donated $6000 to a halfway house last year and that doesn’t even come close to covering a single bed for a year. If I was a billionaire I could have built an entire halfway house.

Hashimoto did more valuable work than you and then he is in position to do more impact wherever he pleases. >>I donated $6000 to a halfway house last year and that doesn’t even come close to covering a single bed for a year. If I was a billionaire I could have built an entire halfway house. We need some mechanism to select people who makes the choice. Popularity/lying contest (politics) ain't it. People making money…

So far, nobody has come up with something better than democracy.

Re: Pledging another $400k to the Zig software foundation

#295

Post by trollbridge » Tue, Jun 23, 2026, 7:17 PM UTC

Fwirt wrote: post #156

ar_lan wrote: post #137

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 1 billion isn't a thousand times a million. What?

The point they were trying to make was that if you take appreciation of assets into account, if your billion is appreciating by a relatively modest 5% per year, you are passively earning 50 million/year . Whereas someone with one million passively earns 50 thousand/year. One is enough to live in luxury anywhere in the world for several lifetimes, the other is enough to live comfortably in some parts of the US (or lik…

This is a common but silly claim; there is, generally speaking, no such thing as a safe rate of return that overcomes the inherent losses due to inflation. If you're getting a 5% rate of return on cash, that comes with both risk (someone with a billion dollars isn't going to benefit from FDIC insurance) and doesn't even overcome basic inflation.

That $50 million a year is also subject to income taxation and cannot be easily avoided. $50 million a year in interest on returns from cash will be hit at the 37% marginal rate, plus whatever the state assesses, so north of 50% in California.

Re: Pledging another $400k to the Zig software foundation

#296

Post by trollbridge » Tue, Jun 23, 2026, 7:21 PM UTC

PaulDavisThe1st wrote: post #195

fhn wrote: post #64

Earlier quoted context omitted.

your bank owns your money?

Think of it less as "the bank owns your money" and more "the government likes to watch large cash flows moving around".

Also, "the bank likes to make sure elderly people are not being scammed/abused", which is a common problem when someone suddenly wants to take all their cash out. The bank indeed has a duty to advise its clients if a wire transfer, etc. might be a more suitable way to do what they need.

People I know who have $250k in cash or cash like assets generally keep it in a mix of dollars, euros (one paranoid guy I know has a bunch of Canadian dollars - no idea why), junk silver, gold / silver bars (for the former, you're talking about $150k just for a 1kg bar), a collection of watches that appreciate in value, and so on. To quote one guy, "I want to make sure we can wear my family's wealth", which they indeed did (for no good reason, they're just from a cultural background that leads to them being paranoid about banks) when they moved from Scandinavia to Australia - watches, gold bars, etc. on them and their children's persons, valued easily north of $300k in current money.

Re: Pledging another $400k to the Zig software foundation

#297

Post by trollbridge » Tue, Jun 23, 2026, 7:22 PM UTC

MyHonestOpinon wrote: post #72

alchemist1e9 wrote: post #51

Earlier quoted context omitted.

EDIT: comment was under incorrect parent. my error. moved it to correct location. EDIT2: Actually it’s more interesting. The commenters seem have changed their wording away from what I was criticizing. Original observation: Try to purge envy from your heart. It’s a poison. There was originally a lot of dark envy in this thread but interestingly it’s been revised out to be more subtle.

I don't feel the parent post is about bad envy. There is also good envy, when you feel happy for someone's blessings. But you also would like to have it for yourself.

Or you can just be excited that $400k is getting dumped into Zig, and without onerous strings attached. That's an unmitigated good thing.

I don't feel a need to know too much about the particulars of mitchellh's life or what else he spends his money on.

Re: Pledging another $400k to the Zig software foundation

#298

Post by trollbridge » Tue, Jun 23, 2026, 7:24 PM UTC

naishoya wrote: post #270

Johanx64 wrote: post #266

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Most of the things that can be remedied with money are not the truly painful things of life either. Have you done the math of what life consists of for most people? It's 9-to-5. Your life is DOMINATED - by large order of magnitude - by involuntary wage slavery. Where you literally sell away your time for pennies on a dollar to a highest bidder. That is the most painful thing in life, bar none, there is nothing wors…

This, all day long... 9-5 is just the first job of the day if we're lucky. Then there's the 7 to 2am second job, the 5 to 7 on Saturdays and Every Other Sunday. Just to not actually have health insurance which is accepted at anything but the worst health care facilities in the region, with a 6 month waitlist for basic check-ups and a 60% fails or cancel for those appointments and reschedule 3 or more months away. We…

Exactly where is this dystopia you speak of? It certainly isn't the case where I live right now (in the U.S.)

Re: Pledging another $400k to the Zig software foundation

#299

Post by trollbridge » Tue, Jun 23, 2026, 7:28 PM UTC

tetha wrote: post #169

thomascountz wrote: post #27

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Money can't buy happiness, but it can buy less unhappiness. There's diminishing returns, of course, but I'd hazard it looks a bit like ln(n), in that the returns are quite significant in the beginning.

The terms I've learned to use is rather: Happiness, and Stressors. If you need your car to earn money, and you don't have the money or other resources to repair it if it breaks - that's a huge uncertainty and a huge source of stress and worry. Liquid funds can remove that source of stress. More drastic examples would include rent or food. That's why liquid funds can remove impediments and distractions from your life,…

I own my home and land, could in a fairly straightforward fashion produce enough food to feed ourselves (although we don't choose to 100% rely on that), and have quality barter type relationships to repair vehicles, and technically could get by just fine with a bicycle for 95% of our transportation needs (although we don't choose to do that either).

Nonetheless, there are more stressors from other things that come along with that... like making personal choices to assist other people with housing, food, and transportation needs, because that's just what you kind of do when you've taken care of that for yourself but you see people around you with various kinds of needs.

Re: Pledging another $400k to the Zig software foundation

#300

Post by trollbridge » Tue, Jun 23, 2026, 7:29 PM UTC

j1elo wrote: post #46

neuralkoi wrote: post #30

Earlier quoted context omitted.

A recent example: https://vinay.sh/i-am-rich-and-have-no-idea-what-to-do-with-...

I mean, the answer is so obviously in front of our faces right now... :-) Use the free time to learn some Zig! And start a life of happily giving back powerful and useful GPL software to put your own 2 cents on the mountain of society building blocks that allowed you to thrive in such a way to begin with.

It's surprising how few people do this; mitchellh is the exception that proves the rule.

A lot of the really valuable open source software gets written by people who aren't wealthy and have full time jobs doing something other than writing open source software.