[FRIAM] Patriotic Millionaires
Marcus Daniels
marcus at snoutfarm.com
Mon Mar 7 13:03:07 EST 2022
I guess I don’t see the issue. If a millionaire feels like they can sponsor advertisement and get more total money spent, that seems like a good call?
And it seems fine and unavoidable to me to encourage people to project their values into a lower dimensional space so that the binning effects can be more potent.
I don’t see why it is a shitty position to take. I would take that position: If we can’t do this right, I’m not interested in doing damage control.
It is like when Patrick Gelsinger said they could spend a lot more money if the innovation act was passed. Lay the groundwork for a system that is sustainable, and then more people will participate.
From: Friam <friam-bounces at redfish.com> On Behalf Of Eric Charles
Sent: Monday, March 7, 2022 9:52 AM
To: The Friday Morning Applied Complexity Coffee Group <friam at redfish.com>
Subject: Re: [FRIAM] Patriotic Millionaires
Pick a cause if you want, or just send your money to the government if the point is that you think the government should have it. ¯\_ (ツ)_/¯
A Javelin missile costs $175,203 according to Wikipedia. 4 years of college education is cheaper than that at most institutions. Any millionaire could just cover one of those, if they thought that was the best use of their money. Any millionaire could cover 4 of them, and still have a significantly higher net worth than the median American under 40. We need to stop pretending otherwise. If someone has several million, they could cover a whole lot more and still be doing just fine.
"Look, man, I think helping kids go to college is a morally crucial activity and that those who have an obligation to support it should do so... But I won't help with that unless I know a legislature is forcing lots of other people to help kids go to college!" Well.... ok.... but that's a pretty shitty position to take.
Maybe you think it's so important that you want to help yourself, and you also you think others should be forced to help. Sure. I don't like that position, but it is sensible, and you can morally ground it in all sorts of ways. But no level of moral importance should exist as a category where you won't help unless everyone else is forced to as well. Yes, people take that position all the time. But it is a morally shitty position, and we should treat it that way.
Phrased differently: Having the government pick up the slack when individual action is insufficient can often make sense. Claiming that only government action should happen, and then acting as if that claim somehow relieves individuals from any obligation to live up to their purported moral values, is crap.
If you think it is important to support local kids getting a college education, then step up. You are in absolutely no sense "a bum" or "a sucker" if you help someone afford a college education and your neighbor doesn't. That's not how moral action works. Not at all. The correct response to someone trying to act that way is to try to force them to admit the obvious truth, which is that they have chosen not to support whatever the cause is that is in question.
Again, if they are supporting the cause, and adding on top of their individual support a statement that they also think others should do more, that's a much more defendable position. Statements like "I think the arts should be supported, which is why I donated $XX,XXX to The Kennedy Center, while lobbying my federal congressperson for more tax support" is perfectly reasonable, as is "I think we need to better support local kids going to college, which is why I provided 5 $X,XXX local-kid scholarships this local high school graduates, while also talking with my state congressperson about upping state funding to state schools."
Do a survey of the "Patriotic Millionaires" and ask them how much more they paid in taxes than what they owed. My guess is that you would find $0 as the across the board answer. If it's not $0 across the board, certainly the median will be $0.
On Mon, Mar 7, 2022 at 9:47 AM Marcus Daniels <marcus at snoutfarm.com<mailto:marcus at snoutfarm.com>> wrote:
Let’s say it is not a box of cookies but a four year college scholarship or a Javelin missile launcher. The millionaire might be able to pay those individually, but no one else. In that situation there is no sales for the individual girl scouts to perform. At best a few heroic medium-sized donations.
Some purchases will be out of reach without spreading the cost around, even over thousands of millionaires.
On Mar 7, 2022, at 6:04 AM, Eric Charles <eric.phillip.charles at gmail.com<mailto:eric.phillip.charles at gmail.com>> wrote:
Marcus,
Let's say you have a neighbor who's always talking about wanting to support the girl scouts, and who even goes so far as to set up a web page about how important it is to support the girl scouts, and pays to have signs printed and distributed around town about how important it is to support girl scouts. You have a cousin in the girl scouts, so you send her over with the girl-scout cookie order form. The neighbor takes a look at the forms and tells your cousin "While I do think I should support girl scouts, I am not going to give you any money unless everyone else in the neighboorhood is forced to give you money too. Don't ask me to be a chump."
What would we make of that?
On Sun, Mar 6, 2022 at 11:13 PM Marcus Daniels <marcus at snoutfarm.com<mailto:marcus at snoutfarm.com>> wrote:
Facebook had advertisements on TV for a few months talking about their efforts to review content for fake news. They advocated government regulation. Commonality being that a taxation or regulation impacts them and their competitors in the same way, so their effective power and influence won’t be negatively impacted. “Don’t ask me to be a chump.”
On Mar 6, 2022, at 8:02 PM, Eric Charles <eric.phillip.charles at gmail.com<mailto:eric.phillip.charles at gmail.com>> wrote:
Frank,
That all seems 100% positive to me.
Do you also routinely publicly complain about how legislatures are lax in not forcing you to do more of that sort of thing, because you strongly think that you should do more, but are unwilling to without the government forcing you to?
THAT is what the Patriotic Millionaires are doing.
On Sun, Mar 6, 2022 at 9:43 PM Frank Wimberly <wimberly3 at gmail.com<mailto:wimberly3 at gmail.com>> wrote:
I probably shouldn't volunteer to be a case in your argument but...
I do make donations to universities and a church. Today my wife and grandson Matthew assembled packages of hygiene products for Ukrainian refugees which included things like towels, toothpaste, toothbrushes, soap, shampoo etc. This was done at United Church of Santa Fe. As for financial contributions we spend $20k per year for tuition at Matthew's school which is a Montessori school for kids with executive function problems. There are a number of scholarship students whose families wouldn't be able to send their kids there without help.
The church group put together 137 packages this morning. We donated funds for the purchase of some of the stuff.
Melinda Gates said that if you're a billionaire you can donate half of your assets without any impact on your lifestyle. But that's a different question.
Frank
---
Frank C. Wimberly
140 Calle Ojo Feliz,
Santa Fe, NM 87505
505 670-9918
Santa Fe, NM
On Sun, Mar 6, 2022, 7:24 PM Eric Charles <eric.phillip.charles at gmail.com<mailto:eric.phillip.charles at gmail.com>> wrote:
While some of the goals of groups like "Patriotic Millionaires" are admirable, I can never get past the blatant hypocrisy of it all. Maybe "hypocrisy" isn't exactly the right term. You could also see the part that bugs me as a bizarre worship of the benefits of authority over individual choice. Let me rephrase their primary claim: "I, as a rich person, recognize that I really should give more of my money to certain causes, but I adamantly refuse to do so unless forced to do so by the federal legislature."
What is anyone really to make of that position? Is it any different than trying to look virtuous by saying that you know you should stop using child labor in your mine, while also publicly refusing to stop unless the government makes you?
On Thu, Mar 3, 2022 at 3:08 PM glen <gepropella at gmail.com<mailto:gepropella at gmail.com>> wrote:
Obviously, I'm either procrastinating or unclear on how best to do actual work today because here is yet another thing I meant to talk about with someone, anyone, awhile back:
https://patrioticmillionaires.org/about/
A salon participant recently asked whether "greed" was our most nefarious trait as a species. It's a great question for sparking discussion. My answer was that the most nefarious trait of *all* species is myopia, the inability to reason over externalities, from pond scum to the Trust <https://raised-by-wolves.fandom.com/wiki/Trust>. But to de-emphasize what people think of as "greed", I said "Trying to ensure you have enough money to live out your life in relative comfort is not greed. Greed is, after acquiring billions of dollars, you feel the need to acquire more billions of dollars."
I found Patriotic Millionaires prior to that conversation. And it seems legit ... a set of outwardly greedy people who recognize limits to their greed ... a recognition that there's a spectrum of merit, some luck, some effort, some systemic infrastructure, etc. Overall, [m|b]illionaire philanthropy (and especially effective altruism) seem like jokes to me, very postmodern jokes. "Here, let me given you a billion dollars without fundamentally rewriting your genetic code." Pffft. Give anyone enough money and you'll corrupt them fundamentally, often against their will. Philanthropists know this. Effective Altruism is an oxymoron. You can't both be coercive and altruistic at the same time. >8^D
Anyway, I'd welcome any opinion on Patriotic Millionaires.
--
glen
When elephants fight, it is the grass that suffers.
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