Post on The Atlantic by Noah Hawley (from the shows Fargo and Alien Earth) about the world that billionaires live in and how they become immune to the normal limitations that normally affect...
Post on The Atlantic by Noah Hawley (from the shows Fargo and Alien Earth) about the world that billionaires live in and how they become immune to the normal limitations that normally affect humans.
In 2018, I was a guest at Jeff Bezos’s Campfire retreat in Santa Barbara, California. It’s an annual event in which the Amazon founder invites 80-plus guests—celebrities, artists, intellectuals, and anyone else he thinks is interesting—to spend three nights at a private resort. I had recently been approached by Amazon about moving my film-and-television business over from Disney, and although I had declined (or maybe because I had declined), Bezos’s team invited me to Campfire, perhaps keen to impress me with the power of his reach.
...
When Peter Thiel said, “I no longer believe that freedom and democracy are compatible,” he wasn’t talking about your freedom. He was talking about his own. You don’t exist. When Musk took a chainsaw to the federal government as part of the inside joke he called DOGE, he did so with the air of a man who believed that nothing matters—poverty, chaos, human suffering. He was having fun. It didn’t even matter that the entire destructive exercise ultimately yielded no practical financial gains. For him, the outcome was a foregone conclusion: He could only win, because losing had lost its meaning.
Since the 2024 election, there has been a philosophical shift on the right, and especially among tech billionaires, to vilify the idea of empathy. Musk has called empathy “the fundamental weakness of Western civilization.” He sees it as a weapon wielded by liberal society to bludgeon otherwise rational people into operating against their own interests. Empathy is something done to you by others—a vulnerability they exploit, a back door through which they gain access to your resources and will. This rejection of empathy as a human value gives cover to people who don’t want to feel anything at all. If empathy is the problem, then lack of it isn’t a deficiency—it’s an advantage.
The world has always been run by rich men. The robber barons of the Gilded Age were known for their ruthlessness in the accumulation of wealth—hiring Pinkertons to shoot striking unionists. But they directly engaged with the world around them, using their wealth and power to muscle it into its most profitable form. And although today’s billionaires are clearly manipulating society to maximize their own profit, something else is also happening—a disassociation from the reality of cause and effect, from meaning and history. These men no longer feel the need to change the world in order to succeed, because their success is guaranteed, no matter what happens to the rest of us.
It’s a great read and it’s definitely tugging at some truths… but I feel like something’s missing from the analysis. It explains why billionaires can do whatever they want, how money and cause and...
It’s a great read and it’s definitely tugging at some truths… but I feel like something’s missing from the analysis. It explains why billionaires can do whatever they want, how money and cause and effect become meaningless, and how this leads billionaires to completely detach from their humanity and shared existence with the rest of the planet.
But it doesn’t explain why they become EVIL. Why they get into bed with corrupt politicians; go into the businesses of mass surveillance, war profiteering, propaganda, and data brokerage; buddy up with the rogues gallery of Russian oligarchs and Gulf state journalist-sawing royals. Particularly for the bootstrappy ones like Bezos that came up in America (or any western nation) where they personally benefited from the ideals of democracy, what drives them to undermine those values, to pull the ladder up behind themselves and actively use their wealth and influence to steer the world into an oppressive dystopic hellscape of a future? I get that they can do that, but why they fuck DO they?? They weren’t born supervillains, but at some point they had the thought: I can do literally anything, and what I choose to do… is this. Because reasons.
Why don’t they choose differently? Why isn’t there a single billionaire in the world leveraging the same degree of wealth and influence to actually end world poverty? I’m talking about earnest, big project energy, not PR philanthropy or shady self-enrichment schemes disguised as altruism. They could choose good… they just don’t.
The Bill Gates foundation has done a massive amount of good! I think the reason that nobody has ended poverty is that that's not a realistic goal by any stretch of the imagination. Here's an...
Exemplary
Why isn’t there a single billionaire in the world leveraging the same degree of wealth and influence to actually end world poverty?
The Bill Gates foundation has done a massive amount of good! I think the reason that nobody has ended poverty is that that's not a realistic goal by any stretch of the imagination.
Here's an (AI-generated) list of billionaires who have donated over $1B of their personal fortunes, with sources.
Warren Buffett — the top philanthropist for five consecutive years, with $62 billion given over his lifetime (about 30% of his net worth), donating $5.3 billion in 2024 alone. Philanthropy News Digest
Bill & Melinda French Gates — the most famous philanthropists in the world, with a lifetime total of around $32.91 billion given TFN through the Gates Foundation.
MacKenzie Scott — has donated an estimated $26 billion across more than 2,700 gifts since 2020, representing about 46% of her net worth, including $7.2 billion in 2025 alone. Fortune
George Soros — has given away a larger percentage of his current net worth than most major donors on the Forbes list (76%), Philanthropy News Digest with total giving well over $30 billion to his Open Society Foundations.
Michael Bloomberg — has parted with over $10 billion, including a $1.8 billion donation to Johns Hopkins University in 2018, Love Money and led the Chronicle of Philanthropy's top 50 list for 2024 and 2025.
Chuck Feeney — donated his entire $9 billion fortune to good causes, with 2020 being the year he finally achieved his lifelong aim of giving it all away. Love Money
Mark Zuckerberg & Priscilla Chan — directed $1.11 billion in 2024 to foundations and donor-advised funds Chronicle of Philanthropy , part of a much larger lifetime commitment through the Chan Zuckerberg Initiative.
Michael Bloomberg (already noted), Eli Broad — donated around $4 billion during his lifetime to educational grants and arts initiatives, including a record-breaking $100 million gift to Yale's Business School. Love Money
Gordon Moore — gave $4.22 billion (57% of his net worth) through the Gordon and Betty Moore Foundation. TFN
John & Laura Arnold — have given over $2 billion to date since signing the Giving Pledge in 2010, currently the only signatories technically in full compliance with its terms, with their donations amounting to about 42% of their wealth. Fortune
Herbert & Marion Sandler — donated more than $1.3 billion during their lifetimes to causes including civil liberties and the launch of ProPublica. Love Money
Reed Hastings — directed $1.6 billion in 2024 to foundations and donor-advised funds, Chronicle of Philanthropy part of a growing philanthropic commitment.
A few caveats worth noting: tracking actual disbursed giving vs. pledges or transfers to donor-advised funds is genuinely difficult. Many participants channel philanthropy through private family foundations or donor-advised funds that enable immediate tax benefits while allowing disbursements over time Wikipedia — meaning money "donated" can sit for years before reaching actual charities. In total, American billionaires have publicly donated or pledged around $185 billion over the past decade — only about 3.25% of their combined $5.7 trillion in wealth. Fortune
For what it's worth on that last bit, I felt it was worth including for context but that wealth figure is a little sketchy. It's paper wealth, not real wealth.
Particularly for the bootstrappy ones like Bezos that came up in America (or any western nation) where they personally benefited from the ideals of democracy, what drives them to undermine those values, to pull the ladder up behind themselves and actively use their wealth and influence to steer the world into an oppressive dystopic hellscape of a future?
Bezos privately funded the Washington Post at great expense to keep it alive. I think "actively trying to make the world a hellscape" is a bit of a stretch, you know?
Not AI generated (you could at least do your own research) list of why people who donate money aren't necessarily "not evil" or "good" or whatever moral lever you want to use. Warren Buffett,...
Exemplary
Not AI generated (you could at least do your own research) list of why people who donate money aren't necessarily "not evil" or "good" or whatever moral lever you want to use.
Warren Buffett, Melinda French Gates, MacKenzie Scott -
These are very rich people, two of whom got their billions in the divorce. I can't say whether they're evil, but they're not getting much (if any) poorer despite their pledges to donate their money. They do seem to be at least remaining multi-billionaires at about the same level or making more and more money. Is that even ethical? That's more of a philosophical question.
Bill Gates - All of the monopoly/business practices issues with Microsoft, and a significant enough connection to Epstein to lead his wife to divorce him. Including apparently multiple affairs. While some of the specific new allegations are not true, this connection is not new.
George Soros - the man was absolutely awful for financial markets, but like, not in a way that's good for the people. He was short selling billions of other currencies, to the point of causing crises for his own gain and was convicted of insider trading.
Is he good because he donated to political causes I agree with? Or still functionally a negative for society?
Michael Bloomberg - for someone who wants to close tax avoidance schemes he's set up a lot of trusts to protect the money going to his heirs. He was a sexist pig (to the point that his company was described as a frat house) and commented that if computers could provide oral sex they'd put women out of work entirely; he also seems to support whatever way the wind blows (including mass surveillance and stop and frisk until he doesn't).
Is he evil? I don't know that I can say he's "not evil".
Chuck Feeney —
Afaict he was never technically a billionaire, having put his shares into a foundation before it sold for lots of money. Props.
Mark Zuckerberg & Priscilla Chan — directed $1.11 billion in 2024 to foundations and donor-advised funds Chronicle of Philanthropy , part of a much larger lifetime commitment through the Chan Zuckerberg Initiative.
I mean, we can start with stealing the idea for Facebook, which was also motivated by looking at women, trying to pressure the Crimson not to publish and hacking the editors' email accounts. Lota of things he settled over for a lot of money in court
Lying about viewership numbers on Facebook videos leading to the destruction of indie shows, purchasing land in Hawaii while suing hundreds of native Hawaiians to take their land because he "didn't know the laws were different there" and gating off land that to be frank was just more recently stolen than the rest of the US. Actively profiting off of the spreading of hate speech, misinformation, propaganda - to the point that I'm not sure they've gotten close to donating enough to recompense. Refusing to protect teen mental health, immediately being misogynistic when Trump took office... This is a very high level summary.
John Arnold
Accused of deliberately manipulating gas price indices while at Enron, getting a very large bonus right before they declared bankruptcy. Despite Enron (and similar) companies being largely responsible for the pension shortfalls in CA, pushes heavily for "pension reform" (aka cuts) and has no regrets about Enron. Some of that grant work isn't great either such as supporting aerial police surveillance.
Is he evil? He gives me the ick, but idk you decide.
Herbert & Marion Sandler —
Herbert's firm nearly killed Wachovia in 2008 (who cares about Wachovia? Not really me but they got their bag and sold the sub-prime crisis on to the taxpayers). They supported pre-payment penalties and invented a mortgage whose payments were lower than the interest. Idk that one can call them particularly "not evil".
Reed Hastings — I could flag a number of things about Netflix, being ont eh Anthropic board, or turning half a mountain into a private ski resort. He also hasn't donated that much - he's only a little billionaire but he's made sure he remains one.
I don't know what point makes someone "not evil" for being a billionaire. And I didn't dig through some of their pasts further. But notably, they haven't ended world poverty. Many of them are richer now than they were when they pledged their money away, most are at least as rich. The point of the article is that you cannot end up broke, and that seems to be true.
The whole "evil or not" framing seems problematic. Even if it's not binary, it's still putting all the things someone did on a one-dimensional scale, and to do that, you have to decide whether the...
The whole "evil or not" framing seems problematic. Even if it's not binary, it's still putting all the things someone did on a one-dimensional scale, and to do that, you have to decide whether the good things and bad things somehow cancel out. Did they do more good than bad or more bad than good? How do you even weigh that? There are a few cases where it's obvious, but usually it's a mix.
I don't think people's deeds cancel out. Bill Gates's charity doesn't cancel the bad things he's done. And also, the bad things he's done don't cancel the lives saved through his charity. They both happened, and you usually can't give each deed a number and add them up. They're incomparable.
For someone writing a biography, it all goes in. It seems pretty common for powerful people have plenty of good and bad stuff in their biography. Having power means they had more opportunity than most of us to do both.
Yeah I tried to make that clear throughout. I thought an AI list of donation quantity sans context does nothing to counter balooga's point which stands - what makes them evil (by the standards...
The whole "evil or not" framing seems problematic
Yeah I tried to make that clear throughout. I thought an AI list of donation quantity sans context does nothing to counter balooga's point which stands - what makes them evil (by the standards outlined there). And I can't even begin to address that. I can just point out that donating money doesn't do it though.
I broadly agree. Even if they spent their money on their pet projects, but those projects were solving climate change, feeding the world, etc. rather than going to Mars (Space is great, capitalist...
I broadly agree. Even if they spent their money on their pet projects, but those projects were solving climate change, feeding the world, etc. rather than going to Mars (Space is great, capitalist space isn't) or buying a bigger yacht or networking to abuse children, we could have more of a quibble about how they were spending their money. (And the same applied to those who kept slaves vs donating everything to abolitionist causes, especially TJ and his whole "my wife's enslaved half-sister is clearly an ethical sexual partner" thing. )
I'm mostly unimpressed with the "pledge to give away your money" thing because the vast majority of the people involved have kept a very large amount of money. Despite being pretty old relatively speaking. How much of that money do they need, actually?
The one guy who really gave it all away made that decision before he had billions. And maybe that's the answer, if you never had it you can't hoard it. But once you have it, you turn into a dragon as sure as Eustace does in Narnia - you have to slough your own scales off to be free of it.
Ah damn, just for brief context. The cousin of the 4 kids ends up in Narnia and his name is Eustace Scrubb "and he almost deserved it" and that tells you most of who he is as a person. He comes...
Ah damn, just for brief context.
The cousin of the 4 kids ends up in Narnia and his name is Eustace Scrubb "and he almost deserved it" and that tells you most of who he is as a person. He comes across a dying dragon, puts some of his gold hoard on, falls asleep while having very greedy thoughts and turns into a dragon. He tries to peel off the dragon's skin but can't do it by himself so Lion Jesus (who just shows up) has to claw it off him, because only He can cleanse this kid from his sin.
I just had the image of shedding dragon scales like coins in my head for these billionaires though, not really the religious bits. (Total aside: The fact that Dionysus, Silenus and multiple other gods are all over Narnia is entertaining to me, and I like to imagine he mixed all these mythos just to piss Tolkien off)
Going out on a limb, I'm going to guess that you have at least $100 (or equivalent) in funds that you could lose without impacting your own life. That's more than enough to, if used properly,...
But for me, having the ability to lessen an enormous amount of human suffering, whilst retaining immense comfort - and making the conscious choice not to - is evil in my eyes.
To quote from a book series I don't even like, "Evil is evil. Lesser, greater, middling… It makes no difference. The degree is arbitary."
Going out on a limb, I'm going to guess that you have at least $100 (or equivalent) in funds that you could lose without impacting your own life. That's more than enough to, if used properly, materially alleviate the suffering of more than one child in Africa.
Are you evil because you haven't donated it? The degree is arbitrary, no?
Hopefully it goes without saying that I'm not actually accusing you of being evil. What I am seeking to do is force you to defend your position more broadly than "people have money, therefore they are evil."
I don't think R3qn65 was specifically targeting you with their comment. Almost no one is dedicating all of their disposable income to charity. If you are, that's very admirable, but statistically...
I don't think R3qn65 was specifically targeting you with their comment. Almost no one is dedicating all of their disposable income to charity. If you are, that's very admirable, but statistically speaking, virtually no one is doing what you are.
I know I could certainly afford to donate more than $100 to ending world hunger, but I don't. I have hobbies I spend money on instead, I save more than I need to for retirement because I'm worried about the future and I want to retire early, I live in a house that is nicer than I actually need to to be to live, and so on.
I think the vast, vast majority of people are in a similar boat, so without knowing anything about you, it was a decent guess that you were as well.
The core of the argument is that the vast majority of people aren't evil because they don't donate a significant portion of their income to charity.
I think that tracks, but whether it can be applied to billionaires is an entirely different argument, so it doesn't need to be the case that almost everyone is evil (or doing something immoral, if you want to be more accurate about it) in order for billionaires to be.
I'm not religious, but I very much love throwing this into conversations with people who are: Generous billionaire < Homeless woman Bible is full of these gems. Jesus and Marx would have gotten...
I think it's deeply immoral to accrue more than you can ever realistically use
I'm not religious, but I very much love throwing this into conversations with people who are:
As Jesus looked up, he saw the rich putting their gifts into the temple treasury. He also saw a poor widow put in two very small copper coins. “Truly I tell you,” he said, “this poor widow has put in more than all the others. All these people gave their gifts out of their wealth; but she out of her poverty put in all she had to live on.”
(Luke 21:1-4)
Generous billionaire < Homeless woman
Bible is full of these gems. Jesus and Marx would have gotten very drunk together.
(@DefinitelyNotAFae also pertinate to your reply to me in another thread here)
On the one hand, “not a billionaire” is kind of a low bar since someone with, say, a hundred million is still set for life, ten times over. But on the other, I don’t think it should be a litmus...
On the one hand, “not a billionaire” is kind of a low bar since someone with, say, a hundred million is still set for life, ten times over.
But on the other, I don’t think it should be a litmus test for anything. The Giving Pledge asks that they give a majority of their money away and it could be in their wills. It’s kind of weak sauce, and yet, if most billionaires did that then that would be fantastic. The people who are giving a majority of their money away in a thoughtful way should be praised.
I would not expect this to solve world poverty in any scenario. I think people don’t have a good sense of scale and overestimate what private charity could do. Governments are an order of magnitude more powerful.
The scary thing is that this is heavily dependant on which government you're talking about. Jeff Bezos alone makes more per year than the revenue of most countries governments on earth. Only about...
Governments are an order of magnitude more powerful.
The scary thing is that this is heavily dependant on which government you're talking about.
Jeff Bezos alone makes more per year than the revenue of most countries governments on earth. Only about 60 have bigger budgets than he does.
The Trump administration is to blame for cancelling USAID. Some billionaires supported him (for example, Musk), but so did the millions of people who voted for him, and other billionaires publicly...
The Trump administration is to blame for cancelling USAID. Some billionaires supported him (for example, Musk), but so did the millions of people who voted for him, and other billionaires publicly opposed it (Gates).
So I don't think talking about billionaires as a group helps as far as public policy is concerned. They're not a monolith. They have different politics.
Paying more in taxes to the US government than legally required instead of donating to charity is a terrible idea. How much you pay in taxes has zero effect on what Congress decides to spend, or...
Paying more in taxes to the US government than legally required instead of donating to charity is a terrible idea. How much you pay in taxes has zero effect on what Congress decides to spend, or on what the Trump administration decides to do. USAID would be just as cancelled if billionaires paid more in taxes. ICE would still be deporting people and we'd still be at war with Iran.
You might as well set the money on fire for all the good it will do. Paying more in federal taxes than is legally required has zero effect and you get zero credit. That's true for us and it's true for billionaires too. (For a local government like a public school district it's different.)
In times like this, we're fortunate that there are well-funded private charities. They can't make up for USAID, but at least they can do something. It's good that we live in a pluralistic society with many kinds of organizations that try to do different things. By donating to a good charity you get to redirect money towards better uses.
Furthermore, charitable donations are often tax deductable for a reason. It's cooperating with what the government wants you to do.
They all agree on keeping more money than any person needs to live, even live in the highest levels of comfort. It's very useful when talking about that to discuss them as a group.
They all agree on keeping more money than any person needs to live, even live in the highest levels of comfort. It's very useful when talking about that to discuss them as a group.
There is a much simpler arguement: If dictatorships, oligarchies, and monarchies are considered bad forms of government, what suddenly makes them good for running companies and charitable...
There is a much simpler arguement:
If dictatorships, oligarchies, and monarchies are considered bad forms of government, what suddenly makes them good for running companies and charitable organizations?
No one person should have the amount of power that weilding billions (or even millions) will give. It's a roulette wheel whether you get another Musk or another Warren.
The inevitable counterarguement boils down to 'because government sets the law for everybody,' but I think that falls apart once you acknowledge the power of money in politics.
There is nothing the Gates foundation does that couldn't have been done better by funding USAID with tax dollars which would have prevented its existence.
Billionaire charity is akin to putting out a forest fire that they caused, and then receiving praise for it.
Or you know the saying "The best time to plant a tree was 20 years ago. The second best is now."? That applies. We could have had that wealth to leverage into progress decades ago.
I agree, I just didn't think that was as useful a response to "but they donated so much they can't be evil" as if money cleans the moral slate. The one guy who donated everything before he got it...
I agree, I just didn't think that was as useful a response to "but they donated so much they can't be evil" as if money cleans the moral slate. The one guy who donated everything before he got it seems fine, but maybe he was evil for something else, idk. It was less a counter and more an invalidation of the premise. Also a distaste for any post that says "I asked AI and here's the answer" especially with apparently zero thought about it.
Your point is taken though - and dumping all their money into a foundation is secondary to taxing the shit out of them.
I know of at least one billionaire foundation whose director after the founder passed away announced "Hey, we are unable to give this money away faster than we are making money, if you need some...
I know of at least one billionaire foundation whose director after the founder passed away announced "Hey, we are unable to give this money away faster than we are making money, if you need some lmk." And I mean there's still an application, it's a process no matter what, but they seem to really mean it; once that exponential compound interest ticks over, things get crazy.
I'm reminded of an exchange from Fiddler on the Roof in which Perchik, the ardent young communist, says "Money is the world's curse." Tevye's response is "May the Lord smite me with it. And may I...
I'm reminded of an exchange from Fiddler on the Roof in which Perchik, the ardent young communist, says "Money is the world's curse." Tevye's response is "May the Lord smite me with it. And may I never recover!"
God every day I feel like I relate to Tevye a little bit more.
It's for non-profits, not individuals, with a focus on NC So you know, they could give it away faster. It's ok for a foundation to have standards. I'm just saying billionaires could do more.
It's for non-profits, not individuals, with a focus on NC
So you know, they could give it away faster. It's ok for a foundation to have standards. I'm just saying billionaires could do more.
Unfortunately they are only a foundation giving to other organizations—i haven't cracked the philanthropy-to-individuals pipeline but as someone who's also been looking for a job, I feel ya
Unfortunately they are only a foundation giving to other organizations—i haven't cracked the philanthropy-to-individuals pipeline but as someone who's also been looking for a job, I feel ya
I absolutely loathe this narrative. You absolutely can end up broke, none of them want to. They want too much control over it. Spend a bunch of energy and effort hiring people you trust to create...
The point of the article is that you cannot end up broke, and that seems to be true.
I absolutely loathe this narrative. You absolutely can end up broke, none of them want to. They want too much control over it.
Spend a bunch of energy and effort hiring people you trust to create a company to do x, and give them a budget. Rinse and repeat.
None of them have to be perfect. Hell, even if some of them end up corrupt, if the amount which is not corrupt that goes towards tangible good is more than the amount they are currently spending, then you are closer to your objective.
Everyone brings up Bill Gates because the numbers he gives is bigger than anyone else, but put it into perspective. Compare how much he has donated to his total wealth. Then multiply it by your total wealth. You give more of your wealth by leaving change behind as a tip. We need to stop celebrating these people - they care so much more about the number in their bank account than anything else, full stop.
Allow me to be clearer, from the article the impression I got is that (the author believes) billionaires feel there are no consequences for their mistakes because they can't end up broke from...
Allow me to be clearer, from the article the impression I got is that (the author believes) billionaires feel there are no consequences for their mistakes because they can't end up broke from them. There's no realistic way to "lose" that much money or not to be able to borrow liquidity the way Musk did for Twitter
I agree they could actually spend down, but they aren't. I wasn't very precise with my last phrase there as it was a hefty write and edit.
I could help. Put me in charge, I'll help them be "broke"
But I agree they still care deeply about their bank accounts despite having more money than God (at least as represented by the RCC)
I don't know enough about charity funding to really discuss the rest of your comment, but this is such a disingenuous framing of what Bezos has been doing with the Post that I'm genuinely...
Bezos privately funded the Washington Post at great expense to keep it alive.
I don't know enough about charity funding to really discuss the rest of your comment, but this is such a disingenuous framing of what Bezos has been doing with the Post that I'm genuinely surprised you posted it without any sort of caveat acknowledging the widely-criticized moves he's made there.
Agreed. To be very explicit: Bezos bought the Washington Post to control the content. To see a very blatant change in the content, notice the Washington Post has endorsed a Democrat for President...
Agreed. To be very explicit: Bezos bought the Washington Post to control the content.
To see a very blatant change in the content, notice the Washington Post has endorsed a Democrat for President in most of the elections before Bezos took over:
Year
Candidate
Party
1976
Jimmy Carter
Democratic
1980
No Endorsement
-
1984
Walter Mondale
Democratic
1988
No Endorsement
-
1992
Bill Clinton
Democratic
1996
Bill Clinton
Democratic
2000
Al Gore
Democratic
2004
John Kerry
Democratic
2008
Barack Obama
Democratic
2012
Barack Obama
Democratic
2016
Hillary Clinton
Democratic
2020
Joe Biden
Democratic
2024
No Endorsement
-
Most of mainstream media has been bought by billionaires. They use it to manufacture consent. They use it to increase the already massive power that they have.
Similarly, Musk bought Twitter. Some people were mocking him at the time because he's been driving Twitter into the ground and it isn't profiting. But authoritarian governments have benefited from the demise of twitter, which had previously been used to organize protests, call out dishonest politicians, and do some other good things (along with the shallow and dumb things that have always dominated it).
Here's more of the timeline for context: August 2013 Jeff Bezos agrees to buys the Post October 2013 deal closes October 2024 Bezos forces no endorsement over the protests of editorial staff....
Bezo's interference in October 2024 is well-documented by the Post itself. But for the previous two elections, apparently he hadn't started interfering yet?
So I don't think it's likely that he bought the Post to control the content back in 2013. If that was the reason, why wait a decade? It seems more likely to be a shift in strategy.
The NYT's profile on Bezos's ownership of the post is worth reading. I wouldn't call it positive, exactly, but it's a more neutral overview of Bezos's tenure. The Times cites a dozen sources...
The NYT's profile on Bezos's ownership of the post is worth reading. I wouldn't call it positive, exactly, but it's a more neutral overview of Bezos's tenure. The Times cites a dozen sources inside the Post who say that Bezos never interfered with the Post's critical coverage of Trump, for instance, even as he himself was courting Trump separately. There has clearly been some influence (interference), obviously, that's indisputable. It was Bezos's call to kill the planned endorsement of Kamala Harris, for example. That's no secret, he published an oped about it. But if Bezos's goal is to manufacture consent to increase his own power, why is he so (generally) uninvolved? An NPR piece covering the Kamala decision (and fallout) even noted that Bezos has not interfered with reporting on his businesses or himself.
I think it's reasonable to conclude that Bezos owning the Post is a net negative for democracy; my point isn't that everything is fine. But it should be a nuanced conclusion, not a reflexive conclusion. (Not saying your conclusion specifically was reflexive.)
The more negative view of Bezos's tenure, for balance, can be found in the Atlantic.
Because manufacturing consent requires that the source is still viewed as at least somewhat legitimate. You can't just turn on a dime and publish stories about unions being evil and billionaires...
Because manufacturing consent requires that the source is still viewed as at least somewhat legitimate. You can't just turn on a dime and publish stories about unions being evil and billionaires being good, actually, if you want the paper to remain relevant.
Subtly nudging the paper in the direction you want it to go is a lot more effective.
What other reason would someone have for buying a newspaper in 2013?
It's a business model that was on an obvious downward trajectory even back then.
Very fair counterpoint. I’ll concede that. As far as why buy a newspaper, Bezos is both rich enough that it doesn’t really matter to him (like Elon and Twitter, right?) and I can see a world where...
Very fair counterpoint. I’ll concede that.
As far as why buy a newspaper, Bezos is both rich enough that it doesn’t really matter to him (like Elon and Twitter, right?) and I can see a world where he was sufficiently convinced of his own business acumen that he thought he could turn it around and make it profitable. Nevertheless, there’s no way for us to really know and I grant that you’re probably correct here.
Elon and twitter is actually a pretty good case study to illustrate the differences strategywise. Elon bought the company and within a month it became an extreme right wing, bot and crypto bro...
Elon and twitter is actually a pretty good case study to illustrate the differences strategywise. Elon bought the company and within a month it became an extreme right wing, bot and crypto bro infested echo chamber that no one takes seriously anymore.
WaPo is still a pretty well respected publication, all things considered. Even though Twitter has far, far more users than WaPo could ever dream of, I'd argue that the newspaper is a lot more influential with people who have actual power than twitter is.
I'm trying to squint at the table you provided and see absolutely no evidence of Jeff Bezos's ownership affecting Washington Post's position. What am I missing here?
I'm trying to squint at the table you provided and see absolutely no evidence of Jeff Bezos's ownership affecting Washington Post's position. What am I missing here?
The table shows that there were 8 endorsements in a row, all for candidates from the Democratic Party. But then in 2024 they decided not to endorse anyone. At a time when it was extremely easy to...
The table shows that there were 8 endorsements in a row, all for candidates from the Democratic Party. But then in 2024 they decided not to endorse anyone. At a time when it was extremely easy to choose the better candidate: One of the candidates was a seditionist and convicted felon and found guilty of rape in court and horribly mismanaged a pandemic and had conflicts of interest with foreign countries and much of his cabinet were convicted felons. The other candidate was an acceptable politician whose main downside was the disorganization of the DNC who should have had a primary.
Additional context: there were news stories at the time that the editorial staff wanted to endorse Harris but management prevented it.
It can be both at the same time. I would believe that Bezos bought the Post for those kinds of reasons - the reality is that once he resigned as CEO of Amazon, he would be pretty bored. Keeping a...
It can be both at the same time. I would believe that Bezos bought the Post for those kinds of reasons - the reality is that once he resigned as CEO of Amazon, he would be pretty bored. Keeping a storied newspaper alive is the kind of legacy building that rich people are known for - just look at how many things are named Carnegie to this day.
But, in the end, Blue Origin was what really became his pet project, and where he poured his money. Eventually WaPo became a liability, because WaPo angering Trump = Trump denying his actual favorite company, Blue Origin, from government contracts.
I can believe Bezos's motivations were more of a mixed bag than where the Post has ultimately ended up, but it's framing it as purely benevolent without even mentioning that he's made some...
I can believe Bezos's motivations were more of a mixed bag than where the Post has ultimately ended up, but it's framing it as purely benevolent without even mentioning that he's made some controversial moves with the paper that I take issue with.
I’m sure the vast majority of people who comment on Tildes can also access one of the many free AI/LLM services out there, if they want to, so I’m not sure this adds anything to your comment. It...
Here's an (AI-generated) list of billionaires who have donated over $1B of their personal fortunes, with sources.
I’m sure the vast majority of people who comment on Tildes can also access one of the many free AI/LLM services out there, if they want to, so I’m not sure this adds anything to your comment. It feels padded out but with very little actual human contribution. I’m much more interested in your own views and synthesis of information than copying over some AI output with a thin layer of commentary on top.
If your comment was simply a link to a Wikipedia page of “list of billionaires who have donated more than $1bn” then it would be visually much clearer which parts of your comment are your own contribution and which are external.
I don’t want to discourage contribution, but I do want to discourage pasting the output of any AI without your own editorial input. In the same kind of way, I am a lot more interested in a person discussing a Wikipedia link rather than simply copying the contents of Wikipedia into a comment.
This is a totally reasonable view and generally, I agree. My comment was responding to one very specific element - the question "why isn't there a single billionaire who's actively used their...
This is a totally reasonable view and generally, I agree. My comment was responding to one very specific element - the question "why isn't there a single billionaire who's actively used their fortunes to try to make the world better [technically, 'end poverty']" - and showing that not only is the number not zero, there are quite a few. I don't think there's an issue using AI for that sort of fact retrieval, in much the same way that I wouldn't hold it against someone for pasting a screenshot of the top Google results or something.
I think the piece actually does address why billionaires turn "evil", at least to an extent. Quoting this observation from the article: That is, it's not just that behavior ⇒ consequences but also...
I think the piece actually does address why billionaires turn "evil", at least to an extent. Quoting this observation from the article:
Decades of research in developmental psychology have shown that moral reasoning develops through consequences—not punishment, necessarily, but experiencing the effects of your actions on others, receiving honest feedback, having to accommodate reality as it actually is rather than as you wish it to be. It’s not that the wealthy become evil; it’s that their environment stops teaching them the things that nonwealthy people are forced to learn simply by living in a world that pushes back. When you can buy your way out of any mistake, when you can fire anyone who disagrees with you, when your social circle consists entirely of people who need something from you, the basic mechanism by which humans learn that other people are real goes dark.
That is, it's not just that behavior ⇒ consequences but also that consequences ⇒ behavior. If a group of people is shielded from the consequences of their actions on others, then that group will learn to behave in ways that are narcissistic or selfish. Obviously this dynamic extends beyond billionaires -- it also broadly explains the tendency for Israelis to feel apathetic about the conditions in Gaza, Americans to tolerate factory farming, shoppers to support fast fashion, etc.
Nevertheless, everybody still has the capacity to act morally; they just might have to be deliberate, which requires some amount of introspection. Unfortunately, some of these same people view introspection as weakness (see link in quote), likely because introspection doesn't reap personal benefits (further reinforcing the idea that consequences ⇒ behavior).
I think the theme of the article is that being good requires empathy, and empathy requires you to imagine losing something, and that seems to be a muscle that needs constant exercise. I'm not sure...
I think the theme of the article is that being good requires empathy, and empathy requires you to imagine losing something, and that seems to be a muscle that needs constant exercise. I'm not sure if I'm convinced of this either, but that seems to be Hawley's theme.
Except I'm guessing the kind of person who would become a billionaire is already a person who doesn't have the normal level of ethics and behavior. At best, they are hoarders, but wealth hoarders instead of random garbage like you see in the TV series about hoarding.
It's possible there are some "good" billionaires now but we don't hear about them too much except for "accidental billionaires" like MacKenzie Scott (Bezos' ex-wife), who donated $19 billion since 2019.
When we see things like Carnegie Hall we might think that previous generation's wealthy were better, but in that example I'm pretty sure he was a terrible person his whole life until he decided he "won".
Someone with altruistic impulses is much less likely to become a billionaire in the first place. They would make a transition from generating additional wealth to maintaining or drawing down their...
Someone with altruistic impulses is much less likely to become a billionaire in the first place. They would make a transition from generating additional wealth to maintaining or drawing down their assets well before reaching ten figure's worth of assets.
As R3qn65 brought up, there are a lot of not-evil billionaires. But the process of becoming a billionaire selects out the most sociable humans, and the end result is a concentration of personalities harmful to the general good that is many multiples of the rate of the general population.
To me, I think stereotypical philanthropy from a billionaire is not really even desirable. All existing billionaires should spend all their resources ending the one thing that they shouldn't have...
Why don’t they choose differently? Why isn’t there a single billionaire in the world leveraging the same degree of wealth and influence to actually end world poverty? I’m talking about earnest, big project energy, not PR philanthropy or shady self-enrichment schemes disguised as altruism. They could choose good… they just don’t.
To me, I think stereotypical philanthropy from a billionaire is not really even desirable. All existing billionaires should spend all their resources ending the one thing that they shouldn't have to begin with, which is immense amount of resources that give them immense amounts of power.
I disagree with the base foundation that there should be people who have as much influence as the extremely wealthy have, and the only way I could support any of them leveraging any of that influence for anything is for the goal of ending that influence. Otherwise I can't support other actions because they're stealing from society as a whole. They're literally the biggest thieves in history, and the typical philanthropy they engage in is a bit of a reverse Robin Hood scenario so they can stroke their own ego and create a legacy for themselves.
Being a normal human being is almost invisible, it doesn't break the social media ragebait hurdle. It hardly ever even breaks the regular news hurdle. So if those people exist, how would you know...
Why isn’t there a single billionaire in the world leveraging the same degree of wealth and influence to actually end world poverty?
Being a normal human being is almost invisible, it doesn't break the social media ragebait hurdle. It hardly ever even breaks the regular news hurdle. So if those people exist, how would you know about them?
A billionaire using their money and influence to help people and solve the world's problems is not the same as "being a normal human" and absolutely would be newsworthy enough to have coverage....
A billionaire using their money and influence to help people and solve the world's problems is not the same as "being a normal human" and absolutely would be newsworthy enough to have coverage. Probably not as much coverage as evil things, news does have a negativity bias, but the limited good that some billionaires do contribute to is well-documented (at least enough for the AI-generated comment above to scrape them for examples). If there were a billionaire truly leveraging their resources to have much greater impacts, at least someone here absolutely would have heard of them and would post about it.
I mean, the answer is pretty obvious, right? It's a dry run to see who gets the invite on the giant dick rocket that takes society's winners up to Bezos's space colony when civilization inevitably...
Each morning, we gathered in a lecture hall to hear presentations. If you’ve ever seen a TED Talk, you understand the format. The year I went, a sitting Supreme Court justice was interviewed, and a neurologist talked about technological advances in prosthetics. In the afternoons and evenings, we were encouraged to exchange ideas over drinks and four-course meals, with no set purpose—to network, in other words, with some of the most rarefied talent on Earth. The most common question I heard was “Why am I here?”
“Why am I here?” asked the 1980s hair-metal singer. “Why am I here?” asked the Pulitzer Prize–winning novelist, the famous anthropologist, the presidential historian.
I mean, the answer is pretty obvious, right? It's a dry run to see who gets the invite on the giant dick rocket that takes society's winners up to Bezos's space colony when civilization inevitably collapses under the pressure of the resource wars. Duh.
On a slightly more serious but still half-baked note, this line stood out to me:
And yet, looking around at faces I had only ever seen in a magazine or on-screen, I had an unsettling revelation: This is the hubris of accomplishment. To be declared a genius at one thing is to begin to believe you are a genius at everything.
My friend and I have this stupid little joke about the value of sucking at math. We both know a couple people who think they know everything because they were good at every subject in highschool. It doesn't matter that they didn't study or specialize in something, they watched one TED Talk or read one book and they think they're an expert. Us, on the other hand, well we know we aren't experts at the things we didn't study because we sucked at math and therefore know that we don't know things. If being smart at 17 can cause a normal to overestimate their understanding of the world, imagine what all that wealth and power does to a billionaire.
What did he learn eight years ago in Santa Barabara? ... ... ... And that's about it as far as reporting goes. The rest of it doesn't seem to be about Bezos? To pad it out, there's a bit about...
What did he learn eight years ago in Santa Barabara?
It turns out there is a circuit of idea festivals. Many tech billionaires host one, and if you find yourself on the right list, you can spend much of the year traveling the world, eating Wagyu, and discussing how to make the world a better place [...]
...
Bezos was everywhere that weekend—in a tight T-shirt, laughing too loudly, arms thrown around his teenage sons.
...
Though we didn’t know it at the time, Bezos’s first marriage would be over a few weeks later. My defining impression of his wife that weekend was sadness, even though Bezos made a big show of performing the role of family man.
...
[W]hen I told him [that his wife had broken her wrist], Bezos looked horrified. He did not say “I’m so sorry.” He did not say “Do you need anything?” Instead, he made a face, and in an instant, an aide came and whisked him away.
And that's about it as far as reporting goes. The rest of it doesn't seem to be about Bezos?
To pad it out, there's a bit about There Will Be Blood, a Trump quote, a Peter Thiel quote, and some pontificating based on that.
The headline doesn't imply it to be about Bezos at all, so I don't understand your confusion. It's a lot about the experience at this event, and how that led the author to these other conclusions,...
The headline doesn't imply it to be about Bezos at all, so I don't understand your confusion. It's a lot about the experience at this event, and how that led the author to these other conclusions, especially in light of more recent events.
But it wasn't about Bezos, it's "what I learned about Billionaires..."
Why does he have to meet billionaires to learn things about them? For example, This doesn't require meeting anyone at all, but the experience still would leave an impression on me. I think your...
Why does he have to meet billionaires to learn things about them? For example,
Bezos had bought out the entire Biltmore resort for the weekend, as well as the beach club across the street. He had brought in a security firm from Las Vegas to ensure our safety and privacy. Even the weather felt expensive, and when we were shown to our rooms, the designer gift bags we found were filled with luxury goods.
This doesn't require meeting anyone at all, but the experience still would leave an impression on me.
I think your summary was reductive and ignored basically the entire point of the article which has very little to do with meeting Bezos, and a lot to do with Bezos' and other billionaires' disconnect from the rules that govern everyone else, including not doubting whether they belonged in a space.
It's absolutely possible to criticize the article - Noah Hawley sure is rubbing elbows with other rich people, his business was being courted too. Why talk about this now, did he talk about it before? And his connections may help him make his Star Trek movie or whatever else he's working on. But your read seems to seriously misunderstand the writing at face value.
I think "even the weather felt expensive" shows his hand. It's Santa Barbara, so of course the weather is usually good. What does that even mean? He's entitled to his opinions, but my point is...
I think "even the weather felt expensive" shows his hand. It's Santa Barbara, so of course the weather is usually good. What does that even mean?
He's entitled to his opinions, but my point is that there is very little in the article that's based on learning anything new or interesting about billionaires. They're just run-of-the-mill opinions that you can get anywhere, from someone who doesn't actually know more than the rest of us.
But it's certainly true that rich people, or rich companies, can make extravagant gestures. I was quite impressed when Google flew the entire staff to Disneyland in 2008. That was a major operation with a lot of chartered flights between San Jose to LA. They even closed the park to normal visitors one evening for the event, which I guess is a thing a company can buy?
Like I said, there is plenty to criticize, "it's not about Bezos" is not a reasonable criticism of the article, nor is "he didn't meet other billionaires." I don't know how anyone was supposed to...
Like I said, there is plenty to criticize, "it's not about Bezos" is not a reasonable criticism of the article, nor is "he didn't meet other billionaires." I don't know how anyone was supposed to understand the point you said you're making from your other comments which is why I was, and am, confused about them.
I wouldn't know about renting resorts or Disney, my very rich former employer only spent money on lobbying legislators to expand private prison contracts. Their employees don't rate that sort of expense.
But I think a line can be drawn connecting the common exposure to luxury and the lack of empathy for people, especially today as the author highlights when "empathy" is being used derogatorily by the billionaires and other right wing media figures alike. It's right up there with "how much can a banana cost...$10?"
Traveling to a popular tourist destination (which has good weather) during peak season (when the weather is best) is not something that everyone can afford to do.
I think "even the weather felt expensive" shows his hand. It's Santa Barbara, so of course the weather is usually good. What does that even mean?
Traveling to a popular tourist destination (which has good weather) during peak season (when the weather is best) is not something that everyone can afford to do.
Well, "what I learned at anon billionaire's retreat" is less attractive a headline. It can be excused though, like, "what I learned about Japan (from inside Narita Airport during a one hour...
Well, "what I learned at anon billionaire's retreat" is less attractive a headline. It can be excused though, like, "what I learned about Japan (from inside Narita Airport during a one hour layover)" kind of way.
That's what I'm getting at. Many, many people have posted their opinions about billionaires and here is another one. It's not actually based on better reporting than the rest. The author doesn't...
That's what I'm getting at. Many, many people have posted their opinions about billionaires and here is another one. It's not actually based on better reporting than the rest. The author doesn't seem to know more about them than the rest of us. So if you wanted to learn more about billionaires, this isn't the place to look.
Post on The Atlantic by Noah Hawley (from the shows Fargo and Alien Earth) about the world that billionaires live in and how they become immune to the normal limitations that normally affect humans.
...
It’s a great read and it’s definitely tugging at some truths… but I feel like something’s missing from the analysis. It explains why billionaires can do whatever they want, how money and cause and effect become meaningless, and how this leads billionaires to completely detach from their humanity and shared existence with the rest of the planet.
But it doesn’t explain why they become EVIL. Why they get into bed with corrupt politicians; go into the businesses of mass surveillance, war profiteering, propaganda, and data brokerage; buddy up with the rogues gallery of Russian oligarchs and Gulf state journalist-sawing royals. Particularly for the bootstrappy ones like Bezos that came up in America (or any western nation) where they personally benefited from the ideals of democracy, what drives them to undermine those values, to pull the ladder up behind themselves and actively use their wealth and influence to steer the world into an oppressive dystopic hellscape of a future? I get that they can do that, but why they fuck DO they?? They weren’t born supervillains, but at some point they had the thought: I can do literally anything, and what I choose to do… is this. Because reasons.
Why don’t they choose differently? Why isn’t there a single billionaire in the world leveraging the same degree of wealth and influence to actually end world poverty? I’m talking about earnest, big project energy, not PR philanthropy or shady self-enrichment schemes disguised as altruism. They could choose good… they just don’t.
The Bill Gates foundation has done a massive amount of good! I think the reason that nobody has ended poverty is that that's not a realistic goal by any stretch of the imagination.
Here's an (AI-generated) list of billionaires who have donated over $1B of their personal fortunes, with sources.
Warren Buffett — the top philanthropist for five consecutive years, with $62 billion given over his lifetime (about 30% of his net worth), donating $5.3 billion in 2024 alone. Philanthropy News Digest
Bill & Melinda French Gates — the most famous philanthropists in the world, with a lifetime total of around $32.91 billion given TFN through the Gates Foundation.
MacKenzie Scott — has donated an estimated $26 billion across more than 2,700 gifts since 2020, representing about 46% of her net worth, including $7.2 billion in 2025 alone. Fortune
George Soros — has given away a larger percentage of his current net worth than most major donors on the Forbes list (76%), Philanthropy News Digest with total giving well over $30 billion to his Open Society Foundations.
Michael Bloomberg — has parted with over $10 billion, including a $1.8 billion donation to Johns Hopkins University in 2018, Love Money and led the Chronicle of Philanthropy's top 50 list for 2024 and 2025.
Chuck Feeney — donated his entire $9 billion fortune to good causes, with 2020 being the year he finally achieved his lifelong aim of giving it all away. Love Money
Mark Zuckerberg & Priscilla Chan — directed $1.11 billion in 2024 to foundations and donor-advised funds Chronicle of Philanthropy , part of a much larger lifetime commitment through the Chan Zuckerberg Initiative.
Michael Bloomberg (already noted), Eli Broad — donated around $4 billion during his lifetime to educational grants and arts initiatives, including a record-breaking $100 million gift to Yale's Business School. Love Money
Gordon Moore — gave $4.22 billion (57% of his net worth) through the Gordon and Betty Moore Foundation. TFN
John & Laura Arnold — have given over $2 billion to date since signing the Giving Pledge in 2010, currently the only signatories technically in full compliance with its terms, with their donations amounting to about 42% of their wealth. Fortune
Herbert & Marion Sandler — donated more than $1.3 billion during their lifetimes to causes including civil liberties and the launch of ProPublica. Love Money
Reed Hastings — directed $1.6 billion in 2024 to foundations and donor-advised funds, Chronicle of Philanthropy part of a growing philanthropic commitment.
A few caveats worth noting: tracking actual disbursed giving vs. pledges or transfers to donor-advised funds is genuinely difficult. Many participants channel philanthropy through private family foundations or donor-advised funds that enable immediate tax benefits while allowing disbursements over time Wikipedia — meaning money "donated" can sit for years before reaching actual charities. In total, American billionaires have publicly donated or pledged around $185 billion over the past decade — only about 3.25% of their combined $5.7 trillion in wealth. Fortune
For what it's worth on that last bit, I felt it was worth including for context but that wealth figure is a little sketchy. It's paper wealth, not real wealth.
Bezos privately funded the Washington Post at great expense to keep it alive. I think "actively trying to make the world a hellscape" is a bit of a stretch, you know?
Not AI generated (you could at least do your own research) list of why people who donate money aren't necessarily "not evil" or "good" or whatever moral lever you want to use.
Warren Buffett, Melinda French Gates, MacKenzie Scott -
These are very rich people, two of whom got their billions in the divorce. I can't say whether they're evil, but they're not getting much (if any) poorer despite their pledges to donate their money. They do seem to be at least remaining multi-billionaires at about the same level or making more and more money. Is that even ethical? That's more of a philosophical question.
Bill Gates - All of the monopoly/business practices issues with Microsoft, and a significant enough connection to Epstein to lead his wife to divorce him. Including apparently multiple affairs. While some of the specific new allegations are not true, this connection is not new.
George Soros - the man was absolutely awful for financial markets, but like, not in a way that's good for the people. He was short selling billions of other currencies, to the point of causing crises for his own gain and was convicted of insider trading.
Is he good because he donated to political causes I agree with? Or still functionally a negative for society?
Is he evil? I don't know that I can say he's "not evil".
Afaict he was never technically a billionaire, having put his shares into a foundation before it sold for lots of money. Props.
I mean, we can start with stealing the idea for Facebook, which was also motivated by looking at women, trying to pressure the Crimson not to publish and hacking the editors' email accounts. Lota of things he settled over for a lot of money in court
Lying about viewership numbers on Facebook videos leading to the destruction of indie shows, purchasing land in Hawaii while suing hundreds of native Hawaiians to take their land because he "didn't know the laws were different there" and gating off land that to be frank was just more recently stolen than the rest of the US. Actively profiting off of the spreading of hate speech, misinformation, propaganda - to the point that I'm not sure they've gotten close to donating enough to recompense. Refusing to protect teen mental health, immediately being misogynistic when Trump took office... This is a very high level summary.
Accused of deliberately manipulating gas price indices while at Enron, getting a very large bonus right before they declared bankruptcy. Despite Enron (and similar) companies being largely responsible for the pension shortfalls in CA, pushes heavily for "pension reform" (aka cuts) and has no regrets about Enron. Some of that grant work isn't great either such as supporting aerial police surveillance.
Is he evil? He gives me the ick, but idk you decide.
Herbert & Marion Sandler —
Herbert's firm nearly killed Wachovia in 2008 (who cares about Wachovia? Not really me but they got their bag and sold the sub-prime crisis on to the taxpayers). They supported pre-payment penalties and invented a mortgage whose payments were lower than the interest. Idk that one can call them particularly "not evil".
Reed Hastings — I could flag a number of things about Netflix, being ont eh Anthropic board, or turning half a mountain into a private ski resort. He also hasn't donated that much - he's only a little billionaire but he's made sure he remains one.
I don't know what point makes someone "not evil" for being a billionaire. And I didn't dig through some of their pasts further. But notably, they haven't ended world poverty. Many of them are richer now than they were when they pledged their money away, most are at least as rich. The point of the article is that you cannot end up broke, and that seems to be true.
The whole "evil or not" framing seems problematic. Even if it's not binary, it's still putting all the things someone did on a one-dimensional scale, and to do that, you have to decide whether the good things and bad things somehow cancel out. Did they do more good than bad or more bad than good? How do you even weigh that? There are a few cases where it's obvious, but usually it's a mix.
I don't think people's deeds cancel out. Bill Gates's charity doesn't cancel the bad things he's done. And also, the bad things he's done don't cancel the lives saved through his charity. They both happened, and you usually can't give each deed a number and add them up. They're incomparable.
For someone writing a biography, it all goes in. It seems pretty common for powerful people have plenty of good and bad stuff in their biography. Having power means they had more opportunity than most of us to do both.
Yeah I tried to make that clear throughout. I thought an AI list of donation quantity sans context does nothing to counter balooga's point which stands - what makes them evil (by the standards outlined there). And I can't even begin to address that. I can just point out that donating money doesn't do it though.
I broadly agree. Even if they spent their money on their pet projects, but those projects were solving climate change, feeding the world, etc. rather than going to Mars (Space is great, capitalist space isn't) or buying a bigger yacht or networking to abuse children, we could have more of a quibble about how they were spending their money. (And the same applied to those who kept slaves vs donating everything to abolitionist causes, especially TJ and his whole "my wife's enslaved half-sister is clearly an ethical sexual partner" thing. )
I'm mostly unimpressed with the "pledge to give away your money" thing because the vast majority of the people involved have kept a very large amount of money. Despite being pretty old relatively speaking. How much of that money do they need, actually?
The one guy who really gave it all away made that decision before he had billions. And maybe that's the answer, if you never had it you can't hoard it. But once you have it, you turn into a dragon as sure as Eustace does in Narnia - you have to slough your own scales off to be free of it.
Ty I appreciate your thoughts as always
Ah damn, just for brief context.
The cousin of the 4 kids ends up in Narnia and his name is Eustace Scrubb "and he almost deserved it" and that tells you most of who he is as a person. He comes across a dying dragon, puts some of his gold hoard on, falls asleep while having very greedy thoughts and turns into a dragon. He tries to peel off the dragon's skin but can't do it by himself so Lion Jesus (who just shows up) has to claw it off him, because only He can cleanse this kid from his sin.
I just had the image of shedding dragon scales like coins in my head for these billionaires though, not really the religious bits. (Total aside: The fact that Dionysus, Silenus and multiple other gods are all over Narnia is entertaining to me, and I like to imagine he mixed all these mythos just to piss Tolkien off)
But I do love Granny's take on sin. Perfect pull
Going out on a limb, I'm going to guess that you have at least $100 (or equivalent) in funds that you could lose without impacting your own life. That's more than enough to, if used properly, materially alleviate the suffering of more than one child in Africa.
Are you evil because you haven't donated it? The degree is arbitrary, no?
Hopefully it goes without saying that I'm not actually accusing you of being evil. What I am seeking to do is force you to defend your position more broadly than "people have money, therefore they are evil."
I don't think R3qn65 was specifically targeting you with their comment. Almost no one is dedicating all of their disposable income to charity. If you are, that's very admirable, but statistically speaking, virtually no one is doing what you are.
I know I could certainly afford to donate more than $100 to ending world hunger, but I don't. I have hobbies I spend money on instead, I save more than I need to for retirement because I'm worried about the future and I want to retire early, I live in a house that is nicer than I actually need to to be to live, and so on.
I think the vast, vast majority of people are in a similar boat, so without knowing anything about you, it was a decent guess that you were as well.
The core of the argument is that the vast majority of people aren't evil because they don't donate a significant portion of their income to charity.
I think that tracks, but whether it can be applied to billionaires is an entirely different argument, so it doesn't need to be the case that almost everyone is evil (or doing something immoral, if you want to be more accurate about it) in order for billionaires to be.
I'm not religious, but I very much love throwing this into conversations with people who are:
Generous billionaire < Homeless woman
Bible is full of these gems. Jesus and Marx would have gotten very drunk together.
(@DefinitelyNotAFae also pertinate to your reply to me in another thread here)
Something, something eye of the needle.
On the one hand, “not a billionaire” is kind of a low bar since someone with, say, a hundred million is still set for life, ten times over.
But on the other, I don’t think it should be a litmus test for anything. The Giving Pledge asks that they give a majority of their money away and it could be in their wills. It’s kind of weak sauce, and yet, if most billionaires did that then that would be fantastic. The people who are giving a majority of their money away in a thoughtful way should be praised.
I would not expect this to solve world poverty in any scenario. I think people don’t have a good sense of scale and overestimate what private charity could do. Governments are an order of magnitude more powerful.
The scary thing is that this is heavily dependant on which government you're talking about.
Jeff Bezos alone makes more per year than the revenue of most countries governments on earth. Only about 60 have bigger budgets than he does.
Power isn’t just about money. Bezos isn’t going to arrest you, deny your visa, or raise your taxes.
The Trump administration is to blame for cancelling USAID. Some billionaires supported him (for example, Musk), but so did the millions of people who voted for him, and other billionaires publicly opposed it (Gates).
So I don't think talking about billionaires as a group helps as far as public policy is concerned. They're not a monolith. They have different politics.
Paying more in taxes to the US government than legally required instead of donating to charity is a terrible idea. How much you pay in taxes has zero effect on what Congress decides to spend, or on what the Trump administration decides to do. USAID would be just as cancelled if billionaires paid more in taxes. ICE would still be deporting people and we'd still be at war with Iran.
You might as well set the money on fire for all the good it will do. Paying more in federal taxes than is legally required has zero effect and you get zero credit. That's true for us and it's true for billionaires too. (For a local government like a public school district it's different.)
In times like this, we're fortunate that there are well-funded private charities. They can't make up for USAID, but at least they can do something. It's good that we live in a pluralistic society with many kinds of organizations that try to do different things. By donating to a good charity you get to redirect money towards better uses.
Furthermore, charitable donations are often tax deductable for a reason. It's cooperating with what the government wants you to do.
They all agree on keeping more money than any person needs to live, even live in the highest levels of comfort. It's very useful when talking about that to discuss them as a group.
There is a much simpler arguement:
If dictatorships, oligarchies, and monarchies are considered bad forms of government, what suddenly makes them good for running companies and charitable organizations?
No one person should have the amount of power that weilding billions (or even millions) will give. It's a roulette wheel whether you get another Musk or another Warren.
The inevitable counterarguement boils down to 'because government sets the law for everybody,' but I think that falls apart once you acknowledge the power of money in politics.
There is nothing the Gates foundation does that couldn't have been done better by funding USAID with tax dollars which would have prevented its existence.
Billionaire charity is akin to putting out a forest fire that they caused, and then receiving praise for it.
Or you know the saying "The best time to plant a tree was 20 years ago. The second best is now."? That applies. We could have had that wealth to leverage into progress decades ago.
I agree, I just didn't think that was as useful a response to "but they donated so much they can't be evil" as if money cleans the moral slate. The one guy who donated everything before he got it seems fine, but maybe he was evil for something else, idk. It was less a counter and more an invalidation of the premise. Also a distaste for any post that says "I asked AI and here's the answer" especially with apparently zero thought about it.
Your point is taken though - and dumping all their money into a foundation is secondary to taxing the shit out of them.
I know of at least one billionaire foundation whose director after the founder passed away announced "Hey, we are unable to give this money away faster than we are making money, if you need some lmk." And I mean there's still an application, it's a process no matter what, but they seem to really mean it; once that exponential compound interest ticks over, things get crazy.
Sure. I'm assuming they have something limiting they're giving however. But send me the link. I'll happily request assistance.
To quote Good Charlotte
I'm reminded of an exchange from Fiddler on the Roof in which Perchik, the ardent young communist, says "Money is the world's curse." Tevye's response is "May the Lord smite me with it. And may I never recover!"
God every day I feel like I relate to Tevye a little bit more.
Sending now, godspeed lol
I’m interested as well as I’m out of work
It's for non-profits, not individuals, with a focus on NC
So you know, they could give it away faster. It's ok for a foundation to have standards. I'm just saying billionaires could do more.
Unfortunately they are only a foundation giving to other organizations—i haven't cracked the philanthropy-to-individuals pipeline but as someone who's also been looking for a job, I feel ya
I absolutely loathe this narrative. You absolutely can end up broke, none of them want to. They want too much control over it.
Spend a bunch of energy and effort hiring people you trust to create a company to do x, and give them a budget. Rinse and repeat.
None of them have to be perfect. Hell, even if some of them end up corrupt, if the amount which is not corrupt that goes towards tangible good is more than the amount they are currently spending, then you are closer to your objective.
Everyone brings up Bill Gates because the numbers he gives is bigger than anyone else, but put it into perspective. Compare how much he has donated to his total wealth. Then multiply it by your total wealth. You give more of your wealth by leaving change behind as a tip. We need to stop celebrating these people - they care so much more about the number in their bank account than anything else, full stop.
Allow me to be clearer, from the article the impression I got is that (the author believes) billionaires feel there are no consequences for their mistakes because they can't end up broke from them. There's no realistic way to "lose" that much money or not to be able to borrow liquidity the way Musk did for Twitter
I agree they could actually spend down, but they aren't. I wasn't very precise with my last phrase there as it was a hefty write and edit.
I could help. Put me in charge, I'll help them be "broke"
But I agree they still care deeply about their bank accounts despite having more money than God (at least as represented by the RCC)
I don't know enough about charity funding to really discuss the rest of your comment, but this is such a disingenuous framing of what Bezos has been doing with the Post that I'm genuinely surprised you posted it without any sort of caveat acknowledging the widely-criticized moves he's made there.
Agreed. To be very explicit: Bezos bought the Washington Post to control the content.
To see a very blatant change in the content, notice the Washington Post has endorsed a Democrat for President in most of the elections before Bezos took over:
Most of mainstream media has been bought by billionaires. They use it to manufacture consent. They use it to increase the already massive power that they have.
Similarly, Musk bought Twitter. Some people were mocking him at the time because he's been driving Twitter into the ground and it isn't profiting. But authoritarian governments have benefited from the demise of twitter, which had previously been used to organize protests, call out dishonest politicians, and do some other good things (along with the shallow and dumb things that have always dominated it).
Here's more of the timeline for context:
Bezo's interference in October 2024 is well-documented by the Post itself. But for the previous two elections, apparently he hadn't started interfering yet?
So I don't think it's likely that he bought the Post to control the content back in 2013. If that was the reason, why wait a decade? It seems more likely to be a shift in strategy.
The NYT's profile on Bezos's ownership of the post is worth reading. I wouldn't call it positive, exactly, but it's a more neutral overview of Bezos's tenure. The Times cites a dozen sources inside the Post who say that Bezos never interfered with the Post's critical coverage of Trump, for instance, even as he himself was courting Trump separately. There has clearly been some influence (interference), obviously, that's indisputable. It was Bezos's call to kill the planned endorsement of Kamala Harris, for example. That's no secret, he published an oped about it. But if Bezos's goal is to manufacture consent to increase his own power, why is he so (generally) uninvolved? An NPR piece covering the Kamala decision (and fallout) even noted that Bezos has not interfered with reporting on his businesses or himself.
I think it's reasonable to conclude that Bezos owning the Post is a net negative for democracy; my point isn't that everything is fine. But it should be a nuanced conclusion, not a reflexive conclusion. (Not saying your conclusion specifically was reflexive.)
The more negative view of Bezos's tenure, for balance, can be found in the Atlantic.
Because manufacturing consent requires that the source is still viewed as at least somewhat legitimate. You can't just turn on a dime and publish stories about unions being evil and billionaires being good, actually, if you want the paper to remain relevant.
Subtly nudging the paper in the direction you want it to go is a lot more effective.
What other reason would someone have for buying a newspaper in 2013?
It's a business model that was on an obvious downward trajectory even back then.
Very fair counterpoint. I’ll concede that.
As far as why buy a newspaper, Bezos is both rich enough that it doesn’t really matter to him (like Elon and Twitter, right?) and I can see a world where he was sufficiently convinced of his own business acumen that he thought he could turn it around and make it profitable. Nevertheless, there’s no way for us to really know and I grant that you’re probably correct here.
Elon and twitter is actually a pretty good case study to illustrate the differences strategywise. Elon bought the company and within a month it became an extreme right wing, bot and crypto bro infested echo chamber that no one takes seriously anymore.
WaPo is still a pretty well respected publication, all things considered. Even though Twitter has far, far more users than WaPo could ever dream of, I'd argue that the newspaper is a lot more influential with people who have actual power than twitter is.
I'm trying to squint at the table you provided and see absolutely no evidence of Jeff Bezos's ownership affecting Washington Post's position. What am I missing here?
The table shows that there were 8 endorsements in a row, all for candidates from the Democratic Party. But then in 2024 they decided not to endorse anyone. At a time when it was extremely easy to choose the better candidate: One of the candidates was a seditionist and convicted felon and found guilty of rape in court and horribly mismanaged a pandemic and had conflicts of interest with foreign countries and much of his cabinet were convicted felons. The other candidate was an acceptable politician whose main downside was the disorganization of the DNC who should have had a primary.
Additional context: there were news stories at the time that the editorial staff wanted to endorse Harris but management prevented it.
It can be both at the same time. I would believe that Bezos bought the Post for those kinds of reasons - the reality is that once he resigned as CEO of Amazon, he would be pretty bored. Keeping a storied newspaper alive is the kind of legacy building that rich people are known for - just look at how many things are named Carnegie to this day.
But, in the end, Blue Origin was what really became his pet project, and where he poured his money. Eventually WaPo became a liability, because WaPo angering Trump = Trump denying his actual favorite company, Blue Origin, from government contracts.
I can believe Bezos's motivations were more of a mixed bag than where the Post has ultimately ended up, but it's framing it as purely benevolent without even mentioning that he's made some controversial moves with the paper that I take issue with.
I’m sure the vast majority of people who comment on Tildes can also access one of the many free AI/LLM services out there, if they want to, so I’m not sure this adds anything to your comment. It feels padded out but with very little actual human contribution. I’m much more interested in your own views and synthesis of information than copying over some AI output with a thin layer of commentary on top.
If your comment was simply a link to a Wikipedia page of “list of billionaires who have donated more than $1bn” then it would be visually much clearer which parts of your comment are your own contribution and which are external.
I don’t want to discourage contribution, but I do want to discourage pasting the output of any AI without your own editorial input. In the same kind of way, I am a lot more interested in a person discussing a Wikipedia link rather than simply copying the contents of Wikipedia into a comment.
This is a totally reasonable view and generally, I agree. My comment was responding to one very specific element - the question "why isn't there a single billionaire who's actively used their fortunes to try to make the world better [technically, 'end poverty']" - and showing that not only is the number not zero, there are quite a few. I don't think there's an issue using AI for that sort of fact retrieval, in much the same way that I wouldn't hold it against someone for pasting a screenshot of the top Google results or something.
I think the piece actually does address why billionaires turn "evil", at least to an extent. Quoting this observation from the article:
That is, it's not just that
behavior ⇒ consequencesbut also thatconsequences ⇒ behavior. If a group of people is shielded from the consequences of their actions on others, then that group will learn to behave in ways that are narcissistic or selfish. Obviously this dynamic extends beyond billionaires -- it also broadly explains the tendency for Israelis to feel apathetic about the conditions in Gaza, Americans to tolerate factory farming, shoppers to support fast fashion, etc.Nevertheless, everybody still has the capacity to act morally; they just might have to be deliberate, which requires some amount of introspection. Unfortunately, some of these same people view introspection as weakness (see link in quote), likely because introspection doesn't reap personal benefits (further reinforcing the idea that
consequences ⇒ behavior).I think the theme of the article is that being good requires empathy, and empathy requires you to imagine losing something, and that seems to be a muscle that needs constant exercise. I'm not sure if I'm convinced of this either, but that seems to be Hawley's theme.
Except I'm guessing the kind of person who would become a billionaire is already a person who doesn't have the normal level of ethics and behavior. At best, they are hoarders, but wealth hoarders instead of random garbage like you see in the TV series about hoarding.
It's possible there are some "good" billionaires now but we don't hear about them too much except for "accidental billionaires" like MacKenzie Scott (Bezos' ex-wife), who donated $19 billion since 2019.
When we see things like Carnegie Hall we might think that previous generation's wealthy were better, but in that example I'm pretty sure he was a terrible person his whole life until he decided he "won".
Someone with altruistic impulses is much less likely to become a billionaire in the first place. They would make a transition from generating additional wealth to maintaining or drawing down their assets well before reaching ten figure's worth of assets.
As R3qn65 brought up, there are a lot of not-evil billionaires. But the process of becoming a billionaire selects out the most sociable humans, and the end result is a concentration of personalities harmful to the general good that is many multiples of the rate of the general population.
To me, I think stereotypical philanthropy from a billionaire is not really even desirable. All existing billionaires should spend all their resources ending the one thing that they shouldn't have to begin with, which is immense amount of resources that give them immense amounts of power.
I disagree with the base foundation that there should be people who have as much influence as the extremely wealthy have, and the only way I could support any of them leveraging any of that influence for anything is for the goal of ending that influence. Otherwise I can't support other actions because they're stealing from society as a whole. They're literally the biggest thieves in history, and the typical philanthropy they engage in is a bit of a reverse Robin Hood scenario so they can stroke their own ego and create a legacy for themselves.
Being a normal human being is almost invisible, it doesn't break the social media ragebait hurdle. It hardly ever even breaks the regular news hurdle. So if those people exist, how would you know about them?
A billionaire using their money and influence to help people and solve the world's problems is not the same as "being a normal human" and absolutely would be newsworthy enough to have coverage. Probably not as much coverage as evil things, news does have a negativity bias, but the limited good that some billionaires do contribute to is well-documented (at least enough for the AI-generated comment above to scrape them for examples). If there were a billionaire truly leveraging their resources to have much greater impacts, at least someone here absolutely would have heard of them and would post about it.
I mean, the answer is pretty obvious, right? It's a dry run to see who gets the invite on the giant dick rocket that takes society's winners up to Bezos's space colony when civilization inevitably collapses under the pressure of the resource wars. Duh.
On a slightly more serious but still half-baked note, this line stood out to me:
My friend and I have this stupid little joke about the value of sucking at math. We both know a couple people who think they know everything because they were good at every subject in highschool. It doesn't matter that they didn't study or specialize in something, they watched one TED Talk or read one book and they think they're an expert. Us, on the other hand, well we know we aren't experts at the things we didn't study because we sucked at math and therefore know that we don't know things. If being smart at 17 can cause a normal to overestimate their understanding of the world, imagine what all that wealth and power does to a billionaire.
What did he learn eight years ago in Santa Barabara?
...
...
...
And that's about it as far as reporting goes. The rest of it doesn't seem to be about Bezos?
To pad it out, there's a bit about There Will Be Blood, a Trump quote, a Peter Thiel quote, and some pontificating based on that.
The headline doesn't imply it to be about Bezos at all, so I don't understand your confusion. It's a lot about the experience at this event, and how that led the author to these other conclusions, especially in light of more recent events.
But it wasn't about Bezos, it's "what I learned about Billionaires..."
If he met any other billionaires, they're not named or described in any detail. It sounds like he met some celebrities, though?
Why does he have to meet billionaires to learn things about them? For example,
This doesn't require meeting anyone at all, but the experience still would leave an impression on me.
I think your summary was reductive and ignored basically the entire point of the article which has very little to do with meeting Bezos, and a lot to do with Bezos' and other billionaires' disconnect from the rules that govern everyone else, including not doubting whether they belonged in a space.
It's absolutely possible to criticize the article - Noah Hawley sure is rubbing elbows with other rich people, his business was being courted too. Why talk about this now, did he talk about it before? And his connections may help him make his Star Trek movie or whatever else he's working on. But your read seems to seriously misunderstand the writing at face value.
I think "even the weather felt expensive" shows his hand. It's Santa Barbara, so of course the weather is usually good. What does that even mean?
He's entitled to his opinions, but my point is that there is very little in the article that's based on learning anything new or interesting about billionaires. They're just run-of-the-mill opinions that you can get anywhere, from someone who doesn't actually know more than the rest of us.
But it's certainly true that rich people, or rich companies, can make extravagant gestures. I was quite impressed when Google flew the entire staff to Disneyland in 2008. That was a major operation with a lot of chartered flights between San Jose to LA. They even closed the park to normal visitors one evening for the event, which I guess is a thing a company can buy?
Like I said, there is plenty to criticize, "it's not about Bezos" is not a reasonable criticism of the article, nor is "he didn't meet other billionaires." I don't know how anyone was supposed to understand the point you said you're making from your other comments which is why I was, and am, confused about them.
I wouldn't know about renting resorts or Disney, my very rich former employer only spent money on lobbying legislators to expand private prison contracts. Their employees don't rate that sort of expense.
But I think a line can be drawn connecting the common exposure to luxury and the lack of empathy for people, especially today as the author highlights when "empathy" is being used derogatorily by the billionaires and other right wing media figures alike. It's right up there with "how much can a banana cost...$10?"
Traveling to a popular tourist destination (which has good weather) during peak season (when the weather is best) is not something that everyone can afford to do.
I feel like this could be said about the vast majority of op-ed pieces. At least the guy went to a party that no tildo will ever be invited to.
Yes, I agree. (There are lots of mediocre op-ed articles out there!)
Well, "what I learned at anon billionaire's retreat" is less attractive a headline. It can be excused though, like, "what I learned about Japan (from inside Narita Airport during a one hour layover)" kind of way.
That's what I'm getting at. Many, many people have posted their opinions about billionaires and here is another one. It's not actually based on better reporting than the rest. The author doesn't seem to know more about them than the rest of us. So if you wanted to learn more about billionaires, this isn't the place to look.