We're back, baby!! And for our first episode of the new year, we're bringing news of the rich and famous.

If you haven’t been watching the news or trolling Twitter, you might not have noticed that it’s been a very bad few months for billionaires. One after another, they’ve been breaking down the myth that they’re in any way special or worthy of our admiration.

We have a little rundown on what Kanye, Elon, Bezos, and SBF have been up to in the last four or five months.

Other than helping to run his own businesses into the ground, SBF has been one of the loudest voices advocating for a particular school of philanthropy called Effective Altruism.

Essentially, Effective Altruists separate themselves from other philanthropists by claiming to use science and reason (that’s the effective part) to determine what would benefit the most people.

A main feature of Effective Altruism, also part of the “effective” side, is that it’s often seen as better to earn a lot of money and donate some of it than to donate your time.

SBF is a perfect example of this calculated career planning. At some point, he had a conversation with Will MacAskill, one of the main organizers for the Centre for Effective Altruism. MacAskill told him that it would be better to earn a lot of money for his cause (animal welfare) than to volunteer.

Think of how many people would be better off if Sam Bankman Fried had ignored that advice!

Some reading:

https://www.vox.com/recode/2020/10/6/21502639/amazon-union-busting-tracking-memo-spoc

https://time.com/3935328/how-to-do-well-when-you-do-good

https://davekarpf.substack.com/p/against-jackpot-longtermism

https://www.nytimes.com/2022/12/07/business/ftx-sbf-crypto-market-investigation.html?smid=tw-nytimes&smtyp=cur

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