You don't need to be a billionaire to count as "bored rich", which I take to mean anyone who has too much money lying around and can't find better uses than shitty computer-generated "art" (note that this doesn't include people who buy these with the sole purpose of flipping them to a greater fool).
There are a surprising number of bored rich people, especially when you consider all the new-found crypto wealth. Most of them probably haven't contributed any of their excess wealth to help the hundreds of millions of people who are still starving, so if NFT is one way to extract some of that, so be it.
>> (note that this doesn't include people who buy these with the sole purpose of flipping them to a greater fool).
Hate to burst your bubble, but that is 99.99% of the NFT market. There is maybe 5 people total who bought a NFT for art appreciation reasons, but aside from that rounding error the only reason anyone owns one is as a speculative investment.
In the US, a billionaire has more money at the end of the day if they just pay taxes on it than if they give it to charity and take the deduction.
The only other way a charity helps a billionaire save on taxes is if they use the charity's assets (e.g. boats, helicopers, real estate) as personal assets. But that's felony tax fraud. A billionaire wouldn't be likely to risk prison for that kind of chump change.
The crooked thing about charities is the people who run them, focus on fundraising, and pay themselves a huge salary. But those people aren't billionaires.
Now, you could rent your real estate to a charity you control at an inflated price, or sell them other services, but I think that's probably an edge case.
Yeah, charities aren't full tax avoidance for the rich. It's more of a dick swinging contest amongst the wealthy with some tax breaks to take some of the sting away. At least some good may come from these contests though. Even if 90% of the funds go to pay charity management salaries it's better than nothing.
It isn't about having money, it's about control of that money. Zuckerberg doesn't "have" the money he gives to his foundation, but he still controls it, vs taxes which he wouldn't.
Better Zuckerberg than using the money to send our young men to their deaths in Afghanistan, or pay people to have kids and not work, or to have it siphoned off through fraud by government workers, or wasted by their negligence, or...
* Real charities, not those billionaire tax avoidance schemes.