Roko comments on (One reason) why capitalism is much maligned - Less Wrong

1 Post author: multifoliaterose 19 July 2010 03:48AM

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Comment author: xamdam 19 July 2010 04:35:35PM *  5 points [-]

And Jeff Bezos spends his money on Blue origin which furthers the cause of the human race as a whole

This seems good to me from the little that I know.

No need to reply to this red herring about spending habits of super-rich; they are largely irrelevant to your argument (that capitalism is still the better system).

But once we go down that road...

"The IRS facts for 2007 show that the 400 biggest taxpayers had a total adjusted income of $138 billion, and just over $11 billion was taken as a charitable deduction, a proportion of about 8%...Is it possible that annual giving misses the bigger picture? One could imagine that the very rich build their net worth during their lifetimes and then put large charitable bequests into their wills. Estate tax data, unfortunately, make hash of that scenario, as 2008 statistics show."

It's a good counter-point to Roko's fantasy about the kindness of billionaires. I suspect he fell for availability bias with his space program idea and Bezos. BTW, the Blue Origin investment is not even close to closing his income gap with the average Joe. Buffett is giving away all of his money, to be managed by tech-smart Gates, would have made a better example (which again supports the availability bias ;).

Still, the real economics of it is that the super-rich by and large do not take away much from society, with some exceptions. This is because they either buy goods and services for themselves or invest. This per se adds a single cycle to the money circulation rate, which is not huge. The exceptions come when they spend obscene amount on essentially single-used goods that need to be produced anew, such as building palaces for them and their whole f*g royal extended family (sorry for the emotion, but this is what I feel for the oil sheiks). Somewhat counter-intuitively, if they compete on existing luxuries, such Michelangelo paintings, and spend billion dollars on them, the harm is pretty minimal, since little societal resources needed to be wasted on these goods.

All in all I heard of very few, billion-dollar self indulgent spenders. The rest of the money gets invested, and often in new startups/technologies that you mutual fund will not invest in, and which in fact is a very valuable service.

Comment deleted 19 July 2010 05:44:55PM *  [-]
Comment author: xamdam 19 July 2010 06:02:02PM *  3 points [-]

I venture that if you put this data next to the marginal utility of money the 1% donation of the ordinary people will look way more charitable than the 8% or the super-rich.

Buffett said, rather honestly (after declaring his intention of giving away 99%) something along the lines of "don't look at me for charity advice, I never gave away a dollar I actually needed". You have to discount super-rich giving quite steeply on altruism scale.

Additional accounting note: the 8% comes from American data, so 8x is not the true ratio your 1% figure is from UK, and according to you Americans' giving is waaay more charitable. Also not known how much of the super-rich giving goes to churches as you point out.

Just to point out, we are not arguing about altruism of the super-rich, not their usefulness in a capitalist society; they are not only a necessary evil but are actually useful because of their investment profile.

Comment deleted 19 July 2010 06:06:29PM [-]
Comment author: xamdam 19 July 2010 06:44:30PM *  2 points [-]

Agreed, but this still does not indicate any general altruism of the super-rich. Pragmatically, you're better off hitting them up for 10M than me for $100, even if I am giving up more utils in process. Individually Theil deserves credit for far-sightedness, of course.