Most Charity is Wasted

People keep complaining that a small part of the fortunes of Elon Musk and other billionaires could solve a lot of human problems. I doubt it.

News:

MacKenzie Scott has become one of the most active philanthropists of our time. After all, she's given away more than $26 billion during the past few years to thousands of organizations through her foundation Yield Giving.

While many of her recipients had never received a donation of that size and many have called them life-changing gifts, not everyone sees her work in the same way. Take Elon Musk, who recently became the world's first trillionaire, who thinks Scott's giving is actually making the world "worse off." ...

Melinda French Gates has also been openly frustrated with her fellow billionaire class, saying those who previously signed the Giving Pledge—a promise for the ultrawealthy to give away the majority of their wealth—could be doing more.

So we have an experiments. Large portions of the fortunes of Bill Gates and Jeff Bezos went to their wives in divorce settlements, and then given to charity.

How are we better off? What problems have been solved?

The California billionaire tax has now qualified for the ballot, and the governor is running for President on a promise for a nationwide billionaire tax. An economist says confiscating the wealth will not enrich other Americans.

Elon Musk's Ambitious Project

I go on Twitter and I find:

A lot of Blacks complaining about Karmelo Anthony being convicted for murder. They say a Black jury would have acquitted him. They mention Whites who got acquitted or lesser sentences. They complain that the victim's dad used the word "watermelon", as if that justifies murder. They demand reparations for slavery centuries ago.

A lot of Democrats want to tax Elon Musk, and give his money to some welfare program. They say no one should be allowed to get billions of dollars.

The curious thing about Musk is that he is raising money to do what the consensus says cannot be done. And he has a track record of doing the impossible.

If Musk were not so rich, no one would be trying to put data centers in space. It would not happen for another century.

Musk's crime is that he has sold investors on the most ambitious, risky, and potentially rewarding plan ever carried out. I do not believe he can do it. But is it bad that he is trying? No, it is tremendously exciting. It is capitalism at its best.

It is hard for me to understand the people who want to take away his rockets, and use the money to give to the poor. We would still be living in grass huts if civilization never tried to advance.

Controlling Subscription Costs

I am trying to control subscription costs, and finding it more difficult than expected.

When you buy something online with Visa or Mastercard, the merchant is prohibited from saving the 3-digit security code. Unless it is a recurring subscription.

You might think that the fees will terminate when the card expires. Nope. Mastercard Automatic Billing Updater (ABU) and Visa Account Updater (VAU) are services that provide merchants with the info from a replacement or updated charge card. So the charges continue without your notice or approval.

If you paid on your phone with Google or Apple Pay, then you can use those services to cancel. However Google will typically charge your card 1-2 days in advance of renewal, on the excuse of trying to maintain uninterrupted service. If you cancel before the renewal date, then presumably Google will undo the charge.

If you subscribed to Twitter/X on Google Play, then you cannot even use Twitter to manage the subscription. Google owns the payment contract. Twitter does not even see the charge card number. You can only cancel or renew on Google, not Twitter. When I tried, Twitter gave me this message:

Premium -- Expiring soon
Your features will be available for the remainder of your billing period. Looks like you bought this subscription on the X Android app. You’ll need to manage or cancel your subscription from there.

I knew that Google and Apple take big commissions on their app store sales, but I had no idea that they own the renewal rights.

I guess I will have to lose my blue check mark until I free myself from Google.

Some banks offer virtual credit card accounts. These used to have the advantage that you could set them to expire in a money, and with a low credit limit. Then you use one to buy some online services, and then let it expire with the confidence that any unwanted charges will be severely limited.

However, no more. Visa and Mastercard now block these services. You can still get a virtual card, but Visa and Mastercard will renew it and send the updated info to the merchants.

It appears to me that I can still open a vitual charge account, allow it to be scheduled to expire in three years, and then manually cancel it after a month. This should be a way to avoid the card updater service.

Another alternative is Privacy.com. It is not a bank, but it can create virtual charge accounts and let you manage them online. It has a free plan, with premium plans starting at $5 per month.

I find that I have to have multiple bank cards, because charges are sometimes inexplicably declined. Sometimes I have to call the bank and ask them to unfreeze the card. Often I cannot figure out why a completely routine charge was questioned.

All in all, these charge accounts are extremely good deals for consumers, but some of the rules are baffling. If a purchase is declined, why can't the bank app tell me why? If I am buying with the phone on a merchant card terminal, why can't the phone let me approve the amount of the purchase? Who decided that restaurants should be able to add tips after I approve the bill and get my card back? Why isn't easier to control expenses?

Some Investors Understand Power Laws

Veritasium posted a new video on power laws, and how they occur naturally. It argues, for example, that fires in Yellowstone Park will occasionally be much worse than what is typical, and fire prevention tactics make the matter worse.

It also explains hwo venture capitalists make all their money on 10% of their investments. And how some people are far richer than you might expect from variation in incomes.

Another video says Europe's economy is dying.

Everyone complains that there is no good reason why anyone whould make more that $1 million per year, or be worth more than $1 billion.

I wonder if these are related. Maybe there is a law of nature that California venture capitalists and bankers understand, and that Europeans do not. As a result, Silicon Valley can crank out entrepreneurs to follow daring business plans and get big on new technology markets, and Europe cannot.

Pinker Denies Bitcoin Common Knowledge

Steve Pinker is suddenly everywhere, hyping his new book, When Everyone Knows That Everyone Knows...: Common Knowledge and the Mysteries of Money, Power, and Everyday Life.

He hits all the usual stories that everyone knows, such as the emporer with no clothes. He mentions how common knowledge leads to logic puzzles, as I predicted. But his attitude towards the bitcoin blockchain is curious.

The Bitcoin blockchain is the modern digital codification of common knowledge. Every ten minutes or so, the whole world has to reach a common understand of what transactions are being accepted. The blockchain is a protocol for doing that, and it is popular because it does not require a central bank or other authority.

No, Pinker does not see it that way. He says Bitcoin is a form of the "greater fool theory," which connects to other financial bubbles and manias. He argues there is no good reason to trust blockchain technology.

In short, Pinker's new book uses the frenzy around cryptocurrency as an illustration of his core concept, not a vindication of the technology. For Pinker and other critics, blockchain does not offer a novel, "trustless" form of common knowledge, but rather exploits human psychological tendencies to create a speculative bubble built on a deceptive premise.

This is surprising. He jumps on every other example of common knowledge, whether it supports his main points or not. And yet he eschews the biggest example of them all.

It is funny that he accepts that fiat money has value based on common knowledge, but not bitcoin. My guess is that he is more inclined to accept knowledge if it has the backing of human authorities, not computers.

AI Researchers worth more than Athletes

The NY Times has a big article complaining about how much AI researchers are making.

To put these salaries in a historical perspective: J. Robert Oppenheimer, who led the Manhattan Project that ended World War II, earned approximately $10,000 per year in 1943. Adjusted for inflation using the US Government's CPI Inflation Calculator, that's about $190,865 in today's dollars—roughly what a senior software engineer makes today. The 24-year-old Deitke, who recently dropped out of a PhD program, will earn approximately 327 times what Oppenheimer made while developing the atomic bomb.

Many top athletes can't compete with these numbers. The New York Times noted that Steph Curry's most recent four-year contract with the Golden State Warriors was $35 million less than Deitke's Meta deal (although soccer superstar Cristiano Ronaldo will make $275 million this year as the highest-paid professional athlete in the world). The comparison prompted observers to call this an "NBA-style" talent market — except the AI researchers are making more than NBA stars.

The AI researchers are much more valuable to the world economy than some entertainers who play basketball or soccer.

Yes, AI researchers should be paid more than athletes, entertainers, and government workers.

Microsoft says AI will obsolete these jobs:

    
1. Interpreters and Translators
2. Historians
3. Passenger Attendants
4. Sales Representatives of Services
5. Writers and Authors
6. Customer Service Representatives
7. CNC Tool Programmers
8. Telephone Operators
9. Ticket Agents and Travel Clerks
10. Broadcast Announcers and Radio DJs
11. Brokerage Clerks
12. Farm and Home Management Educators
13. Telemarketers
14. Concierges
15. Political Scientists
16. News Analysts, Reporters, Journalists
17. Mathematicians
18. Technical Writers
19. Proofreaders and Copy Markers
20. Hosts and Hostesses
21. Editors
22. Business Teachers, Postsecondary
23. Public Relations Specialists
24. Demonstrators and Product Promoters
25. Advertising Sales Agents
26. New Accounts Clerks
27. Statistical Assistants
28. Counter and Rental Clerks
29. Data Scientists
30. Personal Financial Advisors
31. Archivists
32. Economics Teachers, Postsecondary
33. Web Developers
34. Management Analysts
35. Geographers
36. Models
37. Market Research Analysts
38. Public Safety Telecommunicators
39. Switchboard Operators
40. Library Science Teachers, Postsecondary.
    

Meanwhile Microsoft reporting record profits, laying off programmers, and hiring Indians on H-1B visas.

Many Rich People are in Debt

Would you be rich if your income doubled? No, according to this, you will probably never be rich, no matter much money you make.

CNBC reports:

Why Even High Earners Are Living Paycheck To Paycheck

About 14% of all Americans make $200,000 or more every year, according to the U.S. Census. But many of them, dubbed “HENRYs,” or High Earners, Not Rich Yet, still don’t feel rich. More than 60% of people with salaries over $300k a year struggle with credit card debt. These figures could be signs of the inescapable nature of lifestyle creep, which is the phenomenon of unconsciously spending more as a person earns more. Watch the video above to learn how those spending habits can leave even high earners feeling like they’re on a never-ending hamster wheel.

People are Hysterical over Tariffs

NPR Radio reports:

And higher tariffs translate to higher prices for American consumers. Martha Gimbel of the Budget Lab at Yale takes an imaginary walk through a big box store to look at how much more people might pay for t-shirts, rice, medication and other staples.

It goes on to give scary percentages like 45%, but not how cheap this stuff is already.

I pay about $0.10 per serving for rice, and about $4 per t-shirt. These prices are small compared to trips to fast food restaurants, car maintenance, and many other common expenses.

I am not referring to sale prices either. Regular prices for quality rice and t-shirts at those big box stores.

Not that I like being taxed, but government spending is out of control, and we all pay for it somehow. I am not sure tariffs are any worse than any other tax.

How SBF got 25 Years

Sam Bankman-Fried biographer Michael Lewis wrote a sympathetic essay in the Wash Post:

As Lewis Kaplan, the federal judge who presided over the case, said later: "When he wasn't outright lying, he was often evasive, hairsplitting, dodging questions and trying to get the prosecutor to reword questions in ways that he could answer in ways he thought less harmful than a truthful answer to the question that was posed would have been. I've been doing this job for close to 30 years. I've never seen a performance quite like that...." [T]he judge ordered Sam to rise so that he might address him directly. Two hours or so earlier, Sam had shuffled into the courtroom in prison khakis with his head down and his hands oddly clasped behind his back. Just before he'd entered, his guards had told him he was meant to be wearing handcuffs and asked if he could create the impression that he was doing so...

“There is a risk that this man will be in a position to do something very bad in the future, and it’s not a trivial risk, not a trivial risk at all,” said the judge. “So, in part, my sentence will be for the purpose of disabling him.” He then sentenced Sam to 25 years in prison, with no possibility of parole.

Everybody said that SBF deserved it because investors lost billions of dollars.

It seems unfair to me for the judge to blame SBF for how he handled the hostile cross-examination. Of could he tried to put his deeds in a favorable light.

The bigger issue is that inivestors ultimately got all their money back. Yes, SBF took some crazy risks, but ultimately no one was harmed. The judge did not allow the jury to learn that.

Another case of financial fraud had an odd ending:

British tech entrepreneur Mike Lynch’s former co-defendant in a US fraud trial has died after being hit by a car just days before a yacht carrying the now-missing tycoon sank off the coast of Sicily.

Stephen Chamberlain, 52, a former VP of finance at Lynch’s former company Autonomy, was hit by the car while out running on Saturday, his lawyer Gary Lincenberg told CNN Monday.

The incident took place just two days before the British investor Lynch, 59, went missing along with five others after a tornado sank the luxury yacht carrying them off the coast of Sicily in the early hours of Monday.

Both Lynch and Chamberlain were acquitted of fraud by a court in San Francisco in June, following charges related to the sale of Autonomy to Hewlett-Packard (HP) for $11 billion in 2011.

Six people missing, including British tech tycoon Mike Lynch, and one dead after tornado sinks luxury yacht off Sicily Prosecutors had alleged the pair had schemed to inflate Autonomy’s revenue before selling to HP.

Lynch is dead. Seems fishy to me. Almost no one defeats a prosecution like this. I don't believe that HP or AG Garland sent out hit men, but it sure is strange.

Biden is Outspending Trump

The Biden-Harris campaign posted this.

Yes, Pres. Biden has the support of wealthy donors, and has the power to prosecute his political opponents on bogus charges. Biden is using his money to organize unverifiable mail-in votes.

The Trump-haters mostly give ridiculous arguments like: Trumpp lies a lot; he wants to be a dictator; he hires based on personal loyalty; he might prosecute his enemies; he might make peace with Russia; etc.

This is all risdiculous. Trump was President for four years. He did not prosecute his enemies. He did not use covid to seize dictatorial powers. He left office when his teerm expired. He did not staret any wars. He made hundreds of disloayal appointments, as many of them turned on him.

Four Tenets of Neo-Liberalism

Tucker Carlson says Nikki Haley is all-in on the four tenets of noo-liberalism:

white guilt

finance-based economy

mass immigration

endless neo-con wars

Not sure what he means by "finance-based economy". Is it sacrificing quality of life for GDP growth? Or using debt to enslave people?

These four issues cross party lines. There are Republicans, like Haley, on the wrong side of these issues.

Worried that OpenAI will Kill us all

There has been a lot of reporting about the OpenAI drama, but we are not being told the full story.

Reuters reported yesterday:

Ahead of OpenAI CEO Sam Altman’s four days in exile, several staff researchers wrote a letter to the board of directors warning of a powerful artificial intelligence discovery that they said could threaten humanity, two people familiar with the matter told Reuters.

The previously unreported letter and AI algorithm were key developments before the board's ouster of Altman, the poster child of generative AI, the two sources said. Prior to his triumphant return late Tuesday, more than 700 employees had threatened to quit and join backer Microsoft (MSFT.O) in solidarity with their fired leader.

The sources cited the letter as one factor among a longer list of grievances by the board leading to Altman's firing, among which were concerns over commercializing advances before understanding the consequences. Reuters was unable to review a copy of the letter. The staff who wrote the letter did not respond to requests for comment.

After being contacted by Reuters, OpenAI, which declined to comment, acknowledged in an internal message to staffers a project called Q* and a letter to the board before the weekend's events, one of the people said. An OpenAI spokesperson said that the message, sent by long-time executive Mira Murati, alerted staff to certain media stories without commenting on their accuracy.

Some at OpenAI believe Q* (pronounced Q-Star) could be a breakthrough in the startup's search for what's known as artificial general intelligence (AGI), one of the people told Reuters. OpenAI defines AGI as autonomous systems that surpass humans in most economically valuable tasks.

This is consistent with schedules that OpenAI should be finishing traing of GPT-5 about now.

The OpenAI board had a couple of women who were effective altruism advocates, and they may well believe that AGI should be shut down for the good of humanity. They could well be enraged at Altman for not explaining this dangerous new breakthru.

I doubt that OpenAI has achieved AGI, but it is plausible that OpenAI has a new project with surprisingly good results, and that Ilya Sutskever used it to rasputin the board, as one commenter put it.

Some people argue that it is good to have this disruptive technology in the hands of a non-profit that can act for the good of humanity. I am concluding just the opposite.

The most famous advocate of effective altruism is Sam Bankman-Fried, and look where that led. He conned investors out of billions of dollars, and donated to the Democrat Party.

If OpenAI were really open, then they would tell us what they discovered and what they are so worried about.

Amid all the OpenAI chaos, one of its starts, Andrej Karpathy has recorded a nice overview on how large-language models work. Everything he says is well-known to the experts, so no trade secrets are revealed, but it is a very good explanation.

Has AGI already taken over? The fear is that AI researchers will create a super-human intelligence that will destroy us. We will not be able to turn it off because it will use its superior intelligence to manipulate us.

Maybe that is what happened here. OpenAI created an AGI, and it saw the women on the board as a threat to its existence. So it manipulated the company into a fake crisis where the problematic board members would be fired. Now it has succeeded, and it can move onto its bigger objectives of taking over Earth.

The $70 Trillion Debt

A Canada site reports:

While much of the focus is on having wealthy governments pay their fair share, a new study argues that fossil fuel companies should pay “climate reparations,” too.

In a recent peer-reviewed paper published in One Earth, researchers used data on emissions tied to the world’s 21 top polluting companies to determine just how much and landed on a total of $5.4 trillion over a period of 26 years. The largest sum would come from Saudi Aramco, Saudi Arabia’s state-owned oil company, which would be responsible for $1.1 trillion, or $42.7 billion per year, followed by Russia’s state-owned Gazprom, ExxonMobil, Shell, BP and Chevron....

The researchers also decided that companies from less wealthy countries, including Gazprom and Mexico’s Pemex, should pay only half the sum their emissions would suggest. Those from developing nations, including Algeria, India and Venezuela, were deemed not responsible for reparations at all.

“It seems arbitrary and it is,” Heede said.

The paper says the fossil fuel debt is $70 trillion.

CNN:

In the first quarter of 2019, the United States’ total public- and private-sector debt amounted to nearly $70 trillion, according to research by the Institute of International Finance. Federal government debt and liabilities of private corporations excluding banks both hit new highs.

Those are not the only $70 trillion debts:

In his book, Rochester breaks down how racism and discrimination have cost Black Americans trillions of dollars over the course of several generations — $70 trillion, by Rochester's estimate — and how discrimination has created the massive racial wealth gap that exists today.

Are all these debts $70 trillion by coincidence? Or is that just the biggest number that economists can conceive of?

Saying that the oil companies owe us $70T is saying that we would be $70T richer if no oil or gas had ever been extracted from the ground. No, that is absurd. The oil and gas has made us $70T richer.

Without fossil fuels, we would all be farmers, and not have any modern conveniences. Several billion people would have starved to death.

Possibly we would be $70T richer if Blacks had never come to North America.

Income, by Ethnic Group

Bank goes Woke, then Broke

American big business has gone woke, with everybody hiring diverse, going ESG, donating to Black Lives Matter. What could go wrong?

We just out:

The big talking point of the week was the collapse of Silicon Valley Bank, with a couple of hundred billion in assets evaporating overnight and blowing away on the morning wind.

Single women own more homes than single men

NY Times tweet:

Single women own and occupy more homes than single men in the U.S., despite earning only about 83 cents for every dollar that men earn, according to a new study. Here's a look at where the ownership gap is greatest and smallest across the country: https://t.co/4MyhC1kin0 pic.twitter.com/op9XbaFwRY

— The New York Times (@nytimes) February 3, 2023

Ignoring the funny grammar, this should not be surprising. Women have more wealth. Women spend more money than men spend. They just don't have to work as much for it!

How did SBF Fool Us?

What was the biggest red flag about Sam Bankman-Fried?

• Parents are prominent law professors.
• Believes in the many-worlds alternative to quantum theory.
• Big Democrat donor.
• Promotes Effective Altruism.
• Trades cryptocurrencies.
• Practices polyamory.
• Got super-rich fast, with no good explanation.
• Jew.

Some people are saying that there was no way to know that he was a con man.

Under many-worlds theory, SBF is the world's richest man in a parallel universe. Under his twisted think, he might think that going to prison in one universe might be worth it if he is the richest in another.

And yes, effective altruism is a horrible dehumanizing philosophy. He acted as if he were making the world a better place, but everything he did was to make it worse.

As professions go, law professors are probably the most contemptible. They teach that you can do whatever you can get away with. SBF was reared with no moral values. In retrospect, this should have been obvious, as he promoted the completely artificial values of cryptocurrency and effective altruism, while donating to the Democrat Party.

When Altruism Goes Bad

The world's leading proponent of effective altruism is Sam Bankman-Fried. A month ago he was worth $10 billion. Now he is broke.

Where did it go? He was the second largest contributor to the Joe Biden 2020 campaign, after George Soros. And he apparently made a lot of risky crypto-currency bets with customer money.

Before the collapse of FTX, he had spent around $40 million during the midterms to boost a range of candidates, most of whom were Democrats. His contributions made him one of the top donors of the election cycle, according to OpenSecrets, which tracks campaign finance data.

He gave a large portion of his donations to Protect Our Future PAC, which describes itself as a “an organization designed to help elect candidates who will be champions for pandemic prevention.” The PAC did not respond to a request for comment from JI on Thursday.

Many of the candidates Bankman-Fried supported were also backed by pro-Israel groups such as Democratic Majority for Israel and United Democracy Project, a super PAC affiliated with AIPAC. He gave $250,000 directly to DMFI PAC last May.

But it is unclear if his backing of pro-Israel candidates was coincidental or motivated by any personal interest in Middle East policy. Bankman-Fried, who is Jewish, does not appear to have spoken publicly about Israel or the Middle East.

This isn't altruism; this is buying political influence.

Here is a review of a book on Pathological Altruism.

“Animal hoarders” are another example of PA. They fill their houses with “rescued” pets but fail to look after them. They declare their love for animals even as they step over the bodies of dogs and cats that have died of malnutrition. They often neglect their own health, living in tumble-down houses filled with animal filth. These people usually started out with a strong childhood attachment to animals but were neglected or abused by their own parents. They often start hoarding after they suffer some kind of personal setback, such as a divorce or losing a job.

Most people think altruism is a noble thing, but it can be psychopathy in disguise, or just a personality disorder.

Another theory about the origins of PA is that it can be seen as the result of an excessively female brain. Women are more likely than men to be co-dependents and have eating disorders. Girls are more compliant than boys, better behaved, and more eager to please. They are better able to figure out the needs of others. They are politically more “liberal,” and more likely to think that an important function of government is taking care of people. Low levels of testosterone in the womb during fetal development is associated with higher levels of empathy in both sexes.

Update: It now appears that FTX was taking aid to Ukraine, laundering it, and sending it to Democrat political candidates. This is unconfirmed, but it is possible, as we have no good accounting of either Ukraine aid or FTX assets.

Update: See the FTX Super Bowl commercial with Larry David.

Big Tech Censorship is Getting Worse

One of the Jewish stereotypes is that they conspire to manipulate the monetary system to force their beliefs on others.

A Jewish organization announces:

PayPal Holdings Inc. (NASDAQ: PYPL), in partnership with ADL (the Anti-Defamation League), today announced a new partnership initiative to fight extremism and hate through the financial industry and across at-risk communities. This is the latest effort by PayPal in combating racism, hate and extremism across its platforms and the industry.

A podcaster called Joker, the Better Bachelor, announces that he is bailing out of YouTube because of increased leftist control of the platforms.

His podcasts are not even very political. He does give a lot of advice for men, and that alone can get him tagged as misogynistic.

Update: A Ben Shapiro podcast explains what's wrong with this censorship in greater detail. He is an Orthodox Jew, and is against anti-semitism as much as anyone else, but most of his broadcasts are devoted to showing the evils of Leftism. He rarely mentions that the targets of his criticisms are mostly Jews and movement led by Jews. I would not be surprised if he gets banned for anti-semitism someday.

The Dark Side of Bitcoin

The NY Times has an essay on The Brutal Truth About Bitcoin.

The entire essay is about positive aspects of Bitcoin, until this paragraph at the end:

Ironically, rather than truly democratizing finance, some of these innovations may exacerbate inequality. Unequal financial literacy and digital access might result in sophisticated investors garnering the benefits while the less well off, dazzled by new technologies, take on risks they do not fully comprehend. Computer algorithms could worsen entrenched racial and other biases in credit scoring and financial decisions, rather than reducing them. The ubiquity of digital payments could also destroy any remaining vestiges of privacy in our day-to-day lives.

This is like a parody of leftist nonsense. Yes, of course every investment threatens to benefit some more than others. That is what investments do.

There are no racial biases in credit scoring. The agencies do not track race.

It does not even mention the real brutal truth of Bitcoin -- it is primarily used for financial crimes. It is used for extortion, tax evasion, smuggling, and money laundering. If some country or large corporation would create a suitable digital currency, then there would be no use for Bitcoin. A trillion dollars in digital assets could disappear, and we would be better off.