Comment by jawnv6 | Hacker News Reader

Comment by jawnv6 | Hacker News Reader

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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.

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