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If you're a young personal at the start of your career, then I agree it could easily make more sense to invest it in yourself (e.g. education, trying out a star

If you're a young personal at the start of your career, then I agree it could easily make more sense to invest it in yourself (e.g. education, trying out a startup, graduate school).

vinceguidry 11y ago
Whole-heartedly agreed. Until you have more money than you know what to do with, the expected social returns from just about everywhere you put your money would be far dwarfed by the returns you'd get from investing in yourself and giving back once you've got enough piled up to where it doesn't matter one whit whether you have it or not.
- Sven7 11y ago
  The expertise and worldviews one accumulates in piling up indecent amounts of cash, doesn't always help in it's eventual efficient distribution.
  - eru 11y ago
    It probably doesn't hurt either. Bill Gates (and Warren Buffett) seem to be doing fine at philanthropy.
- tedsanders 11y ago
  That doesn't make sense to me. If you give money to poorer people, it allows them to invest in themselves at a higher rate of return than you can achieve.
  - deleted 11y ago
    [deleted]
  - derefr 11y ago
    No; ten people accruing compound interest (for example) on $100 is not nearly as good as one person accruing compound interest on $1000, and then distributing the dividends. Why? Because fixed costs eat away the interest gains of the ten much more than the one. Every system has friction. You have to concentrate power to overcome friction and get things done. We'd be knocking off the world's problems a lot faster if we could "focus fire" on them. Ten diseases that might each take a decade to cure with 1/10th the donation could be solved half the time or less if each disease got a year of all the donations. But charity is more about signalling your clever pet cause than global optimization of future world-states, so nobody will let go of their second-best (or, realistically, 897th-best) charity.
    - tedsanders 11y ago
      If it is indeed socially optimal to concentrate wealth, then we should advocate a regressive tax policy and encourage the poor to donate to the upper middle class. Do you know of published research that supports this conclusion? I'm honestly curious.

If you're a young personal at the start of your career, then I agree it could easily make more sense to invest it in yourself (e.g. education, trying out a startup, graduate school).

vinceguidry 11y ago

Whole-heartedly agreed. Until you have more money than you know what to do with, the expected social returns from just about everywhere you put your money would be far dwarfed by the returns you'd get from investing in yourself and giving back once you've got enough piled up to where it doesn't matter one whit whether you have it or not.

Sven7 11y ago
The expertise and worldviews one accumulates in piling up indecent amounts of cash, doesn't always help in it's eventual efficient distribution.
- eru 11y ago
  It probably doesn't hurt either. Bill Gates (and Warren Buffett) seem to be doing fine at philanthropy.
tedsanders 11y ago
That doesn't make sense to me. If you give money to poorer people, it allows them to invest in themselves at a higher rate of return than you can achieve.
- deleted 11y ago
  [deleted]
- derefr 11y ago
  No; ten people accruing compound interest (for example) on $100 is not nearly as good as one person accruing compound interest on $1000, and then distributing the dividends. Why? Because fixed costs eat away the interest gains of the ten much more than the one. Every system has friction. You have to concentrate power to overcome friction and get things done. We'd be knocking off the world's problems a lot faster if we could "focus fire" on them. Ten diseases that might each take a decade to cure with 1/10th the donation could be solved half the time or less if each disease got a year of all the donations. But charity is more about signalling your clever pet cause than global optimization of future world-states, so nobody will let go of their second-best (or, realistically, 897th-best) charity.
  - tedsanders 11y ago
    If it is indeed socially optimal to concentrate wealth, then we should advocate a regressive tax policy and encourage the poor to donate to the upper middle class. Do you know of published research that supports this conclusion? I'm honestly curious.