This story is disturbing in that it shows how little financial privacy we have left in the US (and Western Europe and Canada too).
Just look at the incredible lengths these guys went to:
http://images.bwbx.io/cms/2014-05-09/billionaires-970-popup....
to preserve their privacy.
That the federal government and thousands of random people that work for the federal government have all your finances at their fingertips is bad enough, but then they also make this information available to basically anybody (a reporter with no subpoena power) if you're willing to make the magic incantation (FOIA request or whatever).
Transparency of government is good, but personal data government should be private. (Even better if we gave a whole lot less personal info.)
Incomes aren't public here (Denmark), but our neighbors to the northwest publish lists of everyone's income and net worth once a year, which doesn't seem to have ruined Norway. I don't think I'd find it disturbing if Denmark did the same, though I don't know of any plans to do so. If anything it might increase some government transparency— there are some very large family fortunes (Mærsk, Carlsberg/Jacobsen, etc.) that have longstanding and often rather cozy relationships with the government. It might add some insight into things if the public better understood who controlled which parts of those fortunes.
We need this kind of transparency to keep people accountable for their actions.
Of course, it is their money and they can do as as they want with it but if it has a large impact, I can see the argument for more transparency about the source of funds.
Edit: For example, less than a minute of online searching leads me to this kind of example: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Greg_Gianforte#Social_and_Polit...
The more layers of shell companies, shady law offices, and empty "foundations" these donations go through, the more scrutiny should be applied. How clean is all this money? Where did it come from?
The public has a legitimate interest in knowing what portion of a country's wealth(power) is controlled by what kind of people.
The scale of these contributions mean they have the potential to significantly distort markets, and reorder societal priorities, arbitrarily refocusing vast resources from one cause to another on the whim of a single individual.
With great wealth comes great power, with great power comes great responsibility, and with great responsibility comes a great need for transparency and oversight.
And at the level of local politics (which in many cases has a greater impact on our day-to-day lives than national politics) you can become a high school or politician's largest donor for less than the cost of a house or high-end car.
And of course you wouldn't want large donors to disguise large donations by making them as many small, indirect donations!
Shouldn't we make everyone's finances totally public?
That seems like an easy interview question.
Or you could algebraically bash it out.
edit: I sincerely hope you were making a joke.
That's a fairly easy question as well. Every single person in my immediate vicinity knows it. My daughter who is less than 36 months old knows it.
Don't you?
Most people believe what mass media tells them. The media talks about the actors, but not about the producers, they talk about the young sport star but not so much about the owner of the team, and so on.
And the main reason is: Most of them don't want to be famous, they don't want people stalking them for money whenever they go, or someone kidnapping their children. They don't need to show off their money. They live in good, but normal houses, and drive a 10 year car.
Most of them already made themselves, they don't need external recognition when they have the internal one. Most of them were naysed when they started their business(most people tell you "it wont work") or wanted to create something new and survived extreme negativity, so they are quite indifferent about what other people think about them(when you are super rich everybody wants to be your friend and the same person who told you "it wont work" the most now tells you "I always believed you were going to make it").
You have lots of them writing in HN with pseudonym. Like writers they want their words to carry a message from itself, not from the authority of the person who writes them, and it lets them interact with intelligent people in an equal level.
If I may borrow a phrase from the Geto Boys:
"Real gangsta-ass niggas don't flex nuts, cause real gangsta-ass niggas know they got em"
It's an attitude I find quite endearing.
jeez, not this trope again. not all rich people are the same, because they are people.
first of all, to buy a "good, but normal" house somewhere like SF or west LA or NYC requires you to be nearly-rich. if you aren't worth double the house's value in assets and have at least triple the mortgage payment as annual income, you're not going to have much money left over for anything else. that's not even rich.
yes, some rich people are like warren buffet and live in a normal house and drive a 10 year old cadillac.
but who do you think owns all those yachts parked in every marina in the world? or the incredible, huge houses and apartments that exist in every major city?
who do you think buys all of the ferraris and lamborghinis and other exotics produced every year? who's buying private jet rides and, on a bad day, first class tickets at $10k a pop?
here's a hint: it's not the middle class.
The OP reports individual donors contributing in excess of $100 million to particular causes. We've spoken often here about the various inefficiencies in the current research structures: top scientists spending too much time writing grants; disincentives for the curiosity-driven research that often leads to breakthroughs, etc.
So the question: is investment on the order of $100M+ sufficient to set up a private research facility with research "done right"? (By which I mean, of course, the way I would do it. :) ) It's easy to imagine a private facility that recruits top-notch but frustrated scientists from various schools, sets some important problems for them, and sets them free from grant writing, publishing pressures, etc.
The obvious objection is that the donor would call the shots and subvert the research... but on the other hand these sorts of donors are already willing to just fund research with no personal input into process.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Perimeter_Institute_for_Theoret...
http://www.perimeterinstitute.ca/
It was an initial donation of $100M in 2000, followed up by $50M in 2008. I believe Lazaridis' financial support has ended with the difficulties at RIM, but PI is by now self-sufficient and supported by the Canadian government.
The place is well known for hosting some pretty crazy and speculative research. It is the only institution I know of that has a Quantum Foundations department. But they have enough money that they have been able to attract some big names to lend significant degree of respectability to the place.
(I'm starting a postdoc at PI in the fall, and the complete freedom available there was a big part of the attraction.)
The key, it seems, is to keep the institute mostly private and independent, but with enough links to some established research university to lend it credibility, resources, academic/peer feedback, and long-term sustainability.
[1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7725377
[2] http://vcresearch.berkeley.edu/datascience/simonsaward
In my estimation 100M is enough to set up and fund a large-scale research enterprise for 5 years. It's harder to get critical mass if you spread it out longer than that, and it's certainly not enough to establish an endowment for a research institute.
Purely theoretical or software research is cheaper.
That they use their gains for good is wonderful, but should not be necessary, and is not as great as transparent and accountable charity that is coordinated by democratically determined public policy would be.
No, we do not.
Then there was an argument that if these people hadn't have spent their money anonymously, the money would be available to the government to spend as it chose.
At that point I decided my 20 minutes were best spent somewhere on the net that had a higher caliber of analytic thought.
Why not? If I am rich enough to have my pick of the best researchers and doctors, and to divert their attention to a disease or condition of my choosing, then shouldn't there be some oversight of that?
Perhaps all that money could have been better spent on malaria or cancer, rather than a rarer condition.
I don't know why an arbitrary rich individual should be able to direct medicinal research better than a public body, and get the most benefit for humanity or, at a lower level, their fellow citizens,
Huh, turns out he's about 5,0000 times smarter than the average billionaire that never realizes this.
The ROR can include capital gains (the price of your stocks rise) and income (you get paid a dividend). These are different, but both contribute to your returns.
Not that I think government is immune to uncoordinated, flawed spending. Or that we need regulation. Or that we need to tax the rich to the fullest. Charity is a great thing. But imagine the absurd: that private donors donated to road construction foundations, and you end up getting two parallel highways that go from A to B. Wouldn't that be just a plain waste of a country's wealth, even if it belongs to private donors?
This reminds me of the story about how certain NGOs took used clothes from rich countries straight to Africa, only to realize how that was damaging these countries' textile industry. Nowadays many NGOs have adopted a more constructive approach in Africa or countries simply banned these shipments [1].
TGS Management's money is also somewhat exaggeratedly, if not suspiciously, split into many cascading foundations and companies, which also should raise an eyebrow or two whatever their reasons may be. Investigative journalism, and hopefully the transparency and insight it provides, can be powerful for setting long-term, effective goals for donors and charity that are in everyone's interest.
[1] http://www.huffingtonpost.ca/mariah-griffinangus/africa-char...
Either that or some guys got filthy rich using questionably legal means, felt guilty so they started giving a lot of it away, and are worried they might get caught if they become well-known.
