> While many wealthy philanthropists enlist an army of publicists to trumpet their donations, Feeney went to great lengths to keep his gifts secret.
Seems like that was by design.
Seems like that was by design.
It is. Philanthropy exists to launder the reputations of the rich, on the one hand, and are paternalistic on the other. The only things that get funding are things that can attract the attention of our "betters." If we had taxed them on the front end to the point they couldn't become billionaires in the first place then people in general (through democracy) can decide what causes are valuable. And with the added bonus that the negative effects of they got to be billionaires don't cause more problems (Feeney worked in private equity. PE are strip & sell firms)
I'm willing to argue that it is in fact possible to become a billionaire though honest earnings.
but, if that's all morality is, pretty pointless
Sorry, I’m not able to parse this sentence. Could you please rephrase?
I'm not sure how accurate of a representation this is, but it certainly appears to work that way in some places. Realtors are a really good example of this, and of course, Butler's "War is a Racket" is a classic regarding the US military-industrial complex.
Cable originally started because people in valleys of PA and the like could not get antenna reception. So the CATV companies put up lines and started selling the service.
Sure, they were filling a 'need'. But I think when we look back at how the CATV Industry itself punishes 'piracy' there is more than a little irony. The only reason they started paying was because it was codified into law.
Also, the CATV Industry's general union-busting structure; lots of linework invovles 2-3 layers of contractor companies. By doing so, they help prevent unionizaiton (which is a thing in the Phone line side of things, their workers tend to get paid more and be happier in my experience) and also 'absolve' themselves of much of the responsibility when something goes wrong (especially in the contractor industry, that 'last layer' may not be around in 1-2 years.)
Aye, there's the rub. The greatest evils are when the billionaires team up with the government. Shifting money from the villains with money to the villains in the legislature doesn't solve that problem, and the villains in the legislature already spend close to half the GDP.
As a datapoint, "Fifty-five percent of Harvard College students receive need-based scholarship aid, and the average grant this year is more than $53,000." (https://www.google.com/search?client=safari&rls=en&q=harvard...)
https://slatestarcodex.com/2019/07/29/against-against-billio...
> I feel this is one of your lesser thought out pieces. I mean false equivalencies are rampant in it.
but... if we must, a few hard counterpoints:
> 1. Is criticizing billionaire philanthropy a good way to protest billionaires having too much power in society?
This point misrepresents how journalism & counter-criticism occur.
People criticize billionaires. Full stop. Criticism of their philanthropy is not selective: it's a criticism of the billionaire when they receive press due to their philanthropy, not because its philanthropy. Billionaires don't receive wide-reaching press because of their new yachts because those articles are only of interest to niche audiences, whereas philanthropy is promoted more broadly. THAT's the only reason it receives more criticism.
> 2. If attacks on billionaire philanthropy decrease billionaires’ donations, is that acceptable collateral damage in the fight against inequality?
This is cross-referencing the first point and doesn't hold water once the first point is debunked: the "attacks" on billionaire philanthropy are directed at billionaires because they receive positive press, not because they are philanthropic. This question only makes sense if you believe non-philanthropic billionaires should not be criticised for being billionaires.
> 3. Do billionaires really get negative reactions from donating? Didn’t I hear that they get fawning praise and total absence of skepticism?
(a) the question is bizarrely worded and I don't understand how any answer to this question would either confirm or debunk... anything.
(b) the author's "research" has sample sizes of 25 (Twitter search) and 10 (Google search) respectively. i.e. is basically junk.
> 4. Is it a problem that billionaire philanthropy is unaccountable to public democratic institutions? Should we make billionaires pay that money as taxes instead, so the public can decide how it gets spent?
This is again a poorly worded question but the content of the "answer" essentially amounts to a (rightful) critique of the current US government, and compares it to 3 cherry-picked examples of philanthropy that the author believes were better than what the current government would do.
Moving past the obvious point that... dear god what a low bar that is... as a general simple rebuttal: criticism of billionaire philanthropy generally centres around the fact that their philanthropy does less good than the negative impacts of their existence as billionaires. These negative impacts are absolutely the reason for the current state of the US government.
Arguing that billionaire philanthropy is inherently better than functioning democratic government in general is obvious nonsense.
> 5. Those are some emotionally salient examples, but doesn’t the government also do a lot of good things?
Same point as 4
> 6. The point of democracy isn’t that it’s always right, the point is that it respects the popular will. Regardless of whether the popular will is good or bad, don’t powerful private foundations violate it?
I mean this is slightly different but it's essentially 3 Qs on the same thing...
> 7. Shouldn’t people who disagree with the government’s priorities fight to change the government, not go off and do their own thing?
4 Qs on the same thing. This is a crafty technique to seem like you have more bullet points than you really do.
> 8. Is billionaire philanthropy getting too powerful? Should we be terrified by the share of resources now controlled by unaccountable charitable foundations?
We're now wandering off-topic from the original "should we criticise billionaires" to "is billionaire philanthropy dangerous in theory", and starts with the argument of whether they wield too much power. For this, they use their total philanthropy spend as the operating metric, rather than the actual resources at their disposal. Total net worth of US billionaires rivals the federal budget, and exceeds the mandatory spend. The wealth of just one of those billionaires is almost 1/16th of the federal budget and fast increasing.
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At this point the list of bullet points verges off into the land of vague discussion and is no longer a set of "counterpoints" and just a rambling conversation.
This author sure can write a lot, but none of the points seem to land.
And Scott's point is that non-selective criticism is dumb. If you don't want your dog to chew the carpet, criticizing your dog, full stop, as you say, is a terrible strategy.
If you're opposed to dogs or people richer than you in principle, then you can make that claim too I guess. But you won't get much sympathy if you do it when they're doing their most praiseworthy things.
Just out of curiosity, do you just think that billionaires are evil, or does that also extend to people in rich countries making six figure salaries in tech, who are also ridiculously richer than most of the rest of the world?
That's a reasonable point to make, but... I don't think I saw Scott making it. Are you sure that was Scott's point, or is it yours?
> criticizing your dog, full stop, as you say, is a terrible strategy
I guess this depends on our definition of "criticising" and it's intent. If you're sitting at home, shouting at your dog, I'm not sure that's particularly productive. If you're having a conversation with a peer, and expressing your frustration at your dog chewing carpet, you may perhaps combine forces to arrive at some solutions to your carpet problems.
You can argue that perhaps discussing the plight of billionaires amongst peers (or even random folk on the internet) is equivalent to sitting at home shouting at your dog, but I think that's a debate for a different day.
Point being: I doubt many "criticising" the billionaires/dogs are expecting them to listen. They're discussing problems (and potential solutions?) in a more general sense by criticising a system/event that exists/occurs.
> do you just think that billionaires are evil
Are you proposing that dogs chewing carpets are evil? I presume not, but I presume you still want to save your carpet.
Billionaires are not necessarily "evil" in intent in the absolute sense. What I am proposing is that their existence is a problem needing solving in and of itself.
The existence of billionaires (or anyone who holds more economic resources than are needed to be content... I think that stands somewhere around the ~$150k mark according to some studies... certainly far short of whatever number of millions/pa leads to billion-level assets) necessitates that those resources have been withheld from someone who has less than are needed to be content (in many cases, to survive).
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It may be worth noting that Feeney has gone about solving this exact problem (the existence of billionaires), albeit in a very individual way (making 1 billionaire no longer a non-billionaire). Which is quite an remarkable and laudable achievement, even if that billionaire was himself.
(and that's before we get into the very far-reaching, and—in my own experience—enormously positive impact, of his philanthropy)
Which government exactly is it that you think is excellent at solving societal problems and spending taxes efficiently?
[edit]
The top individual income tax rate is 22 percent, and the top corporate tax rate is 17 percent. The overall tax burden equals 14.1 percent of total domestic income[1].
Depending on how much you value each one depends on the answer you get.
I thought for certain the level of hate the left has for the current federal regime would make my constant refrain of "do we really think the government will do a better job?[1]" finally make sense. However, the empirical fact that government agencies will be directed by those you don't like doesn't seem to deter people from wanting to increase the role of those agencies.
1: To be clear: I'm not an anarcho-libertarian; I think the answer to this question can very often be "yes" but living in coastal California, I too often seem to be surrounded by people who think getting the government involved is the only reasonable solution to any problem. Conversely there is a very large minority of the US right that seems to think that bombs, guns and walls is the only time the answer is "yes"
Like lobbying their representatives to allow for loopholes and credits to allow them to keep their money and avoid the taxes that the lesser incomes must pay
People’s ability to agree where money should be given isn’t great. Worse so when the people who are giving the most have less say in where it goes.
In my experience, most appeals like the above tend to be driven by the idea that they would make better decisions than the philanthropist.
Whats a better model for deciding the distribution of political power, a democratic one, or a dictatorial one?
At the very least I don't think its an unreasonable position to believe that democracy makes more sense.
Unless you're trying to do things that pretty much nobody finds unsavory (e.g. funding education) money by itself doesn't go very far.
If democracy gets involved in that process, suddenly there's only an obstruction to say "No...you can't spend it on that." It's just there to introduce a form of majority control.
Conveniently, we can already see what causes we think are valuable, because the US government already spends about 40% of the entire GDP, $8 trillion per year.
Apparently we've decided that Donald J. Trump should manage it, and that $1 trillion per year should go to the defense industry (that's 600 Chuck Feeneys), with another $500B (300 Feeneys) to interest on the national debt.
(*edit: assuming 1 Feeney = $1.5B)
Maybe HackerNews needs to read some Adam Smith.
Chuck Feeney didn't work in PE, and he wasn't one of those creatures you despise. He invented Duty Free Shopping in WWII, selling booze, smokes and cars to returning servicemen. He pioneered airport shopping, doing all the hard, clever work himself, and spent the bulk of his life giving the billions earned to good causes anonymously.
Why? He didn't care about money or reputation. He wanted to make the world a better place.
Wikipedia Bio of Chuck Feeney https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chuck_Feeney
Biography of Chuck Feeney https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/2842145-the-billionaire-...
> Philanthropy exists to launder the reputations of the rich
It can be used that way, but Chuck Feeney didn't need or want that. That's why he gave anonymously right up until international money laundering regulations post 9/11 forced him to reveal his identity.
Yup. Even Adam Smith talked about this, it helps propel the capitalist system.