7 ms·
$250k books sold, to save lives
- obilgic 6y ago$250k is the revenue? if he wired the whole thing, who covered the costs?
- shric 6y agoBased on https://sive.rs/m https://sive.rs/m and https://sive.rs/n https://sive.rs/n he's self-publishing electronically for $15 (or $4 more for paperback), so I guess the costs are quite small.
- jbc1 6y agoSounds like Derek Sivers did. Wouldn't be his first time giving to charity.
- hypersundays 6y agoHe has a blog post on the site about the approach he took. Instead of going to Penguin to get his book published, he decided to try doing the whole process himself. That included getting translations done, coordinating printing, building a webstore, etc. It's pretty cool tbh
- grativo 6y agoThis is very true, in his about me page, he says that he does not rely on any type of cloud and hosts through his own servers. A very unique approach indeed.
- clintonfunds 6y agoShould have donated to the Clinton Foundation. They do great work.
- garbagetime 6y agoI didn't find this exact page particularly interesting, but I enjoyed exploring the website. It's a good example of a personal website.
- moreaccountspls 6y agoIt's a bit sad that you've taken a wonderful, altruistic act and cheapened it by feeling the need to broadcast it on the internet :(
- jbc1 6y agoCharitable acts being lessened by others learning about them is possibly the most harmful widespread opinion that exists today. Your comment makes it less likely that others will broadcast their charitable giving, result in less people being prompted to give, and overall reduce the amount of giving in the world; all for no gain for yourself or anyone else. You want "a bit sad"? Dwell on that for a while.
- moreaccountspls 6y agoThere's a "Curb Your Enthusiasm" episode where Larry David's character donates to a museum with his name on the donation. There's no self deception for him; he wants to do something good AND he wants the credit. And that's totally fine! The character is self aware enough to know that part of his motivation is selfish. My point is that by not acknowledging the selfish part of "wanting the credit", the author comes off as not self aware [or disingenuous, but let's give them the benefit of the doubt]. That's what I meant by cheapening it for them.
- elbear 6y agoYou sound like an idealist. You expect people to do good without getting anything out of it. The fact that they seek recognition reduces the value of their gesture in your eyes.
- Infinitesimus 6y agoIf the good is done and lives are improved, does it matter is someone felt good about their act? Re: "cheapening", who exactly is ranking the charitable act and why does their perspective matter? I was raised with that ideology but eventually abandoned it. Nowadays, I care a lot more that something helpful is done that the signaling attempt to admit our desire for recognition or hide our involvement in the good deed because that mindset prevents a lot of helpful giving in my experience.
- stopachka 6y agoDerek is one of the kindest people I’ve gotten to know. I reached out to him when I was 17 years old, about to embark on a hacker’s adventure. He took the time to respond, and his advice was always a breeze of encouragement. I recently read both his books. Hell yeah or no I imagined I would love...and was right...but boy was I surprised by your music and people. It’s a book about friendship and authenticity, disguised as a branding book for musicians. I posit his ideas will stand the test of time. Highly suggest reading :) — and darn happy that the orders went to help those in need
- qazpot 6y agoCharity is to be considered charity when nobody gets to know about it. Broadcasting it to the entire world charity to show the world how generous or or good one is, is uncharitable. This is just someone getting ego trip after spending 250k that they did not need.
- Tomminn 6y agoThe lives get saved regardless. If writing a blog post makes you more likely to save an estimated 120 lives, you write the damn blog post. A society in which status seeking individuals are incentivized to publically save lives with their money is a healthy society. None of us are that impressive in the shadows. We're all a little performative, at our core. May as well use our instinct for performance for good.
- wyxuan 6y agoWhile the act of charity isn't as pure if theres a huge amount of publicity surrounding it, it doesn't mean that it isn't charity. Also, it doesn't hurt to have some pride when you do good things.
- imtringued 6y agoThere is nothing wrong with effective charity. The problems start when you're merely creating the appearance of doing something by e.g. doing poverty tourism. Celebrities go to some random poor African town where they take some selfies to make them look sympathetic. They get their twitter likes and followers and then the topic is over for them. Even the celebs are paying the "tour guides", what they've created is an industry where people pretend to be poor to make a living. The problem is it's easy to get good publicity even when things get worse instead of getting better.
- corobo 6y agoWhy? What’s wrong with someone doing good and taking credit? Heck, what’s wrong with them doing good solely for the credit? As long as doing good is the side effect, good is done Is it because you don’t enjoy it as much, knowing who did it? Bit selfish. Or maybe it makes your own anonymous charitable works (or lack thereof) feel not as good? It’s a lot of money but this isn’t a race!
- camgunz 6y agoThank you for doing this. I once knew a guy who said it should be your goal to give over a third of your lifetime earnings to charity (I think it was a third, somewhere between 10% and 50%) and this reminded me instantly of that. Great to read about something super positive in these times.
- renewiltord 6y agoInteresting. This baselines the cost of one life to $2000 effectively. So I could trade two lives for a top of the line Macbook Pro. Buy an SF home for 500 lives. I spend one human life to live in SF every month. Huh.
- owenshen24 6y agoThe notion of "Dead Child Currency" (https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/6cRhG6PKeASdNHqxD/dead-child-currency https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/6cRhG6PKeASdNHqxD/dead-child...) may intrigue you.
- renewiltord 6y agoI enjoyed that. Interesting to me that I value arbitrarily children so low. Getting my turbocharged engine vs. getting the same car without a turbo could have saved a couple of lives. I suspect I would have made the same choice and killed two kids for a turbo if I had thought explicitly in those terms then.
- mtgx 6y agoKind of puts the trolley problem in a new perspective -- forget about saving five people or only one, it's more about whether or not you'd save five people or buy that long-range upgrade for your Tesla. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Trolley_problem https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Trolley_problem
- yboris 6y agoThe original "Dead Child Currency" (also linked from what you posted) https://www.gwern.net/docs/philo/2011-yvain-deadchild.html https://www.gwern.net/docs/philo/2011-yvain-deadchild.html I think it's a classic!
- YetAnotherNick 6y ago> I spend one human life to live in SF every month If the numbers are to be believed, the comparison would be more like one human life for every coffee you buy(<$4 to save a human life).
- k_sze 6y agoI see that on the pages about each of his books, all of the chapters are listed. Are those actually the complete chapters or only excerpts?
- garbagetime 6y agoThey are the full chapters.
- rajekas 6y ago1. He made $250K self publishing a book. That itself is worth writing a post about and such posts are routinely popular on HN. 2. From all appearances, he gave the money away out of generosity rather than the need for recognition. Didn't strike me as celebrity self aggrandizement. 3. He felt both the what and the how are worth publicizing. He's a known 'thought leader' after all. Of the three, only the third is remotely objectionable. I think it's ok to say good things about oneself doing good things. I bet it's correlated with generosity and more likely to be so than the mean spiritedness that comes from wagging a finger at those who are putting themselves out there.