My first thought was "Fuck! Not Sam's house!!" but it quickly became "Oh fuck this could easily have been a post saying how Sam Harris was killed in the fire." It was a double gut punch, leaving me feeling broken for you and also feeling so relieved that you are ok. And then I remembered you earmarked 2025 to live as if it's your last year, and the cruel irony that you found yourself picking just a handful of possessions to save was stunning. And yet still, in this chaos, you are penning such a cogent appeal to rebuild the city. I really have no words. Sam, I wish you and your family as peaceful and quick a resolution to this nightmare as possible.
In a recent Rich Roll "Best of" podcast, the author Suleika Jaouad, who has had leukemia come and go and come again several times, said that rather than living life as though each day were her last, she has decided that living life like each day is her FIRST is much more fruitful. She made a good case for her approach producing much more positive results.
Glad you're safe so far. My mom grew up in PP. And my aunt a few days ago who lives there barely escaped her apartment before the building burned down.
So glad to hear you and your family are safe. Living in Australia we have fairly regular wild fires and the impact is so devastating in such a short time. I do hope the rich mob take notice of your perfectly reasonable suggestion to elevate humanity.
Another Australian here. My family and I had to evacuate over Xmas because we had a bushfire under 7km away from our house (rural), with catastrophic winds predicted, including a change in direction. Thankfully, the bushfire was contained and cooled over a couple of days before the wind hit, and when it did, it didn't jump the containment lines. Spent Xmas staying with relatives, with our bare essentials, in line with our fire plan.
It's strange to see wildfires in the northern hemisphere in their winter. I have been following the news coming out of California (having walked on the beach in Malibu myself), and it's truly awful to see - the pictures are mind boggling. It's something else to go into a mode where you need to evacuate and take bare essentials while seeing fire heading toward your house.
It's going to take absolutely ages to rebuild, due to firstly the number of houses and secondly, the available trades and building materials. What happened here in 2009 ("Black Saturday" bushfires) was devastation of 2000 houses, and it took years and years for most to rebuild due to insurance squabbles, lack of tradespeople and availability of materials.
Stay safe Sam, and thanks for your post today - it was well put together and hopefully the message gets to some of the folk who have plenty of money to spare.
"90 percent share in all our companies—to the state of California,"
Via State is the worst way to accomplish anything.
"There are four ways in which you can spend money. You can spend your own money on yourself. When you do that, why then you really watch out what you’re doing, and you try to get the most for your money. Then you can spend your own money on somebody else. For example, I buy a birthday present for someone. Well, then I’m not so careful about the content of the present, but I’m very careful about the cost. Then, I can spend somebody else’s money on myself. And if I spend somebody else’s money on myself, then I’m sure going to have a good lunch! Finally, I can spend somebody else’s money on somebody else. And if I spend somebody else’s money on somebody else, I’m not concerned about how much it is, and I’m not concerned about what I get. And that’s government." --Milton Friedman
I don't mean to suggest the money will be given blindly to the state, without any input from the donors. Imagine a group of wealthy people producing a large fund and working with the state to decide how best to spend the money. When push came to shove, they would be in a position to say, "Do you want the money, or don't you? We're not spending this on another DEI initiative for lumberjacks."
If we look at what the George Kaiser Family Foundation has done ($4 billion in assets- look up Gathering Place for the largest example of their spending), we can see that it's very possible for very wealthy people to work "with" the State without turning any money or assets over to the State. Their approach is basically, we hired smart people, this is what we came up with, we're doing this to better our community, please stay out of our way. Donald Reynolds is another great example of wealth being used to benefit communities without any government management.
I do agree with 99.99% of your approach though. I just know, from first hand observation, that this can be accomplished without the added waste of a government bureaucracy.
Sam, I know you come from a good place on this...but expecting such of the State of California has increasingly seemed quixotic at best - even given the current "bargaining position" you lay out for the donors to operate from. Completely from the outside, it would appear to be almost unimaginable that such a thing wouldn't die in a haze of graft and incompetence. To be clear - I agree with the over-arching concept of the ultra-wealthy stepping up...it's just that the details really matter. Good luck, friend.
Noblesse oblige is a French expression that means "nobility obliges." It refers to the expectation that people of high social standing should behave generously and responsibly towards those less fortunate.
This was one of my kneejerk reactions as well, the thought of handing billions of dollars to the government elicited a minor gag reflex. But I completely agree with the sentiment behind this. What a world we could build. It is so exciting to me to think, what if one person, just one, said "here is my wealth, which I earned, let's use it to rebuild." I think it would be infectious. I live much closer to the floods of Helene. And I thought the same thing at the time. We and so many others did what we could with what we had. What if those much wealthier than us stepped up and stepped in? Not for a tax write-off but because they wanted to help other humans get back on their feet, because of love and compassion.
We could sit around and hash out the hypothetical details of how to properly execute the spending of other people's money, but until those people realize the power they have to affect the world for good, and elect to use that power for said good, hypotheticals are all we have.
My point, which I did not state clearly, was that we don't need the government to "rebuild". If there's a road that a wealthy person wants to rebuild because it's been destroyed, they only need say "we've got this" and they can do it. No sensible government is going to stand in their way. They typically have documents and they say you have to follow these rules and we're going to need a bond to make sure that you actually finish what you say you're going to do, but that's it. Public backlash from governmental roadblocks would be swift.
The George Kaiser Family Foundation is a perfect example- two miles of Riverside Drive in Tulsa Oklahoma were completely replaced, two new tunnels incorporated, while GKFF was building a $500 million dollar park on Riverside for the people of Tulsa. It's been ranked as one of the nicest parks in the country. There are dozens of other examples of their philanthropy in the area, where they have directly impacted the community without sending any of their dollars through the City of Tulsa or the State of Oklahoma. They've made large investments in infrastructure that now belongs to the people.
The waste associated with any level of government involvement in almost anything infrastructure related is typically found to be astounding.
"I’m not concerned about how much it is, and I’m not concerned about what I get"
unless you know you actually take your job seriously and respect your position and try to do good? This idea seems to be fundamentally lost on American culture no matter how many Ikigai books you stuff in your Amazon carts.
Each person improving their own life results in more lives being improved than any government attempting to improve lives through a monopoly on violence.
How about...
"It is hard to imagine a more ... dangerous way of making decisions than by putting those decisions in the hands of people who pay no price for being wrong."
Sam, hearing even briefly about how this is affecting you and your family made me very upset. I don’t think I personally know anyone affected, but it’s not an exaggeration to say I take your situation personally.
Wishing the four of you and your pets all the grace and luck you deserve.
Sam, I’ve been eager to hear how you guys are. Please update us as soon as you know about the house. I can’t imagine these hours & days of anguish. Thank you for this bracing & actionable piece. Reminiscent of Hanauer’s pitchforks, but with a clear path forward. I hope billionaires will understand just how healing gestures like these would be.
My parents had to evacuate their home in the Valley which was luckily spared by the benevolent path of the Kenneth Fire. These events hit home for many of us during these past few days.
I am sure my comment will be lost in the cacophony of well wishes, but nonetheless Sam I leave you nothing but the most heartfelt wishes for your home and belongings to have been spared from destruction. More importantly. I and all of us here wish for you, Annaka, and your immediate family to find themselves in a state of equanimity rather than distress.
Paradise was destroyed by Fire and I don’t recall any billionaires jumping forward to rebuild. Destruction left by Katrina left many who to this day have not been able to rebuild. Musk spends his billions on space fantasies and Bezos on a ship and rockets Just think of what those billions could do about research into climate change, diabetes, medical strategies, homelessness, those losing their homes and life savings due to medical expenses. YES, LA needs help. So get in the long line of tens of thousands of others who for years have been left to struggle alone.
One detail you're ignoring is that many very wealthy people live in Los Angeles and built their wealth here. And they have a direct interest (often unrecognized) in the quality of life and infrastructure outside their walls. They also have interest in avoiding class warfare.
Not to belittle the scale of this disaster, but LA is always on the world stage, not to mention being a first-world city within a first-world country, and is filled with enough influence and money that the rebuilding will be funded and organised without you needing to plead for donations. As you always say; people naturally donate to causes within their immediate social and geographic proximity. I doubt the rebuilding of Gaza will enjoy the same level of support.
Gaza enjoys and has enjoyed billions of dollars in support, most of it lining the pockets of Hamas leaders (billionaires who surprisingly run no businesses) and a lot of it going to the purchase and construction of a war machine, woven into every street of this now decimated area, exactly because it was woven into it. These billions in aid are the exact opposite of effective altruism and have contributed hugely to the ongoing crisis there. Gaza is still getting huge amounts of aid today and will receive more after the war, probably more than it ever had. The question remains what will be built – a brighter future for Gazans, or deeper tunnels and pockets… Currently the funds keep flowing to the same places and stoking the same fires.
There is no simple solution, and you’re right - pouring money into a broken and corrupt system doesn’t fix anything. I do hope the region can find peace. I was simply lamenting that scores of communities around the world need the kind of funding and assistance Sam is calling for in LA, but will never see a shred of it—whether they be victims of fires, tsunamis, earthquakes or wars.
I don't think that's true, at least as a blanket statement. People donate to such causes all the time. Gaza is just one of them. They have gotten a lot of help in the past, however uneffective it was. But there are more examples: When the Tsunami hit in 2004 in Asia, people all around the world came together to help in many different ways, including donations and physical assistance. When we in Israel had forest fires in 2010, the world also helped, including fire fighters from the Palestinian Authority. After the 2023 earthquake in Turkey, Israelis volunteered to go over there and rescue people, and others donated money. In Ukraine people actually joined the Ukranian military from different countries... There are a lot of such examples. We DO know how to come together in a real and meaningful way :)
LA is one of the biggest cities in the richest country in the world. Naturally, they will get more help than most communities, even within the US, purely due to the amount of resources at the disposal of the state and national authorities. So in that respect, you're right, but the lens isn't the appropriate one in this context.
I believe we are in agreement. You’ve essentially phrased my point with more detail. However we have focused on different aspects. My main concern is that while a lot of people did a lot of great work around these other disasters, LA is by default - without Sam’s call for funding - going to have a much better outcome (by several orders of magnitude, in any metric you like).
Sam’s point about avoiding class wars is entirely valid and sadly a real threat. I wonder though, have these class wars already become a part of American cultural identity?
Off topic again now: if Hamas is the main roadblock to a habitable Gaza, and Hamas’ rise and actions were mostly as deterministic as any natural disaster, should the removal of Hamas not be treated as any other natural disaster? That is, to deal with them without massively exacerbating the conditions that allowed them to grow and fester in the first place. Else similar groups take their place and continue the cycle of misery.
Gaza would not require rebuilding if a) October 7th had not happened and b) Hamas had not wasted every dollar of aid on building tunnels instead of civic works. And I'm sure if the Muslim world really cares about the Palestinians as much as the college demonstrators seem to think, it will rally.
That’s got nothing to do with the point I made. Besides, all you’ve written is “us vs them” rationalisations for inaction. You’re definitely not alone in that, but it’s not helpful.
Yes, the billionaires need to ‘put on their own masks first’…We are always three meals away from anarchy. And ‘hojoki’ ( small 13c Japanese book about Kyoto burning) lead the author to madness by fleeing, the rich running away is forever, but I see why this is an opportunity for them, it’s where they live! Sam’s point is both poetic and real. I think of Thich Nhat Hanh’s example of engaged Buddhism after the Vietnam way, setting up communities to rebuild his country himself, and founding a university, without much money. Perhaps this must also be part of the ethos of reconstructing L.A. Leading by example is the other side of the coin.
There are many more efficient ways to donate wealth than to pledge it to rebuilding an already wealthy city in an already wealthy state. I've lived most of my life in Los Angeles and find the fires tragic, but billionaire wealth is much better spent on underserved causes on which the marginal dollar will do more good.
As you may know, I have spent a lot of time discussing this issue with Effective Altruists like Will MacAskill and Peter Singer. And, generally speaking, I agree with you (and them). The marginal dollar matters much more in Nairobi than in Los Angeles. However, I think it can be argued that human flourishing will not be best achieved by spreading all the wealth around equally, so that no place has a higher standard of living than any other (if such a thing were possible). We want great universities, beautiful museums, new companies, and other expensive institutions, and we need wealthy cities to produce them. How one divides the philanthropic pie is difficult to decide. But I find it genuinely tragic that many rich people can't seem to realize that they have a vested interest in mitigating the suffering and social disorder right on their doorstep. Cities like Los Angeles, San Francisco, and New York need to be brought fully into the 21st century, because what happens there will largely determine what the 21st century can be.
The Buddha once confronted a man who lost all of his cows. The Buddha’s response was “how happy is he who has no more cows to lose!”. I hope your house was spared, but if not, maybe you can find solace in Buddhist non-attachment.
Sad really, cannot infer whether this was an intelligent troll comment, or someone attached to questionable sense of humour. Either way, wish you success in your self-discovery.🙏🏻❤️
I know a guy who accidentally burned his house down and related to me his experience of realizing that he had successfully completed two tasks on his "to-do list"
It seems like you don't use Sam's meditation app. In the app, Sam gives classic Buddhist teachings about non-attachment. I encourage you to try his meditation program, and I hope it gives you peace as it did for me and Sam.
I’m not sure that your premise is correct during an ongoing disaster. At the moment, it is entirely plausible that billionaire money is best spent in LA.
Sam, It's insane to think that the Resnicks should trust their assets to the LA/California government, which has misinvested billions of dollars on nonsensical projects to cure homeless, provide high speed rail, and promote climate change virtue signaling. They would be much better off funding, private investors to rebuild homes and businesses which were lost. I'm sure the government would have absolutely no interest in doing that. Just my thoughts. Hope all Angelinos come out of this tragedy, including my two LA children. Thanks, Nelson
I’m not sure that follows. I am not an expert, but I don’t think that many billionaires’ wealth is liquid. Much is tied up in their shares in their own companies. Sure, they could sell it now and fund every federal program known to man but then what?
It's hard to expand on this in a single comment but look at it this way - any normal human being would be happy to retire at a few million, travel the world and fund their interests for the rest of their life.
The fact that you continue on means you are fundamentally unfulfilled by the beauty and presence of the world and instead you need something else to satisfy you which is a fundamental character flaw.
I don’t think it’s a character flaw, but rather a simple product of evolutionary biology. We are all hardwired to want to acquire plenty when we can, with the fearful expectation of suffering during famine caused by drought, or conflict, or other disaster. Consider that for most of human history the best we could hope for was a surplus when times were good to hopefully see us through a harsh winter or whatever could be defined as “bad”. The vast majority of people are not able to see beyond the strings that pull their mind in this or that direction, (queue every argument Sam has ever made about free will), and knowing this it’s not hard to see how even Billionaires can worry that
They might *just* loose it all someday…. Better stockpile that next billion just in case. Just incase the next winter is particularly harsh……
At this level, money has long lost the meaning of a resource. Also this "hardwired evolution" line of thought is pure bullshit, I'm sorry. It's just people trying to justify their shit behavior through an appeal to nature — so, pass on all of that even if it might have some biological truths.
It's purely power and status. The difference between 1 billion and 2 billion is not a lifetime of lavished living — it's SEVERAL lifetimes and generations of offsprings who do not have to think about resources at all, ever.
It’s not bullshit. There is real science behind how we are driven by our biological inheritance. Now I grant you that we can rise above it if we try really hard. The more sentient and intelligent a brain is the more power it has to resist its own programming and chart a new course by “re-programming” itself. But most people, including billionaires, are just not thinking about themselves in these terms. It’s not “shit behavior” to hoard wealth. It’s just behavior. You could sell the phone or computer you are using to write this and send the money to a poor village in Africa that desperately needs a water well. But you won’t. And it’s for the same reasons a billionaire won’t do the things you think they should.
I had not seen any compelling evidence that this would be true in any reasonable extent. All of this science is barely scratching the lowest threshold to be considered scientific at all and even if it proves anything the context is so narrow that it hardly means anything in the grand scale of things.
They do give back. They pay an incredible amount of taxes. They run enterprises and business that hire tens of thousands. They engage in philanthropy. Etc.
Based on 2022 IRS data, the top 1% of income earners (those making above approximately $500,000) paid about 42% of total federal income taxes, while the top 10% (those making above approximately $150,000) paid about 74% of total federal income taxes.
The bottom? The bottom 50% of income earners (those making less than approximately $45,000 in 2022) paid about 2.3% of total federal income taxes.
I hope you and your family can begin again. Be well, and thank you for updating us that you are safe
So glad you and your family are safe Sam.
The voice of reason even in a time of total chaos. Glad to hear you and your family are safe, my friend.
Completely agree. And wishing the best to you and your family.
Let it be possible to wrench value from disaster, with heart and will and mind.
You've already made a start.
Jimmy puts it perfectly. Love to you and your family.
Exactly.
My first thought was "Fuck! Not Sam's house!!" but it quickly became "Oh fuck this could easily have been a post saying how Sam Harris was killed in the fire." It was a double gut punch, leaving me feeling broken for you and also feeling so relieved that you are ok. And then I remembered you earmarked 2025 to live as if it's your last year, and the cruel irony that you found yourself picking just a handful of possessions to save was stunning. And yet still, in this chaos, you are penning such a cogent appeal to rebuild the city. I really have no words. Sam, I wish you and your family as peaceful and quick a resolution to this nightmare as possible.
In a recent Rich Roll "Best of" podcast, the author Suleika Jaouad, who has had leukemia come and go and come again several times, said that rather than living life as though each day were her last, she has decided that living life like each day is her FIRST is much more fruitful. She made a good case for her approach producing much more positive results.
"begin again."
I’m also presently a Palisades Fire evacuee, and found myself listening to your “Break Glass In Case Of Emergency” meditation a few days ago.
It helped. LMK where you’re getting your bottles of MDMA - I think that might also help as we’re bracing for the next winds to flare up..
Glad you're safe so far. My mom grew up in PP. And my aunt a few days ago who lives there barely escaped her apartment before the building burned down.
So glad to hear you and your family are safe. Living in Australia we have fairly regular wild fires and the impact is so devastating in such a short time. I do hope the rich mob take notice of your perfectly reasonable suggestion to elevate humanity.
Another Australian here. My family and I had to evacuate over Xmas because we had a bushfire under 7km away from our house (rural), with catastrophic winds predicted, including a change in direction. Thankfully, the bushfire was contained and cooled over a couple of days before the wind hit, and when it did, it didn't jump the containment lines. Spent Xmas staying with relatives, with our bare essentials, in line with our fire plan.
It's strange to see wildfires in the northern hemisphere in their winter. I have been following the news coming out of California (having walked on the beach in Malibu myself), and it's truly awful to see - the pictures are mind boggling. It's something else to go into a mode where you need to evacuate and take bare essentials while seeing fire heading toward your house.
It's going to take absolutely ages to rebuild, due to firstly the number of houses and secondly, the available trades and building materials. What happened here in 2009 ("Black Saturday" bushfires) was devastation of 2000 houses, and it took years and years for most to rebuild due to insurance squabbles, lack of tradespeople and availability of materials.
Stay safe Sam, and thanks for your post today - it was well put together and hopefully the message gets to some of the folk who have plenty of money to spare.
"90 percent share in all our companies—to the state of California,"
Via State is the worst way to accomplish anything.
"There are four ways in which you can spend money. You can spend your own money on yourself. When you do that, why then you really watch out what you’re doing, and you try to get the most for your money. Then you can spend your own money on somebody else. For example, I buy a birthday present for someone. Well, then I’m not so careful about the content of the present, but I’m very careful about the cost. Then, I can spend somebody else’s money on myself. And if I spend somebody else’s money on myself, then I’m sure going to have a good lunch! Finally, I can spend somebody else’s money on somebody else. And if I spend somebody else’s money on somebody else, I’m not concerned about how much it is, and I’m not concerned about what I get. And that’s government." --Milton Friedman
I don't mean to suggest the money will be given blindly to the state, without any input from the donors. Imagine a group of wealthy people producing a large fund and working with the state to decide how best to spend the money. When push came to shove, they would be in a position to say, "Do you want the money, or don't you? We're not spending this on another DEI initiative for lumberjacks."
If we look at what the George Kaiser Family Foundation has done ($4 billion in assets- look up Gathering Place for the largest example of their spending), we can see that it's very possible for very wealthy people to work "with" the State without turning any money or assets over to the State. Their approach is basically, we hired smart people, this is what we came up with, we're doing this to better our community, please stay out of our way. Donald Reynolds is another great example of wealth being used to benefit communities without any government management.
I do agree with 99.99% of your approach though. I just know, from first hand observation, that this can be accomplished without the added waste of a government bureaucracy.
Sam, I know you come from a good place on this...but expecting such of the State of California has increasingly seemed quixotic at best - even given the current "bargaining position" you lay out for the donors to operate from. Completely from the outside, it would appear to be almost unimaginable that such a thing wouldn't die in a haze of graft and incompetence. To be clear - I agree with the over-arching concept of the ultra-wealthy stepping up...it's just that the details really matter. Good luck, friend.
Noblesse oblige is a French expression that means "nobility obliges." It refers to the expectation that people of high social standing should behave generously and responsibly towards those less fortunate.
In a way, old fashioned Victorian philanthropy still works wonders.
This was one of my kneejerk reactions as well, the thought of handing billions of dollars to the government elicited a minor gag reflex. But I completely agree with the sentiment behind this. What a world we could build. It is so exciting to me to think, what if one person, just one, said "here is my wealth, which I earned, let's use it to rebuild." I think it would be infectious. I live much closer to the floods of Helene. And I thought the same thing at the time. We and so many others did what we could with what we had. What if those much wealthier than us stepped up and stepped in? Not for a tax write-off but because they wanted to help other humans get back on their feet, because of love and compassion.
We could sit around and hash out the hypothetical details of how to properly execute the spending of other people's money, but until those people realize the power they have to affect the world for good, and elect to use that power for said good, hypotheticals are all we have.
My point, which I did not state clearly, was that we don't need the government to "rebuild". If there's a road that a wealthy person wants to rebuild because it's been destroyed, they only need say "we've got this" and they can do it. No sensible government is going to stand in their way. They typically have documents and they say you have to follow these rules and we're going to need a bond to make sure that you actually finish what you say you're going to do, but that's it. Public backlash from governmental roadblocks would be swift.
The George Kaiser Family Foundation is a perfect example- two miles of Riverside Drive in Tulsa Oklahoma were completely replaced, two new tunnels incorporated, while GKFF was building a $500 million dollar park on Riverside for the people of Tulsa. It's been ranked as one of the nicest parks in the country. There are dozens of other examples of their philanthropy in the area, where they have directly impacted the community without sending any of their dollars through the City of Tulsa or the State of Oklahoma. They've made large investments in infrastructure that now belongs to the people.
The waste associated with any level of government involvement in almost anything infrastructure related is typically found to be astounding.
Good way to go
"I’m not concerned about how much it is, and I’m not concerned about what I get"
unless you know you actually take your job seriously and respect your position and try to do good? This idea seems to be fundamentally lost on American culture no matter how many Ikigai books you stuff in your Amazon carts.
You apparently haven't had much experience with public sector employees.
and Friedman is a run away capitalist. He doesn’t care about improving lives other than his own
Each person improving their own life results in more lives being improved than any government attempting to improve lives through a monopoly on violence.
How about...
"It is hard to imagine a more ... dangerous way of making decisions than by putting those decisions in the hands of people who pay no price for being wrong."
Thomas Sowell
> Each person improving their own life results in more lives being improved
Incredibly flawed line of thought. Many exchanges are zero sum so one person ultimately improving their life could mean no one else gets to live.
Maybe this will make sense once we live in a post-scarcity society but we don't and we won't for a while so statements like this are incredibly toxic.
Sam, hearing even briefly about how this is affecting you and your family made me very upset. I don’t think I personally know anyone affected, but it’s not an exaggeration to say I take your situation personally.
Wishing the four of you and your pets all the grace and luck you deserve.
And the same to your community.
Sam, I’ve been eager to hear how you guys are. Please update us as soon as you know about the house. I can’t imagine these hours & days of anguish. Thank you for this bracing & actionable piece. Reminiscent of Hanauer’s pitchforks, but with a clear path forward. I hope billionaires will understand just how healing gestures like these would be.
My parents had to evacuate their home in the Valley which was luckily spared by the benevolent path of the Kenneth Fire. These events hit home for many of us during these past few days.
I am sure my comment will be lost in the cacophony of well wishes, but nonetheless Sam I leave you nothing but the most heartfelt wishes for your home and belongings to have been spared from destruction. More importantly. I and all of us here wish for you, Annaka, and your immediate family to find themselves in a state of equanimity rather than distress.
Yes. I have a lot of fam down there. An aunt in Pac Pal barely escaped her building burning down.
Paradise was destroyed by Fire and I don’t recall any billionaires jumping forward to rebuild. Destruction left by Katrina left many who to this day have not been able to rebuild. Musk spends his billions on space fantasies and Bezos on a ship and rockets Just think of what those billions could do about research into climate change, diabetes, medical strategies, homelessness, those losing their homes and life savings due to medical expenses. YES, LA needs help. So get in the long line of tens of thousands of others who for years have been left to struggle alone.
One detail you're ignoring is that many very wealthy people live in Los Angeles and built their wealth here. And they have a direct interest (often unrecognized) in the quality of life and infrastructure outside their walls. They also have interest in avoiding class warfare.
Not to belittle the scale of this disaster, but LA is always on the world stage, not to mention being a first-world city within a first-world country, and is filled with enough influence and money that the rebuilding will be funded and organised without you needing to plead for donations. As you always say; people naturally donate to causes within their immediate social and geographic proximity. I doubt the rebuilding of Gaza will enjoy the same level of support.
Gaza enjoys and has enjoyed billions of dollars in support, most of it lining the pockets of Hamas leaders (billionaires who surprisingly run no businesses) and a lot of it going to the purchase and construction of a war machine, woven into every street of this now decimated area, exactly because it was woven into it. These billions in aid are the exact opposite of effective altruism and have contributed hugely to the ongoing crisis there. Gaza is still getting huge amounts of aid today and will receive more after the war, probably more than it ever had. The question remains what will be built – a brighter future for Gazans, or deeper tunnels and pockets… Currently the funds keep flowing to the same places and stoking the same fires.
There is no simple solution, and you’re right - pouring money into a broken and corrupt system doesn’t fix anything. I do hope the region can find peace. I was simply lamenting that scores of communities around the world need the kind of funding and assistance Sam is calling for in LA, but will never see a shred of it—whether they be victims of fires, tsunamis, earthquakes or wars.
I don't think that's true, at least as a blanket statement. People donate to such causes all the time. Gaza is just one of them. They have gotten a lot of help in the past, however uneffective it was. But there are more examples: When the Tsunami hit in 2004 in Asia, people all around the world came together to help in many different ways, including donations and physical assistance. When we in Israel had forest fires in 2010, the world also helped, including fire fighters from the Palestinian Authority. After the 2023 earthquake in Turkey, Israelis volunteered to go over there and rescue people, and others donated money. In Ukraine people actually joined the Ukranian military from different countries... There are a lot of such examples. We DO know how to come together in a real and meaningful way :)
LA is one of the biggest cities in the richest country in the world. Naturally, they will get more help than most communities, even within the US, purely due to the amount of resources at the disposal of the state and national authorities. So in that respect, you're right, but the lens isn't the appropriate one in this context.
I believe we are in agreement. You’ve essentially phrased my point with more detail. However we have focused on different aspects. My main concern is that while a lot of people did a lot of great work around these other disasters, LA is by default - without Sam’s call for funding - going to have a much better outcome (by several orders of magnitude, in any metric you like).
Sam’s point about avoiding class wars is entirely valid and sadly a real threat. I wonder though, have these class wars already become a part of American cultural identity?
Off topic again now: if Hamas is the main roadblock to a habitable Gaza, and Hamas’ rise and actions were mostly as deterministic as any natural disaster, should the removal of Hamas not be treated as any other natural disaster? That is, to deal with them without massively exacerbating the conditions that allowed them to grow and fester in the first place. Else similar groups take their place and continue the cycle of misery.
Gaza would not require rebuilding if a) October 7th had not happened and b) Hamas had not wasted every dollar of aid on building tunnels instead of civic works. And I'm sure if the Muslim world really cares about the Palestinians as much as the college demonstrators seem to think, it will rally.
That’s got nothing to do with the point I made. Besides, all you’ve written is “us vs them” rationalisations for inaction. You’re definitely not alone in that, but it’s not helpful.
Sorry, but that thing about Gaza was a little bit of a cheap shot.
Yes, the billionaires need to ‘put on their own masks first’…We are always three meals away from anarchy. And ‘hojoki’ ( small 13c Japanese book about Kyoto burning) lead the author to madness by fleeing, the rich running away is forever, but I see why this is an opportunity for them, it’s where they live! Sam’s point is both poetic and real. I think of Thich Nhat Hanh’s example of engaged Buddhism after the Vietnam way, setting up communities to rebuild his country himself, and founding a university, without much money. Perhaps this must also be part of the ethos of reconstructing L.A. Leading by example is the other side of the coin.
Thank-you for sharing your thoughts, and I very much hope those billionaires will take note.
There are many more efficient ways to donate wealth than to pledge it to rebuilding an already wealthy city in an already wealthy state. I've lived most of my life in Los Angeles and find the fires tragic, but billionaire wealth is much better spent on underserved causes on which the marginal dollar will do more good.
As you may know, I have spent a lot of time discussing this issue with Effective Altruists like Will MacAskill and Peter Singer. And, generally speaking, I agree with you (and them). The marginal dollar matters much more in Nairobi than in Los Angeles. However, I think it can be argued that human flourishing will not be best achieved by spreading all the wealth around equally, so that no place has a higher standard of living than any other (if such a thing were possible). We want great universities, beautiful museums, new companies, and other expensive institutions, and we need wealthy cities to produce them. How one divides the philanthropic pie is difficult to decide. But I find it genuinely tragic that many rich people can't seem to realize that they have a vested interest in mitigating the suffering and social disorder right on their doorstep. Cities like Los Angeles, San Francisco, and New York need to be brought fully into the 21st century, because what happens there will largely determine what the 21st century can be.
The Buddha once confronted a man who lost all of his cows. The Buddha’s response was “how happy is he who has no more cows to lose!”. I hope your house was spared, but if not, maybe you can find solace in Buddhist non-attachment.
Sad really, cannot infer whether this was an intelligent troll comment, or someone attached to questionable sense of humour. Either way, wish you success in your self-discovery.🙏🏻❤️
I know a guy who accidentally burned his house down and related to me his experience of realizing that he had successfully completed two tasks on his "to-do list"
1.) Clean house
2.) Organize
It seems like you don't use Sam's meditation app. In the app, Sam gives classic Buddhist teachings about non-attachment. I encourage you to try his meditation program, and I hope it gives you peace as it did for me and Sam.
*That's Just Classic Dan Right There*
🤣
I loved the quote.
I’m not sure that your premise is correct during an ongoing disaster. At the moment, it is entirely plausible that billionaire money is best spent in LA.
Sam, It's insane to think that the Resnicks should trust their assets to the LA/California government, which has misinvested billions of dollars on nonsensical projects to cure homeless, provide high speed rail, and promote climate change virtue signaling. They would be much better off funding, private investors to rebuild homes and businesses which were lost. I'm sure the government would have absolutely no interest in doing that. Just my thoughts. Hope all Angelinos come out of this tragedy, including my two LA children. Thanks, Nelson
Bingo.
See above. Perhaps I should add a footnote.
The reason why billionaires don't give back is the same reason they are billionaires in the first place. It's a character flaw.
I’m not sure that follows. I am not an expert, but I don’t think that many billionaires’ wealth is liquid. Much is tied up in their shares in their own companies. Sure, they could sell it now and fund every federal program known to man but then what?
How is it that a character flaw leads to wealth?
It's hard to expand on this in a single comment but look at it this way - any normal human being would be happy to retire at a few million, travel the world and fund their interests for the rest of their life.
The fact that you continue on means you are fundamentally unfulfilled by the beauty and presence of the world and instead you need something else to satisfy you which is a fundamental character flaw.
I don’t think it’s a character flaw, but rather a simple product of evolutionary biology. We are all hardwired to want to acquire plenty when we can, with the fearful expectation of suffering during famine caused by drought, or conflict, or other disaster. Consider that for most of human history the best we could hope for was a surplus when times were good to hopefully see us through a harsh winter or whatever could be defined as “bad”. The vast majority of people are not able to see beyond the strings that pull their mind in this or that direction, (queue every argument Sam has ever made about free will), and knowing this it’s not hard to see how even Billionaires can worry that
They might *just* loose it all someday…. Better stockpile that next billion just in case. Just incase the next winter is particularly harsh……
At this level, money has long lost the meaning of a resource. Also this "hardwired evolution" line of thought is pure bullshit, I'm sorry. It's just people trying to justify their shit behavior through an appeal to nature — so, pass on all of that even if it might have some biological truths.
It's purely power and status. The difference between 1 billion and 2 billion is not a lifetime of lavished living — it's SEVERAL lifetimes and generations of offsprings who do not have to think about resources at all, ever.
It’s not bullshit. There is real science behind how we are driven by our biological inheritance. Now I grant you that we can rise above it if we try really hard. The more sentient and intelligent a brain is the more power it has to resist its own programming and chart a new course by “re-programming” itself. But most people, including billionaires, are just not thinking about themselves in these terms. It’s not “shit behavior” to hoard wealth. It’s just behavior. You could sell the phone or computer you are using to write this and send the money to a poor village in Africa that desperately needs a water well. But you won’t. And it’s for the same reasons a billionaire won’t do the things you think they should.
We can agree to disagree here then.
I had not seen any compelling evidence that this would be true in any reasonable extent. All of this science is barely scratching the lowest threshold to be considered scientific at all and even if it proves anything the context is so narrow that it hardly means anything in the grand scale of things.
It's an addiction.
Here’s the Groundhog Day prediction for winter:
I'll give you a winter prediction: It's gonna be cold, it's gonna be grey, and it's gonna last you for the rest of your life
They do give back. They pay an incredible amount of taxes. They run enterprises and business that hire tens of thousands. They engage in philanthropy. Etc.
They pay an insane amount. Federal taxes:
Based on 2022 IRS data, the top 1% of income earners (those making above approximately $500,000) paid about 42% of total federal income taxes, while the top 10% (those making above approximately $150,000) paid about 74% of total federal income taxes.
The bottom? The bottom 50% of income earners (those making less than approximately $45,000 in 2022) paid about 2.3% of total federal income taxes.
The fact that you can think and write with this kind of equanimity while you and your family’s lives are being totally upended is inspiring.
Profound words as always, take care Sam