You asked for other examples. The following two examples are certainly not the most relevant but they are interesting:
-- Benjamin Franklin, in his will, left £1,000 pounds each to the cities of Boston and Philadelphia, with the proviso that the money should be invested for 100 years, with 25 percent of the principal to be invested for a further 100 years. As a result, Boston wound up in 1990 with a fund of over $5 million, Philadelphia with $2.3 million.) [copy-pasted from a book review by Joseph Heathe in Ethics]
-- From Cliff Landesman’s 1995 2-page-paper (http://bit.ly/2QETQ9Z) ): “I and a dozen or so nickel and dime philanthropists belong to the 2492 Club. We each contributed less than $25 to open a Giftrust mutual fund account (#25000044879) with Twentieth Century Investors. With luck, a millennium after Columbus landed in America, this account will pay out its accumulated value (expected to exceed the equivalent of 26 million in 1992 dollars) to Oxfam America, an organization that fights hunger in partnership with poor people around the world. Other altruistic gamblers who wish to join the 2492 Club, hoping to influence events centuries from now, and betting that current conditions will prevail for another 500 years, should contact the author or Oxfam America.”
PS: In trying to remember where I found the quotes I came across the following two papers which pre-date the current EA discussion and I just post them here in case anyone who’s interested in this stuff hasn’t noted them: Dan Moller’s 2006 paper “Should we let people starve—for now?” (http://bit.ly/2TgJz5T) or Laura Valentini’s 2011 paper “On the duty to withhold global aid now to save more lives in the future” (http://bit.ly/37TbxIG) .
Benjamin Franklin, in his will, left £1,000 pounds each to the cities of Boston and Philadelphia, with the proviso that the money should be invested for 100 years, with 25 percent of the principal to be invested for a further 100 years.
Also of note is that he gave conditions on the investments; the money was to be lent to married men under 25 who had finished an apprenticeship, with two people willing to co-sign the loan for them. So in that regard it was something like a modern microlending program, instead of just trying to maximize returns for benefits in the future.
You asked for other examples. The following two examples are certainly not the most relevant but they are interesting:
-- Benjamin Franklin, in his will, left £1,000 pounds each to the cities of Boston and Philadelphia, with the proviso that the money should be invested for 100 years, with 25 percent of the principal to be invested for a further 100 years. As a result, Boston wound up in 1990 with a fund of over $5 million, Philadelphia with $2.3 million.) [copy-pasted from a book review by Joseph Heathe in Ethics]
-- From Cliff Landesman’s 1995 2-page-paper (http://bit.ly/2QETQ9Z) ): “I and a dozen or so nickel and dime philanthropists belong to the 2492 Club. We each contributed less than $25 to open a Giftrust mutual fund account (#25000044879) with Twentieth Century Investors. With luck, a millennium after Columbus landed in America, this account will pay out its accumulated value (expected to exceed the equivalent of 26 million in 1992 dollars) to Oxfam America, an organization that fights hunger in partnership with poor people around the world. Other altruistic gamblers who wish to join the 2492 Club, hoping to influence events centuries from now, and betting that current conditions will prevail for another 500 years, should contact the author or Oxfam America.”
PS: In trying to remember where I found the quotes I came across the following two papers which pre-date the current EA discussion and I just post them here in case anyone who’s interested in this stuff hasn’t noted them: Dan Moller’s 2006 paper “Should we let people starve—for now?” (http://bit.ly/2TgJz5T) or Laura Valentini’s 2011 paper “On the duty to withhold global aid now to save more lives in the future” (http://bit.ly/37TbxIG) .
Also of note is that he gave conditions on the investments; the money was to be lent to married men under 25 who had finished an apprenticeship, with two people willing to co-sign the loan for them. So in that regard it was something like a modern microlending program, instead of just trying to maximize returns for benefits in the future.
Thanks! These are useful examples.