• self@awful.systemsM
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    1 year ago

    a quick supercut of garbage Scott Alexander takes for your sneering convenience:

    I bet the billionaires who have donated the majority of their fortune to the cause also enjoy being told it’s just so they can get a few percent tax break.

    does anyone have the slightest idea what Scott’s talking about here? cause I feel like I’d have heard of a billionaire donating most of their money to any cause, unless my intuition’s right and scott’s playing with words pretending that treating a non-profit as a piggy bank somehow isn’t possible or common

    I am of the opinion that most billionaires are good and have nothing to whitewash. But even aside from that, this is the worst possible way to whitewash money. If you spend your money on a yacht, people say “cool yacht”.

    I… I don’t have words for this one actually, the sneers write themselves

    “Doesn’t actually do selfless things with the money” - can you explain how this works? My impression is if your foundation spends money on yachts or mansions for yourself, that’s plain tax fraud.

    a bunch of folks in the thread and the original podcast have already explained exactly how this works, Scott, and it’s also kinda fucking obvious, but I guess don’t let that stop you from JAQing off about it

      • jonhendry@awful.systems
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        1 year ago

        The kind of people described in this article say “cool yacht” and are loathsome.

        https://archive.is/sMA9e

        "The 12 Wildest Things I Learned as a Nightlife Concierge in Ibiza

        Between €69,000 Champagne and feral party crashers, private yachts and helicopter flights, hangover IVs and “naked houses,” just one week managing wealthy clients pushed our writer to the brink of exhaustion."

      • lobotomy42@awful.systems
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        1 year ago

        If you spend your money on a yacht, people say “cool yacht”.

        I was going to say, I have never heard a single human soul in my decades upon this earth say “cool yacht.”

      • YouKnowWhoTheFuckIAM@awful.systems
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        1 year ago

        Well technically, there’s no culture war thread on the subreddit anymore, so all of the culture war rules they had to invent to contain the culture war they started in part by inventing a series of culture war rules which constantly fed the flames of culture war are irrelevant, since when there’s no culture war thread to quarantine the culture war it’s fine to wage culture war elsewhere (and if you took away culture war, what would be the point of either the sub or its inspiring author?)