you will genuinely never guess who wrote these absolute bars about AI and the tech elite
emily thai
@ethai.bsky.social
4.2K followers 1.8K following 803 posts
they/she // @donororganizerhub.org // opinions mine, strong, weakly held
they/she // @donororganizerhub.org // opinions mine, strong, weakly held
”. It requires confronting the fact that you *can,* with a few clicks, do something meaningful in the world, and asking why you aren’t doing more.
Some criticism (of both EA-ish and left-ish philanthropy, and sometimes [perplexingly of both at once?](https://x.com/pmarca/status/1867508435618869519)) paints this impulse as a sort of self-flagellation, a penance for the sinner, or something. I don’t think that’s right. Giving is not some kind of punishment for the sin of wealth (and if you feel this way, you are being pushed too hard by someone, quite possibly yourself).
I truly think giving should feel good. Challenging, but good. Both in a moral sense—you are taking an action to help other people, and you deserve to celebrate that!—and in a pragmatic sense—if something doesn’t feel good, it’ll be really hard to keep doing it. Giving is something I *choose* to do, every year, because doing things that are in line with my values feels good to me.
So lately, my answer to “how much is enough?” is “what feels good, but challenging?”
For some, a $20 gift will be their first time parting with hard-earned money, and that might feel scary and new. Others regularly give $100 here and there, but $1000 will give them some pause. No matter where we start, as we grow into a practice of regular giving, we can lean into giving more. We will never give enough for the world to be fair, or enough to justify our own wealth. But we can certainly give enough to do some good.](https://cdn.bsky.app/img/feed_thumbnail/plain/did:plc:7fh65gpwlxlanjpjr2w5eap3/bafkreiamovkpprxbpubx7azxex4iayfmofw6ppasr5g5kbgf4p2a7ewh2m)
![Malcolm L. Thomas argued in his 1970 history The Luddites that machine-breaking was one of the very few tactics that workers could use to increase pressure on employers, undermine lower-paid competing workers, and create solidarity among workers. "These attacks on machines did not imply any necessary hostility to machinery as such; machinery was just a conveniently exposed target against which an attack could be made."[10] Historian Eric Hobsbawm has called their machine wrecking "collective bargaining by riot", which had been a tactic used in Britain since the Restoration because manufactories were scattered throughout the country, and that made it impractical to hold large-scale strikes. An agricultural variant of Luddism occurred during the widespread Swing Riots of 1830 in southern and eastern England, centring on breaking threshing machines.](https://cdn.bsky.app/img/feed_thumbnail/plain/did:plc:7fh65gpwlxlanjpjr2w5eap3/bafkreihp3n7pzsjd6tiwk5ixgdehcacdxgun2cgg3qmj2gcr7thxup7d7a)
