By the way, keep in mind that the Gates critic was not arguing the omission vs commission thing. Even if they were equal he was essentially saying that those who give to help the blind were hurting museum goers and that was just as bad.

Yes, in my opinion. But that doesn't mean that Gates is correct. Because the money goes to enhancing museums rather one rich person. This particular question should depend on the precise acts that are being weighed.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bill_%2...te-FactSheet-3

If any criticism exists here it should have to do with how you allocate resources and what projects you pursue and how aggressively in terms of obtaining maximum benefits and actually changing world for the better. Nobody can dare say they do not already do good work.

I happen to believe that selecting research projects and education as the core is a better idea that changes the world faster and more efficiently.

Developing technology that can be used in areas that it can have maximum impact is also a good idea. (solar energy technology, batteries, any kind of advanced equipment that can operate in very unfriendly locations and deliver value to people in need, substantially altering their quality of life, enabling education to replace endless hours of hard work. We can study what these may be.)

Also it is indeed hypocritical to derive your fund assets' growth from companies that generate their profits actually by deploying strategies worldwide which effectively harm the causes you are then financing. Its like destroying the world and then giving it a bit of a refund!

How about instead investing in new companies created with specific purpose the direct progress of mankind without the slightest targeting of profit unless they have first fulfilled that role they were created for. Progress may be new energy production methods, pollution control, AI development with the purpose of assisting to solve global problems and helping increase productivity in poor countries etc.

Think big and win big!

I find it predictable that so many intelligent people's reaction to "the world is so messed up" arguments is: Well if Gates REALLY believed the stuff he's saying he'd give away every penny. He doesn't. QED. Now let me get back to not giving a **** but pretending I do. Really awful that people are starving but, you see, the ethically optimal deployment of my surplus resources is in fact hookers and blow because something something invisible hand something powah of teh market.

It's predictable because it's true and intelligent people, who aren't susceptible to rationalization like common peasants are, are likely to believe true things.

Check out Russian Ark on Netflix streaming for an impressive view of the Hermitage.

Maslow's hierarchy for the win.

The argument by Gates is silly as he stated it. Donating money to prevent blindness is the same as putting curators, conservators, janitorial staff and parking lot attendants out of a job.

But the patron who's donating to the museum isn't doing it so the janitor will have a job.

In equilibrium, they'll get new jobs as janitors at the blindness vaccine facility.

Is Maslow's hierarchy in the Hermitage? Wasn't he an impressionist?

Silly round things for the win

Bill Gates is

The ideological battle between natural selection and the delusion of human equality is relatively new; perhaps 50 years or so. Care and feeding of lesser genetics results in very predictable progeny that just compounds the problem further with every succeeding generation. Providing food to people who are starving to death atop fertile lands does not result in many Nobel Prize winners.

The critically dangerous global population levels are a consequence of well-intended policies enacted decades ago, however there is literally no hope to reverse course. Egalitarianism is a more influential force than gravity itself, some of humanity's more horrifying and/or less valuable subgroups are threatening everyone else by their sheer volume.

AIDS was our last great hope.

LOL. Can I safely assume that you cannot afford a mansion in Santa Barbara? ****ing proletariat complaining that life is too egalitarian really annoys me.

If you're doing it partially for reasons other than purely what will do the most good for the world, then it can make sense. If we think that it's okay to spend some of our wealth on personal consumption, like buying paintings for ourselves, then making donating to museums could be some kind of hybrid of consumption (feeling good about sharing the art you love) and charity which we should welcome as superior to pure consumption.

If, on the other hand, someone claims to be sincere about wanting their charitable donation to do the maximum good for the world, and they've come to the conclusion that donating to art museums will do that, well then it's right to criticise them for that decision.

However, it's kind of a grey area, because few people will admit they had some selfish motivations in their charitable donations, despite the fact they almost certainly do. Calling out people for inefficient donations might motivate some to switch to more efficient charities, but it might cause some others to switch to private consumption. What's the net effect? I don't know. I suppose you're best off tailoring your message to each person based on how receptive they seem to an "efficient charity" message.

Well said. That's why I'll continue to keep my charitable giving private. I don't brag certainly, but even if asked, I'll tailor my message for the reasons you described.

fwiw I believe the philanthropy of Gates, Buffett and a few others (Zuckerberg?) is based on The Gospel of Wealth, an essay by Andrew Carnegie. Talks a lot about making money, so you can give it away. It's an interesting read.

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I could get credit to buy a "mansion" in Santa Barbara but that's a moronic and totally irrelevant "assumption". Also, LOL @ "proletariat". Someone appears to be trying to use words they don't fully understand in an effort to appear to be something they very clearly are not.

Economic inequality is a completely different discussion but if you're willing to suspend idealism/sentimentality and address it in the context of race and human performance metrics, it's a very simple discussion.

We've already had the genetic/race/ethnic discussion in this forum. Unfortunately, I can't be bothered to search for the better threads, and am not particularly interested in educating you.

Generally, where you want to discuss politics and race issues is in OOT or the politics forum. We have the economics forum to discuss economics as they relate to race.

Zero sum game.... words..... more words... something about we could spend all our time curing blindness or else feeling guilty that we haven't yet....words... no time for having fun, must cure blindness.... maybe we can eat sometimes.... and then what about curing cancer, welp, no time for whoopy!

I'm not a regular around here, but has anyone seen anything more vile and disgusting than this post? Let's do away with humanity's "less valuable" subgroups. Who do your propose do the evaluations? Perhaps some Nobel Prize winners who have designed political arrangements that cause people to starve atop fertile lands?

WM2 seems to be just further proof that the forum proscription on racism is a lot less important to the moderators of this subforum than exercising their power to punish tools for calling tools tools.

Yeah, not so much.

Now I'd really be curious in knowing the source of his livelihood, given his claim in "my" thread about his few years of "rungood" at the expense of "people like me" (in his estimation)

Just taking that ridiculous claim on its own, I'm pretty sure the Social Darwinism v Social Gospel " 'merican drama" played out in the 19th century, buddy. Human equality may be delusional but your latter-day-eugenicist dogma is even more delusional.

I think the species is ****ed in the long-term if not the short-term, but I'll easily blame the over-consuming WASPs (pluralistically if not predominantly, and nominally ("WASP" being so what-is-the-1980s)) in this great country of mine over anyone unlucky enough to have been born into poverty in the Third World. There is no actual equation that can be run to "adequately assign blame" vis-à-vis colonialism and exploitation and consumption (but also innovation and whatever else for which the Western world may be heralded)...

...but the basic problem is 7.15 billion people on this planet with declining finite resources. Not anything related to your pseudo-scientific agenda.

Keep making a ****load of money exploiting people you think are like me...if your personality-profiling is anywhere near as skillful as your profiling otherwise, then your mind must just be singularly ingenious.

I read in an article that said it would be a waste of time for Bill Gates to bend down and pick up a $100 bill because his yearly worth is more than $100 a second.

Yeah, great, go tell your mother about that. We all know how much he's banking.

Edit to say $3,153,600,000 were he picking up a $100 bill every second in the Seattle area. Kinda funny for me to posit this given that I have an uncle out in greater Seattle who claims to find an inordinate amount of money on the ground every walk he takes (he however claims a more modest $20 or so...which still strikes me as a ridiculous amount of money to find in the course of a long walk)