The FTX scam, Sam Bankman-Fried, the Clintons and the Democrats

That's a crazy story.

I guess my main point was billionaires/big business also fund non mainstream sources too. The grassroots Tea Party was engineered and funded by conservative interest groups so they are pretty adept of masking themselves in folksy or non-mainstream ways. It's hard to tell who to believe, especially through a platform that is rife with misinformation and easy to manipulate, or some stodgy old media trying to adapt to the digital age.

 

Dumbacrats. Worthless

 

Yea I would think so but I know next to nothing about Bahamas laws.

 

The biggest takeaway from this is how the wealthy use concepts like "effective altruism" to hide from the fact that they just don't like paying taxes.

Hence why no one should care when a wealthy person does charity.

 

Effective Altruism as it was outlined by MacAskill wasn't supposed to be that at all and I think in theory it is a still a good idea. Like many other philosophical ideas it is how it is implemented in practice and it's difficult to just get around basic greed. We have no idea how things would've turned out if MacAskill hadn't encouraged SBF to go into finance and instead to have gone directly into non-profit work.

In this culture money = power and that's not going to change anytime soon. Effective Altruism if it can set up enough of a moral framework to harness Capitalism to do better things I still think is a good idea. I would frame it more though in terms of Enlightened Self-Interest that while yes people are greedy and would like to make a lot of money it would also be in one's self-interest to address long term problems like Climate Change and habitat loss.

 

It was just the narrative he pushed in order to mask his fraud, made it sound warm and fuzzy.

 

I essentially see it as a way for wealthy people to decide what's better for us and justify not taxing them more.

The world's problems shouldn't be solved by the pet glamour projects of billionaires.

 

It shouldn't be up to billionaires but most governments aren't doing a good job. Most NGO's lack the power, money and many themselves are corrupt.

Capitalism has proven to be the most successful way of moving resources and driving development. That's not going to change in the foreseeable future. If we can find a way to harness that to do good I think we should.

 

Fair enough but at the very least we should not trust wealthy people at face value when they are charitable. We shouldn't let this philosophy be used against increasing tax burdens for the wealthy.


Capitalism being the reason for modernity can be debated though. Think of all the top discoveries in society that lets us live a modern lifestyle. Most of those discoveries started in the public sphere through academia and research. Example being the study of quantum mechanics. No one knew when we started that field that it would lead to the microprocessor revolution that pretty much is the symbol of modernity.

So capitalism being the system that existed during the most expansive era of human history could merely be a factor that has too much noise to isolate and determine whether it is only responsible.

 

Also, I don’t think effective altruism is incompatible with political organizing to seek systemic changes for addressing poverty and global issues that hit the poor the hardest. And Peter Singer has argued that it’s not just the very rich who can impact change. Even people with modest income can do a lot to meaningfully help the poor, if only they are more thoughtful about their charitable giving.

 

Yes Effective Altruism shouldn't be an excuse to get tax write offs but if we want change we need to go to where the money is. It's a fair argument that a lot of the altruism that billionaires do is vanity projects but what is the harm in having Bill Gates devote a bunch of his money to getting clean drinking water in Africa rather than buying a megayacht.

While yes many discoverseries started out in the public sphere it still took a profit motive to get them applied and widely implemented. The Internet is perhaps the best example having started under DARPA. It only became widely successful when it was commercialized. Also many of the uber rich do fund basic research through endowments to universities or through foundations.

The basic issue though is how do we distribute resources while encouraging scientific and technological advancement. Command economies have proven terrible at that. While the Soviet Union did develop some great technology and science it was ultimately a failure in providing for the basic needs of it's people. And let's not forget the terrors of the Great Leap Forward and attempts at centralized planned agriculture of the Khmer Rouge. While many have died and been exploiting by Capitalist economies it's possible more died from command economies with less overall benefit.

 

I don't see it in this lense. I see those "command economies" being extreme push backs to capital based overlording. What I see is the excesses of capitalism leading to an extreme push back that goes too far such as the forced seizing of property from upper middle class land owners.

To me it's more like a cycle. A command economy usually only exists due to excess in wealth inequality making the common folks riled up enough to go to extremes. Can you provide an example of these command economies that don't get created from extreme push back to wealth inequality?

I don't see one system being better than the other. I just see it as a giant cycle. In a sense you can say that FDR essentially saved capitalism with the New Deal prolonging the lifespan of our current economic system before violent pushback occurs.

 

The Soviet Union in the 1950's was no longer a reaction to extreme wealth redistributioin as they had already had a command economy for decades by then. The UK post WWII gradually became more of a command economy until the 1980's when they started dismantling it.

While FDR did increase government intervention in the economy he rejected Socialism and was against it.

As I've stated before I am not for unfettered Capitalism and as I've said to those espousing Libertarianism that I see it as principled but naive. I would say the same for those who espouse Socialism. By that I mean actual Socialism as Marx defined it as the state owning and controlling the means of production and not some flavor of social democracy or what much of the Right screams about which is simply more regulation on markets. Large economies and human nature is too complicated and ingrained for central planning to control. I think even well meaning central planning is ultimately doomed to failure.

 

1950s Society Union is still the consequence of the Bolshevik revolution. So I don't understand the point here. I said that the revolution was an extreme push back but that's what happens when you suppress the common folks with extreme wealth inequality. I don't deny during these times, charismatic power hungry folks use populism to take advantage of the hatred and fork their own authoritarian regimes.

I don't want the extreme pushback I would rather FDR the problems we have now. I never said that FDR was a socialist. I said he saved capitalism by making it more tolerable for the working class.

 

Looks like mastermind Sam Bankman Fried found one big doofus ready to partner up, no questions asked: