361–370 of 704 posts
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.
This implies that they got rich by pillaging instead of countless people voluntarily giving them money in exchange for what they offered.
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> 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.
Perhaps the government 'should' be the ideal charitable entity; but it most definitely is not. The waste, fraud, and abuse that runs rampant throughout the government tells us that the powerful often use taxpayer dollars as their own slush fund. Sure the government does much to relieve the suffering of people around the globe; but it could do far more with substantially less.
I don't know that it's worse than any other institution? At least voters can remove the corrupt, and they are prosecuted. Are you saying these uber-wealthy and CEOs aren't just as corrupt or worse?
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I'm sure a similar book could be written where the political stripes are all changed. Instead of Koch, we have Soros. Instead of Musk, it would be Gates. Instead of whoever owns Sinclair Media, its Carlos Slim or Lauren Powell Jobs.
And? I would welcome that. This isn't team sports where I'm rooting for my favorite billionaire. That said, this book actually exists.
To me - these claims seem to fuel a conspiracy like mind set about why certain efforts or movements fail. "Because the billionares didn't want it to". "Or they bought the media and control the narrative". "Its all just a uniparty!".
If I were to replace the word billionare with the name of the first Abrahamic religion, you and I would both see that view point as low intellect nonsense. And it would be. But somehow, sub in the word billionare and then it becomes brilliant analysis for some.
His foundation really does seem to do a good job with 'effective altruism'. There's a reason they're marked as secondary beneficiaries on all my accounts. Also, as a recommendation, you guys should look into whether your employer matches charitable donations to 501Cs in any amount. I find giving a solid chunk of my discretionary budget to charity every year lends a sense of purpose to a job that wouldn't otherwise ha…
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As someone who grew up in a Christian faith tradition that said Jesus Christ died for the sins of all of us and that we are all made in God's image, I find this position so bizarre. If we are all children of God, why should I prioritize the well being of a single stranger in Ohio over twenty strangers in Kenya? I can understand an argument for prioritizing one's family, especially if you are a parent, or even one's i…
This is a pretty common question that's raised: how can we square this with loving our fellow man? The short answer is Christianity isn't a utilitarian belief system. While God loves everyone equally, he puts some of us closer together in love: family, friends, neighbors, countrymen. This incurs a greater obligation , plus we ought to love more those who are closer to us. Sadly, a lot of Christian faiths teach dogma…
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That works only if majority agrees that we put such system in place and enforce it globally in the world. Some could say that communism was a failed attempt for this.
Why does it have to global? Isn't that just imperialism? Why can't it be scoped to a geopolitical unit that wants it? (I'm highly skeptical of social movements that claim to be for equality, but of course there are officials who suspiciously enjoy non-equal luxuries. Then it just looks like greedy sociopaths leveraging 'equality' PR in bad faith, as a tactic.)
Natural resources also are not distributed equally and e.g. living longer life is a basic human need. What if some other country has the technology to save humans but they don't give it for free? Some start hoarding wealth in order to get that and it changes the political attitude in general.
One of the great tragedies of the world is that while he is arguably the philanthropist with the highest positive impact in human history, a significant part of the population seems to still think he is the literal Antichrist.
That people can create wealth is alien to most people!
They think wealth is money, which leads to a zero sum belief system. That is, if Bill has $200B, he must have taken it from the rest of us.
His foundation really does seem to do a good job with 'effective altruism'. There's a reason they're marked as secondary beneficiaries on all my accounts. Also, as a recommendation, you guys should look into whether your employer matches charitable donations to 501Cs in any amount. I find giving a solid chunk of my discretionary budget to charity every year lends a sense of purpose to a job that wouldn't otherwise ha…
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Moreover, insisting on going all-in on medical research before doing any immediate lifesaving sounds to me like a gross perversion of what should be, in its most simple case, an urging to make sure your kids are clothed and fed before donating to the food bank. Surely ordo does not make it unvirtuous to save a drowning foreigner even if your kids would miss a meal for it.
I’m under the impression that Aquinas says outright that it makes sense to make exceptions to the general ordering to aid those in grave need that are “low” in the order, and stuff like mosquito nets are a prototypical example of this imo. Lives saved, families preserved, terribly unjust suffering averted, etc for literal pennies on the dollar.
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No. Capitalism is ineffective at solving lots of problems. Particularly problems of the kind where there is universal inelastic demand, where competition makes the end arrive or product less affordable or efficient, where externalities are not priced in, and where there are single/few or a unique instance of a thing that can be used by the public. Examples: healthcare, food and water for sustenance; insurance; pollut…
You didn’t answer the question. I get it, you think capitalism is bad. What do you propose instead?
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The sovereign wealth funds of the Nordic countries weren't built with tax dollars, but rather with oil revenue. We could do the same thing here if there were political appetite for holding energy companies responsible and the wealth they produce as belonging to the people living on the land the resources are coming out of. We're doing better now than we were 50 years ago, but the Nords are light years ahead.
The oil fund isn't a Nordic Thing™, it's norwegian. We in the rest of the nordics don't even have (significant amounts of) oil.