> So half of it will never be seen by the athlete
This can't be right, right? I never heard of people "receiving a donation" that you get the promise of now, but will be given to your family once you die, sounds a bit macabre. And as you mention, also pointless, how would that make them "break through new frontiers of excellence" when they may not be able to afford rent while being alive?
To me it sounds more than a bit macabre - depending on the familial relations, it would seem like a motive for them to commit suicide in order to provide for their children or for their children to murder them. I can already imagine the memoires being adapted into Netflix shows.
If your sport has any mortality or long term risk (concussions, cardiac events) then this could be seen as a nice extra insurance policy.
Still not worth questioning?
Also, $donator is making, as far as I know, zero demands. These people would be competing if they had to pay. Actually, most of them do have to pay.
Your analogy is comparing apples-to-sqrt(-1)
If you think the above example isn’t a donation then I don’t see the logic behind seeing this as a donation.
And to be clear, I view it as a donation that is still probably net good, but it’s not a selfless donation. The timeline as well also means it can be clawed back at some point in time.
I’d probably rate it a 2/10 for “goodness” where anything greater than 0 is still good.
This doesn't sound macabre at all to me. Sounds more like loophole finding to avoid directly paying the athletes to allow them to keep their amateur status to me.
No, a trust that is setup to give your family money when you die, in order to serve as motivation for you to "break through new frontiers of excellence"
Well, that makes it seem like this isn't a donation then at all, if you need to "achieve a place on the Olympic team"? I thought this was given for people to be able to better reach that, not as a "reward".
This is a "prize" it seems to me, not a "donation".
The title right now is "Ross Stevens Donates $100M to Pay Every US Olympian and Paralympian $200k", while after our conversation, it's pretty clear that this isn't a donation at all, it's a prize/reward for doing something specific. If you don't do that thing, you (and your family once you die) don't get the prize/reward.
Not only is the whole "once you die" part really strange way of trying to "reward" people, it isn't even a "donation" which the article seems to want you to believe.