EAs shocked to discover how billionaires make their money
EAs shocked to discover how billionaires make their money
Summary 1. I investigate the rates of criminal misconduct amongst people who have taken The Giving Pledge (roughly: ~200 [non-EA] billionaires who h…
Look at me, I'm a philantropist! I non-bindingly pledge to probably promise that if possible and convenient, I can be considered to essentially intend to effectively donate up to half of my arguable net worth to a cause one might consider charitable.
Oh and a legal defence fund for unfairly maligned non-sex offender friends of Jeffrey Epstein counts as a charity, by the way.
Is this the famous trickling-down I keep hearing about?
Often, things become crimes that get prosecuted when they are done by the wealthy vs. normal people. To be clear, the reason for this is that governments/prosecutors want money and there is a lot of money in going after Kjell Inge Røkke for an illegal boating license but there isn't for a father letting his 15-year old child drive in a parking lot. There's a lot of money going after a billionaire for tax evasion but not in someone having a side hustle where they make money under the table selling $50k worth of widgets per year.
lmao
I suppose I recommend people think something like "ok, how bad was this really" when they look at billionaire crimes.
double lmao. triple, even
The rates do seem subjectively very high. Way fewer than 10% of people I know have been convicted of financial crimes! But I wonder if founders and CEOs are being blamed for financial crimes that their companies commit, and approximately all successful companies commit financial crimes, defined broadly.
so... close...
"There’s a lot of money going after a billionaire for tax evasion but not in someone having a side hustle where they make money under the table selling $50k worth of widgets per year."
Lol and indeed lmao. "One death is a tragedy, a million is a statistic".
(...and who has a """side hustle""" with a $50k p.a turnover?! At that point it is no longer a side hustle)
"widgets" must be a euphemism for "opioids"
It’s a sign of how completely economically detached from reality these guys are. The annual turnover threshold here for mandatory VAT registration is around €35k, and a lot of small businesses don’t even reach that. Selling widgets and turning over €50k max would not be considered to be minor tax evasion..
To be clear, the reason for this is that governments/prosecutors want money and there is a lot of money
The signs of ur-libertarianism.
Governments can both print money at will and also want to take money from everybody because they cannot print money at will.
How pig-headed does this schmuck have to be, not to realize that if there is a "lot of money", that means the billionaire has committed a more serious crime? A billionaire who evades his (or her, but lbr most of these people are men) fair share of tax offloads that cost onto the public, who are much less able to afford either tax hikes or lost services.
You're right, it's a totally libertarian attitude.
Shot, in the post:
Gina and I eventually decided that the data collection process was too time-consuming, and we stopped partway through.
Chaser, from the comments:
Josh You and I wrote a python script that searches Google for a list of keywords, saves the text of the web pages in the search results, and shows them to GPT and asks it questions about them from a prompt. This would quickly automate the rest of your data collection
the data collection process was too time-consuming
Just to show how time-consuming this process might have been, it consisted of two people doing google searches and assigning the names them to a handful of categories.
1 - I copied the list of signatories from their website. 2 -Gina Stuessy and I searched the internet for “(name) lawsuit”, “(name) crime” and also looked at their Wikipedia page. 3 -I categorized any results into “financial”, “sexual”, and “other”, and also marked if they had spent at least one day in jail. 4 -Gina and I eventually decided that the data collection process was too time-consuming, and we stopped partway through. The final dataset includes 115 of the 232 signatories.[2][3]
Have we considered that we're wrong for criminalizing the smartest and most philanthropic people on the planet?
I, too, am of the opinion that the members of the better classes, signified through their wealth and fortune, should not be subjected to the same criminal laws that the peasants must abide by. They should instead be allowed to do as they will. The poor really shouldn't believe they have any standing to judge their betters.
Exactly if they really have a problem with it they should just throw a start up at it and quit bitching
Summary point 5 is fun.
I conclude that the rate of criminal behavior amongst major philanthropists is high
Great!
which means that we should not expect altruism to substantially lower the risks compared to that of the general population,
Ok, not super clear what “the risks” are here. One interpretation is that they are saying “just because someone donates money doesn’t mean they aren’t a criminal”, which is correct. But it’s not clear! Anyway.
and that negative impacts to EA’s public perception may occur independently of whether our donors actually commit crimes (e.g. because even noncriminal billionaires have a negative public image).
So close! Why do “noncriminal” billionaires have a negative public image? It’s almost as if legality isn’t the decider of morality!
Perhaps one day EAs will gain class consciousness and a sense of morality beyond an uncritical elision of ethics via utilitarianism; we aren’t there yet.