[ExI] effective altruism

[William Flynn Wallace]

 *I always assumed that Bill Gates' philanthropic activities were a flawed
attempt to somehow make up for what he's inflicted on the world in the
process of making his money.  ben*

*I have not been privy to all the anti MS stuff over the years.  Clearly,
among software sorts and others who are not just users like me, Gates is a
monster.  And for what?  Putting out a flawed product?  That people bought
by the hundreds of millions?  Are we supposed to be against Gates for being
the better salesman/ marketer than Apple?*

*In any case, I think it is more than a stretch to think that Gates did
what he did out of guilt over his products.  It is unfair to him.  It might
even be true but you don't know, and you are making a possibly biased
assumption that does not speak well of you.   What was he supposed to do?
Withhold his product until it pleased everyone?  He would have gone out of
business, I think.  He had hundreds of programmers.  Maybe he should have
had thousands?  The software was put together by committees, right?  And
just what do we think of committees?  *

*bill w*

On Wed, Jul 10, 2019 at 9:24 AM <spike at rainier66.com> wrote:

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> *From:* extropy-chat <extropy-chat-bounces at lists.extropy.org> *On Behalf
> Of *John Clark
> *Subject:* Re: [ExI] effective altruism
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> On Mon, Jul 8, 2019 at 3:16 PM Ben Zaiboc <ben at zaiboc.net> wrote:
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> >> *I always assumed that Bill Gates' philanthropic activities were a
> flawed attempt to somehow make up for what he's inflicted on the world in
> the process of making his money. *
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> >…I can't think of any billionaire who has inflicted less harm on the
> world when they made their money than Bill Gates…. John K Clark
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> How do we count stock fund billionehs who quietly make their money with
> astute investing, then get really lucky?  They didn’t harm anyone at all
> from what I can see.  All trades were completely voluntary, all traders
> chasing a common goal.  The lucky few make it big without inflicting a
> trace of harm to anyone.
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> How do we count guys like Peter Theil who made billions by working out the
> details of PayPal?  That didn’t harm anyone that I can tell, and pleeeenty
> of people benefitted greatly.  I don’t see counting the guy who used to
> ride shotgun on the armored truck to pick up the cash from the bricks and
> mortar stores and haul it to the bank, who now isn’t needed much (Remember
> those rolling bank trucks?  We don’t see them much anymore.)
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> Get a good idea, turn it into something outrageously cool, people will buy
> it, you make a buttload of money created from nothing, no one is harmed at
> all.  Now you get to pick and choose how to make your world a better place,
> including charities, including stockpiling gold (for that employs the
> miners, refiners and pocket liners) it includes hiring a bunch of guys to
> build you luxury stuff, for they get a fun job, feed their families, and
> the luxury stuff they build is still here after you perish, everyone wins,
> life is gooooood.
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> If we put our minds to it, we can think of plenty of people who made it
> big without taking anything from anyone.  This illustrates the notion that
> wealth does not need to be evenly distributed because it can be created in
> arbitrary quantities from nothing, then good people create good jobs and do
> good deeds with the profits.
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> spike
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