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Comment by dumbfounder | Hacker News Reader

I think that's a shame. I have never heard of him. How many could he inspire if he was more vocal? But, to each their own.

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Donating anonymously is a way of avoiding ending up on the mailing list of every charity in the country.

While it wasn't so important in this case because as a former billionaire I assume he had people at a foundation who's job it was to handle his correspondence, but if you are a regular person looking to make a donation it's often a good idea to keep your name and contact info out of it as much as possible. Charities can be really bad about selling your name.

Not sure if it was the case for Chuck, but a small percentage Christians strongly believe that charity should be anonymous because it actually says as much in the bible.

I'm not a Christian myself and definitely not rich at all, but I do prefer anonymous donations.

I think this is actually the norm amongst Christians. It just seems like the minority because by nature these folks aren't talking about it.

Matthew 6, 1-4 (NIV):

1 “Be careful not to practice your righteousness in front of others to be seen by them. If you do, you will have no reward from your Father in heaven.

2 “So when you give to the needy, do not announce it with trumpets, as the hypocrites do in the synagogues and on the streets, to be honored by others. Truly I tell you, they have received their reward in full. 3 But when you give to the needy, do not let your left hand know what your right hand is doing, 4 so that your giving may be in secret. Then your Father, who sees what is done in secret, will reward you.

It's kind of sad how it's framed in those passages - Give in secret, or God will notice and hold back some of those heavenly rewards.

As if the whole thing is just a karmic ponzi scheme.

Milk before meat.

A Christian theologian would explain it this way: the point is what rewards the giver is seeking, because that is what reveals what’s in their heart as they do the outward action of giving. As one author observes, “The worth and excellency of a soul is determined by the object of its love.”

A gift given in secret is seeking the rewards truly worth having: the praise that comes from God. Those who seek that find it, because they loved what was truly worthy of love. But gifts given for others to see are seeking a reward on earth, not heaven—and that’s what they get. Either way, they’re not penalized if, say, the word gets out against their wishes. That’s not the point: God knows and judges the heart and rewards them based on what they were actually seeking.

So seeking rewards is not only categorically OK, it’s actually encouraged, but with the caveat that the seeker set their heart on what is eternally worthy of their love and desire.

That explanation doesn't require theology. I've seen Peter Singer make the case that it's only "true altruism" if you're just as happy when someone else does something good as when you do so yourself.

Sort of, but the difference is that Christian altruism results in an increasing expectation of being praised and rewarded by God on the other side for being his agent of love to others in this life.

The result is a lot of joy, knowing one has brought blessing and joy both to God and to other people.

That’s not sad at all. There are plenty of secular reasons for doing a good deed for the sake of the deed itself — not the reward or recognition. I mean, this is basically the entire underpinning of Kantian ethics.

That's exactly my point though. I'm an atheist, and I don't do good things out of a desire for "rewards in heaven", or rewards of any kind. I don't refrain from stealing because I'm afraid of hell or punishment. As you point out, they're done for the act itself.

This passage presents altruism as a tit-for-tat deal with God. Do good, and you'll get some of that back...later. I promise! It's almost tacky.

> This passage presents altruism as a tit-for-tat deal with God.

Only by an extremely shallow reading.

It is not about tit-for-tat, it is about trust. A good parent often wants to give a child something they know will please the child more than what he/she is currently experiencing. Often the child will be angry and scream and hold onto the old, but the parent knows that as soon as the child let go and embrace what the parent has prepared the child will be happy and joyful.

God is more loving that any good parent: God IS Love, 1 John 4:8. I trust God's goodness and follow Him, I therefore don't have any reason to go into a tit-for-tat deal with God.

> This passage presents altruism as a tit-for-tat deal with God. Do good, and you'll get some of that back...later. I promise! It's almost tacky.

Correction: the passage makes no mention of "heaven."

I don't think you mean to say "tit-for-tat" as that means something else, but I do get the gist: it seems that there's some kind of contractual obligation on the part of God. The logical argument being: if you do [GIVE], then He does [REWARD]. This is a subtle argument, but flawed for a number of reasons (and why texts should never be taken out of context).

First, God isn't beholden to anyone. He does as He pleases, and the only "laws" He is bound by is His own nature (good, omniscient, eternal, etc.). There's many examples where Pharisees try to play these logical gotcha games with Christ, and they're always repudiated.

Secondly, the point of the passage itself is twofold: (1) avoid religious hypocrisy, and (2) avoid materialistic vainglory. Reading into the text deeper than that, brings us to my last point...

Finally, given that Christianity is a theist moral system, it makes sense that the ultimate arbiter of "goodness" is God -- in my opinion, that's why Chist brings up the "reward" -- which, for all intents and purposes, might just be God's approval (who knows what that entails).

If you think people should be 100% selfless, you're asking for too much. Even good-hearted people help for the reward of feeling good about it.

Why? It sounds like you're misunderstanding something, perhaps what "reward" means in a biblical context.

This passage teaches people not to do things for show which is what many of us do in order to gain esteem and puff up our egos, often with still further gains in mind. This leads to enslavement to our egos, the approval of others, to things, and generally our constant grasping and our desires. Such false charity is pointless; it only leads to spiritual death. Allow your good deeds to remain a secret between you and the omniscient God. Charity is not loss. True charity produces spiritual "reward" by starving the monstrous, tyrannical ego that enslaves us to death. I would go so far as to say that it is even better for the giver than the receiver. The ego is Man's idolatry, and we cannot serve two masters. Thus killing the ego frees us to worship God and to live. The ego blinds us. It is like sitting in a bus at night with the lights on. All you see in the windows is yourself. Shatter the mirror and you will be freed.

"He who gives charity to the poor without knowing to who, and the poor knows not from who was taken, this is a true Mitzva"

The 2nd ranked charity level. [pls excuse my poor translation]

And Islam has similar, one of people that will be given shade on the day of judgement.

“…A man who gives in charity and hides it, such that his left hand does not know what his right hand gives in charity; and a man who remembered Allah in private and so his eyes shed tears.” (Abu Hurairah & collected in Saheeh al-Bukhari (English trans.) vol.1, p.356, no.629 & Saheeh Muslim (English trans.) vol.2, p.493, no.2248)

Judaism has a similar approach - anonymous charity is the highest form of giving.

https://www.chabad.org/library/article_cdo/aid/256321/jewish...

That's because you are not a billionaire. The article makes it plain that he has talked to other fellow billionaires encouraging them to do the same.

I think it's a shame that all donations aren't anonymous.

The government should at least take away the tax deductibility of non anonymous donations.

Wouldn't the reduce the amount of donations greatly? Gotta think most people do it at least partly for recognition, otherwise there'd be nothing noteworthy about the article we're discussing.

I would get rid of all tax deductions period, but in the case of non anonymous donations, the chance of quid pro quo and inability to prove it is so high, that I just view it as a tax loophole for the rich.

If it lowers the amount people donate, then it proves my point...that people were intending to get something in return, hence not a donation.

Absolutely a good comment. Tax the rich, replace philanthropy with Democracy. Pathetic that PP is getting downvotes.

Get off the high horse. He didn't explain his original position at all, and frankly it's an ideal that seems very unrealistic. I agree that we should be taxing the ultra-rich a lot more, but "prohibiting donations that have names attached" is legislating morality as much as "don't buy liquor on Sundays".

I never wrote non anonymous donations should be prohibited.

So it's better that a hospital not get Beinhoff's hundred million dollars, since you don't like his need for legacy?

If society wants the hospital to exist and have funding, then society can decide to raise taxes to pay for it.

I don't care about Benioff's need for legacy. I care about reducing corruption, which non anonymous tax deductible donations enable.

I think your idea of controlling "corruption" is simplistic if your argument ends with "let government handle the money".

Unless there's actual corruption involved (like giving to a "charity" that actually fuels your personal expenses), how could a deductible gift be used a tax loophole?

I've heard the misconception that one could use a deduction to bump yourself into a lower tax rate on your entire income, and therefore come out ahead, but that's not how U.S. federal income tax rates work.

Donate to a selective school, and your descendants get higher probability of admission.

It's like the government is matching your donations, and in the case of certain charities, that means the government is effectively funding lobbyists for you.

"Loopholes" are often in the eye of the beholder.

https://www.irs.gov/charities-non-profits/lobbying

We could also just tax the income used to make the donations at similar levels to prior top brackets and not depend on philanthropy as a means to fund public institutions or social safety nets.

That puts the decision on where to put public good will and non-profitable money sinks solely into the machine of government bureaucracy, which I don't think would be very effective.

Currently we incentivize private individual donations, and that lets a lot of things happen quickly and without the requirement of soliciting the permission of a bottlenecked council for anything to happen.

Government is often significantly more effective at spending money for charitable works than private charities due to all the overhead involved in running charities. Further, as a private individual I dislike that my tax money is used to in part fund charities that I strongly disagree with.

If you want to use your money to support some private crusade that’s fine, but why must we support anything anyone thinks as a worthy cause? It’s in effect a blank check without meaningful oversight. Their are for example homeopathy charities whose donations are tax deductible.

Isn't budget a part of elections platform, and so democracy? Because certainly when it comes to giving money to people bureaucracy becomes a factor, but then rather than redistributing money, things that you could spend tax money on:

- Universal healthcare - Free education - Funding homeless assistance programs - Employment insurance - UBI

(granted these last 2 are pretty much just redistributing money)

The question is whether you want the few billionaires to decide where to spend the money, or everyone (that is, people who haven't been disenfranchised).

AND THEN arguably given the polarization of the US today, I can understand that anyone feels frisky in raising the taxes to found the other side's ideas (being republicans not wanting to fund healthcare or democrats not wanting to fund a wall)

Perhaps a slight twist on that would be to be if society as a whole considered paying taxes as if it were "pay it forward" philanthropy.

In fact if the government recognized honest taxpayers as if they were forward thinking "philanthropic donors" (replete with award dinners for the million dollar donors) - perhaps there'd be more excitement for April 15th - and such people would not be so quick to figure out ways to avoid paying taxes.

Fun thought video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mTAE5m3ZO2E

It would help if we could decide what our taxes got allocated to directly. Like 50‰ nasa 0% racist border wall. I hate paying my taxes because it's going to bullshit like that federally. Or locally, funding mismanaged pensions.

That'd be an interesting additional feature - a minimum 50% toward general funds and the remaining 50% to the government programs of your choice.

Making a very public show of philanthropy as a means of self-promotion or self-aggrandizement isn't awesome, though frankly if letting people feel good with a little recognition results in more donations then that seems well worth it.

But there are other reasons to make a public show of philanthropy: to encourage others to give, to be a part of giving campaigns, to draw attention to an issue you consider important, to tell a personal story for why something matters for you, and otherwise to direct that attention towards the cause rather than yourself.

Yeah, there's a misconception that it is more morally righteous to give quietly than to give and take credit and that's debatable. $100M is a $100M whether the person is anonymous or not and if not, it can lead to more of the same, even if the motivation is self-aggrandizement. I mean, take that out to a long conclusion and you get a society who's competing to give away the most instead of possess the most.

I think the reason people suggest anonymity as a morally positive or superior action is because this isn't in trade. You've given it away (as noted above) without having your name in etched letters on a building, without a desire for notoriety and not in trade of previous or in fact continuous poor deeds. Consider for example the controversy around Bezos' donations.

It is very similar in fact to tithing instead of the practice of having your name called out in service in front of everyone so you can later trade on that donation for social standing.

Names everywhere could just as easily mean a culture that celebrates wealth and the wealthy as superior to others, because after all, their names are everywhere. A happenstance donation by a rich person in this society may mean far more than a significant donation by someone less well off. This may create a culture where people see helping others as a suckers game unless you get something back, rather than a moral obligation.

On the other hand, a culture of anonymous donations (and less wealth signaling) could indicate a culture where everyone, no matter how rich or poor, is expected to do their part to help others.

It depends a lot on what people's takeaways are from these acts, which are shaped by cultural expectations and norms. One should consider the cultural externalities of donations in addition to purely the dollar amounts.

Even if you'd like to pretend there is none, it doesn't change the fact that giving for the sake of giving versus giving for the sake of recognition are different things.

Giving anonymously can be a way for the giver to prove to themselves what kind of person they are.

Ultimately there are too many causes in need of support for me to take a strong stance on this, but it’s worth pointing out that many a tycoon has utilized philanthropy to maintain a positive image when business dealings run counter to the prevailing social concerns.

> though frankly if letting people feel good with a little recognition results in more donations then that seems well worth it.

I disagree. This is an attempt to buy legacy and erase their past. It benefits only those who make the donations, and whatever causes happen to pique their particular interests. It also creates yet another organization of people dependent upon the good will and whim of a single supporter.

> to encourage others to give

I would presume the tax breaks are enough.

> and otherwise to direct that attention towards the cause rather than yourself.

Large portions of non-profit budgets are specifically spent on awareness and on generating future donations. There is no need to slap your last name on the side of a building for this purpose.

All of the downsides you mention are not that bad in my opinion.

I don't feel bad that people buy a legacy. I believe that a legacy of being a massive philanthropist is a legacy worth having.

I don't feel bad that they "erase their past", because all people can still be judged by the totality of their actions.

The recognition does benefit the people that make the donations. Doesn't seem to be a problem to me.

Charitable organizations are dependent upon the whim of their donors regardless of whether the donors get any recognition.

The fraction of non-profit budgets that are spent on awareness seems to be a tangential point that I do not understand.

But when people are publicly generous with other peoples' money, I assign negative virtue :-/

Nobody is talking about that here; this is about people being generous with their own.

The article mentions Buffet and Gates as being inspired by Feeney. They, in turn, further popularised the idea of giving away large sums of money.

I can't even say how a bit of fame for people giving large sums is harmful. And whatever people object to, I doubt it's anywhere close to the significance of the positive effects of giving.

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