Patagonia founder gives away the company
Apologies if this is an unpopular thing to ask -- but is a very wealthy person giving away his/her wealth to be held in trust in perpetuity (to accomplish some mission) an unambiguously good thing?   Separate the question from this particular story today, that is not my intention to poke at specifically.One thing I can see with wealth being transferred among generations, between actual people, is that people can die and their ideas (especially bad ones) can die with them.   Even if the wealth is redistributed and misspent, it ends and turns over to someone else.  New ideas and purposes for the wealth can take their place.On the other hand, when a trust/foundation holds wealth, putatively forever, their mission might turn out not to be productive, or even good.  I think of certain examples of charities which, by their holdings and activities, keep certain things in status quo and unable to change, which we would sometimes like to leave behind.All this wealth transferring to entities that will not die and pass on their fortunes to other purposes.  What does this cause in the long run that we haven't anticipated?Like many things that are on my mind, our system is not just about incentivizing the good, but avoiding the inadvertent bad.Am I totally off / this is not a concern?