anthony_james

Because if a sports program brings in $100m of revenue and a school has 50k kids, that's only about $2,000 per student. Tack off the sports costs and you're looking at maybe $1,000 extra per student, but instead of offering discounts, they may 1) invest in their trust fund for future growth, 2) pay down their debts to reduce the lifetime interest payments and save money down the road, 3) Roll the money up into more scholarships or 4) invest in infrastructure. None of those things directly lower the immediate cost for other students, but add tangible value to students and the institution.

It also provides low-income youth an opportunity to get a college degree, and incentivizes kids from low-income communities to stay off the streets and focus on something productive (like sports).

Collegiate sports teams are effectively the same as student tutors, student RAs, student librarians, or any other school-sponsored jobs that hire students. One could argue that they're even superior at schools like Alabama because they provide even more money to be used on scholarships.

Alabama could take away their football program, but they would 1) take away scholarship money from the 30-50 low-income scholarship athletes, 2) take away money that could be reinvested into buildings, facilities, teachers, or academic scholarships, and 3) reduce alumni donations (because unhappy alumni don't donate), which further reduces the funds available to the school.

It's one thing if a school has sports programs that aren't a net gain for the university. But for the schools where it is, any talk of them removing the funding is absurdly ignorant.

I think this case is slightly more complicated because the demographics of marginalized credit-seekers tend to be minorities. So by catering to minority groups by keeping their ethnic or racial information private, we may hurt minority groups financially. In some of the situations you mention, we force ethical standards on businesses, but ideally they don't hurt other minority groups in the process.

In this situation, the question is between whether ensuring privacy is more ethical than ensuring access to capital - and this is almost entirely focused at minority groups. If we assume that banks can make more efficient and competitive lending transactions given more demographic information, then denying that information raises the ceiling on financial capital for those marginalized groups.

As of now, I don't have a definitive answer. Although I think it would be beneficial to examine how certain data impacts credit-lending and move from there. A lot of these concerns may be moot if the information in question isn't even relevant to credit lending.

It's important that while we keep in mind the ethical considerations of minorities there is also an ethical consideration of marginalized users of financial capital, who are denied credit because banks are unable to afford them a lower rate due to lacking information.

This isn't a black-and-white choice between including peripheral information into credit lending. When banks and lenders make a deliberate decision to ignore information that could allow them to be more accurate with lending, those costs are passed down to users - and although it may not hurt the typical HN user, marginalized credit-seekers can literally have their hopes of home-ownership or education denied because of a bank's choice to be ignorant but considerate. Neither choice is completely without consequences.

Can I also diversify if I invest in a diverse portfolio as an Angel? or is buying into a venture fund similar to buying a mutual fund?

Just because the aggregate of VC firms under perform doesn't mean there are exceptions.

When you invest in market indexes, your gains are relatively capped. There's more volatility in venture capital, but that's the idea - some years you're in the dumps, other times you're investing in Dropbox, AirBnb and Uber, at the same time.

Since time is a resource, yes these 20/30 year olds are wealthier if we assume that everyone's time is equally valued - and that's an unrealistic assumption

If they truly loved or appreciated their location they would work enough to be able to afford to live there in retirement.

It is unethical and impractical to hold wealthier individuals accountable for the financial missteps of individuals. Especially when hardworking and financially responsible people get crowded out from living in a desirible location who could actually afford it.

Of course, this assumes that anyone can acquire as much wealth as they desire regardless of circumstance, which, as we have seen numerous times, is as much a "theory" as gravity is.

Shoot. How can I delete the post?