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Now that is a worthy goal to set for a budding entrepreneur: becoming a future philanthropist.

by c1sc0 16y ago

nhebb 16y ago
That was Andrew Carnegie's goal. Way before becoming rich he had a goal to give away mass sums of money. He wrote about his philanthropic philosophy in The Gospel of Wealth, summarized here: http://www.fordham.edu/halsall/mod/1889carnegie.html http://www.fordham.edu/halsall/mod/1889carnegie.html
- rbanffy 16y ago
  Erm... Did Carnegie state his goal was to give away money before he acquired massive amounts of it or was it after being labeled a robber-baron? It's easy to say that being a nice guy was your goal all along after you get caught. Not that Paul Allen is not a nice guy. There seems to be no evidence on the contrary.
  - hnal943 16y ago
    after you get caught Caught doing what? Being successful?
    - rbanffy 16y ago
      Being "successful" also means, at least for me, having a clear conscience. I don't want to do business with people who will do whatever it takes to make a profit. Life is not a zero-sum game. Even if it were, there are limits to what a gentleman should and shouldn't do and Carnegie did a lot of the latter in his pre-philanthropist life.
  - byrneseyeview 16y ago
    Carnegie considered retiring at 35, when he was rich enough not to need to work more. But he kept working for the next few decades, and ended up making about 200X as much. He wrote himself a memorandum, in which he totaled up his net worth and income, and decided it was enough. Apparently it wasn't, but that's a couple thousand libraries, organs, etc. that he otherwise wouldn't have purchased. Oddly enough, Warren Buffett wrote something similar at about the same age, when he also semi-retired. Like Carnegie, he went back to work, multiplied his fortune a few more times, and had a lot more to give away at the end.
    - rbanffy 16y ago
      I agree that Carnegie, in the end, made a lot of good things possible. Still, it bothers me that we are so eager to consider that ends justify the means if the ends favor us. Carnegie ruined lots of people. Along with his good deeds, you must consider the good all these other people never were able to do thanks to him. What makes his good deeds more worthy than the good deeds he prevented?
      - colinplamondon 16y ago
        How did he ruin people? His company was incredibly progressive for its time.
        rbanffy 16y ago
        Ruthless competition, mostly. The example that illustrates his character is not related to this kind of behaviour, but to how he treated his workforce. The Homestead strike was caused by a broken promise to tie salaries to profits which, made in a downturn, reduced payments. When profits returned, he broke the promise, refused to keep salaries tied to profits, locked out the union workers who protested and used violence to end them. In the end, he hired immigrant workers in place of the previous employees, working for less in harsher conditions. Not exactly role model. http://bit.ly/8XRSwN http://bit.ly/8XRSwN This quote is, IIRC (lost track of the book and had to resort to Google) from Theodore Roosevelt.
        Retric 16y ago
        FYI: There is no reason to use url shorteners on hn and many people will not click on them.
        rbanffy 16y ago
        Sorry. The URL was so huge I felt bad. When more than 50% of the message is a insanely long URL, something is clearly wrong.
anigbrowl 16y ago
Chuck Feeney's Atlantic Philanthropies are well worth studying in this regard - they basically apply the same standards and practices to giving money away as Feeney did to making the money in the first place: http://www.atlanticphilanthropies.org/learning/atlantic-report/giving-while-living http://www.atlanticphilanthropies.org/learning/atlantic-repo... Feeney is the guy who came up with the idea of duty-free stores at airports. By the time anyone noticed he was a multi-billionaire, he had already set up his foundation and put almost his entire fortune into it.

Now that is a worthy goal to set for a budding entrepreneur: becoming a future philanthropist.

by c1sc0 16y ago

Now that is a worthy goal to set for a budding entrepreneur: becoming a future philanthropist.

nhebb 16y ago

That was Andrew Carnegie's goal. Way before becoming rich he had a goal to give away mass sums of money. He wrote about his philanthropic philosophy in The Gospel of Wealth, summarized here: http://www.fordham.edu/halsall/mod/1889carnegie.html http://www.fordham.edu/halsall/mod/1889carnegie.html

rbanffy 16y ago
Erm... Did Carnegie state his goal was to give away money before he acquired massive amounts of it or was it after being labeled a robber-baron? It's easy to say that being a nice guy was your goal all along after you get caught. Not that Paul Allen is not a nice guy. There seems to be no evidence on the contrary.
- hnal943 16y ago
  after you get caught Caught doing what? Being successful?
  - rbanffy 16y ago
    Being "successful" also means, at least for me, having a clear conscience. I don't want to do business with people who will do whatever it takes to make a profit. Life is not a zero-sum game. Even if it were, there are limits to what a gentleman should and shouldn't do and Carnegie did a lot of the latter in his pre-philanthropist life.
- byrneseyeview 16y ago
  Carnegie considered retiring at 35, when he was rich enough not to need to work more. But he kept working for the next few decades, and ended up making about 200X as much. He wrote himself a memorandum, in which he totaled up his net worth and income, and decided it was enough. Apparently it wasn't, but that's a couple thousand libraries, organs, etc. that he otherwise wouldn't have purchased. Oddly enough, Warren Buffett wrote something similar at about the same age, when he also semi-retired. Like Carnegie, he went back to work, multiplied his fortune a few more times, and had a lot more to give away at the end.
  - rbanffy 16y ago
    I agree that Carnegie, in the end, made a lot of good things possible. Still, it bothers me that we are so eager to consider that ends justify the means if the ends favor us. Carnegie ruined lots of people. Along with his good deeds, you must consider the good all these other people never were able to do thanks to him. What makes his good deeds more worthy than the good deeds he prevented?
    - colinplamondon 16y ago
      How did he ruin people? His company was incredibly progressive for its time.
      - rbanffy 16y ago
        Ruthless competition, mostly. The example that illustrates his character is not related to this kind of behaviour, but to how he treated his workforce. The Homestead strike was caused by a broken promise to tie salaries to profits which, made in a downturn, reduced payments. When profits returned, he broke the promise, refused to keep salaries tied to profits, locked out the union workers who protested and used violence to end them. In the end, he hired immigrant workers in place of the previous employees, working for less in harsher conditions. Not exactly role model. http://bit.ly/8XRSwN http://bit.ly/8XRSwN This quote is, IIRC (lost track of the book and had to resort to Google) from Theodore Roosevelt.
        Retric 16y ago
        FYI: There is no reason to use url shorteners on hn and many people will not click on them.
        rbanffy 16y ago
        Sorry. The URL was so huge I felt bad. When more than 50% of the message is a insanely long URL, something is clearly wrong.

anigbrowl 16y ago

Chuck Feeney's Atlantic Philanthropies are well worth studying in this regard - they basically apply the same standards and practices to giving money away as Feeney did to making the money in the first place: http://www.atlanticphilanthropies.org/learning/atlantic-report/giving-while-living http://www.atlanticphilanthropies.org/learning/atlantic-repo... Feeney is the guy who came up with the idea of duty-free stores at airports. By the time anyone noticed he was a multi-billionaire, he had already set up his foundation and put almost his entire fortune into it.