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MacKenzie Scott donates over $2B in 2024 to 199 organizations
- zabzonk 2y ago[flagged]
- manmal 2y agoIt puts mild pressure on other billionaires, so, I‘d say: No.
- david2ndaccount 2y agolet not thy left hand know what thy right hand doeth
- afavour 2y ago…no?
- barkingcat 2y ago... yes!
- eCa 2y agoI think a more positive read of it is that it provides publicity for the organizations that receive money.
- graemep 2y agoNice does not mean perfect!
- Neonlicht 2y agoObviously when Americans donate money they want a building or scholarship named after them.
- matdehaast 2y agoI find it a very interesting approach to what she is doing. The problem with most philanthropic organizations is that they come to rely on a constant stream of money. I've heard the Gates Foundation have to be very intentional with how they deploy capital. Because whole ecosystems come to rely on that money in an unsustainable way. So when they have met their goals or decided its not working and pull funding, those that relied on the funding basically collapse overnight. Which could lead to even worse outcomes. With her approach, I do wonder if this will occur with many of the organizations she is giving large amount of money to. EDIT: Reminds me of the saying "Give a person a fish and you feed him for a day. Teach him how to fish and you feed him for a lifetime".
- dbacar 2y agoIMHO, I dont think this is her responsibility.
- Vecr 2y agoIs is a donor's responsibility if they're seeking better outcomes.
- jajko 2y agoIf she cares which she most probably is, she / experienced people in charge should put this fact into project planning. But there are limits and nobody sees future, dont expect impossible miracles just because it would be nice.
- Vecr 2y agoIf she just wants it gone/the responsibility off her chest she could send it to one of the really big re-granters.
- graemep 2y agoIt depends on the terms of what she does. Things like the gates foundation want control over what is done and provide a stream of money. That creates continuous dependence on funding. IMO this is deliberate - it means you can "give away" the money but keep the power and the status which are the only benefits for having that much money. If she is making a series of large one off donations that problem does not exist.
- jollofricepeas 2y agoAs stated in the book “Lessons of History,” this is what billionaires should be doing with the wealth that they’ve snatched from the poor, marginalized and unlucky. When we started on this tech journey, the hope was for a better more equal world, Instead we have the worst inequality since the Great Depression, mass surveillance on a global scale and the destruction of the middle class. Inequality is a part of our society. Some are born with better genetics and opportunities in a lucky part of the world. If you are lucky to become a billionaire your purpose is to serve humanity and redistribute that wealth to your workers and to society at large. If not, the only eventual outcome is repression by the billionaire class or forced redistribution through violent revolution. These are the lessons that history has taught us. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Lessons_of_History https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Lessons_of_History
- inglor_cz 2y agoThe poor, almost by definition, don't have enough money to snatch, as amply illustrated by the total share of tech revenue coming from Africa or ghettos in Missouri. In the modern tech world, you become a billionaire by servicing people with enough money to afford a somewhat banal subscription or enough travel under their belt that they need something like AirBnB or TripAdvisor. Almost all the money I ever spent on tech was from the "discretionary" part of my budget, and so did everyone in my surroundings. This may sound bad, but it is probably better than the earlier times, when money was strongly associated with mining of vital resources and similar enterprises. In some places, that still holds, and those places are (with exceptions) usually more brutal and inequal than the West. That said, violent backlash against the rich is certainly possible, but the outcome will likely be the same as it used to - transfer of power and wealth from the capitalists to the apparatchiks of The Party that takes absolute power in the mayhem. People like Ceausescu and Assad were far from poor. Poor elite just isn't a thing in modern civilization.
- feerfreeflight 2y agoNot to be pedantic, but isn’t the billionaire’s class wealth mostly derived from their ownership of an asset class that does draw from everyone, stocks?
- spicyusername 2y agoWhat a gal. The world would be a much different place if we saw more of this kind of wealth transfer.
- croes 2y agoThe world would be a better place if wealth weren’t spread so uneven in the first place.
- the_optimist 2y agoThe ocean would be much better place if the meat weren’t so uneven in the first place.
- Neonlicht 2y agoYou want wealth transfer raise taxes- but you really don't. I observe that Bernie Sanders didn't make it to the White House.
- keiferski 2y agoThis isn’t really wealth transfer, it’s a billionaire funding organizations that work on things she wants to promote. Philanthropy is probably better than merely hoarding wealth, but an actual democratic process would be to directly give the wealth to fellow citizens. Somehow, that never seems to happen…
- roenxi 2y agoRealistically it probably wouldn't make a difference. $2 billion is ~25 cents/person globally, we aren't talking about a significant amount of money here except for the fact that it is concentrated to a small number of people. Which is a problem for a lot of "tax the rich" schemes. The rich don't actually have that much money relative to the large number of people who want a piece of it. The trick is in the effective deployment of capital but that rarely gets enough focus.
- noisy_boy 2y agoIf the transfer is done to orgs working on foundational issues for the poor instead of spreading it directly, the impact could be tangible.
- firstplacelast 2y ago[flagged]
- resoluteteeth 2y agoOptimal for what?
- unpopularopp 2y ago[flagged]
- that_guy_iain 2y agoShe worked at Amazon and was a major part of the work at the start. I don't think there was a prenup, which is a major reason why she got half.
- delecti 2y agoOddly she actually got a quarter, despite seemingly having been "entitled" to half. Though perhaps it isn't so odd; if she's willing to give so much away so quickly, clearly she wasn't merely aiming to fleece him.
- caeril 2y agoShe worked briefly at Amazon, and she was an accountant. She did not work on critical technology, logistics, growth strategy, design, or operations. There is no world in which she deserves, by dint of her contributions, anything more than $1B. You're correct that she is LEGALLY entitled to half, but that doesn't make it right. People can LEGALLY traffic slaves in Yemen, but I'm going to guess you won't be advocating for the God-given right of Akhmed to sell laborers to UAE real estate development companies?
- codq 2y ago"technically doing nothing" what a terrible comment.
- ltnahg 2y agoThe directors of this laundry list of non-profits will be very happy that their high salaries are secure. If only there were a government that could build affordable housing directly. Perhaps from a billionaire tax ...
- Apreche 2y agoThis is good. I won’t say a bad thing about it. I just always wonder if there’s a better way. Would it not be better to use the money to ~~bribe~~ donate to politicians instead? Two billions dollars can change the results of elections and sway a lot of policy at the local, state, and federal level. It’s a matter of wealth amplification, that two billion could have altered the course of several billions in government budgets. Like a big lever moving an absolutely enormous boulder. Why donate to non-profits fighting for something when you can just win the fight by changing the law? Rather than donate to a non-profit that helps the homeless, wouldn’t it be more effective to directly change the policies that lead to homelessness in the first place? Evil Republican megadonors do it, and it’s working great for them. Where are the non-evil leftist megadonors? If it’s an oligarchy, it’s not impossible to have a good an kind-hearted oligarch.
- e40 2y agoGeorge Soros? It’s interesting how reviled he is to his counterparts on the right.
- ZeroGravitas 2y agoHe directly challenged Putin by supporting democracy in Eastern Europe which explains a lot of the bad press he gets. I wonder if you can do good without triggering that particular geopolitical hot potato, which was close to Soros's heart given his upbringing.
- bdangubic 2y agowe JUST saw in the election few months ago that Kamala’s 1.6bn dollars spent wasn’t enough - you cannot just buy the election, you need money but you also need other things…
- ivewonyoung 2y agoYet there is a lot of outcry that Elon Musk bought the election with his ~100 million dollars. It's all political bias in play.
- mkoubaa 2y agoI have several orders of magnitude less resources than she does but I do the thing which I think scales the best. I just give directly to poor people.
- MrMcCall 2y agoEvery little bit helps. What matters to our human being development is how we have tuned our heart to appreciate what we have and how we can positively affect those less fortunate. We should be moved to action, as you are, by the misery of our fellow human beings. Pink Floyd's "On the Turning Away" is a powerful anthem to how modern society's inertia runs in opposition to your heart's powerful compassion, the compassion we should all embrace. Peace be with you, my friend. You are beloved.
- exitb 2y agoThat’s a loaded statement. In terms of directness, how do you decide which people to help? In terms of scaling, how do you know that if everyone did what you do, the resources would actually flow to all parties according to their needs, rather than towards those that are best at reaching wealthy individuals?
- mkoubaa 2y agoI either know a poor person (it helps not to insulate yourself from them) or donate to a direct charity. The most famous of these is GiveDirectly but there are others. It scales because there is by definition no overhead, accounting, or infrastructure
- itsdrewmiller 2y agoYou think givedirectly has no overhead accounting or infrastructure?
- mkoubaa 2y agoCorrect. Operation contributions are opt-in
- MrMcCall 2y agoThis is an object lesson in the Law of Karma that we human beings live within. It is the realworld and realtime application of the concept "You reap what you sow." The joy that Ms. Scott experiences in her life is not comprehendable by the vast majority of human beings for the simple reason that very few of us have billions of dollars to give away. The few who do have such resources rarely give nearly as much to such worthy causes, because most of them are too busily trying to acquire more money with what they already have. On the other hand, her ex-husband can build his mega-yachts and whatever-the-f else he does with his billions, but he will never be happy because his business is built upon brutally oppressing his workers to make its profit. No, he will have no peace because he is a servant to greed and money alone. Sure, he can always have more pleasure, but pleasure is not a substitute for peace and happiness. That's why Ms. Scott is living a joyous life of giving, and Bezos looks like Bill the Cat on TRT. We all reap what we sow. The happiness we help others feel comes back into us within our inner world's peace and joy. As well, the same is true of those who create misery for others. That's why the people who now run America are never -- and I mean never -- happy and peaceful. They are committed to squeezing each human being for all they can, irrespective of how much misery results. It looks to me like they take pleasure in that oppression, and that is the worst result for a human being, to incur those repurcussions. No, those evil bastards must not be gunned down in the streets, because we must be a society of laws and process, but we can and must "take the power back", out of lovingkindness for the oppressed, not to mention for the healing of the Earth. We are each choosing sides, each and every day, and there are only three roads a person can travel: (1) Apathy and willful ignorance for the results our actions have on others, and the actions our society and cultures have on others. (2) Cruel oppression without regard to the misery caused by our actions or those of our society and cultures. (3) Conscious compassion for all human beings we encounter, such that we both try to act in ways that only result in happiness for others and evolve our society and cultures towards greater compassion for all human beings. Everyone starts out with some combination of the three, depending on our personal predilections and societal/cultural training combined with the situations we encounter in life. Regardless, we all have the choice to self-evolve ourselves into caring members of an ever more universally compassionate society. We can care about our mistakes that result in others' unhappiness and then resolve ourselves to stop repeating them. This is the Path of Love, whose purpose is to not only create happiness in others, but to reap the benefits of that happiness in our own inner world. It can be said that the most selfish -- yes, you read that right -- thing one can do is to help others without thought of recompense, for the simple fact that it will come back you in time, every single time. I like to say that giving without regard to receiving creates a bank of magic in the universe that the universe will pay back at the most optimal time and place in the future. Selfless lovingkindness is the purest, greatest magic in the universe. That most religious folks don't espouse this is because they only partake in religion to be on the "only saved" side, or to be in the most dominant group, or simply because that is their culture's inertia. The universe always knows our heart, and our intentions are always present and can later be seen on our faces and in the tone of our voices as our decisions accrue over our lives. You can see the self-satisfied vanity of the oppressors of the world, but you will never see peace and happiness. If a person has cheated every person they could, they will experience less and less joy over time, unless they see the error of their ways, repent, and then endeavor to live life under love's guidance. Ms. Scott is giving so much to so many because her mother's heart is tuned to lovingkindness, and she knows how much of an utterly callous bastard her ex-husband is. So, she is both working to counteract her ex's horrific business practices and funding so many wonderful projects because it brings her the greatest joy a person can imagine. This journey begins with asking the universe to help evolve you into a being of happiness-creating compassion, to the exclusion of all selfishness. Your life will then bloom like a rose in the springtime, but it won't usually happen all at once; it is a long road to defeat our inner selfish tendencies. The best help we can get comes from our Unfathomable Creator, but we must ask for that help; though it is in our best interests, our free will remains sacrosanct. That people choose to remain ignorant of this system of karma does not make it any less real than Eugene Parker's discovery of the solar wind was any less valid in the face of his opponents' overwhelming majority at the time. It's just that most people are too satisfied with this world's pleasures to care. Your peace and happiness is in your hands.
- indigoabstract 2y agoGood for her. Though I wonder, how many would still give, if donations were anonymous, so others would never know who is it that's giving? The moment you hear about the specific persons/organizations making the donations, you cannot help but realize there are also other considerations at play (like publicity), besides the desire to help others.
- piva00 2y agoIt doesn't change anything to the people receiving the donations if it's done by true altruism or for publicity, either way the organisations/people get help. I'd much rather live in a world where all billionaires are acting like MacKenzie Scott and disbursing their unfathomable riches billions at a time (even if there's no true altruism behind it) rather than the current accumulation of obscene amounts of money they do. Of course, in my ideal world would probably not allow the accumulation of billions to exist in the first place.
- edanm 2y agoGreat! If we live in a society that sees this kind of giving as a good thing, and thereby encourage more giving, that seems like net positive for everyone involved!
- comboy 2y agoWhat a trainwreck of a comment section. It's great to see such philanthropy. I would love to see more documentation on process of choosing like e.g. Givewell does. Presumably non-trivial amount went into researching how to optimally allocate the money and some lessons from that could be useful to others.
- RonaldDump 2y ago[flagged]
- hex3 2y ago[dead]
- exitb 2y agoBecause she didn’t legitimately work enough to own 30 billion dollars, as opposed to Jeff?
- whamlastxmas 2y agoAlternatively, get married if your future ex is going to do more good with your money than you
- rrrrrrrrrrrryan 2y agoShe did not marry into wealth - she herself grinded at Amazon in the early days.
- deleted 2y ago[deleted]