by eirikbakke 10 hours ago
"Larry Ellison has been involved with two philanthropic organizations. First he made a $300M donation to Stanford, in exchange for not admitting wrongdoing in an options backdating scandal. All other philanthropic work is to the Larry Ellison institute for prolonging of life--namely his." -- Bryan Cantrill
It's amusing but it's not true. From Wikipedia:
> In 1992, Ellison shattered his elbow in a high-speed bicycle crash. After receiving treatment at University of California, Davis, Ellison donated $5 million to seed the Lawrence J. Ellison Musculo-Skeletal Research Center.
> In 1998, the Lawrence J. Ellison Ambulatory Care Center opened on the Sacramento campus of the UC Davis Medical Center
> In 2007, Ellison pledged $500,000 to fortify a community centre in Sderot, Israel, against rocket attacks
> In 2014, he donated $10 million to the Friends of the Israel Defense Forces.
> In 2017, he donated $16.6 million donation to support the construction of well-being facilities on a new campus for co-ed conscripts
> In May 2016, Ellison donated $200 million to the University of Southern California to establish a cancer research center: the Lawrence J. Ellison Institute for Transformative Medicine of USC
> Between 2021 and 2023, Ellison invested $130 million in the Tony Blair Institute for Global Change and has pledged a further $218 million since then
Note that I made that claim in 2011. I had tried to research this a bit for the brief period of time that I was at Oracle, and really couldn't find anything (other than the Ellison Medical Foundation). That said, I think my essential assertion stands: given his wealth, Ellison's philanthropic work is de minimis.
These numbers are rounding errors to Ellison. I give a higher percentage of my net worth every year than he has in total
You listed multiple sociopathic stuff. A western hegemony think tank is not a good thing. Giving money to a genociders is the opposite of good.
Nobody claimed otherwise. The claim was that he gave money to nothing except his own life extension fund. And you agree that he's given money to other things.
Ah I see my mistake. I had noticed grandparent being about charity and was responding to that.
Funny death is the equalizer for now till you get the foundation situation
Sounds like he is a refreshingly honest person
Honest doesn't make good.
> in exchange for not admitting wrongdoing in an options backdating scandal
>> Refreshing honest
?
Sounds like he’s a twat.
Isn't falling for virtue signalling charity donations more of a twattery?
It is always enlightening when people criticizing "virtue signaling" accidentally reveal that the problem they have is not the signaling, it's the having virtue.
There was a time when one of the virtues was not to brag about how virtuous you were. I think that's why a lot of folks have a problem with virtue signalling. In their minds if you're signalling by doing something publicly it karmically negates what you're doing and almost alchemically turns it into something resembling vice.
I'm merely trying to explain how it is that people can have a problem with virtue signalling and to them it doesn't really contradict what is to them true virtue where you do something good and stay quiet about it.
This comment feels like it was made outside the context of the existing conversation. The comment I replied to was calling all charity virtue signaling and not just vocal giving.
But either way, I personally don’t think a library is any less valuable to a community just because it has Carnegie’s name above the entrance.
If you choose to classify all charity donations as "virtue signaling", yes.
If you reject that absurd false framing, no.
It's not virtue signally if you're tangible helping people. Like if I give away food, maybe I have the intent of signalling something, but I'm also giving away food. That actually happened.
The world would be a much better place if rich people virtue signalled much more and thereby donated more.