Those are the options for EA-type organizations, aren't they? You accept the money and use it to further your goals, or you refuse to accept the money and accept that you're passing up the opportunity to help a lot of people.
It's admittedly blurred because a proportion of EA donation goes towards "growing the movement" or weird "long-termist" causes (as with most or all of SBF's donations aiui), but most (I think 68% last time I looked) goes towards effective global health initiatives.
So sure, I get that by refusing to accept the billionaire money you'd send some sort of anticapitalist message. I see why people would like that part, in isolation. But, is it really worth hundreds of thousands of lives? I find it really odd that anybody would even think about that question for longer than a millisecond.
250k is admittedly on the high side of how many lives you could save for $1bn. It's in the ballpark though.
Then there's the "what's mine is mine" argument, that whatever was acquired legally is by rights yours and nobody can say otherwise. In America, this philosophy is very prevalent.
> Can you make the case for me that eg. 250k preventable deaths is a better outcome than letting somebody donate a billion dollars?
I don't understand... why is this a dichotomy? I must have missed something in the conversation somewhere?