Comment by lukev
2 months ago
This is pure capitalist brainworms.
And I say this as someone who's not even particularly anti-capitalist.
2 months ago
This is pure capitalist brainworms.
And I say this as someone who's not even particularly anti-capitalist.
It's an unpopular opinion for sure.
Try to think about it in less capitalist terms. Say you built the world's first bicycle and can now move faster / more efficiently than anyone else.
What is the most likely thing that will happen if you give the bicycle away to the person who appears to need it the most and go do something else? (One broken bicycle.)
On the flip side, isn't the most important thing you can work on something like, "figure out how to make a bicycle—and maintenance supply chain—for everyone who wants one"?
The OP's whole point is that he has money, not ideas. Plus, in your example, you could literally do both. Plus, money is not the same thing as IP or creativity. Plus, the post you were responding to was literally advocating giving the money to the people with ideas of how to do good for the world.
There may or may not be a moral imperative to give away excess wealth, but there damn sure isn't any moral imperative to keep it.
If we take the post at face value, OP is saying that he has too many ideas (robots! DOGE!) to have conviction around any, which is a pretty normal predicament for founders.
He also has a track record of having an idea, figuring out how to make the idea useful to others, and turning that into a self-sustaining machine.
All of these are much more important than an idea alone.
As everybody here knows, just having an idea for, say, an app is of very limited value. The trick is being able to mold the idea into what people actually want it to be, and find some model that lets you and them split the value, so the work can continue. The same is true in any kind of political or social activity. Ideas are almost worthless.
As in software, people who are capable of actually executing on their ideas for making the world better are almost always also capable of getting the funding they need, one way or another. People are always the bottleneck, not funding. (Ask anyone who runs a grant program about how hard it is to find effective people to give to.)
Sure, if OP runs into an extremely skilled world-changer with a great track record he should donate 10-50k and introduce the person to some other post-exit friends. But will that skilled and effective person find funding whether he donates or not? Definitely.
The post I was responding to was advocating for giving money to people with an idea for how to make the world better who would otherwise never be able to do it.
The existence of such people is almost a myth.
They do exist, but they're impossible to find in the haystack of people who are guaranteed to fail at executing their idea. If you look for people with ideas for making the world better who aren't doing them because they don't have the money, and give them money, nothing will happen. That's arson.
Also, in my example, you can't really do both. The most efficient system for getting a bicycle to everyone who needs one will involve selling the bicycles. Without capturing some of the value of the bicycles you're making, you'll never be able to make as many.