Comment on The sickness of infinite greed cannot be sustained on our finite planet
ALoafOfBread@lemmy.ml 20 hours agoIt used to be philanthropic stuff - because buying public opinion/legacy is pretty expensive. So you fund a big charity, do some speeches, and are celebrated for being so generous.
Seems like the major expenses now are donating money to fascists and buying big boats.
But $1B (at today’s levels of value - the number isn’t the issue, the relative value and lost opportunity cost of distributing some of this back to the people is the issue) is an obscene amount of money. You could invest it in some safe asset making 2% per year and yearn $54k per day ($20M/year)
OrganicMustard@lemmy.world 20 hours ago
Have they ever done philanthropy that wasn’t for avoiding taxes or laundering money?
ALoafOfBread@lemmy.ml 19 hours ago
The reputational aspect is definitely a big part of it - they want to be seen and remembered a certain way. Bill Gates is a good example, but he blew all that up by raping children (maybe). Before the Gates Foundation, he was viewed by the public as a typical evil miserly cutthroat businessman who was also a weird nerd. Gates Foundation & making sure everyone knew about it did a lot to sway public opinion.
And the actual people at the Gates Foundation did great work - they helped to control and eradicate deadly diseases in the global South. But it isn’t like Bill was doing that work, he was just allowing someone to cut the checks.