Comment by samstave | Hacker News Reader

Comment by samstave | Hacker News Reader

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Totally agree!

This is why I always skeptically look at any philanthropic announcements....

if billionaires like Gates, Buffet, Zuck, Bezos simply funded the above - it would go way further, and have long asting effect on the future of this nation in so many profound ways. Rather than "give away half their wealth" - why not do the above now and actually see it change the surface of the nation?

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I am getting involved in the tiny house movement. Clayton homes (berkshire hathaway) has a tiny home division... but BHs entities (like clayton and karsten) in the housing market are so poorly regarded: they build sub-standard homes, their employees are treated like crap, the quality of their products are low because they do not provide skilled training to their employees, the working conditions are fairly poor etc...

its maddening to see billionaires and governments claim all this "making the world a better place" platitudenal BS, but a critical program like CCC would be realize some serious material benefit in every sector.

Simultaneously driving the economy and increasing quality of life are often competing goals. Take tiny homes, sure, you might be able to put more people in homes they own, but housing construction is one of the most hammer-ready jobs producing activities there is, and if you cut the average house size by 75%, there are fewer jobs in building.

Then consider externalities, the environment could be a lot cleaner if we got over striving for economic growth. Growth is driven by population or consumption growth or both. So you get more trees cut down to build roads, houses and malls. More pollution from energy consumption and manufacturing.

We should really just pursue managed population reduction, combined with a prescribed amount of economic shrinkage, not growth. But then people really get stuck in their caste and there are far fewer opportunities to move into middle class.

Well, its not like building tiny homes are going to make most people who would normally purchase a normal/large size home switch to a tiny home. It would probably net increase the amount of construction work because you've now expanded the available market (lower income people can now purchase a home).

Same with the B&M Gates Foundation. When they started their Grand Challenges, they were very specific and methodical in deciding which project to found. The impact had to be directly towards helping underdeveloped or developing countries, the ideas had to be innovative. Now they found a lot of half-baked startups, that pitch solution based on very sparse/alternative facts. The due diligence is completely lacking.

Thanks for the comment and musing regarding the topic, I appreciate feeling some common thinking. Really, it's kind of lonely sometimes, even when it seems like people agree - do they really?

That's why I'm kind of laughing nobody seemed to come out and directly ask:

>Okay, how are you going to pay for it?

I have an answer, one that would be Boo'd to oblivion. A progressive Estate Tax bracket system of 0-30-85% according to full-worth structures (Trusts, Offshore, wtf-ever-we-gonna-find-that-money) because that'll level out the wealth gap right soon and fund plenty of public works projects.

The kind of maintenance that is needed because those in the top 0.01% can afford to teach their kids to pull themselves up by their bootstraps. That's what they say to poor people all the time, and they didn't grow up with billionaire parents. The pendulum must swing back.

I would guess many of them want to contribute to solving big global challenges rather than simply focusing on a single country?

I'd think one is more qualified to address local challenges than global ones. Certainly all those people made their money focusing on the US market, not only because it's big and governed by relatively uniform regulations but because they understand it better than any other. For the same reasons, it's IMO far easier to be effective as a philanthropist closer to home. (This is not to say there aren't exceptions to this, just that there's a certain tendency for it to be true. Of course there's the somewhat-Rawlsian argument that you should focus on those worst off first; without addressing this argument in itself, I think you should also focus on those whom you can make better off most effectively and who in turn will likely do the most philanthropic work once their own situation improves, and at least for a US billionaire, US citizens sound like a great target demographic on both counts.)

Actually helping people in a significant way in large wealthy countries is harder/more expensive because the bar is already higher. A disadvantaged person in a first world country is still much better off then a disadvantaged person in a third world country.

Not saying that working in a country with no regulatory or physical infrastructure is easy, but buying a bunch of mosquito nets is much cheaper with very few unintended consequences compared to doing something like OP suggested. For instance, wouldn't a revived/subsidized CC put a lot of current companies/workers out of business? How would that opportunity effect a high schoolers decision making? Is this something that goes on forever, it sounds like we would be training more people to do a job then would be needed if this program stopped. etc, etc, etc.

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