warning the Tesla founder his wealth would go to “left-wing nonprofits that will be chosen by Bill Gates.”
Am I missing something or does this argument make no sense? As far as I can tell, Musk can easily fulfill his giving pledge by giving to his preferred not-left-wing nonprofits without deferring to Bill Gates.
I mean… if I were a conservative billionaire, I would be extremely wary about misuse and subversion of the principles that started some foundations (Mellon is the most egregious, but also Rockefeller, Ford, MacArthur...) and a few months ago we had in this very forum a discussion, if memory serves, of the terrible philanthropic choices of MacKenzie Scott. While I obviously think it is desirable for billionaires to spend money on effective charity giving, I also feel there’s a reasonable case to be made for that money that would conventionally be routed into philanthropy to do more good if directed toward innovation: sometimes through philanthropy to individuals and early projects, sometimes through investment in companies capable of creating major breakthroughs.
Just made a search and, rather embarrassingly, I couldn’t find an actual long discussion in the forum (memory didn’t serve as well as I had thought). I think I conflated the 2 comments of Ian Turner and Jason on this topic (in the forum post The ugly sides of two approaches to charity by Julia Wise from January 13th 2025) with EA-focused criticisms of MacKenzie Scott’s donations from this reddit thread, starting from PEEFsmash’s post:
This is bad and neoliberals should be economically literate enough to know why.
Cost effectiveness of interventions + room for additional funding. Scott is completely disregarding both concepts and giving money to whatever sounds good. Mostly trendy social topics. There will eventually be a book written on Scott’s philanthropy and it will probably have accomplished nothing at all. Would be better off as capital for Bezos to have allocated privately with the intention of profit (Amazon and other Bezos projects will do more total good for humanity than all of Scott’s cockamamey donations do) and the money would certainly do more good via the Gates/Effective Altruism style of hyper targeting the most cost effective causes, giving to each only as much as they can each deploy, and funding research into high financial risk but high expected return research, both for profit and not-for-profit.
I interpreted this as the challenge of setting up a foundation with one purpose in mind, and then the people you hire executing something different because of the values they bring to the table. In general, I’d guess that people who work in philanthropic spaces skew left-wing, and so whatever mandate you set will end up skewing more left-wing than you intend (if you yourself are not left-wing).
He was talking about counterfactuals here. I think he’s attempting to convince a lot of right wing billionaires that if they donate to GHD charities for instance than this will cause Bill Gates to redirect some of his GHD money towards left wing nonprofits.
That’s how Thiel said he persuaded Musk. He said he looked up actuarial tables and found the probability of Musk’s death in the coming year equated to giving $1.4 billion to Gates, who has long sparred with the Tesla CEO.
“What am I supposed to do—give it to my children?” Musk responded, in Thiel’s telling. “You know, it would be much worse to give it to Bill Gates.”
I think this would only make sense if Musk had specifically willed his pledge money to the gates foundation?
Am I missing something or does this argument make no sense? As far as I can tell, Musk can easily fulfill his giving pledge by giving to his preferred not-left-wing nonprofits without deferring to Bill Gates.
I mean… if I were a conservative billionaire, I would be extremely wary about misuse and subversion of the principles that started some foundations (Mellon is the most egregious, but also Rockefeller, Ford, MacArthur...) and a few months ago we had in this very forum a discussion, if memory serves, of the terrible philanthropic choices of MacKenzie Scott. While I obviously think it is desirable for billionaires to spend money on effective charity giving, I also feel there’s a reasonable case to be made for that money that would conventionally be routed into philanthropy to do more good if directed toward innovation: sometimes through philanthropy to individuals and early projects, sometimes through investment in companies capable of creating major breakthroughs.
Seems like a great reason for donors to give during their own lifetimes instead of setting up a long-term foundation.
I couldn’t find this discussion, would you mind pointing me to it?
Just made a search and, rather embarrassingly, I couldn’t find an actual long discussion in the forum (memory didn’t serve as well as I had thought). I think I conflated the 2 comments of Ian Turner and Jason on this topic (in the forum post The ugly sides of two approaches to charity by Julia Wise from January 13th 2025) with EA-focused criticisms of MacKenzie Scott’s donations from this reddit thread, starting from PEEFsmash’s post:
I interpreted this as the challenge of setting up a foundation with one purpose in mind, and then the people you hire executing something different because of the values they bring to the table. In general, I’d guess that people who work in philanthropic spaces skew left-wing, and so whatever mandate you set will end up skewing more left-wing than you intend (if you yourself are not left-wing).
He was talking about counterfactuals here. I think he’s attempting to convince a lot of right wing billionaires that if they donate to GHD charities for instance than this will cause Bill Gates to redirect some of his GHD money towards left wing nonprofits.
This interpretation is not true. Thiel was talking specifically about money going to Gates in the event of Musk dying:
I think this would only make sense if Musk had specifically willed his pledge money to the gates foundation?
Huh, thanks for letting me know.