EDIT by "not legit" I mean "not authentic"
1. If instead of donating the company he had left it to his kids he would have paid a lot in taxes (2:58)
2. He donated the voting shares of the company to a 501c4 that will remain controlled by his family and is allowed to lobby the government (4:10)
3. Normally when you make a donation you're giving up influence over what happens after that (4:25).
4. Other billionaires do other things (rest of video)
But #3 isn't actually true: any of us can donate to a donor-advised fund, which will let us later choose what charity we want the money to go to. This is a good idea if you want to donate but haven't decided where to donate yet, or want to fund opportunities that aren't available yet. They did it through new organizations instead of opening an account at Fidelity, but it's the same thing other than the scale. I wouldn't call your donations "not legit" for using a DAF.
Similarly, Adam sort of implies that #2 was tax-deductible, but donations to a 501c4 aren't. They had to pay tax on those shares based on their fair market value.
Overall, I don't see how this makes the donation no longer "legit" or "authentic"? By making the donation he has given up almost all of the benefit of having that money: he can't spend it for the benefit of himself or his descendants anymore. It can't buy them yachts, fancy houses, etc. Instead, they have to use the money to benefit others, which is why we give a tax break for it.
But that does seem a lot more real than the OpenAI shenanigans, they have actually done something, and they have given up being even more fabulously wealthy than they are already, even if they still have direction over how the money is used, including lobbying -- both for climate change, but ok, let's say also for things that benefit them.
They've still done something, unlike the OpenAI thing which seems like giving up some future hypothetical probably wouldn't happen anyway profits, and making no difference at all for the foreseeable future -- no difference but PR advantage.
It not necessarily not legit, but he managed to keep a 3B business under family control and bypass paying around 700M in taxes in doing so. So the altruistic messaging that it was donated to save the world is mildly two-faced. There is nothing wrong with it, but the news stories did leave out a few of the details. I only bring this up because the message about OpenAI being structured in such a way doesn't pass the smell test knowing SV/VC and the key players involved. Again I admit Im cynical and can very well be wrong, it also doesn't affect my life so why do I care, but I bring it up for conversation on HN because I feel its fair to discuss it and the possibilities. [1]
[1] https://fortune.com/2022/09/16/patagonia-founder-legal-tax-l...
If anyone has a good written text account critical of the Patagonia thing, I'm interested in that too; video isn't my preferred consumption format.
