My new deadline: 20 years to give away virtually all my wealth • Hacker News Board

Re: My new deadline: 20 years to give away virtually all my wealth

#311

Post by _bin_ » Thu, May 08, 2025, 4:31 PM UTC

niam wrote: post #306

_bin_ wrote: post #88

Earlier quoted context omitted.

[flagged]

> I am an ordo amoris enjoyer You seem to think this phrase implies a prescription that people ought to donate first to their adjacents (unambiguously enough to be worth including without a definition). I'll note that, given how many sources seem to contravene that interpretation, the probability that your use of this term did not come downstream from Vice President Vance has dropped precipitously. Which might be use…

Not physical adjacents, no. If your brother lives two thousand miles away you should still focus on him more than your neighbor.

I'm unsure what Vance has to do with this. My belief comes from my religious upbringing and (in this case) Saints Augustine and Aquinas. Vance is not a spiritual leader or theologian of any sort.

I think I absorbed much of this when I was pretty young - I had sort of settled on this way of thinking before ever picking up Civitas Dei - but reading and writing on it during my schooling helped me understand why.

Re: My new deadline: 20 years to give away virtually all my wealth

#312

Post by waynesonfire » Thu, May 08, 2025, 4:32 PM UTC

toast0 wrote: post #242

9rx wrote: post #100

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> without paying capital gains tax. It's a funny day when you're feeling charitable, but go out of your way to avoid helping the entity that should be the ideal charitable recipient.

The state goes out of their way to encourage it. Let's say you just won the startup lottery and you've got a significant amount of now tradable stock. Some of which was early exercised and the cost basis is effectively zero. Some of which was RSUs or non-qualified options and you owe ordinary income. And that you're way over into the top tax brackets. If your zero cost basis stock is Qualified Small Business Stock (Q…

Explains why there is a non-profit writing sudo in Rust recently featured on HN.

Re: My new deadline: 20 years to give away virtually all my wealth

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Post by [deleted] » Thu, May 08, 2025, 4:32 PM UTC

cruffle_duffle wrote: post #73

It’s too bad this guy turned into one of the bigger fear mongers during Covid times. He was one of the main pushers of the whole “New Normal” narrative and his doomsday prognostications did significant damage to society and generally went completely against every value he claimed to have. But hey, people like him got a free pass to spit whatever nonsense came out of their mouth as long as it was pro-doom. Good news w…

[deleted]

Re: My new deadline: 20 years to give away virtually all my wealth

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Post by bigstrat2003 » Thu, May 08, 2025, 4:33 PM UTC

bryanlarsen wrote: post #189

cruffle_duffle wrote: post #73

It’s too bad this guy turned into one of the bigger fear mongers during Covid times. He was one of the main pushers of the whole “New Normal” narrative and his doomsday prognostications did significant damage to society and generally went completely against every value he claimed to have. But hey, people like him got a free pass to spit whatever nonsense came out of their mouth as long as it was pro-doom. Good news w…

It's 1999 over again. The whole world was panicking that all the computers would blow up over the Y2K problem. Which mostly didn't happen because we spent billions fixing the problem. Were the doomsayers wrong?

> Were the doomsayers wrong?

They certainly were, but you've elided the reason why. The doomsayers were predicting that we would have complete civilization collapse when the year rolled over to 2000. Vast quantities of wealth erased by bank computer errors, planes falling from the sky and killing thousands upon thousands, etc. Such extreme scenarios were never plausible. The doomsayers were wrong because there was a real problem and it did get fixed, but that problem would never have amounted to the apocalyptic event they said it was going to.

Re: My new deadline: 20 years to give away virtually all my wealth

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Post by beloch » Thu, May 08, 2025, 4:33 PM UTC

The one problem Gates doesn't seem willing to tackle in earnest is the billionaire problem.

i.e. Somebody close to the control of money funnels a disproportionate (based on expertise, intelligence, effort, contribution, etc.) amount to themselves. They quickly come to view this as the just natural order and view anyone who disagrees as a communist hater.

Elon Musk is the current best example. Despite spending most of his time at twitter last year, Tesla was trying to set Musk's compensation at over $100 billion[1]. For what, exactly?

Bill Gates was every bit the problem billionaire in his own time. Only a tiny proportion of billionaires ever decide to engage in significant philanthropy, much of which wouldn't be necessary if their peers weren't draining society of the capital to do it's own research and building. Some argue that billionaires can serve society by hoarding resources and then directing them intelligently in directions governments are too stupid to consider, but that argument falls flat if most billionaires never get past the hoarding stage. Gates has called on his peers to do more. Few have listened.

It's great that a few former robber barons are engaged in serious philanthropy, but it's like slapping a band-aid on a bullet wound. It would be far better to stop the shooting. Reigning in executive pay would be a solid start. How do we do that?

[1]https://www.investopedia.com/elon-musks-multi-billion-dollar...

Re: My new deadline: 20 years to give away virtually all my wealth

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Post by jorvi » Thu, May 08, 2025, 4:34 PM UTC

toast0 wrote: post #242

9rx wrote: post #100

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> without paying capital gains tax. It's a funny day when you're feeling charitable, but go out of your way to avoid helping the entity that should be the ideal charitable recipient.

The state goes out of their way to encourage it. Let's say you just won the startup lottery and you've got a significant amount of now tradable stock. Some of which was early exercised and the cost basis is effectively zero. Some of which was RSUs or non-qualified options and you owe ordinary income. And that you're way over into the top tax brackets. If your zero cost basis stock is Qualified Small Business Stock (Q…

That is not their argument.

You lowering your tax rate and giving that money to charity isn't magicking more money into the world, it is just a different allocation.

The government's tax income is allocated by the masses (in theory anyway). It is fair and dispassionate.

Philanthropy / charity is picking winners and losers based on your personal whims, and for many it is about gaining social capital.

Re: My new deadline: 20 years to give away virtually all my wealth

#317

Post by tough » Thu, May 08, 2025, 4:34 PM UTC

PieTime wrote: post #292

tough wrote: post #211

Every billionaire running these are just doing tax avoidalnce at the highest levels i assume?

Yes, https://youtu.be/KO3-xkVACgE?si=suWJxu_TCPq37V6W Cannot ignore that his communicable disease research and treatment has been effective. But his school voucher and farming initiative have been awful. Ultimately it would have been better as general revenue to provide these services through government.

hey at least they’re doing things.

i guess

tbh seems a lot of this setup is also good ole corruption with a legal veneer of goodwill wrapping

Re: My new deadline: 20 years to give away virtually all my wealth

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Post by akpa1 » Thu, May 08, 2025, 4:34 PM UTC

hiuyty wrote: post #252

jarbus wrote: post #16

Say what you want, but I respect this a lot. Sure as hell beats giving it all to your kids.

[flagged]

There's a pretty clear line between "this inheritance is enough to make you comfortable and sort you out for life" and "this inheritance will make you rich beyond your own comprehension" - there's a certain amount of money that nobody has a need for.

Re: My new deadline: 20 years to give away virtually all my wealth

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Post by kridsdale1 » Thu, May 08, 2025, 4:35 PM UTC

zozbot234 wrote: post #84

ascagnel_ wrote: post #69

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I was talking about this with a friend recently -- Romans flaunted their wealth by improving shared social infrastructure (open market spaces, parks, etc), and the robber barons of the 19th century flaunted their wealth by building cultural institutions (eg Carnegie libraries). It seems like most "effective altruists" want to do things that help "humanity" but don't help "people" -- so developing technology to explor…

> It seems like most "effective altruists" want to do things that help "humanity" but don't help "people" -- so developing technology to explore the stars is on the table, but fighting poverty is not. You seem to have very weird ideas about how EA funding works in practice. Long-termism is flashy and peculiar so it gets a lot of excess visibility, but "fighting poverty" tends to get the bulk of EA money, and the most…

Well all we in HN-adjacent spaces hear about is the EA people getting rich so they can build a RoccoBasilisc-countering super weapon or something.

Re: My new deadline: 20 years to give away virtually all my wealth

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Post by kridsdale1 » Thu, May 08, 2025, 4:36 PM UTC

antisthenes wrote: post #285

yoyohello13 wrote: post #50

Gates seems like a real embodiment of "Effective Altruism". 1. Get a bunch of money by any means necessary. 2. Donate/invest in altruistic causes. Unfortunately, most people that use effective altruism to justify themselves hoarding wealth seem to forget the second part.

> 1. Get a bunch of money by any means necessary. This assumes the money would not have been better spent by giving it to the workers of the company that generated it in the first place.

Microsoft’s first 10,000 employees became phenomenally wealthy at the IPO. That’s far more of a worker paradise than any startup unicorn you’ll see today.