Comment Permalink

Maybe! I don't think it's one or the other though. I suspect a 'them versus us' approach is not going to be helpful - making worldwide laws forcing people to give away wealth over a certain amount seem both unlikely and problematic. I think working with the ultra rich to make 'improving education' as cool as 'having the biggest yacht' is more likely to have a positive outcome.

Scrutiny Around Billionaire Giving - A Good Idea?

by Rob Percival

Aug 24 20221 min read 11

10

Effective givingCommunity projects

Frontpage

Hi All,

I recently read The Business Of Changing The World by Raj Kumar, and was convinced by his arguments that there should be greater scrutiny (ie ‘detailed tracking’) of billionaire philanthropy, and, eventually, scrutiny around the effectiveness of that giving.

I’m thinking of starting a project whereby this data is collected and made available publicly - initially likely just in the form of a table/spreadsheet and potentially later in a more ‘processed’ form, such as a website.

I’m interested in the opinions of the community around:

1. Do you agree this would be overall a good thing? My hope would be it would encourage more billionaires to give to (hopefully) effective causes, and engender a more positive conversation about the philanthropic activities of the ultra-rich, each of whom potentially could have the annual aid budget of a small country. But there are concerns the information could be used negatively, or could have unintended negative consequences.

2. Do you think the data is publicly available? Vox and Forbes among others frequently write articles stating the amount certain billionaires have given away which implies the data is there, but it might be hard to obtain.

3. Would you like to help? If your answer to 1 and 2 is ‘yes’ and you’d like to get involved please let me know!

Thanks,

Rob

10 Reactions

Comments11

Sorted by

New & upvoted

Click to highlight new comments since: Today at 10:35 PM

Vasco Grilo🔸Aug 24 20224

Hi Rob,

Sounds like a good idea! In fact, something similar has been proposed by Elliot Olds on the EA Forum: Proposal: Impact List -- like the Forbes List except for impact via donations.

Rob PercivalAug 24 20222

Thanks Vasco! Will reach out to that team.

BerkeAug 25 20223

If you're curious about arguments for (or rather against against) why billionaire philanthropy you might check out this SSC post. This post by Richard Chappell is pretty good too.

Rob PercivalAug 25 20221

Thanks Berke - I broadly agree with those posts, and would hope that this project would engender more discussion of that nature.

Charles Dillon 🔸Aug 24 20221

I expect much of the data is out there, because the majority of billionaires either want to give publicly, or they need to disclose when they change their shareholdings in their main source of wealth (in the case of the typical company founder) due to regulations, and donating to charity is seen as a good excuse to do this.

It may be rather difficult to gather though, as I don't expect there to be a nice centralised source.

Rob PercivalAug 25 20221

I guess the harder the data is to gather the more valuable the resource would be! If it is actually something people are interested in that is...

sawyer🔸Aug 24 2022-4

I think this is a good idea as a neutral tracking resource, but I might be against it if it had the effect of heaping additional praise on the billionaires. (I don't like Elliot's Impact List idea.) I think transparency is good.

Rob PercivalAug 25 20222

Thanks Sawyer - having read Elliot's post I like the idea but think collecting the data will be very difficult. An advantage of this 'simpler' system is that fewer (although not zero) judgement calls need to be made in the collection/presentation of the data.

Phil TannyAug 24 2022-15

Perhaps more effort should be directed at questioning why any human being needs to be a billionaire? By encouraging billionaires to donate we are in effect legitimizing their hoarding of vast resources far beyond the needs of any person. Instead of asking them to give, perhaps we might be discussing how we will reclaim these resources?

Soaring markets helped the richest 1% gain $6.5 trillion in wealth last year, according to the Fed

https://www.cnbc.com/2022/04/01/richest-one-percent-gained-trillions-in-wealth-2021.html#:~:text=%E2%80%9CThe%20pandemic%20wealth%20boom%20certainly,end%20of%202021%2C%20data%20show.

Rob PercivalAug 25 20225

Phil TannyAug 25 20220

Hi Rob,

I agree we shouldn't demonize most of the rich as "the enemy" assuming they made their fortune legally, which most did. However, when a tiny fraction of the population is, well, hoarding 30-40% of the nation's wealth if we're serious about ambitiously funding altruistic projects we have to look to where the real money is, and that's where it is, held by the super rich.

I agree that laws which reduce the wealthy from being super rich to just comfortable are highly problematic, and that's largely because the super rich will use their vast resources to buy the U.S. Congress so as to prevent such laws.

Most of that money goes to buying TV ads for incumbents, so one change we might consider would be to "make it cool" as you say to not vote for any candidate who runs TV ads. That could be a place to start.

Another approach could be to target rich people who have made their money in a highly anti-social manner, such as tobacco company executives for example. These rich guys kill roughly 1,000 Americans a day, just so they can get even richer, so I see no good reason to have mercy on them.