Back to Lauren, though, who last year declared: “I’m immersing myself in philanthropy and strategic giving.” Which sounds a lot more fun than Amazon warehouse workers immersing themselves in strategic peeing-in-bottles.
On the one hand, I can imagine that it is hard to give away jillions of dollars. I imagine there’s a lot of con-people and hucksters out there, or just kinda shitty orgs like these. But even if that’s true, it’s hard to take you seriously while you’re on a giant yacht in the Med, yanno?
Literally hire people to figure it out? Even if half of his money ended up at shitty companies actually giving away the 10bn he pledged (of note, a fraction of his net worth) the total amount given away to good causes would be over 2x more than he’s given away to date.
This is always an excuse I can never abide. Literally hire more people to figure it out. When you have billions of dollars to give away, it’s perfectly fine for some of it to go to overhead to ensure it ends up in the right hands. I think we can all agree giving someone a liveable salary to figure out where to donate money to is a pretty good use of money.
oh totally agree! i don’t actually think these specific people really give a shit, but because i like to play the “what if i win a billion dollars in the lottery and want to spend the rest of my life giving it away; how can i do it where it has the best impact?” game while I’m showering, i think about the mechanics of this a lot. I’m sure there’s a ton of tried and true philanthropic recipes already out there but it’s more fun imagining how I’d do it if i was too dumb/arrogant to Google it after i win my billions and before i set up my charitable foundation.
starting the charitable foundation is where i think the complexity comes in; you basically need a system of checks in place to avoid any malfeasance, and there are probably a lot of people willing to say whatever it took to get wealthy and to hell with the people the charitable giving was intended to be for. i feel like someone of bezos life experience probably knows how to hire auditors and engage with charity watchdogs with a minimum of fuss, which is probably why they’re spending their time on an absurd boat doing whatever it is stupid rich people do, but for me who hasn’t done this before, I’d be riddled with panic that i was fucking up and someone is going to oceans eleven my vast fortune intended for charity, then sit on it like a fucking gold hoarding dragon. I’m pretty sure I’d die of self loathing if i made a mistake and it meant i couldn’t help all the people i should’ve been able to help.
anyway, just want to be clear: not trying to carry water for these fools, just acknowledging that they are correct that giving away vast fortunes is probably harder than i think it is. at least a little, but also not so hard that you can’t spend a couple months in the French Riviera on a boat
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