[foobarqux]

The question isn't whether windowless dorms are good or bad, it's whether the students who live in dorms should decide or should it be dictated by the richest people in the world.

The common retort is that it's the rich people's money so that they should be able to impose whatever living conditions they want on the deprived.

[prepend]

I suppose students are welcome to use their own money to buy buildings. There is a university governance board that can design whatever they want.

In this case, Munger proposed an efficient donation (in his mind) to help the most students possible with his donation and the university accepted.

Since only billionaires are likely to donate buildings, I think it’s going to be common to have donors influence the design.

[foobarqux]

Yes by this logic if a poor person doesn't have food it's okay for a billionaire to make him dance a jig for them to in order to eat. If a school doesn't have funds for buildings a billionaire should be able to mandate that they teach Charlie-Munger thought for one hour a day in order to stay open.

[prepend]

I don’t think this building is the equivalent of either of those things. More like it’s the equivalent of a billionaire is a pescatarian and they only offer to provide sushi meals to people and refuse to buy hamburgers.

[foobarqux]

I'm not drawing an equivalence, I'm making a comparison: Why should those be forbidden and the others allowed?

[prepend]

Because dancing a jig is demeaning while living in a comfortable, safe apartment that doesn’t have a window seems fine to me.

I think that forcing unreasonable actions as a condition of charity is bad.

[foobarqux]

Does not having windows seem fine for the students? That's the question.

Being forced to live without windows because it makes a billionaire happy seems pretty demeaning (and unreasonable) to me.

[oh_sigh]

Is Charlie a licensed architect? If not, the final decisions still come down to an architect.