Most of them seemingly have control problems where even if they do, it is in the form of a giant money pile still under their control that they give away the returns of, usually also completely under their control.

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toomuchtodo 3 hours ago | parent [-]

What's interesting is they cannot, but their ex partners go much further in their giving (Melinda French, MacKenzie Scott, for example).

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Waterluvian 3 hours ago | parent [-]

I wonder if there's a survivorship bias there: those who can and do reject the status quo.

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toomuchtodo 3 hours ago | parent [-]

My hot take is that men with extreme wealth and power are desperate to keep it as part of their identity, where the women I mentioned do not have the same character and personality flaws, and therefore use it as a tool to do good because they are not optimizing for status, power, and wealth: they are optimizing to do good. Doesn't always hold, there are exceptions.

"Power tends to corrupt and absolute power corrupts absolutely. Great men are almost always bad men, even when they exercise influence and not authority; still more when you superadd the tendency of the certainty of corruption by authority." -- Lord Action

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DennisP 3 hours ago | parent | next [-]

One giant exception was Chuck Feeney, who made $8 billion on duty free shops and gave almost all of it away, much of it anonymously. By the end of his life he and his wife had a couple million and lived in a rented apartment.

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idiotsecant 2 hours ago | parent | next [-]

Giving away your fortune in secret is so much more virtuous than doing it with a giant foundation with your name on it. Much respect.

	▲	fuzzfactor 33 minutes ago \| parent [-]
		When they agreed in Nashville to rename the airport after Dolly Parton, all of the people commenting on the TV clip said it was well-deserved. Some were more emotional than others, but one of the proponents was very touched, she admired Parton so much because Dolly set an example of how to be as successful as a person can be, and not keep a billion for yourself. I can't find the clip now, but it was from the heart.

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toomuchtodo 3 hours ago | parent | prev [-]

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chuck_Feeney

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Atlantic_Philanthropies

https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=false&qu...

Great human, thanks for mentioning.

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seki285 2 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-]

There's a difference in men and women... until there's not. Very convenient.

	▲	fuzzfactor 8 minutes ago \| parent \| next [-]
		I know what you mean, nobody in North America understands vive la différence outside of French Canadians and Louisiana Cajuns. And some of them only at their own convenience. I wouldn't let it bother me, son of a gun I'm gonna have big fun on the bayou :)
	▲	toomuchtodo 2 hours ago \| parent \| prev [-]
		There's a large body of medical research around women having more empathy than men, specifically around brain volume in the inferior frontal gyrus. Does it always hold? There are always exceptions. Broadly speaking, in most cases, it is a function of brain structure, per person. Do you have many examples of exceptional wealthy and powerful women who are monsters? I do not. I welcome corrections and citations, and am happy to be proven wrong on this. TLDR Show me the brain fMRI and I will show you the soul. In some cases, facial structure is enough for weak but meaningful signal (as a proxy for brain structure). (politics are also brain structure, citations in https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48634883)

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IncreasePosts 2 hours ago | parent | prev [-]

I think more likely is that bill and Jeff built their wealth through their businesses, which they are still directly involved in. Giving away their wealth would be equivalent to giving away the business they built from the ground up

I think there's also a question of efficacy. Bill and Jeff are really good at turning $1 into $10. Melinda and Mackenzie? Not so much. If bill or Jeff wanted to maximize the amount they can give, the best strategy would be for them to continually earn until they die, and then donate it.

	▲	toomuchtodo 2 hours ago \| parent [-]
		I agree that Bill and Jeff are better at exploitation at scale. That’s how you become that wealthy. We are lucky they’re divorced and the wealth is in the hands of better stewards to distribute it to do good.