What is Digg?Sponsored by Travelzoo
Take Advantage of Ridiculously Low Holiday Airfares view!
travelzoo.com - Flights $52 and up for Thanksgiving, Christmas & New Year. But move on it now.
167 Comments
- cindylauper, on 10/10/2007, -2/+256He's just like me...except he's a rich successful philanthropist, amazing human being...and he has a slightly more expensive watch.
- skored, on 10/10/2007, -3/+139Wow - this is an amazing guy. A real rarity in today's society unfortunately. Thanks for posting this webcure...
- Bromskloss, on 10/10/2007, -1/+69Suddenly, all the other rich persons, living flashy lives, don't appear very interesting at all!
- blu64, on 10/10/2007, -1/+66Maybe just maybe there is hope for humanity after all
- timusca, on 10/10/2007, -11/+66I gotta say.... if I were a billionaire, I'd give a ton of money to the community too. But you bet your ass I'd have a nice house and nice car too.
And a nice watch. - mlagana, on 10/10/2007, -3/+42too bad it's 1 good rich guy to every 10000 self obsessed rich guys
- dunderballer, on 10/10/2007, -0/+31Check out his understated wikipedia page. It looks like it wasn't even entered in until this article was published.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chuck_Feeney - akf2000, on 10/10/2007, -1/+31hah "to some degree".
- inactive, on 10/10/2007, -1/+27You have a watch?
- evilregis, on 10/10/2007, -2/+28After living it up in their million dollar estates, private jets, et al. Not that there's anything wrong with that.
But he is rare. A $15 watch, no car, business class... that's not a typical millionaire lifestyle let alone billionaire. - DollaDollaBill, on 10/10/2007, -0/+23you rang?
- charlie55, on 10/10/2007, -1/+231. who are you to tell a person what he enjoys and what makes him happy?
2. stop pretending to be inside bll gates' head - Plotinus, on 10/10/2007, -11/+30I always find this kind of thing interesting. It is interesting because we have created an economic system that works due to peoples inherent greed and selfishness. Experiments such as socialism and even welfare systems are often condemned because 'you can't eradicate the negative aspects of the human animal'.
Well it seems that no matter how much the system emphasises these negative qualities ( turning them into positives - yeah right ) you can't eradicate the better qualities either: altruism, compassion, generosity. It seems that people are inherently both good and bad.
Since this is the case I find it interesting that we've created a social and economic system that emphasises the negative aspects of our nature.
I'm not being prescriptive here by the way, just making an observation. Oh, and well done that man. - daithiocoinnigh, on 10/10/2007, -0/+19He gave money to me anyway, well not directly, but to Irish universities, so I did benefit to some degree.
- geminitojanus, on 10/10/2007, -0/+18He's a billionaire, I'm sure he can manage.
- chyya, on 10/10/2007, -0/+14even the crickets wont chirp for this one
- HotttCarl, on 10/10/2007, -0/+12It would appear the words rent and lease are not apart of your vocabulary.
- megaweb, on 10/10/2007, -0/+12Just a shame a guy like that, gets just a few lines, while the self obsesssed celebs get pages. No wonder so many people find life hard!
- logic6, on 10/10/2007, -3/+14"Dear Mr. Feeney. I have 1 million US dollars stuck in an account in Nigeria. With your help we can both get rich. Please send electronic funds transfer to..."
- akf2000, on 10/10/2007, -0/+11I can't shake that image from MTV Cribs, the founder of Def Jam (I think) with his solid gold bathroom taps. There are no gold taps in a shroud either.
- hamishmacdonald, on 10/10/2007, -0/+11What a great excuse to do nothing. I'm sure the people who benefited from Mr Feeney's generosity would disagree with the miserable idea that charity is futile.
~
I write for a company that offers coaching workshops for entrepreneurs. I've met lots of successful businesspeople who have built incredible wealth for themselves, but eventually found that it has no meaning. When they get beyond a certain measure of wealth, they seem to naturally turn to philanthropy, and it's truly moving to hear about the projects that they've created -- flying plane-fulls of aid to Belarus (including a fire engine!), building schools in their area, creating microcredit agencies to help people with no means start their own businesses, and so on.
As they say, the bad news is the news and the good news is the adverts. With this model of reportage in place, these people are a cute human interest add-on to the wailing wall of today's journalism. But I've witnessed that there is a great tide of human-kindness that moves around the world; we just don't tend to hear about it, because confidence doesn't sell products while fear apparently does. - ronaldinho, on 10/10/2007, -0/+11A good man, I wish kids would grow up and say I want to be Chuck Feeney
I don't have a high salary myself, but I know I have enough to survive. I try to donate some of my money for good causes, and honestly, when I give $25 to some kid in Afghanistan, that could provide them clean water, electricity, education, good food, everything that those kids need and more, and all I have to do is to eat cheaper with my girlfriend. Doesn't sound that hard to me - senorcool, on 10/10/2007, -0/+10God Bless You Mr. Rosewater!
- inactive, on 10/10/2007, -0/+9Awesome... I bet you've been for that to happen since you joined digg
- BossKey, on 10/16/2007, -0/+9Why would Bill Gates need to know about this?
Bill Gates and his foundation have already given away more money than probably most nations, and he stated long ago that he expected to give away MOST of his wealth before the end of his life. We're not talking about software giveaways here, but billions for the prevention of disease.
I am not a fan of Bill Gates, but I am also not a fan of prejudice (in the sense that you are "pre-judging" Bill Gates before knowing any facts at all.) - synaesthesia, on 10/10/2007, -1/+10If $4 billion is most of his fortune, while 1.5 billion annually is but a fraction of Gates', then I would say that makes Feeney the better philanthropist. Although in my book, hes a better man for the simple fact that he kept it to himself for so long. That always garners more respect (from me at least) than the other "LOOK AT ME IM GIVING TO CHARITY" celebrities.
- chobbney, on 10/10/2007, -0/+9I get to use one of my favourite quotes twice in one week: "The only thing better than giving to charity is having someone accidentally find out about it."
Good on him. *applauds* - daEvan, on 10/10/2007, -1/+10*badum chh*
- mavedatthews85, on 10/10/2007, -0/+9That is really awesome. It's good to hear about people like him once in a while.
- NSResponder, on 10/10/2007, -0/+8You do know that that phrase began as an ironic observation on the dismal condition of the Irish during the great famine?
-jcr - picsectionpleez, on 10/10/2007, -0/+8Also there was that little black lady who worked at a drycleaners for 40 or 50 years and eventually saved up $250,000 and gave it to Clark University for a scholarship for poor black girls. Pretty amazing.
- maffiou, on 10/10/2007, -0/+8Have you seen kiva.org ? You don't need to be a millionaire to make a difference !
That's the kindof thing giving me hope in this world ! - emjaymj, on 10/10/2007, -1/+8Being a millionaire these days just means being moderately successful. Of course, it depends on how many millions you have, but counting everybody that has $1 million+, a millionaire is most likely to own a minivan, not an expensive sportscar.
- delusr, on 10/10/2007, -10/+17Stories like this make me feel good all over.
- itsme7g, on 10/10/2007, -0/+7I just made a donation last night to a little local thing the Lions Club does over the holidays. Just $25 but they really appreciate it. It made me thing that instead of waiting for someone to ask me for help with a cause I would like to give money to something small that needs it when they aren't asking.
- epicstruggle, on 10/10/2007, -2/+8"But he is rare. A $15 watch, no car, business class... that's not a typical millionaire lifestyle"
Actually they are not so rare, frugal millionaires that is. - 1nhuman, on 10/10/2007, -2/+8Truly inspiring. Makes you reset your goals in live.
- Optimus, on 10/10/2007, -4/+10doesn't matter. conservatives will still hate him because he gives money away to "people who didn't earn it".
- worthone, on 10/10/2007, -1/+7No, not really.
- Herostratus, on 10/10/2007, -0/+5People like this are THE SOLUTION
- stratola, on 10/10/2007, -4/+9that made me shoot water out my nose. Thanks.
- flashingcurser, on 10/10/2007, -3/+8Google:
"Charles F. Feeney" christian
***** Christians, what do they think they are doing, following the tenants of their religion. (/sarcasm) - Lewie, on 10/10/2007, -1/+6I didn't realize the Scandinavian countries were doing so poorly. Please, tell me where you got your information.
If you are talking about Communism, show me a country that has followed Marx's progression (and not tried to artificially create a pseudo-communist nation like Lenin or Mao). - hitwill, on 10/10/2007, -0/+5I think what he really did is awesome. I wish I had a billion dollars to give too. But you know, he must have been generous even before his billion. So basically he should inspire us to give whatever little or lot we have! :-) His attitude is prolly one of the things that made him so wealthy.
I've always thought that besides giving, the gift should also be given in a way that changes the attitude of the receiver, so they see life in a new light that makes them more prosperous as well. Just like what he did got me thinking! - leha, on 10/10/2007, -3/+8It seems that unless you were born and grew up poor you will never be able to relate to suffering of less fortunate people. Considering that most of th rich were always wealthy we won't see many people like Feeney (the fact that 50% of world population own less then 2.2k in assets means that almost all Americans are wealthy).
Sometimes when I see 100k+ car I think how many lives the owner could have saved if he bought less expensive one and spent the difference on some guys in Africa, S. America, India or China. Here is another commie like idea: Is id possible to bring a 3rd world country to industrialized level by spending .5 trillion dollars? I think so. If you ask where to take .5 trillion the answer is stop bombing hell out of other countries for a year. I am not US citizen so it is up to you guys, Americans, to decide what to do: destroy or create. - userspacename, on 10/10/2007, -0/+5and 10000 poor guys for every self obsessed rich guy. well I'm just guessing..
- cuoops, on 10/10/2007, -0/+5This has been known for a while. I found an article from 1997 about him. He was the runner up for Time Magazine's man of the year.
http://www.time.com/time/special/moy/grove/runnerf ... - CapeKid, on 10/10/2007, -0/+4When I give away money I'm going to be anonymous and then tell people I know that I'm anonymous.
- cococooky, on 10/10/2007, -0/+4I think you might be waiting a while. This guy's a gem.
- MadOtaku, on 10/10/2007, -1/+5No it wasn't and yes he should.
-
Show 51 - 100 of 168 discussions
© Digg Inc. 2009
— Content created and posted by Digg users is