Beware Rich People Who Say They Want to Change the World | Hacker News Reader

Beware Rich People Who Say They Want to Change the World

nytimes.com

56 pointsgnicholas42 comments

> Mark Zuckerberg of Facebook says, “The best thing to do now, if you want to change the world, is to start a company.”

This anecdote, in a list of others related to rich people who think they’re changing the world, is misplaced. Marc isn’t just talking to rich people — he’s saying that starting a company is a powerful way to potentially change the world.

Is that not true? Perhaps his view is skewed by survivor bias. But what would we have him say? “If you want to change the world, go be a politician”?

> It’s that one awesome charter school — not equally funded public schools for all.

Does he not realize that charter schools are open to all (though sometimes lotteried)? And that it’s much more practical to do the former than the latter?

This essay (and the book it’s promoting) seem well-timed to ride a wave of populist discontent. But I don’t personally find it very convincing. It seems like the author just wants to complain that some rich people and companies protect their self-interest, and therefore all of the good they might do is tainted. This strikes me as naive (yes, people protect their self-interest, and always have) and impractical. As the saying goes: don’t let the perfect be the enemy of the good-enough.

There are people out there trying to accomplish the perfect. Don’t demonize the people who are trying to make incremental changes.

One note: charter schools are almost never open to all.

They're not open to those with learning disabilities. Or those with physical disabilities. Or emotional problems at home.

Which means they take a school's worth of finding out of the pool but leave the most expensive students behind.

Setting the rest of the discussion aside, I think there is an argument for specializing care. People with learning disabilities would benefit from attention from experts, people with at-home problems would benefit from school-based childcare (for them, school lunches and afterschool programs would be disproportionately helpful), and while people with physical disabilities need the same good teachers they benefit from specialized access mechanisms as well (for example there are schools for the blind, where knowledge about blindness is concentrated in the staff to an extent not present elsewhere.) Children with physical disabilities have no need for dyslexia experts, children with lots of support at home have no need for elaborate all-day childcare, and so on.

So, there are clear efficiency and quality gains to be had if the system is specialized. Physical disabilities are one of the most stand-out cases, where you can invest in special access mechanisms and make special testing conditions normal if you concentrate enough people with the same needs in one place. See: Schools for the deaf, schools for the blind.

> So, there are clear efficiency and quality gains to be had if the system is specialized.

I'd agree that "specialization" is a good thing when it means that educators have the training needed to most effectively deal with other-than-typical circumstances. But it may be less of a good thing when it means segregating those students into their own classes or their own schools, which I think is what GP is saying effectively happens with charter schools. Setting aside the cost argument, giving students a chance to interact with and befriend those with different backgrounds, circumstances, and abilities benefits the students and society, though it may not be reflected in standardized test scores.

The charter school "lottery" where I live obviously is not random, yet the law doesn't require them to be audited for fairness. They are basically private schools with selective admission that are funded by money pulled away from the public school system.

Yeap. It's pseudo-public for the benefit of the rich kids while denigrating public schools as "inefficient" and other libertarian/utopian hate against "socialism" while duplicitously funneling welfare to the rich while stealing from the poor.

>> It’s that one awesome charter school — not equally funded public schools for all.

I would also note that charter schools are great as a proof of concept. It's naive to think that education is already "solved" and just dumping money into giving everyone access would do better than many people experimenting on the micro level and then hopefully using those concepts to benefit the less fortunate.

>> The best thing to do now, if you want to change the world, is to start a company.

I would certainly agree with this statement. If you think a community doesn't have healthful food options, start a grocery. If you think a community is underserved, look to serve it. I don't think ending the carried interest tax credit will somehow magically fix everything. Most solutions are best done on the micro scale

Starting a company is all well and good from the biased survivors whom can operate at scale, opening a store or starting something small and manageable is more feasible for most people.

That seems like really awkward advice if the change you want to see is less corporate and commercial interest/power...

Zuckerberg changed the world immensely. Whether it was for better or worse is a subject of ongoing debate, but a world where 2 billion people use Facebook is very different in many ways than it was before.

If the question were “how do you change the world for the better?”, then the response would have to be much different.

> Beside a paragraph about how cutthroat business practices had earned the heirs of the Walton family at least $150 billion in wealth, Mr. Tovar wrote: “Possible addition: Largest corporate foundation in America. Gives more than $1 billion in cash and in kind donations each year.”

After accounting for interest on that stolen wealth, that's a damn small return.

Also beware journalists with same mission?

Promise hope and change but deliver it slowly or not at all.

Not to pick on any one partisan side, but isn't that what Obama promised before nearly passing TPP/TTIP which would've sold-out America's autonomy and rule of law to a higher ruling international body also run by corporations? By sheer chance, buffoon 45 killed it.. and then he saved a few hundred jobs while losing tens of thousands more with poorly-designed tariffs.

Treaties have to be ratified by the US Congress, and I doubt relinquishing sovereignty was ever in the cards (no matter who is president).

> Aggressive policies to protect workers, redistribute income, and make education and health affordable would bring real change.

Yeah those are not self-evidently desirable

I would rather a rich person use their own money to change the world than the government seize wealth to change the world.

And this is why we can't have nice things. People trust those who've amassed huge quantities of money for themselves and want to do more of that, instead of a body of the people specifically selected to improve the lives of everyone. Maybe the wrong people are doing it now, you can change that. America has lost so much faith in its government; it's sad.

> instead of a body of the people specifically selected to improve the lives of everyone

I doubt majority of people have time to go research credibility and vote for local politicians and other who you say “specifically selected to improve lives of everyone”

Nor is "improve the lives of everyone" likely even in the top 10 of most politicians reasons for running for office. Power is power, and whether it's in business or government it attracts people who like to wield it.

Hence checks and balances, which the wealthy attempting influence don't have.

How often do you get the opportunity to vet the credibility of rich people claims, let alone stop them? If you aren't electing people for the greater good why are you voting? What makes the wealthy any more likely to be credible?

I am not saying rich people are more credible. What I am saying is that people who were “selected” by voting have also an agenda to get rich and get power. At least rich people are already rich and are can not be easily influenced by somebody else, like young politicians are.

Thats the thing about money, nobody ever has enough. I'd even argue having a pile of it makes you more likely to be influenced as the risks of losing your job are smaller. Either way, the more compelling argument to me is politicians are subject to checks and balances.

The worst that can happen to the rich person is they go broke. The worst that can happen with the government is they turn the country into Venezuela, or devolve into mass killings like Mao’s China and the Soviet Union.

The sad thing about today’s society is that all the lessons of last century are being forgotten.

Yes, the worst that can happen to a rich person is they go broke, that doesn't mean they can't harm others along the way with little to no oversight. Union Carbide [1], Coca Cola killing union organizers [2], Nestle's use of child slaves [3] and of course, that time the Chiquita banana company started a 30 year long civil war in Guatemala [4] - then their CEO walked out of his 40th floor window in New York which almost seems worse than going broke ;) These are just recent.

Speaking of lessons we haven't learned, there's the British and Dutch East India Companies, deputized by their governments to run their own territories - and the slave trade. [5] And boy did the VOC do it well, returning a 20% annual dividend for over 200 years, the single most valuable company in the history of the world ($7T in todays money). And that's just some flagship examples.

Both are people or groups of people; companies don't have checks and balances - good government does.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bhopal_disaster

[2] https://www.theguardian.com/media/2003/jul/24/marketingandpr...

[3] https://www.confectionerynews.com/Article/2018/02/13/Nestle-...

[4] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1954_Guatemalan_coup_d%27état

[5] http://theconversation.com/taboo-the-east-india-company-and-...

All of those examples pale in comparison to the atrocities by socialist governments, brought by, I assume, the best intentions.

OP point stands IMHO.

Mass killings under communist regimes - best estimates are 65 to 165 million people in 100 years

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mass_killings_under_communis...

Tell that to the victims of Henry Ford's security forces. We have forgotten history, indeed.

I mean, one takes the point that companies can very much harm people, often in subtle long-term ways, more rarely with direct, brutal violence.

But if you stack up the victims of Ford's security forces next to the victims of various horrifying governments, you literally can't see the Ford victims.

Sure, but the point is that the original post claims that rich people are completely innocuous, which is just blatantly false. Anyway form of power, whether through private capital or public political, is worthy of critique and skepticism.

I think that you took an informal, slightly hyperbolic claim, and parsed it as a formal one.

Sure, but fallacious oversimplistic political rhetoric should still be called out. This is a board of reason.

Your lack of understanding of even recent American history is breathtaking. Do a little more reading on the gilded age.

Personal attacks will get you banned on HN, regardless of how wrong or ignorant another commenter may be.

Since you've frequently broken the site guidelines and ignored our requests to stop, I've banned this account. If you don't want to be banned, you're welcome to email hn@ycombinator.com and give us reason to believe that you'll follow the rules in the future.

https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html

Wow. So Carter and Gates are selfish pigs?

I live in Venezuela and I would say definitely beware of populist rhetoric and communists trying to change the world.

I don't have a country anymore because people believed in that.

Agreed, but this is a false dichotomy. Google "happiest countries in the world" - the leaders are all countries with high taxes, universal healthcare, universal education and a strong social safety net.

> President Trump is what we get when we trust the rich to fix what they are complicit in breaking.

I am really tired of "We got trump because of X" , when is it speculation/theorisation going to stop :\.

We got Trump because he won under the rules by which we choose presidents. If you aren't happy with him, put up a better competitor next time.

What about politicians and gurus?

They never seem to get very far without other people's money.

Some of what's here is agreeable.

Virtue signalling is very popular among the rich now. I suppose they might be trying to appease the jealous lower classes.

The same holds true for Hollywood. Every heart bleeds for any altruistic cause. Sadly, the place is rife with hypocrites from Weinstein to Damon, preying on sexual victims and raising conspicuous consumerism to previously unseen levels.

I'm glad to see this article. I hope we see more like it.

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