Hacker News Reader

Comment by hprotagonist | Hacker News Reader

because if you get a lot of cash, you, while still living, can make it do stuff in the world that you think needs to be done.

Carnegie, for example, decided that He Really Liked Libraries. So he built a lot of them.

Paul Allen decided that we were wasting everyone's time redoing basic science experiments, so he did a lot of them and put them all online for free forever.

Brian Acton and Jan Koum decided that free, secure messaging should be available to everyone, so they sunk $500M into Open Whisper Systems so it can be a nonprofit with a warchest.

In years past, people have made similar decicions like "there should be a really good hospital in this town, so i am building one", or whatnot.

View on HN

Carnegie liked building libraries, but you will notice that a lot of those libraries got named after him.

He used his wealth to benefit society, but he also effectively set up a system that would stamp and preserve his name and legacy in history. His actions weren't exactly entirely selfless.

This seems to be a common goal for a lot of people once they become very rich. They ask themselves, "what do I do with all this money?", and then they discover that even rich people die... So they attempt to white wash any of their past wrong-doings, and paint themselves as heroes and leave behind a legacy where their name will live on even after they die.

Who cares about Carnegie's reputation now that he's long since dead? It doesn't benefit him at all!

Does it hurt anyone alive today? That's the more important question.

The really hard questions are things like "are all of carnegie's depredations that he was responsible for while amassing his wealth in some sense 'worth it' if his wealth was subsequently spent on raising the standards for everyone? If so, by what metrics?"

I would prefer that than not doing good at all. Doing good is doing good, leaving a legacy or not.

Plenty of places (ie, hospitals) put the name of the donors out of respect for them.

I highly doubt someone as famous as Andrew Carnegie was heavily motivated by having his name on another building.

If I ran a library that was given millions by a donor, even if they didn't ask for it I'd like to name the library after them. Instead of it just being called "Houston Public Library" or whatever, you can show how people choose to give back to communities and maybe inspire other people to contribute in ways they're capable of.

Very rarely, if ever, an action is done that could only possibly be entirely selfless.

Doing good things and having a legacy is better then just doing good things.

>Paul Allen decided that we were wasting everyone's time redoing basic science experiments, so he did a lot of them...

Link please. Couldn't find em

http://portal.brain-map.org/

Maybe this: https://www.wsj.com/articles/SB10001424052970204630904577058...

> Brian Acton and Jan Koum decided that free, secure messaging should be available to everyone, so they sunk $500M into Open Whisper Systems so it can be a nonprofit with a warchest.

I believe it was $50 million not $500.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com