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This guy really proves that there are no good billionaires thing. Being good stopped him from staying a billionaire. Anyone who hoards wealth while others suffer from impoverishment and starvation is evil.
Yep. Those billions are made on the backs of suppressed wages and benefits, more employee productivity with less flexibility, enshittification, etc. It’s “earned” by squeezing it out of others.
I guess he understood that, felt guilty, and wanted to give it "back" to clear his conscience. That's my personal take. I really want to believe there are good people with power and/or money.
That's why its the system that needs to be killed, not billionaires. It doesn't matter if you are good or bad, capitalism is in part a system of forced competition. A CEO who doesn't make the hard calls for the benefit of stockholders will be replaced if he is caught choosing his moral compunctions over profits. A competitor will exploit what he might refuse to, and thus the harm is done and the "good CEO" is drummed out of the system. The only way for a CEO to remain good and a CEO is to never be tested by the markets mad search for profits. This is possible in a small way, like maybe a CEO of a small regional firm which will eventually be bought out or forced out of business. Hell, most of the strictly "moral" repercussions of an executive are hidden from them, and appear only as columns in a profit/loss report. Capitalism alienates us all from the world we inhabit, our humanity and our selves; worker and owner alike.
But regardless of this, the class interests of ceos and employees are in direct conflict. This doesn't mean we need to kill, but we will have to fight to crush their way of life which exists as a result of the mass exploitation and immiseration of millions.
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Ok… but then we are beholden to where they choose to dispense their largesse. Great, the billionaires have a few pet projects they direct their philanthropy to, and it does help those recipients specifically.
But how about the lifetime earnings of the employees who saw their benefits packages shrink, their medical copays and premiums climb? Maybe that was enough to force their kids into crippling college loans instead of the parents having enough extra to help wirh 529s or just smaller more manageable loans? How about the customers who got inferior products or services that support, returns, or exchanges were obfuscated by deliberately ineffective phone menus or website resources that were designed to make people give up instead of receiving what they deserve? How about the billonaire’s pursuit of anti-tax laws to further line their pockets at the expense of government services? All of these things happen directly by command of the wealthy or by those riding on the coattails of those decisions as major investors or board of directors. All of them in service to the bottom line, and that bottom line is increased at your and my expense.
They may be good people. But you do not become a billionaire with clean hands.
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In Northern Ireland he supported "mixed" (i.e., Catholic and Protestant) child education. In 1991, he gave £8m to the Integrated Education Fund,[20] a grant-making charitable body which aims "to make integration, not separation, the norm in our education system".[21] Queens University Belfast also received grants of more than £100m,[20] for capital projects, child education and medical research.[22]
More controversially, Feeney gave substantial personal donations to Sinn Féin, a left-wing Irish nationalist party that has been historically associated with the IRA.[14] Following the IRA ceasefire in 1994, he funded the party's office in Washington D.C.[20]
Feeney supported the modernization of public-health structures in Vietnam,[18] AIDS clinics in South Africa, Operation Smile's free surgeries for children with cleft lips and palates, earthquake relief in Haiti, and the UCSF Medical Center at the University of California at San Francisco.[8]
Jim Dwyer wrote in The New York Times that none of the one thousand buildings on five continents that were built with Feeney's gifts of $2.7 billion bear his name.[1]
On September 14, 2020, Feeney closed down the Atlantic Philanthropies after the non-profit accomplished its mission of giving away all of its money by 2020.[25]
Immensely based
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While I honestly believe nobody can get that kind of money ethically, the fact that he actually put his money where his mouth was on philanthropy whike still alive, and almost all anonymously, is very admirable
You would not know who Chuck Feeney is, but you know the business he set up: Duty Free. He made billions during the golden age of air travel. I think you could become rich ethically by setting shops in places where millions of people run across 24/7.
Why do you think it's ethical that he get so much of the profit instead of the people who made the goods he's selling, or the people working in his shops?
Edit: hopefully that didn't sound too rude
Yeah I mean his efforts to donate his wealth are admirable but he literally built his wealth off tax evasion systems
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Every super rich person who has this mindset should rigorously advocate fair taxation of their peers that is the only chances for a non revolutionary change.
Yes, it is nice that billionaires give away their money, it would be nicer if the people could choose how that money was spent instead of the billionaires.
Not only that, but it's good for one person to donate their excessive wealth, but it'd be great if the other 2700 of them had to relinquish some of it.
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It still would have been better if workers got the money in the first place. There are no good billionaires.
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The good billionaire... eventually? How many people never become billionaires in the first place because accumulating all that wealth in the first place is bad. Unless you have a billion in inheritance in one go or something.
If you’re wealth is in stock that have voting rights and you founded the company, getting rid of the stock is risky as it reduces your control over the company. In that case, if you sell you stock to lower your wealth, a bad faith actor could come in and depose you. If you’re a “good millionaire” then this could then have the effect of lowering your charitable giving potential.
Stocks are essentially people putting bets on you and your company. Most billionaires don’t just become billionaires by themselves…the public anoints them.
And I think the public should be able to rescind that if the person does more public harm than good.
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If it was anonymous how do we know it was him?
If it was anonymous how do we know it was him?
There was a lawsuit against his company.
Imagine getting sued and being forced to show in court what a badass you are.
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From the his Wikipedia:
More controversially, Feeney gave substantial personal donations to Sinn Féin, a left-wing Irish nationalist party that has been historically associated with the IRA.
He was a basically an Irish-American George Soros.
And it's down Along the Falls Road, that's where I long to be, Lying in the dark with a Provo company, A comrade on my left and another on me right And a clip of ammunition for my little Armalite.
George Soros is not a good billionaire. The right wing delusion of him is such a convenient smokescreen for all of the actually horrible global conditions he's helped give birth to and gotten rich from, that I wonder if he doesn't perpetuate it himself. He's basically the final boss of neocolonialism, but because noone will teach you what neocolonialism is and how capitalism violently extracts cheap hyper-exploited labor and natural resources from the third world which amount to super profits for the billionaire class, most people don't see how bad he is.
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Warren Buffett and Bill Gates created The Giving Pledge, a legally binding agreement to give at least half of their wealth to philanthropy by death or through last will and testament. It currently has over 240 signatures from over 30 countries.
Warren Buffett and Bill Gates created The Giving Pledge, a legally binding agreement to give at least half of their wealth to philanthropy by death or through last will and testament.
It's PR, tax dodging, and a scam. Actions speak louder than words.
Those “Giving Pledge” Billionaires Had Better Pick Up the Pace.
Most longtime US members are richer now than when they signed up.
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Warren Buffett and Bill Gates created The Giving Pledge
1 - Giving Pledgers promised to give their wealth away. As a group, they’re wealthier now than when they made the pledge.
2 - These high-end donors increasingly give to intermediaries rather than working charities.
3 - Some billionaires are blending their charitable giving with for-profit investment.
4 - High-end philanthropy is subsidized by regular taxpayers.
Mark Zuckerberg's Foundation:
Following in the footsteps of eBay’s founder, Pierre Omidyar, CZI continues the tradition of “impact investing“,
which is essentially supporting nonprofit organizations in addition to selected for-profit entities...
They are dodging taxes by donating to their foundations and then using the money
to invest in the same things they would want to invest in if the money
wasn't in a charity and they had to pay taxes on it. The whole thing is a scam!
Billionaire Philanthropy Is a Scam
The True Cost of Billionaire Philanthropy
Chuck Feeney did not get richer as he gave his money away.
4 - High-end philanthropy is subsidized by regular taxpayers.
I feel like this is really under-appreciated. Like, Rich Dude decides he wants to donate $100M to...whatever - early childhood education. In the US, he avoids up to $37M taxes, which you can either look at as other taxpayers making $37M matching donation or $37M taken from other society objectives.
To the extent that government is a (marginally) publicly accountable system for funding a society's competing goals - education, health, defense, research - charity allows the very wealthy not just to bypass the social structure for prioritizing goals, but to force other taxpayers to adopt their personal priorities. Maybe the goal is good, maybe it's not - the point is that they're completely unaccountable.
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"Can we have some of your billions?"
"Over my dead body"
- The Giving Pledge
Warren Buffett and Bill Gates created The Giving Pledge, a legally binding agreement to give at least half of their wealth to philanthropy by death or through last will and testament. It currently has over 240 signatures from over 30 countries.
Bill Gates donates to companies that benefit his existing stock investments.
https://www.thenation.com/article/society/bill-gates-foundation-philanthropy/
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this post was submitted on 09 Dec 2024
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