40 billionaires to date: 50% or more of their wealth to Charity

[Jim Brennan]

They're not all donating to the same place. I went through and read the letters; many are donating to education, which is the underlying issue IMO.

I've been an educational advocate for some time now. I would agree that more resources for our educational system would be a good thing, if all other things were equal. But all other things are not equal. Throwing money at education doesn't really help either. What our educational system fails to do is recognize and maximize differentiated learning styles and outcomes for students. Instead it tries to cram them all into the same box, teach them the same way, and give them the same definition of success.

I understand the importance of a baseline standard curriculum, but if the goal of an educational system is to prepare you for whatever comes next, then it should spend less energy on regurgitated facts, and more energy on teaching you to recognize and maximize the way that you learn best.

That solution is only 10% about money, and 90% about attitude and approach.

 

[Drew Ott]

I completely agree. I'm a big hater of formal education. My high school taught students how to be amazing at the SAT, and it is therefore considered one of the best schools in the country, but I resent the place more than almost anything I can think of.

I just meant that the lack of learning/knowledge/wisdom is the underlying issue. Throwing money at the education system would probably do more harm than good.

 

[Kirk Gillock]

Somebody ought to give them Isara's number.

Sad Max, you are my new BFF.

:thumbsup:

 

[Sad Max]

 

[AwakenedFilms]

Chuck Feeny - the billionaire who wasn't.


Jason

 

[Jester2138]

Okay, I'm a sucker for philisophical arguments, so I can't help myself here. This is a bit off-topic. Please, please, please keep in mind that I have no hostile feelings towards anybody here, I just love debating this sort of thing and hope you don't mind responding with a counter-argument

The underlying issue are systemic in nature, we are talking about the ideological framework(s) that are implemented by society as a whole.

I strongly disagree with this. Taking poverty as an example "issue," the "underlying issue" has absolutely nothing to do with any ideology or societal philosophy. Put simply, both the communist USSR and the capitalist USA had (have) problems with poverty. Every society in the world has poverty.

Just look to nature and you'll see that the basic dichotomy between the "haves" and the "have-nots" exists in every possible subsystem (and is often more random than in humanity). Some fish don't get eaten, some do. Some planets don't get sucked into black holes, some do.

The main innovation of capitalism is that rather than trying to suppress the basic human vice of greed as socialism and communism do, capitalism takes advantage of greed and uses it for the betterment of society.

But as an analogy, think of a nation as hardware, and systemic Ideologies (e.g. Democracy, Communism, Etc) as Software (O/S). Clearly issues at the framework level have a huge impact on the development of society. This is where the majority of Issues lie, and this is where they must be solved.

I don't believe this is a very useful analogy, for two reasons:

First, you have the hardware/software reversed. The "nation" would be the software and the "systematic ideology" would be the hardware. Think of it this way: hardware can exist without software, but software requires hardware in order to even exist (which is why it's called software). Thus, continuing on your analogy, ideologies can exist whether or not a particular nation implements them at the societal level, but a nation cannot exist without a ruling ideology (both of which we know to be true already, I was just fitting your analogy to this).

Second, you suggest that issues must be solved at the "framework" level. Now, I'm not sure what you mean by "framework level," but since you stated this immediately after your analogy, I assume you're referring to ideology (correct me if I'm wrong). I have already stated my opinion that ideology has nothing to do with poverty above, so I'll refrain from commenting on that further (except to say I agree that ideology obviously has a huge impact on society as a whole).

But, to keep this post relevant to the rest of the thread, I'll just add my own opinion to our consensus that these billionaires are doing a truly great thing.