This Startup Entrepreneur Lives on Minimum Wage So He Has More Money to Donate | Hacker News Reader

This Startup Entrepreneur Lives on Minimum Wage So He Has More Money to Donate

huffingtonpost.com

51 pointsalexflint12 comments

This is awesome! But I do wonder what his safety nets look like. For instance, I grew up poor so even though I have a good job and have saved a lot I'm always in fear of getting knocked back down to where I was. How does he save for retirement (or is he even)? What about medical bills? What about your car simply breaking down? Can you actually pay for that?

It seems like he has put everyone else over his own well being which is definitely commendable. I certainly couldn't do that.

Thanks for the question – this is Ben (subject of the article).

I think living on minimum wage is a nice thing for journalists to put as a headline, but I tend to shy away from it as actual advice. If you are able to donate $100,000 per year as an engineer and then your car breaks down, making you unable to get to your job, what then? Are you really going to not fix your car and therefore quit your job, just so you can save $500 on the repair and meet some arbitrary spending target? That would be pretty stupid.

The [giving what we can](https://www.givingwhatwecan.org/get-involved/join/) pledge is that you will donate 10% of your income, and I encourage people to take that since 10% is a reasonable amount to donate (particularly for the sort of person who is reading hacker news).

> It seems like he has put everyone else over his own well being which is definitely commendable.

It's really not.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rational_egoism

I don't understand your point. What does that wikipedia page say anything about what's commendable?

I meant that I think that putting others ahead of yourself isn't, in and of itself, commendable.

I posted the Wikipedia link as an example of that sort of morality.

What do you mean ?

This is something I think a lot about as well. How do you choose how much to give? https://medium.com/@Agoraforgood/how-do-you-choose-how-much-...

Awesome, very commendable.

This is not charity, is a VC fund for what he wants, and we barely know what he wants. He is not a philantropist, but a wannabe Gates or Zuckerberg (that aren't either, just billionares spending billions).

No, it's not a charity. But he's giving away all his money to charity..? How is that not philanthropic? How are gates or zuckerberg not philanthropists?

Show me people that are directly helped by these "philantropists" and I'll tell you if I think they are doing "charity" or not. Charity like internet.org is scam.

Thanks for the question – this is Ben (subject of OP).

I listed some causes I think are valuable in the interview, but in general I think GiveWell and ACE are good evaluators:

* http://www.givewell.org/ * http://www.animalcharityevaluators.org/

For each charity they recommend, they have estimates of number of lives saved per dollar.

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