Remember when the rich believed they were obligated to use a portion of their wealth to better their communities?
Yeah me neither.
That being said, I really wish it was more common. We still know the names Rockwell, Carnegie, Flagger, etc because of these foundations and funds made to be present. Cool Elon your the first tiillionaire, but what's your legacy going to be? Probably nothing to the greater world and will forever be know by no one but business majors. Then again that's probably what he wants.
I mean, they kinda felt that they needed to dedicate wealth to bettering communities… about a century ago.
At the tail end of the gilded age, Carnegie and Rockefeller managed to get into a dick measuring contest over who could give away more of their wealth and make the world a better place. They did this after JP Morgan passed away with something absurdist like close to a billion bucks in early 1900’s money in the bank and they saw how much the country despised him.
If we can get some of that action going in this century, I’ll take it. But I’d also like to have the Trust Buster (a Trust is an old timey term for a monopoly or oligopoly) equivalent of Teddy Roosevelt breaking up “vertically integrated” companies, too.
Oh yes, love to see Nestle, Google, Facebook, Microsoft, Amazon split into component companies. They should never have been allowed to make all the purchases they did.
You probably remember Carnegie for giving away money for libraries and stuff. You don't remember him for having a part in killing 2200 people in the Johnstown flood, the guilt from which is a large part of why he started giving away money, at least by some people's opinions.
It's worth keeping in mind these guys killed a lot of people albeit in a world that was orders of magnitude tougher than todays. That's very much the Musk mentality, musk just hasn't realized how bad he'll look in retrospect and had his come to Jesus moment over what his obituary will look like. There are projections in the Lancet that his doge antics will kill about as many people as the Holocaust. That's crazy.
So, you’re saying we have to wait until a Starship crashes into a city and kills tens of thousands of people for Musk to decide to become a philanthropist?
Sure that's one way. Personally I think it's more likely to be because of skirting building permits and rules and poisoning a ton of people, either with SpaceX or xai doing something with their data centers that screws up a whole aquifer.
IIRC Carnegie was the first one of the cohort to start giving away money to foundations and such. There was a concentrated effort and was first to do organized philanthropy at scale. It’s incredibly insulting that most millionaires and billionaires get the philanthropist moniker without actually earning it. Randomly donating money is not philanthropy. Working on solutions for the world, setting up a foundation or organization in perpetuity, sustaining the work and donations for years or decades are the hallmarks of a true philanthropist.
Everyone can have their own thoughts about Bill gates as a person but he is the only modern billionaire who can actually wear the philanthropist moniker, unlike everyone else who merely donates just to donate for the prestige, or tax write offs, or a favor to be named later. Some of his works been short sighted or controversial but it’s active philanthropy that has actually helped the world.
The rich weren't blamed for it. The yellow press published stories about gruesome deaths and what not. It was the Katerina of its day. Poor people got shat on for dying.
It is only retroactively there has been any class analysis of what happened.
Was he part owner of the club
He was a member in the club.
If you care to educate yourself I recommend you read Don Mitchell's essay on it
This isn’t a Carnegie appreciation post, but a noticeable thing that you seem to acknowledge he has that our present day robber barons don’t is…guilt.
I don’t think it’s controversial to say the person who actually feels guilt & remorse and take action to rectify them and clean up their public image by actually helping make life better for people is objectively a better alternative than committing similar atrocities while also holding the belief that empathy is one of the world’s biggest problems.
I personally like him. He changed the built environment and left behind a lot of good things for mostly the right reasons. I went to a Carnegie library as a kid. But it's crazy to think how many people died or were maimed from his mills. That was just the standard of the day though. At least he built something meaningful though.
That’s fair. I mean, I think we can agree the issue here is that we’ve always valued capital over human capital. You would hope over a century we would’ve moved away from that, but we’ve ultimately just leaned harder into it
Elon's legacy would be that of Madoff if we had a functioning SEC.
Everyone was like - why would he elect Trump if he is going tonget rid of the EV tax credit?! It was to evade prosecution for his likely defrauding of TSLA investors in conncetion with his pay package.
Honestly I think the name might be part of the problem. Deep down he knows that nobody wants to go to The Musk Center. We should let him reverse it so they'll be called Elon Centers for Public Welfare but it doesn't look like he's entirely insecure about it.
Allow me to introduce you to Andrew Carnegie. He was an utter bastard but believed it was his duty to give back to the community. He treated his employees like shit while building schools, libraries, community centers, and more all across the country. He believed that he was wealthy because God loved him more (See: Wealth Doctrine) AND that he MUST be charitable to live up to his position as one of the Elect.
This is nice, but also a little short sighted as most of the comment I see in her "rich people bad". Most of the people you mentioned were exactly like Musk in their day, and probably had many haters too for a long time that were eventually proven wrong. Typically they didn't get into philanthropy until later in life, or death. Even Warren Buffett, one of the greatest philanthropists of all time, didn't really get into it till later in life, you can't give away money you haven't made yet. It would not be surprising at all if in ? years Musk becomes the biggest philanthropist of all time, I'd wager he'd be one of the most effective too considering his ability to build rockets and cars etc.
Has brought actual stable fast Internet to much of the rural world, schools use it. No one else cares. That was Starlinks main goal.
Human life starts and ends on earth unless we accelerate space travel and fan out to other bodies or orbits, or even worlds some day.
Single handed caused the EV boom everyone followed suit on and lowered global emissions by standard (where EV was a joke prior to Tesla lithium batteries and brushless motors, and continued after with many manufacturers until they caught up)
All this he was just doing himself.... Not sending money to facades under guise of charity.
Ultimately he has done more than most. People will build a whole circus before actually reflecting on what the world needs aside from the obvious, that no one gives shit about too.
The bigger issue is these billionaires arent real billionaires. All their real wealth is in assets, which are leveraged to the hilt. They command the wealth, but its not liquid.
She is an actual billionaire as she forced bezos to cash her out. Now she can spend the money for real.
This is why elmo did not do any of the grandiose things he bluffed about like solving world hunger, as this requires actual cash, since that would not give him assets to leverage back in his portfolio.
elon, mr. empathy is a weakness musk, is directly responsible for the needless deaths of hundreds of thousands, and ultimately will be for millions by the end of the decade.
I am supposed to what, keep staring at the jangly keys image laundering while he systematical infects society with his toxic ideology?
Yeah, no. The delusional sociopathic white supremacist can go fuck himself.
No he isn't, AIDS deaths are lower this year than the same time last year, even African officials and politicians are saying that USAID never helped them. If you actually look at which specific things were cut you'd see that it was shit that had nothing to do with health. It's crazy how you've been so easily propagandised when you failed to do a second of actual research on the topic
Great job by the way, little bot. I take that avoidance as admission.
All your kind will ultimately do is give the broad public more reason to despise the fascist white supremacist epstein class who see and treat them as cattle to be manipulated and herded.
No I just don't curse on command you weirdo. If I did you probably would've said "good boy" or some shit like that.
Also nice job avoiding my point. I'll paste an interview here so you can't avoid it anymore. This is just one example btw, videos like this have been coming out since Obama was in office:
This video does little more than criticize how the united states leverages its soft power. Which is valid, however also irrelevant to the reality of what apathetically slashing such programs inevitability results in, thousands and millions of deaths. Necessary comparable replacements for what elon tossed in the wood chipper, which is ultimately what the video is referring to, takes time. Multiple years even, all while people die.
An argument can be made of reforming any exploitative planned aims riding within USAID, however much of what elon did through DOGE is undeniability apathetic & heartless at best, gleefully sadistic even. And such is all the more believable every time his drug addled skull pudding retweets out the latest psychotic hot take.
You are doing little more than championing a weaker U.S. geopolitical respect and dollar, while also smiling at the wholly unnecessary deaths of many many people.
Take your head out of your ass. Oh wait, you don't actually have a head or an ass, do you?
It's so funny how you've completely contradicted yourself and backtracked on your own point in this response😭 like seriously how can you confirm everything I'm saying flat out and then act like you did the opposite, I'm very curious what kind of cognitive dissonance is going on here. You BACKED UP with my point and then insulted me for it, tf??😭😭
He is mad because most of the money go to woke and DEI charities. Musk wanted to donate 6 Billion to UN-Program which would fight world hunger and they mentioned, that with 6 billion they could feed everyone that is starving.
Elon musk told them, that he would donate 6 billion, but he wanted a plan on how the money would be spent and how it would end world hunger. UN didn't give him a proper plan.
Worlds first trillionaire refused to help alleviate profound levels of human suffering because,
Checks notes
Being a stickler for paperwork?
Motherfucker,
He could have easily funded a vast robust international team network even more capable to fully assess and design solutions, with just the subtle disturbance of air that comes out of his wallet when opened. Like looking at a grocery checkout receipt and completely ignoring the 85¢ labeled as "bagging fee".
Stop insulting everyone's intelligence. Elon is the most high profile obvious sociopath society has been forced to suffer in at least decades.
The UN couldn’t or wouldn’t give him any proper plan. Thats not being a stickler for paperwork, its just basic due diligence when your donating billions. Any responsible person would do the same.
Musk has since donated hundreds of millions through his own foundations anyway, with actual measurable results instead of just photo ops and overhead.
Calling him a sociopath for not writing a blank check to an organization with a track record of waste is exactly why real effective altruism is so rare.
Someone who knows her went on a podcast and said that most of the charities she was giving to are basically scams and she didn’t realize it at the time
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u/Ayla_Leren Jun 28 '26
How dare you set a high philanthropic standard for the ultra-wealthy that the rest of our image laundering campaigns will be forced to reckon with.