The right way to fund national needs is taxation. If the process is depending on charitable funding, the funds should be put into a safe harbour so this kind of "yea... nah" outcome can't happen.
The reason for the cessation in funding is because of recent political changes. Incidentally those recent political changes also led to a cessation in government charitable donations. I don't think we can claim that either is strictly more reliable than the other. I'm surprised at how readily people will support government intervention while bearing in mind which government would currently be implementing said intervention.
> reason for the cessation in funding is because of recent political changes
The reason is Zuckerberg and Chan have no backbone. These are individuals who command the resources of small nations. Yet their insecurities win out every time, rendering them powerless to take a stand on anything and instead wander to the beats of others’ drums.
A thought just struck me, but I wonder if the difference between the Billionaires of Today and the Monopolists of Yesteryear is that the wealth and power of the Billionaires are tied up in publicly exposed assets (stocks, etc) as well as networked wealth. Make the wrong political move, and people tank your stock into oblivion.
But what are you going to do to Carnegie? Not have steel? Rockerfeller says something antithetical to Elite Beliefs? Good luck getting oil.
This is relatively well known. Monopolists had very real wealth with a high floor value and controlled large portions of the supply chains needed to build big things that lasted.
The Silicon Valley 'elite' of today has wealth predicated on theoretical value calculations of things the world isn't even convinced it needs. Monumental difference, and it significantly changes how these guys operate and what legacy they leave.
Or they looked at the results and weren't seeing much progress vs their science investments, which also coincided with these billionaire social projects becoming politically unpopular.
For ex, from the article re the school:
> But former leaders of the school who spoke on the condition of anonymity to discuss private information said Chan had grown distant in recent years as the school’s academic performance faltered.
> In 2017, a Harvard study funded by CZI found that by 2015 the growth rate of student achievement in English had significantly improved — but that there had been no significant change for math.
> the school met stumbling blocks. Two principals left in its early years, which three former school leaders said made it difficult to establish stability for students.
NYTimes said the refocusing on science investment vs social happened slowly over 5yrs and they haven't invested in any social ones in a few years. So this change has been in the works for a while...
Many of us did stupid anti-social shit when we were young, especially with computers. The mood of that chat felt like plenty of chats I had with friends, grandstanding and boasting. The sad part is that he hasn't grown as he's gotten older.
He doesn't seem to be trying very hard to outrun it either. Facebook is a toxic dump of human unintelligensia and Mark/FB/Meta only ever seem to resist any attempts to disinfect even small pockets.
Sure, but like some other founders he's doing little to morally redeem himself for his sizeable role in the normalization of engineering addiction while simultaneously creating a massive surveillance firm in the name of ad-tech.
Every bit of lip service about connecting people is overshadowed by "they 'trust me'. dumb fucks".
Why is that a terrible statement? Aren’t you in fact dumb if you just trust some rando’s website on the interent with all the details of your personal life? It’s not even wrong.
> The reason is Zuckerberg and Chan have no backbone.
More likely, the wealthier you are the more tied you are to the system. The US government could make it very difficult for Zuck to conduct his business, which would tank his wealth. This is in particularly true when there's a pseudo-dictator in power.
Pretty fair if you take Eli Musk as a counterexample. Eli stood with the government and the whole left groaned that he sold out. Then he backed off due to his principles and the whole right groaned that he's not a team player, also the left still hates him too for some reason. Basically, in this hyper-polarized political environment, apparently all sides agree that they don't like Eli Musk, ironically the power commander of the Twitter propaganda network node.
There is a sociologic experiment to do with “The revolution eats its children”.
For as long as I’ve seen Bill Gates donate to all causes that would please the most leftist proponents, the only reaction I’ve seen was indifference/hate.
It’s a sociological reality: Nothing pleases a mob. On one side, leftist characters always end up in a situation where they were not left enough, which, in revolutionary environments, justifies their termination. In France when the left was elected the president was described as “a capitalist, simping for billionaires”. On the other side, if you are rich and perform acts promoted by leftism, such as donating your entire salary, increasing your employees by 30% a year, or like Bill Gates, donating your entire wealth for the world’s hunger and health before your death, your actions are construed as malevolent, probably there’s a “get rich” scheme behind it for Bill Gates, or probably “you had to treat your employees bad if you had to increase their salary.”
For a good person, there is no winning. But we have countless counterexamples of bad people liked by the same population. A lot, lot, lot of people reach this conclusion by their 40ies. After all, it’s not “spine” that people should have, but just mutual love, including some from the bottom to the top.
Blindly following a hollow con artist who makes every indication that his plans will be bad for you, yet because he speaks the right emotional intonations to your hind brain you rationalize that it will somehow be good for you. Yup, that certainly sounds like religion!
Man, you're just primed to respond to anything with rationalization, huh?
What your implied narrative is missing is that being attuned to "physical reality" means being quite misaligned with our modern technological world, and that incentives diverge when those forebrains and hindbrains are in different skulls.
It’s not “rationalization,” your point just makes no sense. I agree Trump appeals to the lizard brain—that’s the brain that’s in touch with physical reality. The folks who have magical ideas about all sorts of “human rights” are the religious ones. That’s the opposite of lizard brain.
It's rationalization because you've taken the analysis just far enough to feel edgily insightful, and then framed the hanging thoughts in feel-good terms (eg "physical reality").
I don't actually disagree about the factual things you've said! Traditional religions, cultlike religions, progressivism, and Trumpism are all "forebrain" attempts steering the behavior of the "lizard brain".
These goals often help the individual self interest of the forebrains espousing them. But modulo this, they can still be societally constructive (for instance it's hard to deny the progress that Christianity historically brought to western society), and sometimes they can be societally destructive. Trumpism, with its rejection of most of what makes our society successful (eg its rejection of being bound by intellectual reason, and your welcoming embrace of returning to the "lizard brain" behavior based on "physical reality"), is quite destructive.
the difference is that one is from elected officials (however flawed, clearly, there is some measure of representing the people's interests in theory at least), and the other is just an individual's decision, not even pretense of representing the people's opinion
Governments have a degree of democratic accountability - the current US government could be kicked out or not in 4 years depending on the will of the people.
Billionaires paying very little tax are forever ( certainly more than a lifetime as the wealth is handed down over generations ).
That or reform charitable giving so that it truly is an arm's length transaction. No preferential tax treatment for payments to charities one controls.
The article heavily implies that it was a “yeah…nah” thing but does very little investigative work that could corroborate their anonymous witnesses. For all we know, there was a school shooting or a spate of suicides in which case I think everyone here would agree with closing it.
Also I’m not from the area but how are disadvantaged youth coming from Palo Alto at all? Isn’t it one of the highest CoL areas in the nation? Also isn’t it pretty crime-free and well-maintained? How disadvantaged can you be if that’s where you live?
On your first part I'd do exactly the opposite so please don't speak for me...
Given the fact that the number 1 cause in the USA for "unnatural" deaths of school age individuals is now shootings (not cars like in other developed countries) I feel like the expression "when the game gets tough the tough get going should apply. Personally I feel like it's the bil(mil)lionaires new "game" of getting the credit but not doing the commitment.
On the second part {speculation} Because maybe not so rich people lived there before the area became so expensive or moved there for job opportunity + safe place to raise kids ?
If you do a quick Google / chatgpt you'll see that the cost of living compared to median income is extremely bad...
So not the worst place but certainly not the best...
Their social funding was just creative accounting that moved money so it couldn't be taxed, but still gave them full control and then never did deliver anything.
>The right way to fund national needs is taxation.
No absolutes. Sometimes this is true, sometimes not. It feels great, amazing, to give back, to change someone's life with your money. It can feel even better for some people, to give back, to change someone's life, with your NEIGHBOR's money. So you can get people whose existence is to enforce that their neighbor, Peter, shall pay their other neighbor, Paul, and have Paul give them a solid pat on the back for doing them a solid. Peter is unhappy about it. Thusly is the cornerstone of politics.
Sometimes this thinking makes sense, sometimes not, usually not in the extremes, of which such people exist.
Is there evidence that this is the right way? Because it seems to be far less efficient than other ways if funding charitable causes directly by a significant margin.
Likewise, is there evidence for this? Maybe our most "effective" altruism is in fact to pay taxes in a liberal democracy after all.
Painting with a very broad brush, the US is the most charitable country in the world, yet we lag behind many other countries according to various measures of human welfare.
> Likewise, is there evidence for this? Maybe our most "effective" altruism is in fact to pay taxes in a liberal democracy after all.
I think this depends quite a bit on what you're trying to achieve. Hard to measure effectiveness otherwise.
E.g. if you care about global human welfare (and setting aside longtermist ideas), the most effective use of a marginal dollar is to donate money to people in poorer countries (via various methods). One of the main reasons is that the richer countries have a much more robust social welfare system already via taxation.
US "charity" to the UN became highly qualified as a function of both political distance from the UN goals, and regrettable lapses in probity inside the UN, the kind of problem which crops up anywhere and everywhere. Time and place meant they collided, and the US stopped funding the UN because of <reasons> and instead let the charity sector pick up the burden, which meant right wing christian fundamentalism entered the room. It is little wonder that islamic countries became suspicious of e.g. vaccination drives, made only worse by US polital operatives exploiting the polio vaccination runs to track down Bin Laden.
The US was the most charitable nation in the world but it's not a given.
Is it clear the charity approach is more efficient? My sense is many non-profits prioritize fundraising and have the bloat of executives who's main function is to schmooze donors.
I'm sure there are good nonprofits/charities. And there's definitely inefficient public offices that are mainly interested in politics.
My point is "seems less efficient" is kind of weak ground to be asking others for evidence
>My sense is many non-profits prioritize fundraising and have the bloat of executives who's main function is to schmooze donors.
You don't have to have a 'sense', you can look up the overhead for some nonprofits to look and see how much is spent on compensation vs giving/redirecting money to their causes vs. ancillary expenses.
It's often much less than the government in terms of overall efficiency.
"Kind of weak" is an understatement. It's flat out wrong and ridiculous to assume that the best course of action for societal well-being is to let billionaires run free. Or that it's "less efficient" to correct the systemic issues that unfairly tilt things in their favor.
Charity is essentially voluntary. So, in terms of persistence to need, it's highly variable. Some problems demand commitment which charities cannot commit to.
Charity incurs oversight burdens. The UK has a long story about failures in charity, the charity commissioner has had to intercede many times. It would be wrong to assume there are no oversight costs, the thing is that to the charity they may look like externalities. They have to be borne, the state bears the cost.
Charities also usually cannot intercede politically to fix the situation demanding their charitable work. So, charities are excluded from lobbying in some ways, where governments reflect the will of the people and are subject to both good and band consequences.
Charities are abused. Churches for instance. Why do churches qualify for charitable status, when they (in most economies where they are or have been) are established entities with massive landholdings and wealth?
In the end, it's a matter of philosophy. Without being patronising, I tend to think right wing people who believe in personal responsibility and low taxes favour charity because it gives them discretion, to give or not, as a function of how they feel about the recipient, and left wing people who believe in the state as a construct reflecting popular will believe in state functions to implement the burdens individuals cannot manage for themselves.
I say that because my very good friends who donate highly tend to be right wing and tend to make moralising statements about diabetes being a function of a lack of personal self control and so do not fund interventions to prevent diabetes in the working poor because "they lack self control" and also chose not to fund womens reproductive rights on similar grounds "chastity is its own reward" -Bill and Melinda Gates were exceptional in ignoring the fundamentalist christian lobby which came into the room in the Reagan "just say no" years, and funded contraception and abortion in Africa regardless.
Charity seems fine but we should definitly get rid of the tax loopholes.
That would take much of the corruption out of it. These donor advised funds now allow someone to maintain full control of their money while the IRS considers it 'donated' it for a major tax write-offs.
Because some children might have the bad luck of being born to dumb parents who do not value education. Ensuring that those children should not suffer and every member of the society grows into a well-educated adult who can contribute back is certainly a national need.
In the 1950s, we taxed income over $400,000 at somewhere around 90%. Anything you made less than that was taxed much less, but every dollar above $400,000 the government took most of it, which effectively put a cap on wages.
Won't be popular on HN, I think we need to move closer to that again. Maybe not that extreme, but that's the proper direction. We can then use that income to tackle big problems.
We also need to tax interest, capital gains, dividends etc. at the same rate as wages.
At that point why not just go to state-controlled capitalism? That way of life was MUCH closer to competing socio-economic theories to capitalism - than capitalism itself. I saw Sanders' Rogan podcast, I heard his plea - it doesn't work well in today's system.
One of the best things about the freedom of moving from job to job and not relying on pensions or 30-year contracts is that it enables and empowers everyday workers to have the innate, untenable, inalienable "check and balance" on the labor market to choose who they give labor to at any given time - and picket them as well. For the average person: You SHOULD be able to move jobs at any time, you SHOULD be able to not feel pressure of unrealized benefits of a pension 30 years down the road when you do, your housing SHOULD NOT be directly based on your employer ("company towns"), and normalizing systemic status-quo changes that makes it hard to decide/change who cuts your checks is NOT a step in the right direction.
Sanders was right when he said folks in managerial positions - and above - need to care more about their workers, but the businesses that drive the labor market banded together - perhaps unknowingly through a status quo "collective conscious" - to make MOST of your pickings in MOST same-tier jobs look very much alike. There are many ways to fix that in practice across other nations today, like sectoral bargaining; where union experts in a given trade collectively bargain for what SHOULD be an effective minimum wage or minimum benefits package within that trade - instead of the government doing it for them. There's also works councils in Germany that have a similar effect.
The problem is that Reagan/Thatcher's failed experiment is now considered an inevitable law of the universe. Taxes can only go down. Anything else is crazy. You get people talking about taxation's effect on the economy as a baseline assumption without any evidence that it actually works like that. The 1950s was a period of huge economic boom with very high tax rates for top earners, which is a counterexample to popular narratives about how high taxes supposedly hurt the economy.
In the private sector, obsession with short term profits and "shareholder value" is the corollary.
Both of these are now polite consensus, inevitable, but have wrecked government, wrecked our economy, and wrecked people's minds.
But would higher taxes nationally result in better funding for education? We are in a climate where coming to a agreement on what is acceptable in classrooms nationwide seems to be impossible.
Of course, this won't be popular on the HN crowd, but I'll say it anyway: What we need is securities tax.
Absolutely any conversion, collateral, or divestiture of securities need to be taxed at the rate of those securities at that time. A lot of plutocrats are playing the system by just basing their loans and the collaterals thereof, and their payments for things, on stocks and securities because they are "unrealized gains".
If securities are enough of a bearer instrument to give loaners confidence for otherwise no-collateral loans, they're enough of a realized gain to be taxed when you use them for a purchase - or alongside one.
