Hacker News Reader

Comment by teslabox | Hacker News Reader

From the article:

> Rockefeller upheld the family’s philanthropic tradition, giving away more than $900 million during his lifetime. In 1940, he joined the board of the Rockefeller Institute for Medical Research, established in 1901 by his grandfather, and a decade later succeeded his father as board chairman, serving for 25 years.

Rich people don't give money away no-strings-attached, they channel it for their purposes. This "institute for medical research" - now Rockefeller University - was their way of guiding the development of medicine into a profitable industry for "investors".

"The first director of laboratories was Simon Flexner" [1] [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rockefeller_University

Simon Flexner's younger brother was Abraham Flexner, who helped the medical guild reduce the number of medical schools [2], thereby making sure that there's always been a shortage of doctors.

[2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Flexner_Report

The Osteopathic profession was the only group that was organized enough to survive the Medical Guild's purge of non-Rockefeller-approved approaches to medicine. Today D.O.s are more likely to take up Primary Care, where doctors take time to get to know their patients and figure out what's actually causing their complaints. See The Heroism of Incremental Care, [3] for example.

[3] http://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2017/01/23/the-heroism-of-...

View on HN

I finished "Titan: The Life of John D. Rockefeller" a few nights ago. It's a mammoth of a book and I believe the undisputed most accurate and comprehensive look at his life.

I think that what you've written here is incredibly misleading when talking about John D. Rockefeller's philanthropy in particular. It is wrong to imply the Rockefeller's secretly controlled strings in order to make profits from their donations. Time and time again he gave away vast sums of money and did everything in his power to separate himself completely from the donation. His largest fear about donating was that the public would label his donation as tainted money. He wanted no influence over, and never visited with most of the receivers of his donations. His only concern was that institutions should not be wholly dependent on his philanthropy, and work to raise money from other sources as well.

The Rockefeller institute for Medical Research is one of the most successful examples of philanthropy ever. And Rockefeller may only be eclipsed by Bill Gates as the greatest philanthropist ever.

You can absolutely (and should) criticize his business practices, but Rockefeller literally created the model of what a successful philanthropist should do.

> And Rockefeller may only be eclipsed by Bill Gates as the greatest philanthropist ever.

This statement reeks of hero worship and seems myopic to me. For one, both of these billionaires became rich through what most view as morally dubious monopolistic practices that had a high degree of collateral damage. The amount that both men are giving back/gave is/was a percentage of what they took. And when that percentage is under 100%, they're taking more than they're giving. That is assuming a zero-sum game, which isn't always true. When someone creates new value, either by invention or work, they can take wealth out of the system and still leave the rest of the system in a net positive state. But I'm strongly of the opinion that both Gates and Rockefeller left the system in a significantly net-negative state, even with all their philanthropy. There's a reason the cohort that Rockefeller was a part of wasn't termed "Donor Barons" despite the legacy of significant charitable contributions from that massive wealth. I don't think it's out of line to include Gates in that group since the tactics he used to achieve his wealth are very similar.

This, to me, puts both of them significantly behind average people who create more value than they take and donate small sums to charity. The man who gives his one and only dollar to charity is far more philanthropic than the man who gives $99b of his $100b. The people who devote their lives to helping others are the ones we should respect, not the people giving billions while still holding billions in reserve for themselves.

You really need to learn about Bill Gates before you judge him and publicly express your misguided views. Bill Gates has committed to give all of his wealth to philanthropy over his lifetime, leaving only $10 million for each of his 3 children after his demise. That means $30 million of his (current) $80 billion networth is all that will be left for his family whereas the rest goes to charity. That's philanthropy of over 99.999% personal wealth donation. I think by this he satisfies your 100% donation criteria.

You say that a person who gives 100% of his wealth to charity is bigger than one who gives 99%. The amount matters, not percentage. If Bill Gates had your mentality, then at which point do you think he should've given away 100% of his wealth? When he made $100 million or when he made $1 billion? Be reminded, if he had given up 100% of his wealth at those figures, he would never have had any significant money left to increase his wealth, so all those charities and research efforts of his that have received $30 billion+ of his wealth so far wouldn't have existed (the figure was $28 billion in 2013, don't know what it is now).

Bill Gates knows the value of creating value. He knows its better to teach fishing than to give fish. He invests money in research instead of just giving it away blindly because he knows that the outcome of that research will save/improve more lives than giving that money away directly. Again, he also knows that giving away all the money now isn't a better idea since as science progresses, better research will come along that'll need his funding, so he's keeping enough wealth to support those venture if and when they come along. If they don't come along during his lifetime, all of his wealth will anyway go to charity after his death (except $30 million for his children).

His business practices were cutthroat, but that was back when he was younger and not an active philanthropist. As a philanthropist, I think he's the greatest person of all time. Numbers matter, his billions have done more for mankind than misinformed people like you will ever care to admit. So go do some research before you bad mouth him ever again.

> You really need to learn about Bill Gates before you judge him and publicly express your misguided views

I don't care about any of his philanthropic deeds. As far as I'm concerned, they're all "fruit of the poisoned tree." Without his misdeeds, he'd never be in position to be the philanthropist he's become. If you want to talk misguided, you seem to think that he can atone for his past misdeeds. You're wrong. He set back computing at least a decade, killed off several competitors that were genuinely making the computing landscape better and cost businesses billions that they didn't need to spend. As far as I'm concerned, every bit of good that he's doing now could have been done by the others who would have have the money that's now his. It's the broken window fallacy to assume otherwise.

Perhaps you should learn more about his bad behavior before you accuse others of being misguided.

Your kind of world view is too black or white, you are lacking the continuum spectrum of gray that permeates all of human existence.

I'm not the one to defend Bill Gates, I think his business practices were atrocious for a lot of industries and we are going to feel the wake of it for a while. With that said, I still think you have too much of a romanticized view of how the world "should be", the world isn't that and it has already happened, that ship has sailed and now Bill Gates tries to pay back to society with the value he created (or siphoned if that's your view), it is what it is.

It's impossible to tell whatever would happen if there was no Bill Gates business practices in the world, you can't say "every bit of good that he's doing could have been done by others", that's an impossible statement to assert.

Isn't is inconsistent to say a

> world view is too black or white

yet also say:

> that ship has sailed

It is impossible to tell whatever would happen if there was no Bill Gates business practices in the world; Maybe if I burn down your house you'd find hidden gold coins in the ashes? You should still oppose me burning down your house.

He's be no means a hero to me, but you do raise interesting points.

I'm really not sure if Rockefeller gave more than he took. That's a tough question to answer. Is a world without Standard Oil, but also without his incredibly vast and important array of philanthropic works a better one? I don't think I can make this argument. Many aspects of modern medicine, public sanitation, public health, and public education are all in debt to his charitable work. Did those not improve the world more than his anti-competitive business practices hurt it?

A question out of pure ignorance: the parent comment was speaking on David Rockefeller, did he (David Rockefeller) treat philanthropy in the same way (not just superficially) as his grandfather?

I'm ignorant about David Rockefeller as well. And it may be right to criticize David. But the parent comment was actually talking about events related to John D. Rockefeller's philanthropy, not David's. John D. Rockefeller did not pass on his wealth to his Son, let alone his grandson until after the events mentioned.

edit: for example: David was not even born when the Flexner report was released.

I'm not actually sure what the overall point of the parent comment actually is, since he start's with David's timeline and then cites the reduction in medical schools related to Simon and Abraham Flexner, but doesn't actually delve into why Osteopathic medicine survived the medical education reform, or into John D. Rockefeller's support for Osteopathic medicine in general.

So, while I see the implication, the parent never actually makes that implication explicit.

Either way, I think it's important to separate the actions of the grandson and grandfather.

>When Flexner researched his report, many American medical schools were "proprietary", namely small trade schools owned by one or more doctors, unaffiliated with a college or university, and run to make a profit. A degree was typically awarded after only two years of study. Laboratory work and dissection were not necessarily required. Many of the instructors were local doctors teaching part-time, whose own training left something to be desired. The regulation of the medical profession by state governments was minimal or nonexistent. American doctors varied enormously in their scientific understanding of human physiology, and the word "quack" flourished.

Interesting Wikipedia article.

And as I recall, the issue with medical colleges is more the residency, than the exams isn't it? I mean, that's why we trust doctors, because the bar is that high.

> I mean, that's why we trust doctors, because the bar is that high.

Two thoughts:

1. The old joke, "What do you call the person who graduated from medical school at the bottom of their class?" "Doctor."

2. The ordeal of residency isn't about setting the bar "high", nearly so much as it's about, "well, I went through this shit, so you have to, too". (Source: I have several doctor friends. All of them think it's bullshit. All of them have been explicitly told that, in some form or fashion, by their colleagues, superiors, teachers, or otherwise.)

1. What do you call the the person who graduated from SEAL training at the bottom of their class? A SEAL. I get the joke, but part of the point is that top and bottom of the class are only relevant for those who actually graduate, and who is capable of graduating can be entirely different based on the goals of the institution. From "everyone can, with work" as in High School, to "only those who are good enough" as (hopefully) in medical school.

2. Humanity, where we've institutionalized pettiness, and not just once, but throughout history. :/

There's a pretty staggering breadth of admissions requirements for the various accredited medical schools in the US, and plenty of offshore schools that effectively will take anyone — basically MD mills. The Dominican Republic, in particular, is well-known for this.

(Yes, many of the offshore medical schools are LCME-accredited and legit, and have trained some fantastic physicians, but broadly speaking, they're taking people who couldn't get into an on-shore school.)

Sure, I'm not really arguing that all medical schools have sterling reputations or high standards, just that the joke, as a way to illustrate the problem, unfortunately obscures the real problem. It's pithy and punchy, which makes it good joke and easy to repeat. It's sort of a peeve of mine when I see well intentioned but slightly misleading memes propagate. They're hard to fight for the same reason they are memes.

I see you've read DH Xavier too

> Two thoughts...

"What do you call the person who graduated from medical school at the bottom of their class?"

What do you call an engineer who graduated from the bottom of their class?

The ordeal of residency isn't about setting the bar "high", nearly so much as it's about, "well, I went through this shit, so you have to, too". (Source: I have several doctor friends.

Medical doctors are trained to exhibit a level of competence. The 'bootcamp' approach is what we know at the present time to work best. Is it easy? No. Is it pretty? No. Do you have a better suggestion? ___

All of them think it's bullshit

All of them is still a small percentage of doctors.

(Frankly this argument is old and stale. Anyone who has a better plan for training doctors should speak up instead of rehashing it)

> The 'bootcamp' approach is what we know at the present time to work best.

What other approaches have even been tried? I don't think, in the absence of meaningfully tried alternatives that have been shown to be lacking, that a proclamation of "best-ness" is particularly warranted. ("It's the best!" "Oh? What else have you tried?" "It's the best." cycles aren't responsive.)

I note you're a physician, as well. How much of your perspective on the matter is a result of your having been through a similar process?

I'm not. But I take the word of my physician friends — one of whom, a perinatologist, recently accepted a position at a prestigious teaching university — very seriously. They aren't just speaking from their experience. They're, if their explicit statements are to be believed, relating the experience of nearly every other physician they know.

Sure, that's still a vanishingly small fraction of the total physician population. At what point, then, does this chorus of, "This is not the best way to do this" become worth listening to, and not merely writing off as griping by the uninformed, or a minority of slackers with sour grapes?

Regarding the second point, this is room for improvement for reducing healthcare costs by increasing the supply of doctors.

Is the bar really high though? I find doctors in US for common procedures use outdated methods and charge astronomical fees.

My experience of going to Australian hospitals was 10x better.

In US it feels like doctors want to get as much money as they can from you while proving the lowest level of service possible. A very capitalist view to human life.

You might be interested in a Freakonomics episode[1] that covers this to some degree. There's a wide range in care based on many factors, but unless you have quite a bit of experience in the healthcare industry in both countries, for similar ailments, I'm not sure what you experienced falls outside the normal variation for the field.

The TL;DL is that the medical field changes quite a bit in the years since Docters graduate, and depending on the types of work they are doing, it seems to be fairly easy for them to get behind with the latest consensus unless they make a concerted effort. To that effect, relatively new doctors often have better patient health outcomes than doctors that have been out of school for longer. This is, to some degree, obvious after stated, as any field that sees rapid change will have some percentage of practitioners that are out of date.

1: http://freakonomics.com/podcast/bad-medicine-part-3-death-di...

I feel there is also a big difference in motivation: reducing harm versus reducing personal blame.

No doctor can be sued for a patient who doesn't see them, so raising prices high, and using it for insurance has the benefit of insuring patients who see you, while those who can't pay aren't your patients, so if they come to harm because they can't afford to see you, not your problem.

In charitable work, we often say that you either give your time or your money. The younger tend to give their time; the older tend to give their money.

Similarly, people have visions for how the world should be. The young and of-less-means tend to give their time, engaging in grassroots efforts or marches. The old and rich tend to give their money. Both use their resources to shape the world towards what they believe in.

Whether one believes this is morally right is one thing (whether the rich should have a louder voice though their resources), but I do think the intent of the rich is less sinister than we often frame it.

In addition to this, there really is an almost fetish-like following behind the ideas that the Rockefeller's in particular secretly 'rule' or 'ruin' the world.

John D. Rockefeller Sr. stated many times that he believed that it was God's plan for him to: (paraphrasing)

1) Acquire as mush wealth as he could through business. 2) Donate this money to help humanity in the best ways possible.

And he did exactly that. And he did better than anyone else ever has. He didn't do much else. The Rockefeller's are fascinating people, but I think most of us would be surprised as to how little of the 'world-dominating' stuff is true.

It's been mentioned elsewhere in this thread, but "Titan: The Life Of John D. Rockefeller" goes into incredible detail on the family. You may not leave with a nice picture of the family, but definitely a different one than some of the comments in this thread. A lot of the private journals and business documents have actually been released to the public and it makes for a fascinating read.

>Whether one believes this is morally right is one thing (whether the rich should have a louder voice though their resources), but I do think the intent of the rich is less sinister than we often frame it.

People by default seem to put their faith in a works-based salvation, and this may explain why so many religions also tend in that direction (Judaism, Catholicism, many-Protestant bodies, ad infinitum). The end-product of this mindset, especially in cases of magnificently wealthy benefactors or societies, is more often than not a meddling--and ultimately misanthropic--Pharisaism tending toward vainglory.

Lurking somewhere behind the Puritans' stocks and gallows, the Jacobin Club's guillotines, and the Abolitionists' fiery marches-to-the-sea was a prospering, yet militant, charity directed anywhere but inward. Likewise, the works-based religion of today's Soroses, Rothschilds, and Rockefellers, while on the surface resembling the myopically raceless utopia of Star Trek, will likely violently unravel as has most movements led by uncritical men convinced of their own ability to earn salvation.

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

> Rockefeller upheld the family’s philanthropic tradition, giving away more than $900 million during his lifetime.

https://www.forbes.com/sites/carlodonnell/2014/07/11/the-roc...

"That young man was John Davison Rockefeller in 1855, who in 25 years would become the wealthiest man of his time, and arguably the wealthiest in history, reigning over a monopoly that refined as much as 90 percent of America’s oil. His flagship company, Standard Oil, was broken up in 1911 by the Sherman Anti-Trust Act, but Rockefeller’s greatest legacy – his family – lives on, spanning more than 200 surviving individuals and possessing a collective net worth of about $10 billion"

$900M out of $10B is 9%.

Myself, living in Europe, I'm quite convinced I have paid a much higher percentage of my income than this towards state-governed philantrophy. Where's my trophy?

> spanning more than 200 surviving individuals

> collective net worth of about $10 billion

You are taking his individual contribution as a percentage of the combined net worth of 200 individuals.

They're talking about net worth. You're talking about income.

Kind of silly either way though - why don't you just come out and say that you think he should have donated more?

No, I prefer just to point out the hypocrisy surrounding getting acclaims for "philantrophy" in the US.

Seems like even those who have the most give out back less to others than they would have done just by the regular taxation laws, living in a typical European country.

Depending on tax law throughout his life, and his ability to find loopholes, that $900M was _on top of_ what he paid in tax. So unless you have evidence that he paid no or very low taxes, what you're saying just doesn't hold water.

Not to mention that you're comparing the donations of a single person to the collective net worth of 200 people. More fair would be to compare that $900M to David Rockefeller's net worth, not that and all his very-extended family.

Anyone in the US is paying very low taxes compared to what "high-income" tax payers pay in e.g. Scandinavian countries like Sweden. The treshold for "high income" is (simplified) at about $80k per year.

Stock option profits are taxed as income as well. (In Sweden we also have to pay social security fees on our stock option profits - the end result typically being at least a 62% taxation level on that income.).

Gotcha. I still don't see any evidence for what you're saying, though. What was David Rockefeller's income during the period he worked and gave money to charitable causes? If you want to look at it mathematically:

income * (tax rate + giving rate) = "total given"

Obviously you have two important variables there that determine what the total percent of income ends up being. I don't see any evidence that the parenthetical totals above are less or greater than each other when you consider your average European vs. Rockefeller, so you can't really say anything about how much he gave out of his income in comparison to your average European. Maybe it's more, maybe it's less, but you automatically assuming it's less is a bit disingenuous.

There's also the question of required vs. optional. If your average European had a tax rate similar to an American, would they then (on average) give the "savings" away as philanthropy? My guess would be it'd end up somewhere in the middle. Philanthropy is only philanthropy if it's voluntary and isn't forced by your government. That's pretty much its definition.

> Seems like even those who have the most give out back less to others than they would have done just by the regular taxation laws, living in a typical European country.

You're somehow confusing money that someone intentionally gave away to philanthropic causes with money that a state takes away forcefully from anyone's income, as if everyone would wilfully give it away to charitable causes even if the state didn't took it from them, and also somehow assuming that Americans don't pay taxes as well.

Tell me, when was the last time you gave away over 10% of your income to philanthropic causes?

Then you should make yourself aware of the regular taxation laws in force at the time those fortunes were amassed.

The difference I guess is that in the US the rich give away most of their money (often for favorable tax treatment on the remainder of their estate) and in Europe they just pass it along to their children to maintain the nominal level of Eurotrash the world seems to require. </s>

I wasn't claiming rich Europeans are any better. :)

I'm simply claiming that this insanely rich american guy

a) percentage-wise gave away quite a bit less of his fortune than e.g. myself has given away in taxes/wealth-distribution in Sweden.

b) get's to be called a "philantrophist".

The difference is that the money was given away willingly, was personally directed to beneficial causes, and was orders of magnitude more than you have "donated."

You're not doing the same thing - and, while we can debate how the meaning of the word "philanthropist" has changed, this is the widely understood modern definition.

> They're talking about net worth. You're talking about income.

For people who create our the net worth by means of income (that is the most of us) the end result is pretty much the same.

That's a stupid statement. Net worth is not income. Surely you understand the difference between the money you deposit in a checking account and the interest the bank pays on your deposit. Furthermore, net worth are just estimates of the monetary worth of all property belonging to someone.

Just admit you were wrong.

To be fair, in Europe we pay more exactly because we recognise that, if left to their own benevolence, the rich will never pay enough.

(And, the guy donated in addition to paying his fair share of taxes, one would hope. At one point, pre-Reagan, US taxes on wealth were as high as in Europe, possibly even higher).

In Europe, you don't leave the rich to their own benevolence. It's much worse. By and large, European countries have laws forbidding the rich from donating too much of their money to charity, especially upon their deaths. See https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Forced_heirship for a pretty bare-bones description of the setup. https://www.cesifo-group.de/ifoHome/facts/DICE/Public-Sector... has more details by country; see the "Restrictions on the freedom to dispose of one’s succession by will" section.

Under these laws, heirs have been able to claw back donations made before death (including many years before death), in addition to ones made in the will. Note that if you accept the premise of the forced heirship laws, this is an obvious consequence; otherwise people will just structure their finances to make most of the donations they want before they die.

Anyway, the upshot is that the European legal system takes great pains to make sure that currently wealthy families stay wealthy instead of managing to give the money away. It's just not talked about much, and I suspect many people don't really know about it.

> $900M out of $10B is 9%.

The $10B is spread across 200 people.

His personal net worth at the time of his death was about $3.3 billion according to <https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/David_Rockefeller>. But it's hard to compare that to the $900 million number because that number adds dollars from different time periods, which are worth different amounts. This is especially important if any of it happened in the 60s or early 70s, given the subsequent high inflation.

Also, that $900 million number doesn't seem to include the bequests in his will.

And I suspect he did in fact pay taxes too.

Now, I agree that it's easier to give money away when you have so much you don't really need it for anything. So I'm not sure about giving out trophies for doing so.

"Rich people don't give money away no-strings-attached, they channel it for their purposes"

This is really just a troll comment where you put everyone in a group group under one umbrella. Now others will need to waste their timé feeding the troll.

This really is not a constructive or educational way for people to spend their afternoon.

> This is really just a troll comment where you put everyone in a group group under one umbrella.

There is criticism of the Gates Foundation too: http://techrights.org/wiki/index.php/Gates_Foundation_Critiq...

David Rockefeller certainly did some good things with his influence. But he was also a globalist, which has had the effect of allowing 1st world companies to replace expensive workers through offshoring.

Some people do good work with their foundations. But a lot of it is cover for tax planning.

     thereby making sure that there's always been a shortage
     of doctors [2] 
     [2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Flexner_Report

I'm sorry but I prefer the people operating one me are part of a well regulated profession guided by scientific research.

     The Osteopathic profession was the only group that was organized 
     enough to survive the Medical Guild's purge of non-Rockefeller-approved 
     approaches to medicine.

Yeah because Blood Letting, Leaches, Heroin, Electro-Shock, and Drinking Mercury were _so good_ for your health. Turn of the last century Osteopathy is the stuff of Nightmares.

     Today D.O.s are more likely to take up Primary Care, where doctors
     take time to get to know their patients and figure out what's
     actually causing their complaints

Modern D.O.'s aren't _exactly_ descended from Osteopathic of the 1870-1900's. Really in philosophy only. The only real relation is that the "Philosphy" of Osteopathy is the body will try to heal itself, and medicine should compliment this... Not be the only process by-which the body can.

Modern D.O.'s following the training and principles laid out in the Flexner Report. Their decisions are still based on research.

There are _non-approved_ Osteopathic """Doctors""", but we commonly refer to them as faith healers.

There's also the Rockefellar medical drug connection: https://www.google.com/search?num=20&q=rockefeller+drugs+med...

Relevant video on the influence the Rockefeller family has on modern first-world healthcare systems: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=X6J_7PvWoMw

>Rich people don't give money away no-strings-attached..

Why not?

Greed is a response to insecurity and doubt. They don't want to fear the idea of a life where their exceeds needs aren't met by wealth, so they retain it.

This isn't meant to be calling out the "bourgeoisie" to put at best, but there is an emotional response to uncertainty here.

You're talking out of your ass, aren't you.

This is Hacker News, we all are.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com