Comment by someguy321 | Hacker News Reader

Comment by someguy321 | Hacker News Reader

>In a long statement last week, Mr. Buffett defended himself by pointing to his long advocacy for a fairer taxation system, and then he immediately told on himself by undermining the very idea of taxes in the same letter. “I believe the money will be of more use to society if disbursed philanthropically than if it is used to slightly reduce an ever-increasing U.S. debt.”

>In other words: I believe in higher income taxes on people like me, but I’m highly organized to avoid having income to report, and I don’t really believe in taxes because I think I should decide how these surplus resources are spent.

I really don't like this slant. If somebody truly believes in taxes, they would pay taxes they don't need to pay? Nonsense. It assumes so much and paints charitable contributions as... malicious? Or at least it implicitly assumes that Buffett's billions aren't deserved (in whatever sense the author thinks it means to deserve something), and should be assumed to be the property of the public.

Buffett's signed the Giving Pledge, and has given tremendous billions to charity, with many more billions to come. The charitable causes he supports aim to solve real problems that governments are often poorly suited to solve. Having a policy preference of a higher tax rate while minimizing the taxes you pay is not hypocrisy for either billionaires or middle class Joes.

Seems to me that throwing Buffett under the bus is equivalent to saying... "we don't care if you try to help the world. If you're a billionaire, you're evil." If that sort of opinion becomes popular, good luck getting billionaires to give to charity when they're just gonna get yelled at for it.

You're not a billionaire, why are you spending your precious time on this earth trying to lump them together with "middle class Joes" as if that absolves them of their history?

Perhaps Buffett doesn't have a singular genius for applying his wealth to charity. It's anti-democratic on its face to just surrender control of "what problems are solved" to a single person, regardless of the decision metric. Is it truly better for one person to control all of that on a whim? Even assuming the best of intentions, he may pick a disease charity based on a close association with a victim rather than any broad rational analysis. You're just hopping right on board with his unquestioned assertion "I'm better at picking," did you give that one any pause or just hopped right up to carry that water?

What are the problems that governments are 'often' poorly suited to solve? Would governments be more or less suited to deal with these issues if they hadn't been defunded to support the personal wealth and charitable whims of billionaires?

Thankfully, the government still exists and also works to solve problems in parallel with charities. I don't advocate that Buffett takes charge of the world. It's also nice that Buffett doesn't give all his money to one charity- he distributes it across multiple charities that (I assume) he deems as "effective enough to be worth taking a risk on," which is about as good of a guess as anybody has on anything. And even if his motives are more personal, the motivation of earning the autonomy to act for your own best interest is one of the primary motivations that causes people to do hard work that both earns money and (often, but not always, but I figure more often than not) makes the world a better place to live.

At a certain level, any decision made by any individual with autonomy is anti-democratic. The greater that person's autonomy, the larger the effects, and for billionaires those effects are large. They aren't always "better at picking" than the government, but having diversifying our methods of problem solving yields better results. The world would not get eradicated of polio as quickly if the Bill and Melinda Gates foundation didn't work on it. The Against Malaria Foundation does a more cost effective job of preventing malaria than just about any organization on the planet. Habitat for Humanity completes an amazing mission of building affordable housing, teaching skills to interested volunteers, and helping people invest in their community all at the same time.

If government is the only tool in the toolbox, you'll only hammer the nails that governments can hammer.

> good luck getting billionaires to give to charity when they're just gonna get yelled at for it.

When billionaires take food out of the mouths of workers' families, they're lucky they're not made an offer they can't refuse. Even a few interested people amongst millions who have had more than enough of billionaires buying politicians, buying tax laws, stealing from society, and cheating workers out of living with dignity would make a difference to send a message. Strike the shepherd and the herd will follow. and Chop enough hands, theft disappears.

They should feel lucky to not have their stolen treasure reclaimed to help people, rather than overbidding on real estate to park it in empty homes that real owners could live in.

I would like to specifically talk about Warren Buffett.

If we can determine whether we agree or disagree about whether Warren Buffett is more or less virtuous than the average billionaire, then we can have a productive conversation.

You're running away from the 800 lbs. gorilla in the room with low-signal, hypothetical distractions.

Feel free to have that "productive conversation" by yourself.

Talking about the specifics of the person the article is about is talking about the signal.

Creating an abstract notion of what he represents as a member of the billionaire class is talking about something entirely different, and something that is distracted by notions of class warfare, social justice, and a thousand other emotionalized predispositions. It's less accurate and less useful if you care about judging an individual as an individual.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com