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You minimize this as a $7.15 donation, but as someone with a net worth approximately in this range I don’t see the problem? If someone unsheltered asks for a fa

You minimize this as a $7.15 donation, but as someone with a net worth approximately in this range I don’t see the problem? If someone unsheltered asks for a fast food meal I’ll buy it. If I see a sad story from a stranger with a GoFundMe link I might donate $5 or $10. I don’t expect a news story or anything out of it. But I do like to think my small action has in some tiny way made the world a better place.

javajosh 5y ago
But you don't get a news article about you. I think the implicit injustice here is that the public perception and appreciation of selfless giving is firmly stuck in absolute rather than relative terms. The problem of course is if people started thinking in relative terms then there would be little or no incentive for the wealthy to give anything at all. In this version of a just world, this $180k gift would be just as ignored as the $7.50 gift. The fact that this person gave non-anonymously tells me that it was about PR as much as anything else. BTW, truly blessed are the ones who give anonymously. That, to me, is the ultimate in giving, because you receive nothing, not even notoriety, in return.
- jhanschoo 5y ago
  From the news article, it seems to me there was no push for publicity on the side of Palantir or Karp. And ironically, for someone like Karp, giving anonymously might engender worse speculation if found out.
actually_a_dog 5y ago
One difference here is that in one case, we're talking about someone who's financially independent hundreds of thousands of times over, and has enough financial resources to do real good on a fairly large scale, versus @jdavis703, who still needs to work to provide for himself. One can argue (and this is becoming a stronger argument day by day as the whole "tax the rich" sentiment grows stronger and stronger) that the CEO has a responsibility to give back to the society that allows him to exist [0]. This isn't minimizing your personal act of charity. You don't have the power to, say, make sure that every unhoused person in your city has access to shelter, or that every American has access to an affordable source of potable water, or any of the other shameful situations that exist in the richest country in the world by total GDP[1]. This is bringing the scale of the CEO's act down to something the 99.999% of us who aren't billionaires can comprehend. --- [0]: Of course, I don't mean in the literal sense of "society allows this guy to live," but more that his billionaire status owes in large part to the fact that American society is set up to allow people to become billionaires. [1]: This is to say nothing of fighting climate change, or any other, important, global issue.

javajosh 5y ago

But you don't get a news article about you. I think the implicit injustice here is that the public perception and appreciation of selfless giving is firmly stuck in absolute rather than relative terms. The problem of course is if people started thinking in relative terms then there would be little or no incentive for the wealthy to give anything at all. In this version of a just world, this $180k gift would be just as ignored as the $7.50 gift. The fact that this person gave non-anonymously tells me that it was about PR as much as anything else. BTW, truly blessed are the ones who give anonymously. That, to me, is the ultimate in giving, because you receive nothing, not even notoriety, in return.

jhanschoo 5y ago
From the news article, it seems to me there was no push for publicity on the side of Palantir or Karp. And ironically, for someone like Karp, giving anonymously might engender worse speculation if found out.

actually_a_dog 5y ago

One difference here is that in one case, we're talking about someone who's financially independent hundreds of thousands of times over, and has enough financial resources to do real good on a fairly large scale, versus @jdavis703, who still needs to work to provide for himself. One can argue (and this is becoming a stronger argument day by day as the whole "tax the rich" sentiment grows stronger and stronger) that the CEO has a responsibility to give back to the society that allows him to exist [0]. This isn't minimizing your personal act of charity. You don't have the power to, say, make sure that every unhoused person in your city has access to shelter, or that every American has access to an affordable source of potable water, or any of the other shameful situations that exist in the richest country in the world by total GDP[1]. This is bringing the scale of the CEO's act down to something the 99.999% of us who aren't billionaires can comprehend. --- [0]: Of course, I don't mean in the literal sense of "society allows this guy to live," but more that his billionaire status owes in large part to the fact that American society is set up to allow people to become billionaires. [1]: This is to say nothing of fighting climate change, or any other, important, global issue.