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Comment by Zenst | Hacker News Reader

In some aspects it is controlling how your TAXES are spent by cutting out the middle man.

I don't see how this is generally desirable though.

Replacing the government middleman with a rich-person & associated bureacracy middleman. At least the government is meant to be accountable to the people.

This exactly, and because of the absurd magnitude of wealth some people have they are setting policy with their foundations. Basically governing without ever being elected.

The whole philanthropy argument is irrelevant PR.

This wealth wasn't created in a vacuum.

I’ll start paying heed to this line of reasoning when a significant portion of tax revenue is spent bombing innocents. There’s very shaky moral grounds for many of our actions overseas, and I don’t blame any rich person for wanting to control policy for significant philanthropic efforts.

Does Oil & Gas fall under offshore efforts?

Gold & uranium?

There's always something some where worth taking, smoke and mirrors of democracy pave the way.

One country's terrorist is another country's freedom fighter.

We can in theory vote for people that wont bomb innocents we can't vote out the rich people in any meaningful way.

The laws that allow this philanthropy are controlled by us. We most certainly can vote them out of existence

We can't vote their wealth out of existence easily when they own the legislators.

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