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Comment by dpflan | Hacker News Reader

I suggest that it does not align with consumerism/capitalist ideologies which are used in the feedback loop to promote themselves/further substantiate their existence and influence in culture. Philanthropy is great, but to some extent I think the argument that properly taxing such capitalistic gains could have greater effect on society when properly used by the system that can support massive scale projects (i.e. the government).

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It just depends on whether you trust a government or a rich philanthropist to "properly use" capital (get the most impact/$).

If you let billionaires make the choices then sure you get some like Feeney/Gates/Buffett but you get Koch brothers.

Government could theoretically do a more equitable job but only if social programs are run competently. Think about the leadership of EPA and HUD.

There'd be less need for such trust if there were more democracy [1] as well.

1. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Liquid_democracy

It also depends on how much you trust the electorate. Recent developments around the world have shaken my faith a bit.

Indeed, the power goes to the person who can successfully manipulate the most people. Historically that tends to be people who blame minorities for all the ills of the group of people most likely to vote, and come up with what seem like easy solutions (tax the rich, ban the immigrants)

I for one don't have time in my life to be an expert on running an economy, creating an immigration policy, balancing the environmental and societal needs etc. I specialize in my area of expertise and use that money to employ others who specialize in their areas, and that includes government.

> Indeed, the power goes to the person who can successfully manipulate the most people.

Perfect the enemy of good, etc, etc. What I solved is the problem of relying on a potentially authoritarian government which is what was brought up, rather than all possible problems. What I suggest would be better, not perfect.

> I for one don't have time in my life to be an expert on running an economy, creating an immigration policy, balancing the environmental and societal needs etc.

That's the point of liquid democracy. You delegate but reserve the right to override your delegate if needed.

>If you let billionaires make the choices then sure you get some like Feeney/Gates/Buffett but you get Koch brothers.

You just disagree with the things the Kochs choose to fund. You could have easily said Murdoch instead (or Bloomberg if you wanted to pick someone who's hate crosses party lines).

Were the government funding the causes these billionaires fund the causes would still be controversial. We just wouldn't have a single person to have the lion's share of the blame.

That's kind of the point though. Whether you believe that decisions ought to be made by the people, or by whoever has the most money is sort of an axiomatic thing. It's not like we have any good way of testing which one is "better".

> We just wouldn't have a single person to have the lion's share of the blame

Correct. Then we'd only have the electorate i.e ourselves to blame.

> You just disagree with the things the Kochs choose to fund.

Sure, and I'm also not a fan of Jeffrey Dahmer's taste in fine dining, but I don't think it is reasonable to chalk that up to a mere difference of appetite.

> Were the government funding the causes these billionaires fund the causes would still be controversial.

Were the government funding those causes we could stop funding them because they are horrible and people hate them.

Tax dollars go vastly more to dropping bombs on civilians in the middle east and ICE and the NSA than they do to any positive social program (ignoring things like social security that are funded by a separate tax that billionaires wouldn't pay much into under most schemes). I don't love the outsized influence on society that billionaires have, I certainly don't love the Koch brothers -- but I think looking at the $X pool of money spent on philanthropy by billionaires per year, it is probably much better distributed than that same pool of money would be if it was paid as income taxes.

So the thing is... tax dollars go more to dropping bombs on civilians in the Middle East and to ICE and the NSA because that's what people overwhelmingly want. I guarantee you that if public opinion shifted hard against these things, we'd see less funding over the years toward them.

But it doesn't. Regardless of what we say here, the majority of the US wants a big military, and wants hard immigration controls.

Then it becomes a different argument: should we tax the wealthy more if it means the money will go to government initiatives that the majority seems to want, even though a minority of us believe that those things are largely bad for society and the world, and represent short-term thinking that is a result of bad risk assessment? Essentially, should we let the use of this money be directed by the will of the people (rather than a few ultra-rich people) even if we believe the will of the people is often wrong?

I don't have great answers to this. As another commenter mentioned, the billionaire-philanthropist system is good when we have people like Feeney, but fails when we have people like the Kochs. Do we have a net excess of Feeneys in the world, or Kochs? And even if we have the former, is that still a good thing; could we get more fair or equitable outcomes if we did let electorate decide how to allocate these funds? And even if we couldn't, is it antithetical to democratic values to go against the will of the people, even if the people are wrong? And if so, does that matter? I tend to think it does, but I can see the argument for both sides.

In other words: should we let the use of money be directed by the people who will actually pay with their own money for what they want, or should we let a vacuous "majority" pursue whatever goals they might seem to want, with money that's not even theirs to spend in the first place? I know what my answer would be. Even the Kochs are spending money for what they regard as the good of society. There's nothing inherently 'wrong' with that.

> So the thing is... tax dollars go more to dropping bombs on civilians in the Middle East and to ICE and the NSA because that's what people overwhelmingly want.

Support for the War in Iraq was 39% in 2004, 30% in 2006, 34% in 2007, etc. Despite massive PR campaigns on the part of politicians and the natural tendency to ("support the troops"), our various military adventures are actually not very popular among average Americans.

But they are very very popular among rich members of the military-industrial complex, and those people have enough money to win elections and buy politicians, so here we are.

> Do we have a net excess of Feeneys in the world, or Kochs?

Kochs, absolutely, unequivocally. There is no billionaire on Earth who could fix all of the damage caused to the environment by the Koch brothers, any more than a sufficiently well-intentioned German Chancellor could undo the damage Hitler caused.

This is one of the fundamental asymmetries of life: it is easier to destroy than build, easier to harm than heal. With a cheap kitchen knife and a fraction of a Newton of force, you can sever someone's head. Can you as easily put it back?

This is, I think, the core reason why inequality is dangerous. Because when you concentrate power in fewer people, the variance of the resulting outcomes increases. And if you increase that variance, the bad outcomes get worse more than the good outcomes get better.

Say what you will about hunter-gatherer societies, but they never dropped a nuclear bomb, caused a Holocaust, or filled the atmosphere with lead fumes. We obviously shouldn't dial inequality back to pre-industrial levels, but the existence of billionaires is essentially playing global-scale random wildcards in the game of life.

And just to be clear, the Koch brothers fund things like efforts to end civil asset forfeiture, not just the things people like to get mad at them for in the media...

Deadweight loss is a real thing.

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