Asklemmy

In these comments: People who think someone can accumulate obscene personal wealth and then give a small percentage away makes them good. But if someone dares suggest taxing that obscene wealth they are a monster.

They've all done at least one good thing that's a insanely low bar that's very subjective. Name one that isn't more good than harm in the world? They don't exist.

Trick question.

The billionaires who do good don’t want their names attached to their deeds because that defeats the purpose. The point of altruism is you don’t want credit.

(Seriously there aren’t many, though, because if you’re hoarding money, you’re a horrible person.)

What? They're greedy humans who are doing things that have terrible consequences out of selfishness, not mustache twirling cartoon villains out to destroy the world for destruction's sake. I'm sure every single billionaire in the world has done something good at some point. That doesn't justify the kind of wealth disparity that makes their existence possible though.

Bruce Wayne.

Millburn Pennybags or Uncle Pennybags gave you $200 every time you passed go.

The problem isn't a billionaire that's done anything good, the problem is a billionaire who has done more good things than bad.

Those don't exist.

There's no amount of good you can do to make up for the amount of exploitation you had to do in order to get to be a billionaire.

It doesn't mean that a billionaire can't do anything good. It just means the world would still be better off without them.

Michael Kelly caused Blockbuster to go out of business.

Mike Cannon-Brookes (co-founded Atlassian) has set up a 1.5b green fund to invest in green energy projects

My two cents:

1. The current problem is rather that relatively many rich people are trying to do good things. The vast amount of private donations and privately funded NGOs, etc., have a strong influence within traditional, often national, political and governmental processes. This has had good and bad consequences and has been done with good and not so good intentions. Even if all consequences were good, the question remains to what extent we object to the fact that the choices of where to put money have been made by individuals and not arrived at through democratic processes, which can also lead to good or bad consequences.

2. It is unfortunate that "effective altruism" has become the trendy moral framework for many wealthy individuals, especially within Silicon Valley, to make decisions about where they put their money and how. Effective altruism is a questionable moral theory because it is primarily about the question of "how" to act and less about why. The theory suggests no underlying value system. As a result, it remains a values-free form of consequentialism, unlike, say, utilitarianism, a form of consequentialism that does propose an underlying value, namely happiness - and thus happiness maximization as a goal. Moreover, "effective" is a vague term, which also remains relatively free to fill in.

The free-fillability of effective altruism combined with the inherently individual choices of, well, individuals, currently creates friction between wealthy individuals and democratically elected bodies.

This is imho the current issue we need to think about, regardless of any "goodness" of consequences. Where do the responsibilities, rights, duties, freedoms and liabilities of wealthy individuals start, lie and end with respect to those of democratically elected governments, other representatives of the people, and, of course, 'regular' citizens.

Anything? That seems like an easy goal to score on. Maybe you mean "done good overall"?

Current Agha Khan founded the Agha Khan Development Network which has done a fair amount of good in the developing world.

Double dog dare me?

MacKenzie Scott