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this post was submitted on 19 Jan 2024
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I read his wikipedia article and I must say I was somewhat confused. He does not eat meat, he advocates urgent action on the climate crisis and has given over billions to children's investment f (don't know if this is a good charity or not). And yet he is an asshole enough to ask a company to fire tens of thousands of employees so his investments are more profitable on short term. It is entirely possible that he does not eat meat because he thinks that it is healthier and would make him live longer (typical billionaire). Moreover he was directly affiliated to the mentioned children's charity through his wife so god knows what is really going on in there. Also after their divorce his fund is no longer contractually tied to the foundation so don't know if he is regularly donating some parts of his profit there anymore.
The Children's Investment Fund Management (TCI) is not a charity, it is a hedgefund. Even this letter was sent on behalf of TCI. They're apparently one of the most activist investors out there. And not activism in a good way, their only focus is maximizing profits. So activism means: demanding lay-offs, doing unsolicited take-overs of other companies, etc. And then after a few years dumping the company again. They themselves probably have all sorts of thoughts about how they play an important function in an economy because they are ruthless and force changes in the markets. To put 'children's' in the name is just a scam that aims to make them sound innocent. But just this fact tells you a lot about how these people operate. Source: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Children%27s_Investment_Fund_Management
The Human Fund
Yes though initially it was contractually giving certain parts of its profit to children's fund foundation which existed before TCI and was a charity. After his divorce though the contractual donation was apparently cancelled. The aims written for the foundation all look nice but some are vaguely termed and I don't know to what effect were they able to (or try to) achieve it.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Children%27s_Investment_Fund_Foundation
None of these make you a good person. You can do all these things, believe in them, and still be a bad person.
Could be, I would still be interested to know however why an emotionless asshole would be doing these. Does he still feel the need to repent or want to feel morally superior to your average asshole rich person? Or does he just use them as a facade to prevent being blamed as %100 narcissistic sociopath? Or maybe humans are complicated enough that they can spiritually melt firing tens of thousands of people for profit and climate/environment activism in the same pot and don't feel contradicted about it.
I don't think it's that deep, personally. I truly believe someone can analyze their behavior, like eating meat for example, and have moral or health-related objections. This in no way means they aren't a rich asshole billionaire. At the end of the day, he's watching his bottom dollar as an investor. I'm sure everything comes second to that for him.
You can put whatever you want on Wikipedia. You don't think PR firms have longterm Wikipedia editors on retainer for this sort of thing?
Yea, I am sure that happens all the time but I don't really wanna dismiss a piece of information without any further evidence just because of my priors. That is why I posted it here to see if anyone has seen other stuff about this charity which I have heard for the first time.
You're so desperate to think in black and white, it hurts to read the result.
Is that your 1000 tones of grey view of me? lol...
I think the sentiment is that despite any charity or goodwill, he has no reservations in stepping on people in the name of profit. Starting from the position of billionaire = evil, any attempt at explanation becomes an indefensible justification.
I wouldn't generally trust a billionaire to make the humane decision for anything but that is not why I was surprised here. My starting position here is him asking a company to fire tens of thousands of people and lower the pay of more for a more profitable short term investment. I do believe that most people are selfish to some extent but I think people like this are more selfish and hence why my attempt to explain his seemingly more charitable acts from a selfish point of view.
Additionally, I think these people have so much drive to achieve power, it becomes aggressive to the rest of humanity at that point. Sort of "directly and consciously hoarding water for personal gains and comfort during a horrible draught" kind of aggressiveness.
He sounds similar to those insufferable effective altruists. Most of these people have a genuine skill in something narrow, and the willingness to walk all over everyone in pursuit of the 'highest score' achievement on their 'net worth'.
Yet they've convinced themselves that only they can save the world, so they have to make as much money as possible by any means necessary in order to fund misguided charities. They'll burn down the planet and anyone necessary to make money so they can save it.
Sir Chris is still in control of his charity, so really all that money he gave them is still in pursuit of his own goals, the charity is only spending money it makes through its investments. So whilst it sounds so generous to donate billions to charity and I'm sure it brought him great publicity, it's little more than a tax-efficient way to attempt to bring about societal changes that society didn't ask for.
I'm sure it was also nice that whilst he 'donated' billions to the charity, when it came to his divorce settlement, that was taken out of his 'personal fortune' which amounted to less than a billion.
So don't give him that much credit.
I don't get your point. Hitler was vegetarian. In fact, the vast majority of vegetarians/vegans are huge assholes.
I'm pretty sure there are a lot of people who aren't billionaires who do this. I'm not sure "wanting to live longer" is necessarily a billionaire exclusive trait
Yea for sure but I think you miss my point. I am wondering whether if he is a vegetarian because he cares about the environment and animals or just because he thinks it is healthier.
Most bad things in human history have been done by good, kind people.