I wasn’t saying anything about timing or financial / liquidity strategy Zuckerberg should use. Rather, my main point was that Zuckerberg shows no signs of being convinced that either he should take altruism seriously or that, in doing so, EA has a lot to offer.
I see where you’re coming from and you’re right. My point was, the actions of billionaire tech CEOs (and CEOs in general) tend to be put under a microscope by the public and news media merely because they are CEOs of influential companies. So most CEOs try not to do anything that invites more criticism or controversy. It’s true that EA tries to be ‘boringly effective’ and ‘verifiably high impact’. However, as of now EA is still a very niche social movement and it is emphatically not a ‘plain and boring philanthropic choice’ in the same way as donating to your local place of worship or the local YMCA is.
Zuckerberg has been mocked mercilessly for stupid things like ‘looking like an alien’ and ‘sweating during congressional testimony’. He gave a $75 million donation to a bay area hospital and got a building named after his Harvard-educated doctor wife -and he stillgot criticized. The Chan Zuckerberg Initiative tried their best to toe the line and donate to ‘woke’ left wing causes and activists, and those activists once asked him to resign from his own charitable foundation. So now Zuckerberg is just doing zany-but-popular billionaire stuff like building a 7 foot tall statue of his wife or re-recording his favorite pop song. Of course I’m not saying that sort of thing is right or ‘moral’, but you can see Zuckerberg’s point of view from his actions.
Basically I think EA should become a boring thing like the YMCA, to be more impactful. Philanthropic interest and funding tends to be a feast-or-famine thing (hah) for some reason. So I think EA needs to be popular first, and then the billionaire funding may very well follow afterwards.
I wasn’t saying anything about timing or financial / liquidity strategy Zuckerberg should use. Rather, my main point was that Zuckerberg shows no signs of being convinced that either he should take altruism seriously or that, in doing so, EA has a lot to offer.
I see where you’re coming from and you’re right. My point was, the actions of billionaire tech CEOs (and CEOs in general) tend to be put under a microscope by the public and news media merely because they are CEOs of influential companies. So most CEOs try not to do anything that invites more criticism or controversy. It’s true that EA tries to be ‘boringly effective’ and ‘verifiably high impact’. However, as of now EA is still a very niche social movement and it is emphatically not a ‘plain and boring philanthropic choice’ in the same way as donating to your local place of worship or the local YMCA is.
Zuckerberg has been mocked mercilessly for stupid things like ‘looking like an alien’ and ‘sweating during congressional testimony’. He gave a $75 million donation to a bay area hospital and got a building named after his Harvard-educated doctor wife -and he still got criticized. The Chan Zuckerberg Initiative tried their best to toe the line and donate to ‘woke’ left wing causes and activists, and those activists once asked him to resign from his own charitable foundation. So now Zuckerberg is just doing zany-but-popular billionaire stuff like building a 7 foot tall statue of his wife or re-recording his favorite pop song. Of course I’m not saying that sort of thing is right or ‘moral’, but you can see Zuckerberg’s point of view from his actions.
For that matter even Moskovitz sometimes gets the Zuckerberg treatment on this forum itself, and can’t just be a donor giving hundreds of millions of dollars a year. Instead the guy has to politely tiptoe around people’s sentiments while worrying about risks to both EA and his day job as CEO of another multi-billion dollar company. So I wonder if EA is really appealing as a philanthropic choice to other billionaires.
Basically I think EA should become a boring thing like the YMCA, to be more impactful. Philanthropic interest and funding tends to be a feast-or-famine thing (hah) for some reason. So I think EA needs to be popular first, and then the billionaire funding may very well follow afterwards.