MacKenzie Scott donates over $2B in 2024 to 199 organizations
yieldgiving.com
yieldgiving.com
It's great to see such philanthropy. I would love to see more documentation on process of choosing like e.g. Givewell does. Presumably non-trivial amount went into researching how to optimally allocate the money and some lessons from that could be useful to others.
I just give directly to poor people.
Pink Floyd's "On the Turning Away" is a powerful anthem to how modern society's inertia runs in opposition to your heart's powerful compassion, the compassion we should all embrace.
Peace be with you, my friend. You are beloved.
It scales because there is by definition no overhead, accounting, or infrastructure
This HN comment section gets more ridiculous every time I take a look at it.
The problem with most philanthropic organizations is that they come to rely on a constant stream of money. I've heard the Gates Foundation have to be very intentional with how they deploy capital. Because whole ecosystems come to rely on that money in an unsustainable way. So when they have met their goals or decided its not working and pull funding, those that relied on the funding basically collapse overnight. Which could lead to even worse outcomes.
With her approach, I do wonder if this will occur with many of the organizations she is giving large amount of money to.
EDIT: Reminds me of the saying "Give a person a fish and you feed him for a day. Teach him how to fish and you feed him for a lifetime".
But there are limits and nobody sees future, dont expect impossible miracles just because it would be nice.
IMO this is deliberate - it means you can "give away" the money but keep the power and the status which are the only benefits for having that much money.
If she is making a series of large one off donations that problem does not exist.
Which is a problem for a lot of "tax the rich" schemes. The rich don't actually have that much money relative to the large number of people who want a piece of it. The trick is in the effective deployment of capital but that rarely gets enough focus.
Why else an unelected private citizen (Elon) is able to bully congress? He is going to pour 100 million plus dollars to mess with British elections. More than 60% of the money raised by the GOP this year came from ultra wealthy people. Striking Amazon workers are getting beaten up by cops for using their right to protest. And so on
In China their Elon Musk equivalent can't bully congress. That is Jack Ma, he disappeared for a bit, reappeared and then ... a cynic would say he fled to Japan and has spent the last year or two cowering. Xi Jinping stands unbullied! The question here is who do you want to hold it and why are they qualified? Should Trump have free reign? Should Congress be all-powerful (noting that the likely outcome of that is that power then effectively goes to the whips).
I like the idea of no individual having too much power, but outsiders being able to bully congress seems like a great idea. The US Congress is a disgrace to basic principles of competence, honesty and good governance. The US would be well served by more entities that can challenge and bully them, not less. Private citizens being able to loom over them represents a strength of the US system. Better to have someone transient but competent who is powerful than a known-bad institution.
Nobody (other than billionaires) is happy with congress, their approval rating is the lowest it has ever been. That doesn’t mean we want one man to bully them, especially one as dumb and vile as Musk.
The right way to fight back is by peaceful protests, voting corrupt officials out etc.
> The right way to fight back is by peaceful protests, voting corrupt officials out etc.
Go try that in Hong Kong. If the most powerful man in a country is no threat to the politicians, a group of the smallest certainly aren't and will be lucky to get away just being ignored.
Seriously, the US is better off if Musk can stare down Congress. For all you don't like him, he's better than a group of politicians that looks to the likes of Mitch McConnell for leadership.
In historic or global terms, no. Congress is squeaky-clean compared to your average oligarch.
> Better to have someone transient but competent who is powerful than a known-bad institution.
"transient"? Once an oligarch puts themselves above the government, who is going to take away that power?
A malaria vaccine deployed in the field costs $3/dose, and can be driven down with mass purchases or working with e.g., UNICEF.
Assuming 10:1 vaccines / lives saved, you just paid 18,000,000 to eliminate it. Try 100:1 (180M) and you still have a 80% of your investment left over. How many kids grow up healthy because of that? How many parents grow up grateful? If it's 10,000:1 is it a failure to "only" save 60,000 kids for your entire 2B investment?
And malaria vaccines have an economic ROI of 100s:1, making them one of the most effective charitable investments for lower income countries.
And that's just one of the global maladies that can be directly addressed in a meaningful way with proper investment. Usually, with a Billion-dollar investment, a self-sustaining program can be set up so you get 10x - 100x over the course of the program. You really don't understand how vital and helpful foreign aid is.
There are a number of other high impact things you might want to look into, that produce meaningful changes in a data-driven way.
- internet and accountability for rural schools in developing countries
- Vaccines of any kind save tons of lives
- food and relocation assistance for famine-striken areas
- Early childhood education is a massive economic ROI, and reduces unwanted population growth through women empowerment
- Antiviral treatment to prevent spread of HIV to children during childbirth
- Neonatal care in areas without sufficient infra etc etc
In some cases, 60-80% of children in developing countries who are affected by preventable diseases are treated by charitable organizations, often in cooperation with a developing local hospital system that is built in parallel until it is sustainable. The initial intervention is basically exclusively through foreign aid from major wealthy donors and governments.
The actual solution to this sort of problem is what China did - lots of sweatshop labour, slowly scaling up the business opportunities into higher value sectors to the point where they're starting to look quite competitive against European lifestyles. Charity doesn't cut it for getting big fractions of humanity from poverty into the middle class. Then they don't need some billionaire's charity to give them $3 for vaccines. They have incomes of a few thousand dollars and can afford their own medical treatment.
Besides being fatalistic nonsense, and also ignoring the other net positive, poverty reducing stuff I mentioned, AND being needlessly cruel, you completely ignored the fact that we're taking about free donated vaccines, funded by a billion dollar philanthropist, not a weird market solution where only those who can afford vaccines get to live.
No, I'm not. Put it this way - the country with the lowest income per-capita on Wikipedia is Burundi with maybe $200/head [0]. If you're telling me that the country can't manage something equivalent to an effective average tax rate of 1.5% for a 100:1 ROI life saving vaccine, then the people in that country objectively have bigger problems than kids dying of malaria. Or your numbers are wrong, although I'm inclined to trust them. We're talking amounts of money so small that even Burundi can afford to make that sort of effort.
I mean good on whoever is paying for the vaccines assuming it isn't taxpayers, but they're token amounts of money. Someone on an average wage could afford to make a significant impact at these dollar ranges, MacKenzie Scott being involved is cool and all but not necessary. Most people on the globe are going to get through life without charity from her - she doesn't have enough money. Add all the billionaires together and they still don't.
[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_GDP_(nomi...
The only partial response I have is that, if you had a list of all the problems facing such a country, you might understand why a full country-wide malaria vaccine can't bubble up (but I can't speak particulars). The kinds of orgs I'm referring to have a massive triage problem to tackle with those countries, and targeted investment is always with the goal of "teaching them to fish". You can read their reports and impact statements online with a little research.
I don’t think it undermines your point - being able to save half a million lives is certainly meaningful.
Without the wealth feedback loop part, small amounts of money don't do much.
Most people remain willfully ignorant of their spiritual potential to self-evolve, so sometimes they behave well and other times less so. We must eacho choose to wake from our unconsciousness and consciously embark upon the road to compassion, for there resides our peace and happiness, both individually and collectively.
Unfortunately, it’s a drop in the bucket compared to the amount of destruction that Jeff and other billionaires have wreaked on US small businesses and the poor.
EXAMPLES:
Billionaires are driving up single family home prices across the US:
https://www.commondreams.org/news/wall-street-buying-houses
https://www.cnbc.com/amp/2023/02/21/how-wall-street-bought-s...
Bezos and Musk fight unionization and workers rights?
https://www.jwj.org/emboldened-billionaires-take-aim-at-new-...
The prison phone market is owned by billionaires: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Inmate_telephone_system
Amazon now accepts SNAP/EBT payments after destroying small businesses:
https://www.paymentsdive.com/news/amazon-now-accepts-ebt-car...
Farmers are not allowed to reuse seeds from billionaire firms:
https://grain.org/en/article/5142-seed-laws-that-criminalise...
Would it not be better to use the money to ~~bribe~~ donate to politicians instead? Two billions dollars can change the results of elections and sway a lot of policy at the local, state, and federal level. It’s a matter of wealth amplification, that two billion could have altered the course of several billions in government budgets. Like a big lever moving an absolutely enormous boulder.
Why donate to non-profits fighting for something when you can just win the fight by changing the law? Rather than donate to a non-profit that helps the homeless, wouldn’t it be more effective to directly change the policies that lead to homelessness in the first place?
Evil Republican megadonors do it, and it’s working great for them. Where are the non-evil leftist megadonors? If it’s an oligarchy, it’s not impossible to have a good an kind-hearted oligarch.
I wonder if you can do good without triggering that particular geopolitical hot potato, which was close to Soros's heart given his upbringing.
It's all political bias in play.
When we started on this tech journey, the hope was for a better more equal world,
Instead we have the worst inequality since the Great Depression, mass surveillance on a global scale and the destruction of the middle class.
Inequality is a part of our society. Some are born with better genetics and opportunities in a lucky part of the world.
If you are lucky to become a billionaire your purpose is to serve humanity and redistribute that wealth to your workers and to society at large.
If not, the only eventual outcome is repression by the billionaire class or forced redistribution through violent revolution.
These are the lessons that history has taught us.
In the modern tech world, you become a billionaire by servicing people with enough money to afford a somewhat banal subscription or enough travel under their belt that they need something like AirBnB or TripAdvisor.
Almost all the money I ever spent on tech was from the "discretionary" part of my budget, and so did everyone in my surroundings. This may sound bad, but it is probably better than the earlier times, when money was strongly associated with mining of vital resources and similar enterprises. In some places, that still holds, and those places are (with exceptions) usually more brutal and inequal than the West.
That said, violent backlash against the rich is certainly possible, but the outcome will likely be the same as it used to - transfer of power and wealth from the capitalists to the apparatchiks of The Party that takes absolute power in the mayhem.
People like Ceausescu and Assad were far from poor. Poor elite just isn't a thing in modern civilization.
There’s a thing called facts. Billionaires exploit the poor.
Why do they fight unionization and workers rights?
https://www.jwj.org/emboldened-billionaires-take-aim-at-new-...
The prison phone market is owned by billionaires: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Inmate_telephone_system
Amazon now accepts SNAP/EBT payments after destroying small businesses:
https://www.paymentsdive.com/news/amazon-now-accepts-ebt-car...
Farmers are not allowed to reuse seeds from billionaire firms:
https://grain.org/en/article/5142-seed-laws-that-criminalise...
Amazon warehouse workers are closer to the definition of "poor", but they will likely be replaced by robots fully anyway. Which I would say is good, because putting stuff into boxes for hours is arduous work that is suitable for machines, not humans.
Amazon destroying small businesses is somewhat similar to e-mail destroying telegraph, an almost inevitable development stemming from the technology. Even in Europe, where we don't have one big Amazon, there are obvious advantages to several big online retailers that operate on economies of scale. Customers prefer lower prices, and that includes poor customers.
Efficiencies do help us all, but they must not come at a harmful cost to the cogs in the wheels.
If that is your purpose in life you are unlikely to become a billionaire in the first place.
It should definitely not be median but something like 20 percentile threshold works best. This should be transparently clear and communicated.
However receiving UBI should genuinely lead to a charter of responsibilities as well to incentivise good behaviour.
Every party will keep on pushing the responsibility further (Govts and billionares will say cos will go to different jurisdiction, people earning pittance will defend trust fund billionares based on cultural inculcation etc)
Important to understand that a nation country is still the unit the world operates at and the wealth amongst them is by definition not equally distributed and they fight for it either logically (competing to build the best and cheapest industries) or hoarding resources (Australia, Canada and whatever places were conquered first) or Military superpower.
There is no perfect solution but some consensus on identifying the problem is a first step.
Alternative is simply Civil war in an AI world where the owner class retreats to their islands.
We could just start with the goal that everyone has access to basic medical care and a roof their head, like many other wealthy nations. If we want to accomplish that via UBI, we should pick a number that aligns with these goals.
The moment you hear about the specific persons/organizations making the donations, you cannot help but realize there are also other considerations at play (like publicity), besides the desire to help others.
I'd much rather live in a world where all billionaires are acting like MacKenzie Scott and disbursing their unfathomable riches billions at a time (even if there's no true altruism behind it) rather than the current accumulation of obscene amounts of money they do. Of course, in my ideal world would probably not allow the accumulation of billions to exist in the first place.
The joy that Ms. Scott experiences in her life is not comprehendable by the vast majority of human beings for the simple reason that very few of us have billions of dollars to give away. The few who do have such resources rarely give nearly as much to such worthy causes, because most of them are too busily trying to acquire more money with what they already have.
On the other hand, her ex-husband can build his mega-yachts and whatever-the-f else he does with his billions, but he will never be happy because his business is built upon brutally oppressing his workers to make its profit. No, he will have no peace because he is a servant to greed and money alone. Sure, he can always have more pleasure, but pleasure is not a substitute for peace and happiness.
That's why Ms. Scott is living a joyous life of giving, and Bezos looks like Bill the Cat on TRT. We all reap what we sow. The happiness we help others feel comes back into us within our inner world's peace and joy. As well, the same is true of those who create misery for others.
That's why the people who now run America are never -- and I mean never -- happy and peaceful. They are committed to squeezing each human being for all they can, irrespective of how much misery results. It looks to me like they take pleasure in that oppression, and that is the worst result for a human being, to incur those repurcussions.
No, those evil bastards must not be gunned down in the streets, because we must be a society of laws and process, but we can and must "take the power back", out of lovingkindness for the oppressed, not to mention for the healing of the Earth.
We are each choosing sides, each and every day, and there are only three roads a person can travel:
(1) Apathy and willful ignorance for the results our actions have on others, and the actions our society and cultures have on others.
(2) Cruel oppression without regard to the misery caused by our actions or those of our society and cultures.
(3) Conscious compassion for all human beings we encounter, such that we both try to act in ways that only result in happiness for others and evolve our society and cultures towards greater compassion for all human beings.
Everyone starts out with some combination of the three, depending on our personal predilections and societal/cultural training combined with the situations we encounter in life. Regardless, we all have the choice to self-evolve ourselves into caring members of an ever more universally compassionate society. We can care about our mistakes that result in others' unhappiness and then resolve ourselves to stop repeating them.
This is the Path of Love, whose purpose is to not only create happiness in others, but to reap the benefits of that happiness in our own inner world. It can be said that the most selfish -- yes, you read that right -- thing one can do is to help others without thought of recompense, for the simple fact that it will come back you in time, every single time. I like to say that giving without regard to receiving creates a bank of magic in the universe that the universe will pay back at the most optimal time and place in the future.
Selfless lovingkindness is the purest, greatest magic in the universe. That most religious folks don't espouse this is because they only partake in religion to be on the "only saved" side, or to be in the most dominant group, or simply because that is their culture's inertia. The universe always knows our heart, and our intentions are always present and can later be seen on our faces and in the tone of our voices as our decisions accrue over our lives.
You can see the self-satisfied vanity of the oppressors of the world, but you will never see peace and happiness. If a person has cheated every person they could, they will experience less and less joy over time, unless they see the error of their ways, repent, and then endeavor to live life under love's guidance.
Ms. Scott is giving so much to so many because her mother's heart is tuned to lovingkindness, and she knows how much of an utterly callous bastard her ex-husband is. So, she is both working to counteract her ex's horrific business practices and funding so many wonderful projects because it brings her the greatest joy a person can imagine.
This journey begins with asking the universe to help evolve you into a being of happiness-creating compassion, to the exclusion of all selfishness. Your life will then bloom like a rose in the springtime, but it won't usually happen all at once; it is a long road to defeat our inner selfish tendencies. The best help we can get comes from our Unfathomable Creator, but we must ask for that help; though it is in our best interests, our free will remains sacrosanct.
That people choose to remain ignorant of this system of karma does not make it any less real than Eugene Parker's discovery of the solar wind was any less valid in the face of his opponents' overwhelming majority at the time. It's just that most people are too satisfied with this world's pleasures to care.
Your peace and happiness is in your hands.
And you don't know what I know, friend. You have not read what I have read, or learned what I have studied, or mingled with the folks I have.
Humility is the key to learning; it's an excellently necessary place to start.
I've got great respect for both Larry David's work and life.
"I could give a fuck." --Larry David in answer to the question as to whether republicans will stop watching his show because of his openly stating his opinions about Trump being a worthless piece of shit
If only there were a government that could build affordable housing directly. Perhaps from a billionaire tax ...