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chadrs | 5 years ago

It just depends on whether you trust a government or a rich philanthropist to "properly use" capital (get the most impact/$).

If you let billionaires make the choices then sure you get some like Feeney/Gates/Buffett but you get Koch brothers.

Government could theoretically do a more equitable job but only if social programs are run competently. Think about the leadership of EPA and HUD.

discuss

order

Rotten194|5 years ago

Tax dollars go vastly more to dropping bombs on civilians in the middle east and ICE and the NSA than they do to any positive social program (ignoring things like social security that are funded by a separate tax that billionaires wouldn't pay much into under most schemes). I don't love the outsized influence on society that billionaires have, I certainly don't love the Koch brothers -- but I think looking at the $X pool of money spent on philanthropy by billionaires per year, it is probably much better distributed than that same pool of money would be if it was paid as income taxes.

kelnos|5 years ago

So the thing is... tax dollars go more to dropping bombs on civilians in the Middle East and to ICE and the NSA because that's what people overwhelmingly want. I guarantee you that if public opinion shifted hard against these things, we'd see less funding over the years toward them.

But it doesn't. Regardless of what we say here, the majority of the US wants a big military, and wants hard immigration controls.

Then it becomes a different argument: should we tax the wealthy more if it means the money will go to government initiatives that the majority seems to want, even though a minority of us believe that those things are largely bad for society and the world, and represent short-term thinking that is a result of bad risk assessment? Essentially, should we let the use of this money be directed by the will of the people (rather than a few ultra-rich people) even if we believe the will of the people is often wrong?

I don't have great answers to this. As another commenter mentioned, the billionaire-philanthropist system is good when we have people like Feeney, but fails when we have people like the Kochs. Do we have a net excess of Feeneys in the world, or Kochs? And even if we have the former, is that still a good thing; could we get more fair or equitable outcomes if we did let electorate decide how to allocate these funds? And even if we couldn't, is it antithetical to democratic values to go against the will of the people, even if the people are wrong? And if so, does that matter? I tend to think it does, but I can see the argument for both sides.

throwaway0a5e|5 years ago

>If you let billionaires make the choices then sure you get some like Feeney/Gates/Buffett but you get Koch brothers.

You just disagree with the things the Kochs choose to fund. You could have easily said Murdoch instead (or Bloomberg if you wanted to pick someone who's hate crosses party lines).

Were the government funding the causes these billionaires fund the causes would still be controversial. We just wouldn't have a single person to have the lion's share of the blame.

frenchy|5 years ago

That's kind of the point though. Whether you believe that decisions ought to be made by the people, or by whoever has the most money is sort of an axiomatic thing. It's not like we have any good way of testing which one is "better".

munificent|5 years ago

> You just disagree with the things the Kochs choose to fund.

Sure, and I'm also not a fan of Jeffrey Dahmer's taste in fine dining, but I don't think it is reasonable to chalk that up to a mere difference of appetite.

> Were the government funding the causes these billionaires fund the causes would still be controversial.

Were the government funding those causes we could stop funding them because they are horrible and people hate them.

triceratops|5 years ago

> We just wouldn't have a single person to have the lion's share of the blame

Correct. Then we'd only have the electorate i.e ourselves to blame.

bzbarsky|5 years ago

And just to be clear, the Koch brothers fund things like efforts to end civil asset forfeiture, not just the things people like to get mad at them for in the media...