8 votes

Why is evil more charismatic than good?

15 comments

  1. [14]
    PendingKetchup
    Link
    Resentment for the rich isn't so equivalent to resentment of success that you can just abut them in the same noun phrase. People resent the rich not because they are successful but because they've...

    At first, you might suspect that this is just the effect of general resentment for the rich, resentment for success.

    Resentment for the rich isn't so equivalent to resentment of success that you can just abut them in the same noun phrase. People resent the rich not because they are successful but because they've leveraged their success to appropriate tens to hundreds of thousands of times their fair share of society's resources, and retained them for an appreciable length of time. Bill Gates still has something like a hundred billion dollars; he needs maybe two? ten? million dollars for everything a single person could ever justifiably own. He's quite deliberately doing good as cost-effectively as possible, which he can only do because of all the money he has collected and retained, and it's not clear how we should count it.

    (Of course, it is mainly nerds who are the best people and who are moving society forward.)

    This is not an "of course".

    14 votes
    1. [13]
      skybrian
      (edited )
      Link Parent
      I don't understand your point about how much money people need for themselves, since as you acknowledge, this isn't about spending money on yourself. Or at least not in Bill Gates' case. It's...

      I don't understand your point about how much money people need for themselves, since as you acknowledge, this isn't about spending money on yourself. Or at least not in Bill Gates' case.

      It's about the power to take on ambitious projects, like eliminating diseases. It seems to me that it makes sense to praise or blame the people taking these on based on whether you think their projects are a good idea or not? So it sort of makes sense that anti-vaxxers don't like Bill Gates much.

      There is another argument that nobody should have such power, but I'm not too sympathetic given how dysfunctional the U.S. government often is. Democracy is important for reasons, but given how people vote and what kind of politicians we get, I think we're fortunate that's not the only source of power.

      3 votes
      1. [10]
        spctrvl
        Link Parent
        I mean, I think there's a pretty solid case for the extreme wealth and income inequality in this country being the fundamental cause of government dysfunction. The government would be able to do a...

        I mean, I think there's a pretty solid case for the extreme wealth and income inequality in this country being the fundamental cause of government dysfunction. The government would be able to do a lot more if the rich hadn't spent the last forty-odd years using their wealth to take it apart in order to further increase their wealth. Philanthropy is better than the alternative, but I'm certainly not going to sing the praises of those who use their vast sums of stolen wealth to try change the world in an autocratic manner, even if I happen to agree with the changes they want to make.

        9 votes
        1. [9]
          skybrian
          Link Parent
          I agree that inequality is a serious problem. On the other hand, large, ambitious projects require large amounts of money. (Or equivalently, power.) They might be funded by the government or a...

          I agree that inequality is a serious problem. On the other hand, large, ambitious projects require large amounts of money. (Or equivalently, power.) They might be funded by the government or a company or a charity, but in any case, there are going to be large sums involved, and some sort of decision-making process where a few people decide on the overall plan for how the funds will be spent. The people taking part in that decision-making are inherently going to have more power than most.

          It seems to me that it’s good that there are a diversity of approaches for funding charitable causes. Governments are by far the largest spenders, but it seems to me that if the only way to get significant funding were to get legislators to approve, we would be a lot worse off. This is particularly true of politically controversial projects like Planned Parenthood and art funding and stem cell research.

          So, I’m not on board with the idea of a world where the government had somewhat more money and there were no wealthy charities making their own choices. It seems like more of a monoculture, where politically popular things get funding erratically, depending on the politics of the day, and there are no alternatives when the legislature cuts funding.

          1 vote
          1. [4]
            spctrvl
            Link Parent
            I see where you're coming from with that, and definitely agree that government shouldn't be the only source of charitable work, but reducing inequality also allows working class people more time...

            I see where you're coming from with that, and definitely agree that government shouldn't be the only source of charitable work, but reducing inequality also allows working class people more time and money to contribute to charitable causes of their choosing, which I think is a more democratic and preferable model to billionaire philanthropy, which suffers in my opinion from many of the same issues as you point out with government charity. Particularly considering that, if you'll allow me some cynicism, a lot of philanthropy work is done as much to whitewash the reputation of billionaires as individuals and as a class, as it is to genuinely improve the world.

            5 votes
            1. [3]
              skybrian
              Link Parent
              Yes, I think there is a lot of charity work that deserves criticism on the merits. Or, you know, not giving money to charity at all. Charitable foundations are an example of restricted use of...

              Yes, I think there is a lot of charity work that deserves criticism on the merits. Or, you know, not giving money to charity at all. Charitable foundations are an example of restricted use of funds, which restricts their power somewhat.

              It seems like the Gates Foundation is a bizarre example to start with, though, if you want to talk about billionaires spending their money badly.

              1 vote
              1. [2]
                spctrvl
                Link Parent
                I never mentioned the Gates Foundation myself, I was speaking about philanthropy more broadly. Although, since it came up, the Gates Foundation is a lot more problematic than the hagiographic...

                I never mentioned the Gates Foundation myself, I was speaking about philanthropy more broadly. Although, since it came up, the Gates Foundation is a lot more problematic than the hagiographic media coverage would lead one to believe; it might even be one of the better examples to start with on the problem of philanthropy because of that.

                While I was looking for another article1, these two are decent primers on the medical side of it. The gist of it is that Gates Foundation money is spent inefficiently on flashy things that play well in the media, such as polio and malaria eradication, even when those don't represent the major public health concerns for the involved countries, and such money would be much better spent on improving basic healthcare infrastructure. All well and good you might say, it's free money anyway. But there is far from an unlimited supply of trained doctors and medical equipment in the developing world, and this focus causes shortages of both, actively harming efforts to improve this basic care. The Gates Foundation also advocates for a restrictive IP regime that hampers efforts for the development of affordable and locally manufactured medicine, fostering a continued relationship of dependency in the global south, and through the foundation's grossly outsized portion of global health spending, it places a severe chilling effect on its critics within the field, as well as without through its significant media contributions.

                On the education side of things, I haven't found any articles quite as comprehensive, but here are two decent ones. In short, I think the Gates Foundation's impact on education has been a lot more unambiguously negative. It would not be much of a stretch to say that it's actively undermining our public education system just through its fights with teachers' unions and advocacy of the privatization of education with charter schools, and that's before getting into its hard push for standardized testing driven metrics opposed by teachers and education experts alike. The latter I think cuts into the heart of the issue with this sort of large scale philanthropy, even when it's done with good intentions and not as a front to push a political agenda, and that's its lack of accountability. It doesn't matter how little they know of the problems they're trying to fix, by stint of their wealth, billionaires have the power to direct other people's labor as they see fit, and have a practically guaranteed seat at the table, regardless of the efficacy of their programs, regardless of how evident it is to people who've actually studied the problems they're trying to fix that what they're trying won't work, none of that really amounts to much against what the billionaire's gut instinct tells them they should do with their undemocratic power.

                One of the things I utterly loathe about all of the Gates conspiracy theorists is that Gates and his foundation badly need criticism, but instead of talking about one of the many real and documented problems with them, these idiots would rather latch on to some paranoid rambling about microchips in vaccines or whatever that would take all of two seconds' clear thought to disregard. It sucks all the air out of the room and leads people to believe that only whackos distrust the Gates Foundation, or billionaire philanthropy in general, when it's something we should all be critical, or at least aware of the flaws of.

                1. Come to think of it, it may have been a talk or interview, probably by Anand Giridharadas, who wrote a book on the issues with billionaire philanthropy. I'll post it here if I dig it up, but I rather doubt I'll find it; I'm satisfied with the text sources I found, anyway.

                4 votes
                1. skybrian
                  Link Parent
                  The Vox article (from 2015) seems like a useful roundup of scientific criticism of the Gates Foundation. I didn’t drill down into the articles it linked to, some of which are older. Some of the...

                  The Vox article (from 2015) seems like a useful roundup of scientific criticism of the Gates Foundation. I didn’t drill down into the articles it linked to, some of which are older. Some of the criticism seems a bit off, in particular the idea that infectious disease is less important than obesity, cancer and diabetes. Yes, they are also major killers, but the point about fighting infectious diseases is that it’s extremely cost-effective when it works.

                  The LA Times article (from 2007) is more critical, but it leaves me wondering what has happened since then. Has the Gates Foundation or its partner organizations adjusted their approaches?

                  It also hints at the underlying complexity of the issues. A justification given is by the president of the Gates Foundation:

                  “We’re a catalyzer. What we can’t do is fill the gaps in government budgets,” Yamada said. “It’s not sustainable.”

                  That seems realistic. So, the question is how to resolve that role with some of the perverse outcomes described in the article?

                  Partners in Health is another famous charity and their approach is to be more comprehensive but only in a few countries where they think they can do the most good, like Haiti (where they started) and Rwanda. It seems hard to compare these approaches without getting a lot more in-depth?

                  I think in US education, from the outside it seems like the Gates Foundation has spent a lot of money on approaches that don’t seem to have worked well, but to be fair this seems to be true of almost everyone else? The test-centric approach has also been a major initiative of the US government, and that got a whole lot of criticism. It doesn’t seem like anyone has the answers, and it’s not clear what to do about it other than keep trying different things, rather than the same old thing.

                  I am left retreating to my usual approach which is to acknowledge uncertainty. We are just people chatting on the Internet who haven’t studied, talking about what’s going on in places we’ve never been to, so we shouldn’t feel very confident that we know what’s going on.

                  4 votes
          2. [4]
            ICN
            Link Parent
            This argument is deeply flawed for a number of reasons. In no particular order: You bring up the fickleness of government as a strike against government spending, but a large contributor to that...

            This argument is deeply flawed for a number of reasons. In no particular order:

            You bring up the fickleness of government as a strike against government spending, but a large contributor to that fickleness is the rich. They lobby politicians, in essence buying them for their votes and to serve as mouthpieces to the public. They fund think tanks and research to produce rhetoric and "studies" to back up the current exploitative system. They fund advertisements. All of this has the effect of poisoning people against their own best interests and policies that would improve their lives as a result.

            You also assume good intentions for the wealthy as a whole, but that's far from the case. If anything, due to capitalism rewarding exploitation and therefore acting as a filter that pushes some of the worst people to the top, the wealthy are more likely to be selfish than the average person. You assert that at the end of the day, a few powerful people will likely determine the course of things, and imply that it doesn't matter which people those are. But the reason they're powerful matters a great deal; if it's because they succeeded in an unethical system, it doesn't bode well for what their decisions will be.

            Finally, your whole argument is based on the assumption that if the rich don't fund charitable organizations, they won't exist. IIRC, working class people donate a larger percentage of their income to charity than the wealthy. Ergo, in addition to alleviating a great many issues and lowering the need for charity in the first place, reducing wealth inequality is likely to make total charitable donations go up, and in a much more democratic way than currently.

            5 votes
            1. [3]
              skybrian
              Link Parent
              I think the Trump administration shows how the really big screwups are mostly not the fault of the rich. Ordinary voters made him popular. That’s what populism is. The establishment was against...

              I think the Trump administration shows how the really big screwups are mostly not the fault of the rich. Ordinary voters made him popular. That’s what populism is. The establishment was against him.

              Also, although it matters that political campaigns have enough funding, there are diminishing returns to campaign spending and attempts to buy elections often fail. In this election cycle the Democrats had a lot more money, and they spent a lot of money in failed attempts to win Senate seats and electoral votes. Bloomberg in particular spent lots of money with little to show for it.

              I’m also not sure it’s worth getting into a debate about the average billionaire since we are talking about the need for diversity to hit on a winning approach. An example is research into vaccines - it was important to invest in a variety of approaches to make sure at least one wins. It’s okay if there are others that failed.

              And this isn’t to say grassroots funding like Kickstarters and Patreon and charities raising money from small donors is bad. It’s another source of diversity.

              1 vote
              1. [2]
                ICN
                Link Parent
                The Trump thing is a multifaceted issue. He's a populist. Okay; why are his ideas popular? While there would be a certain subset of the population embracing them anyways, the money being poured...

                The Trump thing is a multifaceted issue. He's a populist. Okay; why are his ideas popular? While there would be a certain subset of the population embracing them anyways, the money being poured into right wing propaganda for decades can't be ignored. Additionally, if you look at where Trump was most popular in the 2016 election, it was in areas that were highest in deaths of despair. A large part of his success was in convincing people that were being crushed to dust by the exploitative system that he would drain the swamp and help them find success again. Both of those situations are pretty directly tied to the rich, so they're plenty at fault here.

                Yes, money can't do everything, but this election cycle has some additional factors that warrant consideration. Firstly, it wasn't a case of money versus no money; it was lots of money versus even more money. A system where money is a barrier to entry is inherently going to lead to the wealthy being extremely favored. Secondly, the Democrats were essentially pushing a platform of "Trump is an anomaly; all the other Republicans are great and we should reach across the aisle, etc.", which is kind of the idea that won the election. Trump's out, Republicans stick around.

                Regarding Bloomberg, I'm not so sure about that. He didn't come close to winning the primary, but what he did do is take the heat off of Biden in the lead up to that. Previously, all the other candidates were unifying in attacks on Biden as the frontrunner, which wasn't helping his campaign any. If Bloomberg hadn't entered, would the outcome of the primary have changed? Maybe, perhaps even probably, not, but I think he got more out of his efforts than are immediately apparent.

                Billionaires are antithetical to diversity. By definition, you're going to get far more diversity if 10,000 or 100,000 or 1,000,000 people are empowered rather than a handful of people at the top. This is true even before accounting for the active efforts of billionaires who tend to deliberately crush or absorb competition, as can be seen in every facet of the corporate world.

                All in all, the negative effects of wealth inequality far outweigh any positives.

                1 vote
                1. skybrian
                  Link Parent
                  While I just argued in favor of more decision-makers, I think it’s a bit too simple to say that the smaller the donors, the better. The problem with raising money from small donors is that...

                  By definition, you're going to get far more diversity if 10,000 or 100,000 or 1,000,000 people are empowered rather than a handful of people at the top.

                  While I just argued in favor of more decision-makers, I think it’s a bit too simple to say that the smaller the donors, the better. The problem with raising money from small donors is that nonprofits have learned that the best way to get their money is with marketing campaigns that make emotional appeals. I can’t blame them for doing what works, but I think a healthy ecosystem needs smart money too, and that does require some concentration of spending power to make it worthwhile to hire experts.

                  An analogy: there are millions of people who could buy individual stocks if they wanted, but would probably be better off buying an index fund, because they don’t have the knowledge, time, or interest to pick stocks themselves.

                  Similarly, to be good at picking promising scientific research to fund, it seems like you need scientific experts to review grant proposals.

                  Of course, you can crib off someone else’s research. I’m a big fan of following GiveWell’s recommendations for finding effective charities. But delegating to them is another concentration of decision-making power, where I just follow their recommendations, because they do their homework and I don’t.

                  The reason GiveWell can even talk to charities and get the data to do their evaluations is that they are influential. They can point to “money moved.” It’s not worth it for charities to put up with such intrusive data gathering if they didn’t have that. And these days they have rich backers, too.

                  I wish there were more charity evaluators as well-respected as GiveWell that publish their work, but perhaps with different interests, so we would have a genuine diversity of well-informed opinions about the best charities to fund, and I could read them.

                  But the larger charities with professional staffs to decide on grants do seem to be an important part of the ecosystem too, and large bequests make them possible.

                  2 votes
      2. [2]
        PendingKetchup
        Link Parent
        His public health work is (for the sake of this argument at least) good. But he still has a bunch more money not donated to foundations than he should. That doesn't really explain why Gates gets...

        His public health work is (for the sake of this argument at least) good. But he still has a bunch more money not donated to foundations than he should.

        That doesn't really explain why Gates gets cast as the villain and Trump as the hero; the article seems pretty right to me on that front.

        2 votes
        1. mrbig
          Link Parent
          According to his own declarations, Bill Gates likes to help causes whose effects can be accurately and quantitatively demonstrated, and his foundation is rigorous regarding accountability. That's...

          According to his own declarations, Bill Gates likes to help causes whose effects can be accurately and quantitatively demonstrated, and his foundation is rigorous regarding accountability. That's one reason why he wasn't able to separate himself from a lot of his wealth (again, according to him).

          1 vote
  2. moocow1452
    Link
    Hypothesis 4 seems to be the root of the issue, where what we understand as evil is broad and plays to the darkest, most selfish biases of humanity, where as trying to do good requires nuance and...

    Hypothesis 4 seems to be the root of the issue, where what we understand as evil is broad and plays to the darkest, most selfish biases of humanity, where as trying to do good requires nuance and understanding of systematic issues.

    2 votes