He has a point. Good water pressure us underrated.

He apparently bought this place in 2016:

https://streeteasy.com/blog/craigslist-property/

It is both absolutely gorgeous and luxurious, yet still at less than $6 million, pretty modest for someone capable of giving away half a billion.

It's even easier to give away money when you don't have it.

That's a very naive, but common, viewpoint of wealth. "Worth" 1.3 billion does not mean "has 1.3 billion lying around in liquid cash". Net worth is tied up usually in many bank accounts across multiple banks, securities, real estate, trusts, etc. And that's all excluding capital tied up in corporations/orgs. Freeing up and giving away half of a billion dollar net worth is a difficult and time consuming thing, one which requires effort to do.

I guess that’s why more billionaires don’t give money away, it’s just too hard.

you can donate assets without selling to cash first, the tax incentives and deductions are even better actually

I promise they can afford to hire someone to do the difficult and time consuming thing here.

They certainly can. And the list of people who have become rich only to have it siphoned away by bean counters is at least as long as the people who are still rich.

Well when you say it like that, he’s basically just one of us!

No, he's not. Unless, of course, you've founded a company of comparable size.

gotta upgrade your sarcasm detector

I detected it just fine. Just decided to ignore it.

It is empirically not easy.

I'd be okay with someone who has it giving it to poor old me who has not

It's easy for some to give away money if they have it, but it's hard to accumulate that much money if you're one of those people.

Newmark maybe representing the occasional exception, most people who accumulate great wealth through their effort and ideas are afflicted with an addiction problem and have a hard time saying "this is enough for me". They become attached to how much more wealth they might be able to gather and recognize how the wealth they already hold plays a role in making the most of that.

Even if they somehow imagine themselves as philanthropists or minimalists, they tend to put off giving away too much too soon under the rationale that they'll be able to eventually share more if they hold out and use it more practically.

And if you don't have that kind of mindset, you're probably just not going to climb your way into the level of riches we're discussing here. You might still do quite well as far as most people are concerned, but that billionaire milestone is hard to catch without some propensity for wealth addiction.

> Even if they somehow imagine themselves as philanthropists or minimalists, they tend to put off giving away too much too soon under the rationale that they'll be able to eventually share more if they hold out and use it more practically.

What you're describing sounds exactly like Effective Altruism. The issue is that the expected value of an act that happens at an unspecified time in the future is zero.

> the expected value of an act that happens at an unspecified time in the future is zero

It doesn't have to be an unspecified time. Imagine you make $100K and want to donate $50K of that every year. One might say "well, I will bank that money instead, buy a property for $250K, then donate the rental income forever". You now have a specific time in the future (almost, depending on how property prices fluctuate in the next 5 years).

> it's easy to give away money if you have it.

You'd think that, and yet so few of them give anything significant away (unless you count political donations).

For every one Newmark or MacKenzie Scott who does give there are hundreds who only use charitable trusts as a tax haven, if at all.

So when one of them manages to avoid the extreme-wealth-to-meanness pipeline theorized by Paul Piff (et al) I'm happy to recognize the good they are doing in the world when so many of their peers are going so hard in the other direction.

> MacKenzie Scott

What exactly has been achieved with the billions MacKenzie Scott has given away? She seems to do very little vetting of the organizations she donates to. And upon a cursory inspection, they mostly seem like the kinds of organizations where most of the donor dollars go to white collar non-profit employees that produce little in the way of results, with very little going to needy people.

I feel like the billions might be better used to piggyback on government programs that have already identified need. For example, we could offer universal school lunch for an incremental $11 billion a year (on top of the $18 billion the government already spends). I bet a few of these “giving pledge” billionaires could just fund such a program in perpetuity.

Not really interested in arguing about whether or not she is giving her money away perfectly or to the best causes according to your (or my or anyone's) standards.

She gets credit from me for doing actual philanthropy instead of just cosplaying it for tax purposes, which has been the norm even for quite a few of the other "giving pledge" donors.

As far as bolstering government programs go, I'd love to see billionaires doing more in that area, but I'd also like to see us tax wealth properly to fund the government doing the government's job.

It seems odd to give someone credit for something while refusing to engage with whether those actions have a meaningful positive effect.

> tax wealth

How are all of the old people living off of social security going to pay the wealth tax on their million dollar homes?

Also, we already “properly” tax equity wealth. We tax income at the time it actually exists. We don’t tax notional valuations.

It makes no sense to tax shares of e.g. SpaceX when the company is $42 billion in the hole. What’s really happening is that people wants to tax future income today.

t's also really easy to get greedy or ambitious/selfish.

You would not, tho. The people that think they need to get rich first before giving away won't ever give away. They always want more.

I find that the people complaining the most about billionaires, don't put much effort into help others.

You can always give away labor, in the form of volunteering.

Giving away money is stupid. With that much money I would rather fund companies that push the frontier on something. If it fails no biggie, if it succeeds it will probably end up employing people and giving them a source of income for life while simultaneously contributing to human progress.

You're saying charities like OpenAI that people have given money to haven't pushed the frontier on anything?

You'd rather vibecode a SaaS or start a dropshipping business because that is somehow pushing the frontier more than a charity like OpenAI people gave away money to?

Why wouldn’t you fund nonprofits and artists?

A lot of non-profits are just jobs programs for people who run in the same educational/social circles as the wealthy people. Not all non-profits obviously. But a shocking amount when you get close to it.

And for-profit companies are better than a quality non-profit…how?

[delayed]

Why does any of this need to be discussed? Did you think I was saying just throw money at any random nonprofit without any research? Do you think I blindly trust all non-profits? Clearly the implication is “give to quality non-profits.”

I didn’t just start talking about how there are lots of bad private companies, I assumed what you meant. So this just feels like an attempt at spiking the conversation.

Because you get very little value from them. I haven’t seen anything paradigm shifting come out of non profit besides OpenAI which they then promptly turned into a for profit spinoff.

Artists don’t need money. More money is poured into the arts than at any time history.

Motion picture arts, literary arts, video game arts, graphic design arts,

and also at no time has it cost less to get an audience and find supporters. YouTube , TikTok, instagram, twitch, patreon, starsubscribe, gumroad, etc…

> Artists don’t need money. More money is poured into the arts than at any time history.

That first sentence is patently untrue especially in the US. We have been defunding and ridiculing the arts since the Reagan years. And is “more than before” enough? I’d say clearly not. The only arts that receive large sums of money are those that are commercial enterprises designed to generate enormous profit, they are integrated into capitalism. Are you going to tell me that poetry and painting are heavily funded in the US? How about your local symphony? Are these not “worthy investments” in our culture and humanity?

And let’s say we buy that argument: How does this not apply to private companies? Are you really going to argue that we prioritize the arts anywhere near as much as for-profit businesses?

I respect someone with a good, proper library. So many luxury properties seem to miss that one.

do we think he found it on craigslist

What an absolute dream

Looks cozy and nice. Pretty humble/modest for a guy like that.

6 million house is not "modest", cmon.

Have you checked real estate prices in Manhattan? Today for these prices you can likely buy an appartment.

Its just area itself is expensive. Not like owns mansion with a zoo and 100 servants.

I mean he owns craigslist I am sure he can summon many people to do his bidding.

True—-but half of them forget to actually show up and many of the ones that do try to renegotiate the deal.

If you meme it well enough, you could get people to show up for free and still do it.

The 6 million was a decade ago so can’t be compared with today’s prices

That just means that there does not exist any "modest" property in Manhattan. It doesn't make a $6m purchase modest. There is no frame of reference whatsoever which can justify calling $6m "modest".

He bought a house with < 1% of his net worth, which he made himself. Then proceeds to give away 100x that. Aristotle would call that modest and of a balancend demeanor. An absence of excess indeed. I would be living in a cardboard box with these figures. I can get some irritation with the worlds billionaire class. But I do think modesty is somewhat based on circumstance.

That's because half of the apartments aren't being rented to force up prices

What percentage of his earnings does represent?

It's still not modest. There's no way in which a $6 million dollar house is "modest".

Don't try to launder it through lying with percentages. It's not modest.

You need to prove to us that modesty is an absolute quality. Reasonable people would agree that that is a bit extreme ("immodest") and that modesty is relative. (Try cheap instead of modest to see how this works.)

> There's no way in which a $6 million dollar house is "modest".

Relative to his wealth bracket he is being modest but not cheap.

> Relative to his wealth bracket he is being modest but not cheap.

That's moving the goalposts. No one said anything about "relative to his wealth bracket".

And I don't think I have ever heard anyone using a term like "modest house" in proportion to someone's wealth. House-modesty is something people generally use to mean "when compared with other houses in the region".

> No one said anything about "relative to his wealth bracket".

Original post was "modest for a guy like that"

No reasonable person would call a $6m purchase "modest".

I'm reasonable and I say it is. You are looking at a number, I'm looking at possessions. For example, he could have bought the entire building but he is sharing it with two other owners. A modest man.

Modesty has to be relative, otherwise anything beyond the lowest cost to feed a starving person on the planet is beyond modesty.

Bezos' wedding in Venice was modest* too then.

A small 1 bedroom apartment in Manhattan, today, costs a bit under $1 million, on average.

I would argue that a $1mil manhattan 1br isn't modest. You know, you can start to split hairs what modest means. Is that a modest living space? Sure. Is the privilege of living in manhattan immodest? I also think so.

But at least that's within the realm of "modesty". At least there's at least one element of modesty to it. It's not a multi story 6 million dollar home with a floor to ceiling double floor library.

Ironically you’re the one splitting hairs here. It seems clear that your definition of “modest” differs from a few others’. That’s about it, there’s no deeper meaning here. It seems like you’re trying to find disagreement where there is none, and trying to convince others to use the word the way you are familiar with.

modest is a relative term. its modest compared to most people of his wealth level.

I mean is your place modest compared to the average place in a third world country?

> Pretty humble/modest for a guy like that.

Modest was qualified. The statement is accurate. Your objection doesn’t make sense.

He is not being modest. Sorry.

> Modest describes someone who is unassuming about their abilities, or something that is limited in size, amount, or reach

Buying a 6 million dollar house is not unassuming.

It is when you have a billion dollars.

It’s all relative.

That style of library is my dream

Makes me wonder what a property like that would go for today, 10 years later.

That or Tribeca have to be my favorite areas of the city to live in if I had silly money which I don't so I don't and likely ever won't unless my venture petfood.ai strikes it big in which case I'll buy the entire building but won't put my name on it with large gold san serif letters. I may be poor but I have class.

That library is sick.

Looks like Blue Prince interiors. :D

I can't help but like his altitude.

No that's height, you're thinking of audacity

I’m sorry - it was an attempt at a joke based around water pressure.

So, wooosh?

FTW

Well, he is flying high.

Good interview with him here. Interesting dude.

https://conversationswithtyler.com/episodes/craig-newmark/

I had the privilege of working and sleeping in the original Craigslist office/house in San Francisco. It was just another typical, ageing house they had rearranged a little to have a ton of deskspace in the main area. A lot of start ups (including Zappos IIRC) had also been there over the years. They had a mattress in the loft/attic you could crash on if you were up late too.

Like a Warren Buffet. Same house, same car, or Ray Kroc: Look after the customer, and the business will take care of itself.

Probably lives like craigslist looks in terms of simplicity. Love it.

At heart he seems like one of the good guys in the history of tech.

Although he may have inadvertently destroyed local news by squeezing it of revenue from classified ads (but has since done a lot to fund journalism)

This reminds me an interview of the author Patrick Modiano, just after he won the literature Nobel price. The presenter asked him if the money would help. His answer was something like: "well, I don't see how the money will help the next time I will be in front of a white page".