MacKenzie Scott, ex-wife of Jeff Bezos, says she gave $4.2B to charity | Hacker News Reader

MacKenzie Scott, ex-wife of Jeff Bezos, says she gave $4.2B to charity

cbsnews.com

101 pointsneom185 comments

I feel like if I somehow ended up with billions and was struck by large-scale altruism, instead of just giving it away, I'd set up some kind of fund that would ensure it was around forever, would grow at the pace of inflation, and would use the excess to make the world a better place.

A billion dollars today ain't worth that far into the future. But spread out over decades or even gasp, centuries, it could do far more good in the long run.

One really interesting example is the Battelle Memorial Institute. A charitable trust that also happens to be one of the largest R&D organizations on the planet and does over $6 billion/year in revenue. But has strict governance principles over working on weapons, or things that might harm people.

1 - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Battelle_Memorial_Institute

Why not both? Save some so it can grow and you can continue to provide to charitable causes in the fire but also find some causes you believe in and organizations you trust, and let them do things they’re good at.

Her money is mostly in AMZN stock, as far as i am concerned, which will provide far larger returns than the inflation.

What you said will probably still work out.

This is kinda like dividends -- if the value of the dividend (or charitable donation) grows more slowly than the AMZN stock, then delaying the dividend/donation a year and giving the invested/grown amount later might mean greater impact. And then inductively...

Helping people today also has exponential returns in the long run. More than investment returns since economic growth is tied to people.

A 'rule of thumb' in education funding is that every dollar you put in nets you three on the backend. The issue being that the backend is 20-40 years from the initial investment.

Do you have a source for this rule of thumb? I'm curious!

Oh geeze! I'll try to find a paper on this, but it varies a lot in the US's K-12 at least, hence the 'rule of thumb'.

The source I have off the top of my head is family members that are in education consulting and therefore talks over dinners and whatnot, but that is not a 'source' in the HN sense.

No worries, it was a genuine question, not a “citation needed” ;).

She didn't suddenly end up with billions. She's been a billionaire for a long time. She's basically a cofounder of Amazon. She's just legally separate from Jeff now, so legally it's a separate fortune, but it was always hers.

> She's basically a cofounder of Amazon.

Being married to someone who founded a business does not make you a cofounder.

No, but she worked in the business just as much as he did at the beginning, and Jeff himself said Amazon wouldn't exist without her work.

Most successful startups wouldn't exist without the hard work of those who were not founders. To be honest I don't think Mackenzie herself would consider herself "basically a cofounder".

and I also find it disingenuous to elevate unpaid spousal contributions to unlimited asset and dollar figures and call that empowerment.

that is a slap in the face to every spouse with a much harder life and smaller platform.

the divorce settlement they came to was decent and good for them as individuals, clever to separate the voting rights from the assets. Other people adding more to that as a statement for society is what I find disingenuous.

Yes, this is what all university endowments are and do.

She gave away 6% of her estimated wealth, extrapolated from the public holdings of her Amazon stock. All wealth estimates pull from a snapshot of a public event and assumes that person never trades in anything at all.

With that aside, her estimated wealth jumped 67% this year, and she is donated 6% of the net amount.

One thing that I wish was considered more often when looking at effective philanthropy is the opportunity cost of the money in terms of amount donated over time.

For example, assume someone like Bill Gates or Jeff Bezos had donated all of their money (liquidating their shares however possible) the moment their companies went public. It's tough to say that this would have been a better result, since the amount donated would have been a small fraction in comparison to what could have been; their donations would have been a drop in the bucket.

Given certain people (and/or corporations) have historically allocated capital very effectively (and, for example, that the annual returns of AMZN/MSFT/others have been very good for decades and obviously far surpass inflation+charity efficiency scaling), is it not more effective altruism for those like Bezos and Scott to keep their wealth compounding as effectively as possible, and then donate it much later on, perhaps in a few decades?

I understand that the idea of this may sound unappealing for many reasons, but I rarely hear good counter-arguments for why it shouldn't be done. I apply this to myself personally, and rather than donate large amounts of my income now, I'd like to be able to donate 100x the amount (or whatever it may be) in 30-70 years.

(edit: After reading some great responses, I do think the best counter-argument is perhaps that of "sure you can compound wealth and donate later, or you can donate to something so effective that it compounds (e.g. enables more people to live and accomplish things, which could compound at a higher growth rate). I think this is the best point to mention in response to what I wrote, but I don't know of any analysis that backs it up with hard numbers - do we have charities that we can demonstrate actually cause compounding to happen this well? It's difficult since we'd need to accurately model future compounding returns from them to get the types of answers that we'd want.)

In the case of Jeff Bezos and Bill Gates they already did what you said. They ran their company for a few decades and kept most of their wealth tied to the company. Jeff Bezos isn't 31 years old anymore, he's 56. Bill Gates is 65.

This argument reduces to the richer you are the more you can donate to charity. It doesn't really matter if I'm a billionaire, everyone will have more money later in life if they let it compound. The main issue is that there are real problems that need to be solved today too, you can't put everything off into the future

> is it not more effective altruism for those like Bezos and Scott to keep their wealth compounding as effectively as possible, and then donate it much later on, perhaps in a few decades?

You can donate stock. Or, if desired, the charity can convert your cash back into stock. Or you can transfer the stock into a trust that the charity controls.

That's true, but a charity doesn't (usually) actually use the stock - they would sell it to spend it when they needed the money, and I think (perhaps I'm not correct here since I don't have data) they generally sell equities instantly post-donation, with the main purpose of donating stock instead of cash being for personal tax purposes.

Many charities keep their resources in investment structures. These are often called endowments.

> a charity doesn't (usually) actually use the stock - they would sell it to spend it when they needed the money

It sounds like that means that withholding the money in order to make it grow better wouldn't actually help them then because then they wouldn't be able to spend it when needed.

But then it's actually best to invest and lose all your money in the stock market, because then capital gets reallocated to the people who are best at allocating capital.

More seriously, you also need to take into account the compounding interest from e.g. malaria nets for people in Africa. Save some number of lives today, and you prevent human capital from being completely destroyed today, which also compounds in parallel with the capital allocated into AMZN etc.

Good point. Early stage support for an effective intervention could prevent the need for massive resources after the problem is more widespread.

Haha, yes. I was trying to think of a way to phrase "Jeff Bezos is probably better at compounding his personal wealth than most people".

I think what you've noted is perhaps the best counter-argument, but it's difficult to balance out and do the math. There is obviously some trade-off at which compounding is better than instantly donating, but it's quite possible that the compounding effects of certain classes of donations can be much stronger than what would reasonably be attained, so maybe that is where I'm wrong if I am.

I think this is the usual EA argument, but it's just that I don't know of any way for it to really be backed with the type of quantitative analysis I'd prefer to see to change my mind on it.

At least in Bezos' case: let's imagine his position after the Amazon IPO. It's absolutely true that his skills as a capital allocator are extremely socially valuable. But at the same time, him taking advantage of his newfound liquidity wouldn't prevent him from continuing in that role: he wasn't going to be dumped and replaced. He could have given away his money to high value charitable causes and still continued to run Amazon.

Other people would be getting rich in his stead, sure, but some amount of that wealth accruing to other people would also end up reaching charity. The only big risk would be if his lack of ownership in the company caused him to not be able to execute on his vision.

Going at the question from another direction: imagine you have two companies, each with the potential to provide equal economic and social value. However, the government promises to tax the profits of one at 0% and the other at 90%. Which one will be undercapitalized? I would argue this is analogous to at least some charitable situations: oftentimes it's impossible to capture the economic benefit of socially valuable investments, because of institutional, legal, or informational challenges. But the value from making that "investment" doesn't disappear: it simply dissipates into the amorphous category of positive externalities.

The longer the time period you wait, the worse the problems get. It's not a one way street of improving your donations now. Why assume that none of the people you help today would do anything as impactful as you in the future?

As long as governments do not take care of their citizens health and safety as in the USA today, delayed donations also delay any help to people suffering today.

Global problems are getting worse. Waiting to donate means that each dollar you donate later has less impact than today.

> is it not more effective altruism for people like Bezos and Scott to keep their wealth compounding as effectively as possible, and then donate it much later on, perhaps in a few decades?

The caveat to that is the Steve Jobs outcome - that that time isn't guaranteed to anyone. Jeff Bezos for example nearly died in a helicopter crash. Steve was fortunate he had Laurene to handle philanthropically disposing of the now $37b family fortune responsibly (presumably).

Also, you may just run out of time if you wait too long, even if you live a very long time. Buffett was aiming to discharge most of his wealth before his death and they thought they had a solid timeline for doing it. He won't come remotely close to that as the wealth piled up even faster than expected ($84b remaining and he's 90, after giving away near $40b so far in 14 years). The Gates Foundation can't give it away fast enough. The Gates family was initially aiming to get rid of their wealth in their lifetime, then they shifted that to within N decades after their death. They have to give away at least $250 billion yet (with Buffett's wealth taking priority, which has slowed their ability to discharge their own pile of wealth) - it may require another lifetime.

I would assume that they'd have wealth scheduled to be given away post-death, so that accidental/premature death wouldn't be too bad, yes. But that's an interesting point of how it can be difficult to give away fast enough, so perhaps you might as well start now, since e.g. if someone had to give away billions very quickly, it would probably not be allocated well compared to if they had a few decades to do it.

I don't think I will end up wealthy enough to worry about this myself of course, but it's another factor to take note of.

These billionaires often seed their charities with endowments that continue to grow over time, and the charities finance their operations with the interest.

If you're getting utilitarian, Gates would probably argue that a life saved now might be worth more than a few lives saved decades later, but that's another matter.

This is such an interesting point. Is the value of a future life worth less than a life closer to our present moment? I can’t help but feel like there’s some sort of logical fallacy there, akin to speciesism, wherein we value lives that are closer to our own perspective. It’s ultimately arbitrary which perspective we choose to privilege. I hope that train of thought makes sense!

> Is the value of a future life worth less than a life closer to our present moment? I can’t help but feel like there’s some sort of logical fallacy there, akin to speciesism

I think taking the perspective of "the present" is a bit misleading here. Putting $100 in my bank account today isn't more valuable than putting $100 in my bank account in 5 years because it's closer to the present, it's more valuable because it'll start collecting interest sooner, and then that interest generates more interest. Putting $100 in there a century ago would be better than either.

A live saved now can get to work on adding value to society, and that value could lead to saving more lives later. The sooner you start that process the better.

Ah, that does clarify that idea further. I had some inkling of it but couldn’t quite place it. Thanks!

I was in a conversation on Reddit recently where someone suggested Elon Musk could do so much good by donating his wealth. I said yes, he could do valuable things like invest in electric vehicles and solar power to reduce carbon emissions, and make long term investments in making human life multi planetary. The point is his wealth exists in the value of the things he is doing. It’s not a separate thing.

You’re making the same point, most wealth isn’t tied up in piles of money that are depreciating away due to inflation, they’re invested in jobs, goods and services that benefit all of us. That’s what our economy is.

All the other points about the long term good charities can do are also on point for sure, so it’s not either/or, both very much have their place.

> do we have charities that we can demonstrate actually cause compounding to happen this well? ... accurately model future compounding returns

No one is incentivized to create that kind of accounting scheme - that is, one that deposits future gains into today's bank accounts, somehow. Charities least of all, who only receive donations if they operate in the red, not the black.

Hacker News is people repeatedly discovering that economics and accounting are different things.

One really cool thing the founder of eBay did right before the company went public, he established a foundation and moved 10% of his personal stock holdings into the foundation. So as eBay stock grew, so did the foundation's endowment. They slowly sell off stock as they need to fund their initiatives.

Back in the 90s when Gates was kicking off the Gates Foundation while also running Microsoft he talked a lot about this calculus -- when to give how much, knowing that his Microsoft fortune was likely to grow faster than the market, but that you couldn't postpone this work forever. The answer he seems to have settled on was to ramp down his Microsoft involvement and ramp up his foundation contributions roughly together, spending the first part of his life as a billionaire mainly focused on becoming a hundred-billionaire, and the second part of it focused on distributing those gazillions.

It's interesting how differently Ms. Scott's philanthropy is treated than Bezos's. When Bezos donates the headlines and tweets are very negative whereas when Scott donates they are very positive. I don't see the difference. Isn't it the same pot of money these donations are coming from (Amazon)?

because she donated like 10-15% of her money. what percentage does jeff donate?

which is still effectively nothing for her, since even 1% of her money is enough to do whatever she wants for the rest of her life.

Honest question: besides charity, how can you possibly spend your wealth after it creeps past the billion or ten billion mark? Buy an archipelago?

>> Honest question: besides charity, how can you possibly spend your wealth after it creeps past the billion or ten billion mark? Buy an archipelago?

Buy influence, then use that influence to drive policy changes. Unfortunately it is not always used the way we want, some examples are the Koch brothers and Robert Mercer

Theoretically you can use this influence to drive better climate policy, better civil rights, better social justice

Robert Mercer is not a billionaire btw. Ironically Jim Simons (his ex partner) has donated a lot of money to the democratic party/causes. Does that balance it out?

Spend it on your politics like Soros or Koch. Accelerate technical progress like Musk. Pure vanity like that guy who spent $600m getting the Chicago GSB named after him. I’m sure if you tried you could come up with some ways you’d like the world to be different that you could spend a lot of money on. Personally I’d love to see well recognized, respected tests that test the same knowledge as a variety of university degrees. Setting up an organization to do that and giving prizes for the top results to build brand awareness for the first decade could easily burn a million dollars a year for a decade for one subject. Advertising is expensive, organizations are expensive, people are expensive, especially qualified, competent ones.

It's more like she donated 5-7.5% of Jeff's money.

They wed together before he started Amazon. She's not some vulture that came along after and made off with half his money.

Don't know why being downvoted, it's factually true.

But it’s not actually factually true - it’s her money according to the laws and contracts in place. If it were his money, he’d have it. He doesn’t, so it isn’t “factually” his money.

It’s only “his money” in a non-factual basis where we are implying something akin to “he earned it and she didn’t”.

It’s hard to believe he has achieved what he has without the support of his partner. That’s kinda the point of splitting assets upon divorce, because the law recognizes that partnership as (ideally) having been a shared effort to the benefit of both individuals.

It's my understanding she donates a lot more than Bezos does. Consider the fact she has agreed to the giving pledge, giving away half of her wealth to charity similar to Buffett, Gates, etc. Whereas Bezos has not agreed, and I'm not aware of any time when he has donated billions. That may be the difference but I'm not sure as I haven't really seen any Bezos donation headlines that were negative, or any that I could remember at all for that matter .

Bezos wants to build spaceships. His money will go to that.

Aside from human narcissism, the space race is motivated by it's militarily strategic importance.

Outside of a black swan event, humanity is not ever getting off this rock in any colonial capacity.

Space, it turns out, is a really shitty fucking place for life.

Elon's Mars fantasy is a red herring.

According to the press, Jeff's giving has historically been underwhelming:

https://www.businessinsider.com/jeff-bezos-amazon-how-much-d...

Do you have any examples to the contrary?

$10 billion climate change fund commitment.

https://www.washingtonpost.com/climate-environment/2020/11/1...

That story only documents a $791M gift. The $10B is a fund he's dedicated but still owns. Obviously it's still almost a billion dollars, but well short of his ex's mark.

Yeah it's certainly less. I would imagine Jeff is still working over full time at Amazon. Come back to this thread in 20 years. I bet Bezos will be the next Gates. Similar public perception (cut throat titan) and funds.

I do wish we’d spend more time on spending from these funds and not the oft-hollow initial commitments.

https://www.nytimes.com/2018/08/03/business/donor-advised-fu...

Jeff has given very little ever. For instance he donated $690k to wildfire relief in Australia earlier this year. Every little bit counts clearly, but it's the equivalent of me giving 69 cents. I'm not bagging the guy for it, I'm just saying that there's clearly a difference, and that's why it's treated differently.

Does it matter how much that money is worth to him? Charity doesn't have to hurt to be effective.

With that single donation he's done more good for Australia than I (also, I assume, you) will be able to with years of effort, surely that's worth celebrating.

I or you don't get to have $100 million mansions in every big city in the US either. His team probably spent more on the PR than the actual donation, just to make sure that the protestors placing mini guillotines in front of his house don't escalate further forcing him to increase his security budget.

No, I think I was quite clear on that. I'm not going to give you platitudes for donating 69 cents, and I wouldn't expect you to give them to me either is the point. The reason that Mackenzie Scott is receiving them here is that she didn't donate 69 cents, she donated a substantial amount.

If you want negative opinion, then I am your man. The net value cost of these donations by these philanthropist billionaires should be considered. That is harder to calculate but basically what detrimental impact did generating this wealth cause? Does the donation really offset the damage done? For example, the very pro-business Australian government has been blamed for "shrinking government" by severely cutting back on bush management and firefighters leading to the fires getting out of control. These are the people welcoming the Bezos of the world with open arms. It's money from an ethically questionable source helping solve a problem caused by another group of people making ethically questionable decisions.

Also billionaires combined donate a pittance compared to public institutions likes NIH or NSF, National Endowments and other grant giving orgs funded by the public. Really we should just tax them more and funnel the money to public grants, and also properly enforce antitrust, labor laws and environmental regulations to limit societal damage wealth extraction causes, instead of hoping and praying billionaires will sprinkle a little moolah where it matters every blue moon.

As you suggest, the exact calculus is difficult, but you also can't ignore the positive effect that many (not all) billionaires have in the process of generating their wealth. Amazon, for example, saves consumers' time, and makes it easier to compare goods and prices, saving consumers' money. Bezos became a billionaire because he provided billions of dollars in value to regular people.

That does not absolve Bezos or other billionaires of their sins. But likewise, you cannot exclude it from your calculus.

Positive and negative would be considered in the calculation. Saving time may not be as big an issue if some didn't need to work two jobs or long hours. Saving money may not be as big of an issue if wealth inequality wasn't at record highs and health insurance was universal. The pandemic has highlighted that humans are a commodity and expendable workers are not valued very much, but at least we get those cost savings on ethically-questionable products from overseas, that supports ethically-questionable regimes and increases the net worth of an ethically-questionable billionaire. It's ethically questionable all the way down.

> For instance he donated $690k to wildfire relief in Australia earlier this year. Every little bit counts clearly, but it's the equivalent of me giving 69 cents.

Nope: It's the equivalent of you giving $690K. The value of money doesn't go down based on the wealth of the one holding it.

It does. You think $100 isn't worth more to someone who's homeless than to Jeff Bezos? You're living in dream land.

It doesn't. When a charity receives $100, it has the same value to the charity than whether it came from someone who has $100 or $100 billion

that's not what you said at all, but okay.

It's funny seeing the perspective of charity being shown in various comments in this thread. Apparently it's a competition to see how much 'sacrifice' you're making. Apparently it doesn't count if the giver also gets some benefit (PR?) from it. Never mind the the supposed goal, which is to help others.

Her generosity notwithstanding, she probably hired a great PR agency.

Seems rather condescending doesn't it?

You don't need a PR agency to sugar coat four billion dollars... It's actually pretty generous and requires some level of good faith assumption on our part.

The Women-are-wonderful effect probably plays a role.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Women-are-wonderful_effect

These reports come out because of PRs she's releasing to polish her image. The more virtuous donors stay anonymous.

I recently read the book "The Live You Can Save" by the philosopher Peter Singer. He said that yes, it is considered tacky and self serving to let the world know you did something charitable. That leaves us all in the position of not knowing what is normal, or perhaps that giving $1000/year is good enough. But if you learn that many of your coworkers give $20000/year, it will likely cause you to reevaluate if your $1000/year is really generous enough.

So, to turn it around on you, if your choice is to let friends know that you've donated $X to some charity which may cause them to also be more charitable, or to keep it private because you are afraid of looking tacky, you have made the choice that your self-image is more important than the extra money it may cause friends to donate to the needy.

BTW, it is a great book -- the most important book I've read in at least 10 years. One important point is his philosophy: all suffering is important, not just the people you know or who are local to you. Raising $30,000 for a fancy truck for a disabled person is unquestionably a kind act, but that same amount of money could save 20 lives in a developing country, or prevent river blindness in more than 100 children.

While there is the usual backlash about billionaires doing charity work (blah blah why are there billionaires in the first place), I'd be more interested if there was a way to reconcile the impact they have with these gifts and the process by which they choose where and how to donate and see if some improvement can be made to the way the US handles social services.

The PPP loans seem to be given out to a number of seemingly undeserving recipients [1] and I wonder if an improvement in methodology could help avoid that.

[1]https://www.houstonchronicle.com/news/houston-texas/religion...

I wonder if the Bezos-Scott divorce will be a warning sign for entrepreneurs.

In what could have been a 50/50 split, Bezos walked away with 100% of their Washington Post and Blue Origin interests and 75% of their Amazon shares and 100% of their Amazon voting rights. https://www.nbcnews.com/news/us-news/jeff-bezos-finalizes-di...

What was by far the most expensive divorce in history was actually heavily weighted in Bezos' favor as far as divorces go.

Partners that sacrifice their education or careers to raise children or manage a household should definitely be compensated in a divorce such that they can land on their feet and are set up for success post-partnership, but for entrepreneurs, a 50/50 splits puts even founders with majority voting rights in danger of losing their companies.

It's easy to justify Bezos' wealth after transforming eCommerce, shipping, cloud computing and more. It's harder to justify Scott's $38B ($1.5B per year of marriage) when comparing her to other partners or mothers. I could see taking a partner's past (or projected) earning potential and compensating that amount. Let's say Scott gave up what reasonably could have been a $500k / year job, that would be $12.5M + 25 years compound interest in the divorce. The value she gave up for the sake of the partnership has been restored and the value Bezos created has been preserved. If there's a divorce between two partners who are also business partners, then 50/50 makes a lot more sense.

Jeff himself has said Amazon would not exist without Mackenzie... so I think not only is he perfectly happy with the outcome of the divorce, I think everyone was able to walk away, if not happy, at least satisfied.

However, you are of course speaking in broad terms, and I also happen to think you're correct. I know this was a concern for Elon Musk at one point. How much of a concern, I don't know, but I definitely remember reading about it.

This is really sticky sort of problem, wherein it seems good solutions are few and far between.

Is it? It only becomes a problem retroactively. It's like two athletes, one out plays the value of his contract and the other underplays.

Do you think both deals should be reworked after theyve been inked based on outcome?

>>Jeff himself has said Amazon would not exist without Mackenzie...

Men say a lot of things to their wives that can't be literally true. You have to say these things to ensure they don't feel useless in what is the most successful business of the century.

When you are in a relationship, especially if you are the CEO of Amazon, you don't exactly speak in clojure.core.logic you use a lot of poetic metaphors to ensure your spouse feels important and relevant to your world shattering cause.

Smarter people like Trump make their spouse sign a book thick nuptial agreements. Im sure the women themselves don't really care, getting married to a billionaire is something nearly all women in the world don't get an opportunity to do.

There are also couples like the Clintons who understand how it all works, and are pragmatic enough to move on.

Well Jeff said that to interviewers. So take that for what its worth.

Smarter people like Trump...

You realize bezos and Scott got married before there were any significant assets that would necessitate a nuptial agreement right? Whereas trump was born absurdly wealthy

> In what could have been a 50/50 split, Bezos walked away with 100%

Maybe Scott didn't care. She has a net worth in the 10s of billions (and deserves every cent). Would a few 10s of billions make any difference to her life? It probably would have made a difference to Bezos because he runs the Amazon machine and it would have diminished his power.

The voting rights make sense, her wealth is also tied to investor confidence. She would only lose money by spooking investors, and maybe she does not care about power. I am sure if she wanted full voting rights a judge would have agreed it was fair.

> will be a warning sign for entrepreneurs.

This is the historical equivalent of an empire being divided up. It sets no precedent for anyone.

> She has a net worth in the 10s of billions (and deserves every cent).

I guess I tend to assume that the partner of overseas military raising kids alone for long periods of time, or the partner working night shifts to save for their child's college education, or the partner that is always parenting because they can't afford a nanny, or the partner that makes Christmas special on a shoestring budget, etc. would be as equally if not more deserving, yet they don't even get 1/100,000th of this settlement.

The sole determination of a partners worth in a divorce settlement is their partners income, regardless of their sacrifices or contributions. I'd rather see something merit based or earning potential based, even though I realize it's impossible to do that fairly or accurately.

But to suggest Scott deserves every penny I think wreaks of unfairness to amazing partners that were left high and dry in a divorce for the sole reason that their partners didn't become millionaires or billionaires. We can't give every amazing partner $38B, but we could try to make it more equitable for all partners with similar backgrounds and earning potential.

> But to suggest Scott deserves every penny I think wreaks of unfairness to amazing partners

Wait, what? Me suggesting a woman deserves a significant portion of the company she helped found somehow diminishes another person?

She didn't win this in the lottery nor was she given a gift or inheritance, this was simply how assets were divided up.

How much do you think she should have gotten and how much should Bezos have been left with?

It has nothing to do with gender and everything to do with earning potential.

Did Scott co-found Amazon? I was unaware of that. I agree that when partners are also business partners and share equally in generating value, it makes sense to split the value generated 50/50.

Why do you assume Scott gave up a 500k/year job? For all we know she left an opportunity worth much more.

Also Bezos/Amazon’s success wasn’t guaranteed. Using the benefit of hindsight to evaluate how to split assets now is not reflective of how decisions were made 20 years ago.

I didn't assume her earning potential to be exactly $500k/year, it was just an example. Let's say it was $10M/year, that would still only be $250M.

But I doubt anyone could claim to have sacrificed a $1.5B/year opportunity or that they were 100,000x better of a parent / partner than someone that walks away from a divorce with $15k/year of marriage.

I don't think it's unreasonable to put some type of cap on a divorce settlement based on projected earning power.

This is an awful take. You dont know anything about the dynamic of their relationship or even how Scotts direct actions affected Bezos decisions or ability to function. What if Scott was the reason he felt he could take a bigger swing or if with her by his side he was able to maintain a family and his business goals.

I know your intention isnt sexist but even the idea that the role of partner should be arbitrated on a case by by case basis leaves the person who volunteered not to pursue further education in financial and business matters with the burden of having to explicitly articulate their financial contributions.

A relationship is an open eyed partnership and this idea that the opportunity cost on the person who stays home is just earnings is toxic to entrepreneurs who want to chase their dreams and build a stable family

> I wonder if the Bezos-Scott divorce will be a warning sign for entrepreneurs.

The answer to that is: no. Absolutely nothing of consequence has changed about marital considerations for entrepreneurs in the past several decades. That is regardless of the big Bezos divorce (ie that didn't change anything, there was nothing interesting or new about it; it's merely an agreement that Jeff and his wife came to as a split).

Fortunately for me, I've never really been able to see the value in long term permanent relationships. Granted, I'm borderline autistic, which doesn't help, but I'm also very selfish with my time and like to have options open. The one thing I dread the most is chaining myself to another person.

Some people like this, I dread it. I've had a number of them, never to the point of getting married. But as likely it is I'll never accomplish Bezos wealth, I'm just as likely to not deal with a 50/50 divorce of all my assets to some woman.

This year I actually gave away all of my money and now my bank account has only ~$3k (after 8 years of earning software engineering salary). I didn't donate my money to non profits and instead I just gave out money to people I know who are not as fortunate as me. For example, someone I know got into a car accident last week and now couldn't drive to go to job interviews so I gave him 5k to help him out.

I have a few people that I'm giving 2.5k / month to help them take care of their families and so they don't have to spend every waking hour door-dashing for people like me.

I don't understand how society became so unfair and cruel and I didn't see the point in having savings when so many people around me have so little savings and no job.

Hearing MacKenzie giving away 4B of her 60B is not really impressive because you can live pretty nice with even 1B. To put it in perspective, If I made 300k (my yearly salary) / month for my entire life, I still won't have 1B.

Wow! You are a good human.

> Hearing MacKenzie giving away 4B of her 60B is not really impressive because you can live pretty nice with even 1B.

I doubt the goal is to impress you. While your sacrifice is admirable, at the end of the day, she's helping more people than you are.

What is he sacrificing? He makes a huge difference for a number of people.

> [...] she's helping more people than you are.

It's not a contest though, is it? I'm sure we can all help one another in some way, and it's disheartening to see comments such as yours discrediting (passively as it may be) the help some people give, as if their help is less worthy than others.

It's because the GP is discrediting MacKenzie Bezos that he or she is being discredited in response. If GP is going to find fault with someone donating $4 billion and ask "why not more," the question rightly comes back to "well what have you accomplished compared to her?"

The issue is GP has made sacrifice but MacKenzie doesn't have to scarify as much as GP. GP am not saying MacKenzie have to make sacrifice but he is just pointing the fact we live in society where richest people hoards money instead of using it for betterment society. And most of the donations are just plain PR strategy or some tax escape strategy.

You may argue they earned hard for that money but some people are just lucky and don't have to struggle and are so greedy they don't care about anyone else.

The Commentary is quite interesting here: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lesson_of_the_widow%27s_mite

The OP literally chose to make it a contest, complaining MacKenzie wasn’t doing as much as him percentage wise.

The used metric was "impressiveness", not raw percentages.

The OP argued, that assuming she had donated 59B out of the total of 60B, while this would (probably) be a higher percentage than the OP, it still would not be "impressive". She would retain 1B, which, I hope we can all agree, is more than enough to live a wealthy life, and certainly more than the 3k left on the account of OP.

Yeah this is what I meant, thanks for helping explaining it so well.

> and it's disheartening to see comments such as yours discrediting (passively as it may be) the help some people give

How is stating that his sacrifice is admirable a way to discredit the help he/she is giving?

> she's helping more people than you are

While sacrificing absolutely nothing. She could give so much more and still sacrifice nothing.

> While sacrificing absolutely nothing.

While some people may give charity as an act of sacrifice, others are aimed at helping people. The two are not mutually exclusive, but the former is not a defining aspect of charity.

"A bone to the dog is not charity. ... Charity is the bone shared with the dog, when you are just as hungry as the dog." -- Jack London

Jack London was not an authority on the matter.

Spoken like someone who hasn't read much Jack London and knows nothing of his life.

Assuming that someone who has read much Jack London and knows about his life would come to the same conclusions as you regarding his expertise on the matter is an easy trap to fall into.

Two philosophers were crossing a bridge over a koi pond. One pointed to two fish swimming in the pond and remarked: "Boy, those are some happy fish." The other replied: "You, not being a fish, don't know whether they are happy or not." The first said: "You, not being me, don't know whether I know they are happy or not."

In case it’s not obvious and extending a generous interpretation to your comment - i did not imply she is giving as sacrifice.

I implied that the limits of her giving are not informed by any kind of sacrifice.

In contrast to me, you, and 99.9% of people giving to charity and having a limit based on sacrifice.

>, she's helping more people than you are.

I think the fairer point is to generalise both her and OP's behaviour. If everyone at a professional salary level was giving as generously as OP we could go a lot farther than even every single multi-billionaire throwing in a few billion.

Truth is, the entire net worth of all American billionaires together pays for about one year of national healthcare give or take. We could fleece them all and it wouldn't get us that far in the long term.

I disagree she's helping more people. That money came from Amazon, from the value of other people's work. Those people deserve the full value of their work and not for Bezos to siphon off the vast majority of it. Bezos employees and therefore harms over a million people every day. Giving back some of this doesn't undo that harm.

1 incredible developer could potentially be as good as 100 in the extreme case. But 1 software developer will never be as good as 1000 developers, which is why organizations operating effectively at scale dominate in success.

Similarly I believe giving money to random people is primarily making you yourself feel good. This is fine, but it isn’t very effective except to make yourself feel altruistic.

I prefer to give to organizations that are focused and organized. One of my personal favorites is Liberty in North Korea https://www.libertyinnorthkorea.org

I firmly believe an organization dedicated to helping slaves in a communistic dictatorship escape is better than me giving $500 to my friend. But this should be an analysis you make for yourself in regards to your philanthropic giving.

"Similarly I believe giving money to random people is primarily making you yourself feel good" -> I don't think this is true.

Parting ways with my money was an incredibly painful experience internally. It went against every value I grew up with.

I'm also scared to get to close with the people I give money to. I'm too afraid to become too emotionally involved in their problems to be able to reap any rewards of feeling good.

I haven't "bragged" about it to anyone either, the only people that knows are are the recipients, readers here, and my wife.

I do what I do because I think life is unfair and I don't feel I deserve the money I have.

>> I prefer to give to organizations that are focused and organized

I have a hard time donating to an organization when I personally know someone who could use a bit of extra money. Hard to look at them in the eye kinda thing.

https://medium.com/@dincerhazar/a-rich-man-who-gave-everythi...

"I don't understand how society became so unfair and cruel"

Society is MUCH nicer than it was a thousand, or even a hundred years ago. Much, much nicer. And people are on average much better off.

This is the issue with everyone guessing and not reading history.

Do you mind explaining why you do this?

Genuinely curious.

My POV: Time is money. I'd rather spend my time playing video games instead of wage-slaving. I pay enough taxes.

Little thing called empathy.

Some people are literally incapable of feeling happy no matter what they're doing when they see so many people and friends in utterly fucked situations in life, especially when it's purely because of finances.

If you make quite a bit of money, and have never even remotely felt this way, you may actually be a clinical psychopath (not that this is in any way a bad thing. Really... can't be helped with our current state of medicine, even if the person would want it)

I have a good bit of personal anecdata that psychopaths that are financially better off do seem to enjoy youth-middle age a good bit, but crossing over into older age leads them towards some rather harsh methods of suicide fairly quickly.

Also, on a slightly different note - if all your wants in life are to be able to spend your time playing video games... well, many, many things can be said about this and related to why this person feels the need to financially help others. May want to consider some self reflection... or not. In the end, the world really owes you nothing, nor do you it. Enjoy your time here in whatever way you find yourself able to.

Giving money to your low income parents so they can retire early I can understand. I do that.

But that's not what that guy is doing. He gave away everything (except $3k with a $300k income)!

That's like a month's rent in the Bay Area, I'm kind of worried to be honest.

Giving money to other human beings that are emotionally meaningful to you so they don't have to live what's perceived to be a shitty life by the giver or even be turned to commit suicide because of their financial situation (if you don't think this happens regularly congratulations you're ignorant) I can understand :)

Like I said. Enjoy your life of video games - but realize that's not what makes quite a large amount of the population tick.

I would be more comfortable believing most of the world would rather be playing video games than working 8 hours a day for someone else (other than for their immediate family of course).

But I may be too naive!

I feel like when they say 'all my money' they probably have other assets. Plus at $300k a year, it's only two weeks until another $11k paycheck, right?

Unless they are unable to work for a few months due to health issues/accident. Unless they're fired. Etc.

There's empathy and there's giving away so much you're a step away from making your own life a disaster by giving away everything. I mean, given possible life situations, OP is on average likely to help more people by skipping one or two months of giving and building some buffer to make sure they're able to keep helping in the future. Giving away almost everything goes past plain empathy and is an interesting choice.

"making your own life a disaster" is purely a view of your own opinion. Stop thinking you know what makes another human being tick.

Not really, if someone is reliably earning $300K then they can borrow if they have an emergency expense, take money out of their home, etc.

The replies to your comment is correct. If you are making 300k+ a year, you can borrow money easily for rainy day. I also have many close friends and I have a developed a habit of reaching out for help early when I feel mentally unhealthy. So I think "a step away from making your own life a disaster" is not likely.

"OP is on average likely to help more people" -> A few years ago, I've come to conclude that the goal of achieving "more" is a toxic goal and I've come to accept the mindset of doing just enough. Helping only 1 person is good enough for me, I don't have a desire for helping a statistically significant number of people.

That was supposed to be "help people more" rather than "help more people", sorry. What I had in mind is that if anyone you're helping comes to rely on your continuous support and you're suddenly unable to work for a year due to health issues, you'll have a problem anyway. Unless you have a home with no mortgage and other people can step in to both support you long term and the people you've been helping.

I'm thinking less of "achieving more giving" and more of "what's the plan when you're current support system fails long term".

> "help people more"

Thanks, I agree :)

> If anyone you're helping comes to rely on your continuous support

From my experience, everyone I've helped is trying to get out of the situation so they are not depending on me for 2.5k / month. Compared to a real job, my help is unsustainable in the long run and depends on my job / health / lifestyle. They know that, I think its common sense. Also, 2.5k is not alot of money to rely on for their families.

> and you're suddenly unable to work for a year due to health issues, you'll have a problem anyway.

I have a great network of friends / family. Alot of friends I grew up with, I helped them get jobs in early 2000 and they are all millionaires. My family is not poor either so I think I have a cloud to fall back on (thankfully).

> I'm thinking less of "achieving more giving" and more of "what's the plan when you're current support system fails long term".

Despite a strong support group (family and friends), I'm always prepared for the worst case scenario. I've worked with a homeless person before, someone whom I really respected. I don't mind living homelessly. As long as I am a good person at heart and have good intentions, it doesn't matter what financial situation I live in.

The guy was genuinely curious and you go ahead and respond like this. Step back for a bit. What did your comment actually accomplish?

I would suggest, instead of spending your money on superficial acts, invest that money into your own company to HIRE people who are less well off and train them with your skills. You would do much better for society.

So he is giving out his money and your reaction is "not enough, put time & effort into it as well"

"Give a man a fish..."

What if they don't have time nor skill to teach people fishing and just happen to have fish? Perhaps they must drop other things in their life to turn this into some grandiose altruistic social enterprise? Because I guess they own these people something?

Heard this so many times before, please embark this endeavor yourself. I don't really have that time / bandwidth / interest.

Consider checking out Earning to Give: https://www.jefftk.com/giving

u/jefftk's one of the most prolific givers on HN I know: https://www.jefftk.com/news/giving

And also a strong proponent of effective giving. The charities he gives to (generally malaria-focused ones) can save a healthy human life for less than $5,000 on average. https://www.givewell.org/charities/top-charities

> Hearing MacKenzie giving away 4B of her 60B is not really impressive because you can live pretty nice with even 1B.

> If I made 300k (my yearly salary) / month for my entire life, I still won't have 1B.

It would take more than a millennium of making 300k a month to match what she gave in 4 months.

I cannot begin to comprehend how one could donate this much money in such a short time, it would require a lot of planning and execution. I think it's impressive from that standpoint.

I assume it’s quite easy to donate that amount, much harder to do so in a way that is effective for your goals.

This. Really impressive.

I am wondering more specifically what life experiences caused them to do this -- I assume they were not always like this and more likely an event triggered this less than sane behavior.

The fact that you give money to people you know rather than to nonprofits suggests that your motives are not as purely altruistic as you'd like them to be. A good nonprofit is massively more effective per dollar, able to literally save multiple lives for the 5K you gave to your acquaintance.

Now, if you just think about your donations as a way of making you feel good, the same way other people would spend their entire savings on cocaine, then you do you. But don't get so high and mighty on it that you denigrate the vastly more important work that MacKenzie Bezos is doing.

> The fact that you give money to people you know rather than to nonprofits suggests that your motives are not as purely altruistic as you'd like them to be.

It doesn't really have to be altruistic. There's certainly nothing in what he said that suggests he is doing it simply due to altruism, either. He has more than he needs and injects the excess into things he cares about (specifically, people he knows)

> A good nonprofit is massively more effective per dollar, able to literally save multiple lives for the 5K you gave to your acquaintance.

The goal wasn't to save lives, but to give someone they know money to help them find reliable transportation to get to job interviews. I'd reckon a nonprofit would not be able to ever perform the same service for that person, so you're kind of off base when you say they're massively more effective per dollar - they aren't helping people like his acquaintance.

> But don't get so high and mighty on it that you denigrate the vastly more important work that MacKenzie Bezos is doing.

In what way is her work vastly more important than what he is doing? Him saying he didn't find the donations impressive in comparison to her wealth doesn't say anything about her not doing good.

> The fact that you give money to people you know rather than to nonprofits suggests that your motives are not as purely altruistic as you'd like them to be.

I think this is passing alot of misguided judgements. I'm not thinking to myself, "I want to be altruistic today" and donate, no. I see someone who is struggling with life because of monetary and I give them help (even though I don't get to write off these donations on my taxes).

> A good nonprofit is massively more effective per dollar, able to literally save multiple lives for the 5K you gave to your acquaintance.

I don't interact with people whom nonprofits are specifically targeting and I don't have bandwidth to reach out. How do I have time for that to save lives for X amount when people around me are struggling? Just turn a blind eye and donate to save "X lives" that I've never made and feel good about my actions? How is this altruistic behavior?

Your giving is going to crack the brain of a decent amount of the HN userbase. Don't let their snide comments get to you. You're doing something that is highly likely to be a very morally correct thing to do with regards to prosperity of those in your life and the nation in which they reside.

I personally revere your choice.

I think many of the snide comments are in response to this:

"Hearing MacKenzie giving away 4B of her 60B is not really impressive because you can live pretty nice with even 1B."

His story was fine as it is. Why did he feel the need to compare himself against MacKenzie?

The other comments seemed more like curiosity than anything else.

> Why did he feel the need to compare himself against MacKenzie?

I thought about this and in hindsight I think I was unhappy because it seemed to me that billionaires get glorified alot by the media.

This behaviour by the media seems to result in (approximately) good incentives for billionares.

I'm sure many billionares are only doing it for the PR - but if they want to give away $4B for good PR then isn't that a still a benefit to society?

> I'm sure many billionares are only doing it for the PR - but if they want to give away $4B for good PR then isn't that a still a benefit to society?

I'm not sure. Growing up, I'm only occupied by achieving "success" and it was the only thing that mattered. "I'll help people when I'm a billionaire" is what I used to tell myself for years. I distinctly remember a few people who could have really used a friend, but I didn't have time for them.

I could've been a better person growing up and I blame part of my "assholeness" on the glorification of billionaires.

Are you for real? 2 months ago you posted "I can't quit my job to take a break because my wife and kids depend on my salary for money". Now you state you gave your life savings away?

"my wife and kids depend on my salary for money" -> This part I lied, sorry. I have no kids and my wife works too.

Does your wife know you have done this and support you? This seems like unstable, possibly manic behaviour to me. I don't know what to make of you between this and lying about having kids as well.

Sounds like a man about to get divorced who really resents his soon to be ex wife and didn't want her to get a single penny from his lifetime of hard work.

I lie about details online constantly. It helps me stay more anonymous in case anyone had a beef with me and tried to track me down.

> Sounds like a man about to get divorced who really resents his soon to be ex wife and didn't want her to get a single penny from his lifetime of hard work.

Sounds like you are projecting your deepest fears. I'm lucky, my wife is capable. For now at least, we don't have the issue that you are forecasting.

When it comes to giving away a significant portion of your wealth, gotta make sure you talk about it as the idea is forming, WAY before action is taken.

That was in a different comment with a different context from a different perspective.

Yes yes everybody knows and accepts it. I'm supported by loving people in my life, and that enables me to feel secure enough to not have savings.

He has wife and kids?!

I mean, if I was his kid, I'd appreciate it if there was enough there for me to not have to take out loans for college.

edit: ok apparently he doesn't

I remember talking with folks about gambling and they said you should gamble a certain percentage of your funds, but it wasn't like 80% it was more like 5%. This let you stay in the game longer.

But yeah, this is a black swan kind of time and good people are needing help more than normal. And good people are the kind of folks who don't stomp right over and ask for help.

"And good people are the kind of folks who don't stomp right over and ask for help" -> sad, but true.

>Hearing MacKenzie giving away 4B of her 60B is not really impressive because you can live pretty nice with even 1B. To put it in perspective, If I made 300k (my yearly salary) / month for my entire life, I still won't have 1B.

What you're doing is impressive and commendable, no doubt. But imagine if you didn't have any of those friends to give money to - how fo you then know how to allocate your money? Or let's scale up your salary so that you're now a millionaire. How do you divvy up that money in a useful way to your friends that are in need? There comes a certain point where your friends are no longer usefully absorbing money efficiently.

2.5k a month definitely helps out a couple with kids. Now if you increased the amount to 100k a month, would you say they're efficiently spending every penny, or would a portion of that be better spent given to other families? TBH, I think spending 4B in a year is already pretty good considering it takes a lot of time to figure out how to donate in an efficient matter, outside of straight up giving cash to everyone. Otherwise I could easily see these charitable donations getting soaked up by select brand name orgs that just sit on most of the money as a warchest.

> But imagine if you didn't have any of those friends to give money to - how fo you then know how to allocate your money?

Not sure tbh.

> Or let's scale up your salary so that you're now a millionaire.

I really don't see this happening, I plan to give out exactly what I make for the rest of my life.

> ... Now if you increased the amount to 100k a month, would you say they're efficiently spending every penny, or would a portion of that be better spent given to other families?

Judging from my other engineering peers, I would say 0% of my peers are "efficiently spending every penny". Or 100%, depending on how much you value mental health. One could argue that buying a Peloton is great for mental health. :shrug:

Why did bezos leave this woman again?

I believe it was a mutual separation.

She left him due to cheating.

I personally stopped donating to charities ever since I discovered that 70%+ of the money goes to executives and the rest is just wasted on useless stuff rather than furthering the mission. I would be impressed if over $500M of that money would be used properly.

You should find more effective charities. In the US at least they all have to file fairly detailed forms (Form 990) with the IRS that include the compensation of their executives as well as the major ways the charity spends its money. That can help you steer well clear of the 70%+ overhead charities.

That's not the case for all charities... you want to check out Charity Navigator and find charities that spend a proportion of their funds on programs that you deem worthwhile.

This is why I've donated to the American Red Cross (89.8% of donations go to their programs, meaning every $10 you give, $8.98 of it goes to charity), and RAINN - Rape, Abuse & Incest National Network, who use 91.2% of donations on programs.

The American Red Cross doesn't have a great history either [1][2]

[1] https://www.propublica.org/article/how-the-red-cross-raised-...

[2] https://www.npr.org/2015/06/03/411524156/in-search-of-the-re...

I only recently discovered that The American Red Cross is different to The International Red Cross.

This TED talk on the subject of how we value charities is worth watching:

https://www.ted.com/talks/dan_pallotta_the_way_we_think_abou...

While I don't necessarily agree with everything he says, I think the primary point that we should value charities by their overall community impact, not just by their ratio of program expenditures to overhead, is absolutely correct.

Charity Navigator gives Mozilla 4 stars. Does not seem very reliable.

I would also not give money to RAINN until they remove incest from their name.

> I would also not give money to RAINN until they remove incest from their name.

Okay, you lost me. Explain.

> Charity Navigator gives Mozilla 4 stars. Does not seem very reliable.

You're aware that they're measuring financial performance and objective criteria... not your personal feelings about what that charity does, right?

> Okay, you lost me. Explain.

Consenting adults should be able to do whatever sexual thing they want. Incest-shaming is not a desirable property of our society.

> You're aware that they're measuring financial performance and objective criteria... not your personal feelings about what that charity does, right?

Mozilla's mismanagement of funds and overpayment of executive staff is objective. I also don't appreciate your tone.

> Consenting adults should be able to do whatever sexual thing they want. Incest-shaming is not a desirable property of our society.

Its laughable that you think they're crusading against consensual incest and that they don't mean sexual abuse of minors by their parents. Then again, given the rest of the comments in this chain, I'm not surprised.

> Mozilla's mismanagement of funds and overpayment of executive staff is objective.

Compensation is always subjective. What one organization feels is supremely generous compensation is viewed by another as hiring that executive at an absolute steal.

> I also don't appreciate your tone.

Let me guess, you're used to people who defer to your opinion.

I am sorry but I am not willing to deal with this toxicity. Have a nice day.

Besides the advice in the other replies about choosing good charities, it’s also useful to separate giving to charities (organizations that have non-trivial resources and focus dedicated to handling and seeking donations and often figuring out which other orgs to send that money to) vs. direct charitable giving to colleges, food banks, clinics, universities and other non-profits with a local scope (which many of those receiving donations here appear to be).

Certainly not a guarantee it’ll be used effectively, and that sort of outsourcing of deciding the best way to use money is part of the appeal of the larger charities.

You're donating to the wrong charities.

You realize you can look into the financials of all charities and see which ones actually spend their money on their "mission"

Many transparent charity navigators/comparers exist. Very many charities where 93%+ go directly towards the mission.

That’s it?

you can terraform Mars with all those gazillions of charity money, that mostly go to bureaucrats anyway.

Can you provide a source for those facts? If true, it would be quite important to know.

In most of these large charity set ups, the bulk of the money is spent on management expenses.

It's the unwritten rule of all large organizations.

How do you downvote comments? Sweeping statements like this are political in nature and should be banned.

Im not just talking about Charity organizations. Any large people operation of any nature is like this.

It's one of those default things that large people organizations have. Political parties and charities just happen to be a subset of this. Wait till you hear even armies, or even organized religions work the same way.

You need 200 upvotes to unlock it. I suggest just following the hive mind for a bit if it’s that important to you.

We have no idea how to geoengineer earth, yet alone Mars.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com