That's a pretty stark contrast to Trump's private" charitable" foundation that he's been legally barred from shutting down (like he tried to do) until the multiple investigations into his personal abuses and legal violations are completed.
Too bad they can't rate it, because it's private so he doesn't have to release proof of philanthropy, but the few donations it has made were to 1 star rated charities (oh, and apparently to Trump personally)....while the Clinton foundation itself is >4 star.

Great comparison-
http://www.politifact.com/truth-o-meter/article/2016/sep/23/politifact-sheet-comparing-clinton-and-trump-found/

@MaxWilder Agreed. Philanthropy is bullshit, like driving a rolls royce, it's just to impress other rich fucks. Society cannot survive off hand outs from ruthless robber barons.

What also makes me vomit is how it was eventually presented as some kind of humanitarian gesture of offering up a new technology to people, expanding our horizons thanks to this philanthropy, woe be unto the wheel for we give you all the gift of ... electrodynamic levitation, which has been around since the early 1900s. It's just more cost effective and this douchebag knocked one together.

I could make one.. the only downside is where and how to store the energy required to run it.

What is a $300,000 wristwatch? It's a $5 wristwatch mechanism with a bunch of diamonds or whatever hammered into it. And what are diamonds? Shiny pebbles. So what you have is something that cost all this labour to create but is actually worthless. What you have, actually, is $300,000 worth of value torn out of the world by criminals.

What I want to know is, what's the person who buys the wristwatch from Tom Perkins supposed to do with it? Shouldn't they also sell the watch to fund drug treatment centres?

I like the idea of this hallowed watch-totem perpetually moving hand-to-hand around the world shaming rich people into philanthropy. Then it could actually have been worth making.

Rwanda, CAR, all of these places that see poverty, murder, etc are all the consequence of foreign intervention. The regional instability is a direct result of American and European intervention for the past three hundred years or so.

There are many reasons. It is complicated. But that doesn't mean that its just a mess we can't understand.

Sending resources doesn't mean anything when the people themselves either don't receive it, or it doesn't actually empower anybody. What Africa needs is revolution and real economic independence. Not hypocritical philanthropy.

A video about philanthropy and sharing is region restricted. I do hope the irony isn't lost on those who published it to YT....

Actually I have an even better suggestion heard from a friend today ~ Start your own debt collection agency, (easily done actually) Buy the debts from the credit collection agencies (subsidized by crowdfunding and philanthropy) and then discharge the debt altogether. I have heard this is already happening and people are breaking down in tears when they are being called on the phone and told their debt has been absolved.
Bill Bartmann may be a good guy but his company is still collecting money from people who are struggling whichever way you slice it.

That is how a Democrat would view it. As an independent I see culpability with both major political parties. Democrats are to blame for high crime rates in these economically depressed areas, because they are the engineers and enablers of the system which keeps poor people poor and robs them of ambition. Without an economically disadvantaged and undereducated class of voters, Democrats would have a much lower voter base.

Most of the crime committed is not done for survival. Most crime is a result of a gang culture. Gang cultures are the result of lack of education, disparity in the justice system, hopelessness, collapse of family units (which results in the need of place to belong), lack of employment prospects, etc. Both parties are at fault for not properly addressing the underlying causes of crime.

Republicans have the right idea in trying to limit social welfare programs. The problem is that they are looking at it from the standpoint of dealing with those who are collecting benefits. The problem needs to be addressed in altering the mindset and futures of the youth with a result to be seen in a generation and not a presidential term. It has taken generations of Democrat sponsored social philanthropy through a massive benefits sytem to get us to this point. It will take at least a generation to begin to get out of it.

Milkens' worthy of derision not for his ethnicity, but for his abject sliminess cloaked in a measly veil of philanthropy.
98 counts of racketeering and fraud back in 89'?? He's a chump who gives fuck-all for humanity.

Still on the Forbes 500 list which comprises mostly douchebag fucks.

>> ^chilaxe:

@NetRunner said: "What about the needs of people who have no money? Is helping them literally worthless? Are you a better servant of humanity if you make diamond jewelry than you are if you work for a public school in an underprivileged neighborhood?"
Salary is a reasonable measure of societal contribution, but it's not a perfect measure, so there are of course exceptions to the rule. That being said, all lines of evidence point to that teaching in underprivileged neighborhoods is an ineffective form of philanthropy, even though it's heart-warming.

@NetRunner said: "And "advocating careerism" isn't particularly useful if what you really mean is you like to yell "get a job" at homeless people."
One of the best things we can do for society is to argue against the flaws in the zeitgeist. If those flaws predictably create poverty, showing people there's another path that their opinion leaders and teachers have strangely never exposed them to should be a high priority.
>> ^NetRunner:
>> ^chilaxe:
The 'jobless economic recovery' we've experienced means all those people who don't like to read weren't contributing much to the economy.
That sounds like nonsense to me. Are you saying that the only reason why unemployment ever was low in the first place was because corporations hired people whose labor they couldn't profit from out of charity? What changed in 2007-2008 that made them all stop being charitable simultaneously?
>> ^chilaxe:
Netrunner said: "Also, it's not really healthy to define your self-worth and the worthiness of others solely on the basis of their salary. I doubt your "friends" would care much for you referring to them as mediocre or lazy, either."
1. Salary is a reasonable measure of how much we're contributing to humankind. If society values something, it will be willing to pay for it.
2. Advocating careerism is humanistic and good for the world.
Ahh, so you do think markets are perfectly moral systems. What about the needs of people who have no money? Is helping them literally worthless? Are you a better servant of humanity if you make diamond jewelry than you are if you work for a public school in an underprivileged neighborhood?
And "advocating careerism" isn't particularly useful if what you really mean is you like to yell "get a job" at homeless people.



Can you please describe the other path you speak of? So far all I've identified from the OWS message is a general upset with wealth disparity, but no coherent or unified solution. It'd be great to hear what they are advocating for. It's the required next step from rallying against something, or this will all go either no where, or somewhere much worse.

@NetRunner said: "What about the needs of people who have no money? Is helping them literally worthless? Are you a better servant of humanity if you make diamond jewelry than you are if you work for a public school in an underprivileged neighborhood?"

Salary is a reasonable measure of societal contribution, but it's not a perfect measure, so there are of course exceptions to the rule. That being said, all lines of evidence point to that teaching in underprivileged neighborhoods is an ineffective form of philanthropy, even though it's heart-warming.



@NetRunner said: "And "advocating careerism" isn't particularly useful if what you really mean is you like to yell "get a job" at homeless people."

One of the best things we can do for society is to argue against the flaws in the zeitgeist. If those flaws predictably create poverty, showing people there's another path that their opinion leaders and teachers have strangely never exposed them to should be a high priority.

>> ^NetRunner:

>> ^chilaxe:
The 'jobless economic recovery' we've experienced means all those people who don't like to read weren't contributing much to the economy.
That sounds like nonsense to me. Are you saying that the only reason why unemployment ever was low in the first place was because corporations hired people whose labor they couldn't profit from out of charity? What changed in 2007-2008 that made them all stop being charitable simultaneously?
>> ^chilaxe:
Netrunner said: "Also, it's not really healthy to define your self-worth and the worthiness of others solely on the basis of their salary. I doubt your "friends" would care much for you referring to them as mediocre or lazy, either."
1. Salary is a reasonable measure of how much we're contributing to humankind. If society values something, it will be willing to pay for it.
2. Advocating careerism is humanistic and good for the world.
Ahh, so you do think markets are perfectly moral systems. What about the needs of people who have no money? Is helping them literally worthless? Are you a better servant of humanity if you make diamond jewelry than you are if you work for a public school in an underprivileged neighborhood?
And "advocating careerism" isn't particularly useful if what you really mean is you like to yell "get a job" at homeless people.

Everyone is tearing up over Steve Jobs, but this is the man who put an end to all of Apple's philanthropic programs and has no meaningful record of personal philanthropy.

He built a cult out of his corporation to the point that people defend his lack of philanthropy (despite his enormous wealth) by saying he has made the world a better place through the innovations he has made with Apple - innovations he had admitted to stealing in the first place (and there are lawsuits to confirm these thefts).

What was so great about this man that makes him worthy of all the worship?

I'm not saying anything about Steve Jobs personally when I bring this up. But I find it a little ironic that all my friends who've been posting about the recent "occupy Wall Street" protests by pasting all the requisite "Anonymous" videos on Facebook, are now posting about how much they mourn the loss of this man.

This is a guy who, although openly receiving pay of just one dollar a year, was paid in stocks. His estimated worth was almost nine billion dollars. Yet one of this man's very first decisions upon returning to the board of Apple was to terminate, "...all of Apple's long-standing corporate philanthropy programs within weeks after returning to Apple in 1997, citing the need to cut costs until profitability rebounded. But the programs have never been restored."

Again, I have nothing personal against the guy, and I'm not speaking ill of the dead. I just think it's funny.

A *quality talk. Very interesting ideas. I like his idea of fusing philanthropy and capitalism--to make the human impact "the bottom line" so to speak.

An evil lair - that's the best kind of philanthropy there is.