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Some people like to do good. In fact, most people like to do good. Ask any kid what they want to be when they grow up and no one will say "I want to become a s

Some people like to do good. In fact, most people like to do good. Ask any kid what they want to be when they grow up and no one will say "I want to become a scary ogre". I want to do good, and most likely you want too. Zuckerberg and Musk and Cuban, apart from their money, are people like me and you. They don't wake up in the morning and think "how can I be a scary ogre today". They want to do good, and they happen to have the money to do it. Why is this miserable?

AlexandrB 6y ago
Because the idea of "good" is can be extremely subjective and might also include things like a tougher IP regime[1], invasion of foreign countries[2], or a drug war[3]. With enough money/influence you can get both major parties to agree with your priorities effectively removing the voters' control of their own country. [1] https://www.vox.com/2015/6/10/8760199/gates-foundation-criticism https://www.vox.com/2015/6/10/8760199/gates-foundation-criti... > "The Gates Foundation has played an extremely negative role in efforts to develop replacements for strong patent rights and high drug prices," James Love, the director of Knowledge Ecology International and a critic of the foundation, writes on his blog. Or as McGoey put it: "There’s immense concern surrounding the Gates Foundation’s position on intellectual property rights, and whether this major global health player is cognizant enough to ensure property rights are fair for citizens in wealthy and poor nations." [2] https://theintercept.com/2016/11/04/koch-senate-hawks/ https://theintercept.com/2016/11/04/koch-senate-hawks/ [3] https://www.forbes.com/sites/chrisroberts/2021/01/12/the-last-drug-warrior-sheldon-adelson-was-the-final-billionaire-to-fight-marijuana-legalization-and-he-lost/?sh=6cb5c1692942 https://www.forbes.com/sites/chrisroberts/2021/01/12/the-las...
junippor 6y ago
I can't even tell if you're being sarcastic or what... Yes, a lot of people like to do good. On the other hand, we've seen from Zuckerberg specifically - not a generic random person - these power moves for as long as he's been on the radar. If you believe Zuckerberg is motivated by wanting to do good, you haven't been paying attention.
wegwerfbenutzer 6y ago
It is miserable because they have too much wealth and too much power. If Zuckerberg cared about doing good instead of accumulating money and power he would have made a few different decision in the past.
COGlory 6y ago
It's miserable because we are reliant on their generosity.
thundergolfer 6y ago
You are making an argument based on the personal attitudes of individual billionaires while OP is making a structural argument. So you are not really responding to them. Further to the point, the personalities and temperaments of people is only weakly correlated with their moral quality, which is what you’re talking about when you talk about “doing good”. For example, many well meaning people who “like to do good” nonetheless participate in factory farming, which is a moral atrocity that subjects tens of billions of animals to suffering and death per year. If you don’t like the animal rights example, take the example of all the “like to do-gooders” who supported Jim Crow.
treeman79 6y ago
Some people like to do good. Some like to be told they are doing good. Subtle difference with big ramifications.
- DyslexicAtheist 6y ago
  define good. what's good for me might be terrible for you.
  - treeman79 6y ago
    Someone’s tire is bald. You know they are broke. You arrange for a tire place to come and replace all the tires. But you leave an anonymous note. You have done good, and seek no reward. Alternate. You show up with a camera crew and surprise the person by giving them tires. Everyone glorifies you for your kindness. End result is the same. Person in need has tires. Yeah. One is a person helping others. One is helping others to help themselves to look good. Both are accomplishing good. There maybe overlap in motive. Both people giving have earned a reward. One of the earth, recognition and status. The others reward is emotional and or spiritual.
catdawg 6y ago
I think the problem here is that we moved away from Monarchies/Feudalism for a reason. If we let single people or families completely control the direction of legislation and justice systems, at some point it will go terribly wrong. Sure right now, Zuckerberg or Musk or Cuban, might be cool dudes with the right intentions and making great things, but what happens when they're gone? Who's going to take control of all that wealth and power? Democratic states aren't perfect, but at least there are fail safes against the wrong people having power at the wrong time. The people supposedly all collectively own the wealth and direction of a state, so a single person can never be that powerful. Authoritarianism or dictatorships will always feel appealing in the face of dysfunctional governments, because there is always someone who is actually good at they do, and effects real change (if you disregard all the usual xenophobia/populism/oppression). In this case, you can see people saying "government is not doing anything about this, so why shouldn't these people fix it". Power eventually corrupts, if not the person then its descendants, at some point it goes terribly wrong and itends up tearing a society apart. This has happened pretty much everywhere. Also the level of wealth some people are accumulating right now is absolutely unheard of in history. You can now "easily" have a business that reaches billions of people from your basement. If this exponential accumulation of wealth continues, government as we know it will become obsolete, and democracy will stop functioning because some people just have too much lobbying power.
skinpop 6y ago
Because they will never do the kind of good that threatens their power and influence.
Melting_Harps 6y ago
> Why is this miserable? Because Zuck's version of 'good' includes building a platform optimized exactly for fomenting discord and hatred in order to create ad revenue and bring in eye balls and clicks. It's a part of the survielence economy and has been weaponized in countless ways, Zuck may not be the one building it any more, he has many of you do that for him. But it stands to reason that of those 3 you listed you have a very clear 'orge' in the bunch. What good has he done for Society over all exactly? Even with unfathomable wealth all he seems to be responsible for is creating a greater divide and discord amongst people and that help promote absurd conspiracies and crate time-wasting habits especially so in developing countries as his platform is what most associate with what the 'internet' as they cannot afford to browse anything else once they have access to it via FB enabled smart phones. I'm glad SpaceX had his satellite blow up on the launch pad! God only knows what horrible things would be possible had it actually made it into orbit. As for Mark Cuban, I'm on the fence but his talk and backing of Andrew Yang makes me think he isn't an ogre, but Zuckerburg certainly is, willing or not at this point.
TheChaplain 6y ago
The issue is the definition of "good". Trump and his supporters probably believed what he did was for the good, and many of us quite strongly disagrees.

AlexandrB 6y ago

Because the idea of "good" is can be extremely subjective and might also include things like a tougher IP regime[1], invasion of foreign countries[2], or a drug war[3]. With enough money/influence you can get both major parties to agree with your priorities effectively removing the voters' control of their own country. [1] https://www.vox.com/2015/6/10/8760199/gates-foundation-criticism https://www.vox.com/2015/6/10/8760199/gates-foundation-criti... > "The Gates Foundation has played an extremely negative role in efforts to develop replacements for strong patent rights and high drug prices," James Love, the director of Knowledge Ecology International and a critic of the foundation, writes on his blog. Or as McGoey put it: "There’s immense concern surrounding the Gates Foundation’s position on intellectual property rights, and whether this major global health player is cognizant enough to ensure property rights are fair for citizens in wealthy and poor nations." [2] https://theintercept.com/2016/11/04/koch-senate-hawks/ https://theintercept.com/2016/11/04/koch-senate-hawks/ [3] https://www.forbes.com/sites/chrisroberts/2021/01/12/the-last-drug-warrior-sheldon-adelson-was-the-final-billionaire-to-fight-marijuana-legalization-and-he-lost/?sh=6cb5c1692942 https://www.forbes.com/sites/chrisroberts/2021/01/12/the-las...

junippor 6y ago

I can't even tell if you're being sarcastic or what... Yes, a lot of people like to do good. On the other hand, we've seen from Zuckerberg specifically - not a generic random person - these power moves for as long as he's been on the radar. If you believe Zuckerberg is motivated by wanting to do good, you haven't been paying attention.

wegwerfbenutzer 6y ago

It is miserable because they have too much wealth and too much power. If Zuckerberg cared about doing good instead of accumulating money and power he would have made a few different decision in the past.

COGlory 6y ago

It's miserable because we are reliant on their generosity.

thundergolfer 6y ago

You are making an argument based on the personal attitudes of individual billionaires while OP is making a structural argument. So you are not really responding to them. Further to the point, the personalities and temperaments of people is only weakly correlated with their moral quality, which is what you’re talking about when you talk about “doing good”. For example, many well meaning people who “like to do good” nonetheless participate in factory farming, which is a moral atrocity that subjects tens of billions of animals to suffering and death per year. If you don’t like the animal rights example, take the example of all the “like to do-gooders” who supported Jim Crow.

treeman79 6y ago

Some people like to do good. Some like to be told they are doing good. Subtle difference with big ramifications.

DyslexicAtheist 6y ago
define good. what's good for me might be terrible for you.
- treeman79 6y ago
  Someone’s tire is bald. You know they are broke. You arrange for a tire place to come and replace all the tires. But you leave an anonymous note. You have done good, and seek no reward. Alternate. You show up with a camera crew and surprise the person by giving them tires. Everyone glorifies you for your kindness. End result is the same. Person in need has tires. Yeah. One is a person helping others. One is helping others to help themselves to look good. Both are accomplishing good. There maybe overlap in motive. Both people giving have earned a reward. One of the earth, recognition and status. The others reward is emotional and or spiritual.

catdawg 6y ago

I think the problem here is that we moved away from Monarchies/Feudalism for a reason. If we let single people or families completely control the direction of legislation and justice systems, at some point it will go terribly wrong. Sure right now, Zuckerberg or Musk or Cuban, might be cool dudes with the right intentions and making great things, but what happens when they're gone? Who's going to take control of all that wealth and power? Democratic states aren't perfect, but at least there are fail safes against the wrong people having power at the wrong time. The people supposedly all collectively own the wealth and direction of a state, so a single person can never be that powerful. Authoritarianism or dictatorships will always feel appealing in the face of dysfunctional governments, because there is always someone who is actually good at they do, and effects real change (if you disregard all the usual xenophobia/populism/oppression). In this case, you can see people saying "government is not doing anything about this, so why shouldn't these people fix it". Power eventually corrupts, if not the person then its descendants, at some point it goes terribly wrong and itends up tearing a society apart. This has happened pretty much everywhere. Also the level of wealth some people are accumulating right now is absolutely unheard of in history. You can now "easily" have a business that reaches billions of people from your basement. If this exponential accumulation of wealth continues, government as we know it will become obsolete, and democracy will stop functioning because some people just have too much lobbying power.

skinpop 6y ago

Because they will never do the kind of good that threatens their power and influence.

Melting_Harps 6y ago

> Why is this miserable? Because Zuck's version of 'good' includes building a platform optimized exactly for fomenting discord and hatred in order to create ad revenue and bring in eye balls and clicks. It's a part of the survielence economy and has been weaponized in countless ways, Zuck may not be the one building it any more, he has many of you do that for him. But it stands to reason that of those 3 you listed you have a very clear 'orge' in the bunch. What good has he done for Society over all exactly? Even with unfathomable wealth all he seems to be responsible for is creating a greater divide and discord amongst people and that help promote absurd conspiracies and crate time-wasting habits especially so in developing countries as his platform is what most associate with what the 'internet' as they cannot afford to browse anything else once they have access to it via FB enabled smart phones. I'm glad SpaceX had his satellite blow up on the launch pad! God only knows what horrible things would be possible had it actually made it into orbit. As for Mark Cuban, I'm on the fence but his talk and backing of Andrew Yang makes me think he isn't an ogre, but Zuckerburg certainly is, willing or not at this point.

TheChaplain 6y ago

The issue is the definition of "good". Trump and his supporters probably believed what he did was for the good, and many of us quite strongly disagrees.