[HN Gopher] My new deadline: 20 years to give away virtually all...
___________________________________________________________________
My new deadline: 20 years to give away virtually all my wealth
Author : nrvn
Score : 503 points
Date : 2025-05-08 13:59 UTC (9 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (www.gatesnotes.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (www.gatesnotes.com)
| toomuchtodo wrote:
| Related:
|
| _Bill Gates pledges 99% of his fortune to Gates Foundation_ -
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=43926212 - May 2025
| oceanhaiyang wrote:
| So he's going to selflessly donate it to himself to save
| himself from taxes? What a hero.
| earlyriser wrote:
| Gates has been advocating for higher taxes to people like him
| for a while.
| lagniappe wrote:
| Look at outcomes, not words and ambitions.
| I-M-S wrote:
| It's possible this is not Gates' preferred outcome
| esafak wrote:
| What control does he have over that outcome that he has
| not already exercised?
| cinntaile wrote:
| With that kind of money, he can outlobby an awful lot of
| people.
| lotsofpulp wrote:
| There is nothing inconsistent about wanting a society's
| tax structure to change, but also not sacrificing
| yourself (which the donations kind of are).
|
| I want X rules, but I will play by whatever rules exist
| at the time.
| Windchaser wrote:
| >Look at outcomes, not words and ambitions.
|
| Does Gates have the power to change tax code? "Look at
| outcomes" makes more sense when it's something you have
| at least a _moderate_ amount of control over.
| otteromkram wrote:
| Is anyone stopping him, et al, from just paying more?
| There's an option for that on US tax forms (though I'm
| guessing tax returns for billionaires are a little more
| complex than what a Form 1040 can handle).
| alabastervlog wrote:
| It's not hypocritical to advocate for _everyone_ like you
| to pay higher taxes, while not unilaterally paying higher
| taxes in the meantime.
| Windchaser wrote:
| I would expect that he wants _all_ billionaires to pay
| more taxes, not only himself.
| 9283409232 wrote:
| People suggest this often whenever a rich person says
| they should pay more taxes but unless I can specifically
| say I want my extra taxes to go to a specific government
| agency or office, I have no idea why I would do this.
| Just so Boeing can get a larger contract with my extra
| taxes? At that point I would just donate directly to
| causes that support what I want instead of dealing with
| the middle man.
| toast0 wrote:
| You can give to state and local governments and get a
| federal tax deduction [1], per 26 U.S. Code SS 170 (c)
| (1)
|
| > (1) A State, a possession of the United States, or any
| political subdivision of any of the foregoing, or the
| United States or the District of Columbia, but only if
| the contribution or gift is made for exclusively public
| purposes.
|
| But not if you make a gift to federal agency (unless
| that's listed somewhere else)
|
| https://www.law.cornell.edu/uscode/text/26/170
| jedberg wrote:
| > Though I'm guessing tax returns for billionaires are a
| little more complex than what a Form 1040 can handle
|
| Even billionaires file a 1040. They just file a whole lot
| of other forms with it.
|
| But at the end of the day, it all rolls up to the same
| 1040 that you and I use. :)
| wing-_-nuts wrote:
| If I were him I wouldn't, for fear it would go to our
| 1T/yr defense budget, or perhaps some narcissists
| 'birthday parade'
| eliaspro wrote:
| If he'd be serious about it, he'd spend 0.01% of his
| fortune to buy politicians (he just has to bid more than
| the fossil industry etc) and have them change the tax code.
| wing-_-nuts wrote:
| You can only write off ~ 67% of your income in through
| charitable deductions IIRC. Of course, I suppose if donating
| shares of appreciated stock that doesn't quite apply the same
| way.
| giantg2 wrote:
| Yeah, it would be going through stocks.
| twodave wrote:
| Not "to" but "through". What am I missing?
| bobxmax wrote:
| It must be exhausting to spend your days being pathetically
| cynical about every little thing.
| I-M-S wrote:
| People are cynical for a reason
| bobxmax wrote:
| Yes, because it's a very convenient way to feel better
| than other people when you're insecure about your own
| accomplishments.
| melling wrote:
| The interest alone on the US debt is $1 trillion a year. He's
| giving away $200 billion in the same time the US will spend
| $20 trillion in interest.
| Windchaser wrote:
| > So he's going to selflessly donate it to himself to save
| himself from taxes? What a hero.
|
| You don't really "save yourself from taxes" by donating money
| to charity.
|
| Option A: sell stock for $100, pay taxes of $20, spend $80 on
| yourself Option B: donate stock of $100 to charity, and spend
| $0 on yourself
|
| Which of these options leaves Gates with more money in his
| pocket to spend on himself?
|
| Giving money away doesn't save you from taxes on your income;
| you just forego the income entirely. The money is gone. It's
| no longer yours. Why would you be paying taxes on it?
| ghaff wrote:
| >You don't really "save yourself from taxes" by donating
| money to charity.
|
| That's not really true if you have sufficiently appreciated
| assets and are in a high tax bracket. You can donate those
| appreciated assets and collect an annuity from some
| percentage of the face value donation and basically be
| shielded from any capital gains.
|
| See e.g. https://www.fidelitycharitable.org/guidance/philan
| thropy/cha...
|
| I'm sure there are other mechanisms as well.
| philomath_mn wrote:
| The exact same logic applies to any deductible expense, and
| yet people think they can buy a business vehicle "for free"
| because it is deductible.
|
| IDK why this is so hard to understand.
| swiftcoder wrote:
| People get confused between deductions and credits,
| mostly?
| modo_mario wrote:
| Last time he pledged to give away half his wealth over x years
| didn't it basically tripple during that period?
| jsbg wrote:
| Did it triple because the assets he owns tripled in value?
| modo_mario wrote:
| In which case he didn't actually charitably give away any of
| those assets I'd assume?
| melling wrote:
| Maybe it'll triple again and he'll throw in a cure for
| cancer(s) or Alzheimer's.
| bravoetch wrote:
| He does mention existing support for programs related to
| Alzheimer's research in the article.
| legitster wrote:
| Same thing happened to Buffet.
| gtirloni wrote:
| The end goal isn't for him to be poor-ish but to do something
| supposedly useful with the money he has today.
| bee_rider wrote:
| It seems weird to write this, but:
|
| In the billionaire's defense, he probably didn't plan on us as
| a society deciding to shoveling money at his class as quickly
| as we possibly could.
| jjj123 wrote:
| You really think his team didn't plan on or even help lobby
| for that?
| DavidSJ wrote:
| MSFT is up 18x during that time and the S&P 500 is up 5x during
| that time. His investments are some mixture of MSFT and other
| things, so we might say he would have been up around 10x if
| he'd given no money away.
|
| Since his net worth is only up 3x, that means he gave away
| about 70% of his wealth.
| willvarfar wrote:
| He won't have given away 70% of his wealth. If he gave away a
| dollar at the beginning that is 10 dollars that dollar didn't
| turn into etc.
| monooso wrote:
| AFAIK he didn't give it all away in one lump sum at the
| start.
| modo_mario wrote:
| He said he would do it over 5 years. MSFT was up roughly 2x
| not 18x
| DavidSJ wrote:
| However long he took, he has ~70% less wealth than he would
| have had if he didn't do it. If it took him longer, that
| only means he gave the wealth after it had more time to
| appreciate.
| tootie wrote:
| It's part of the strategy. He endowed a giant philanthropic
| org. You can leverage an endowment by investing it aggressively
| and spending the proceeds to keep the fund running
| indefinitely. What he is now announcing is a pivot to start
| spending principal so the endowment starts to shrink until it
| hits zero.
| dfaiv wrote:
| It _feels_ like none of this works without functioning
| governments
| senko wrote:
| $108B net worth now (per chart in the article), so he will be
| left with paltry $1B.
|
| Still, would be beautiful to see all megarich do the same. Keep a
| few yachts, mansions and planes if you give back a few small
| countries' worth of GDP back.
| bombcar wrote:
| Apparently billionaires in the USA hold 4.48 trillion, 756 of
| them or so.
|
| So if they all dumped their wealth and saved a billion (should
| be enough to retire on, even for the conservative portfolio!)
| we would have 3.72 trillion - it would cover the US deficit for
| two, maybe three years.
| senko wrote:
| Or to spin this another way: Americans spend around $200B*
| annually on education (private spend, on top of
| federal/state/local education spend), so this would provide
| all-expenses-paid free tuition for everyone for 18 years, or
| more than 50 years if focusing on primary/secondary
| education. In that time, there might be a new crop of
| megarich to continue the cycle :)
|
| ([*] $50B for primary/secondary ed, $150B for higher -
| figures via Kagi Assistant, which I didn't double-check).
| seeknotfind wrote:
| "virtually" wonder why it needs to be qualified like this.
| esafak wrote:
| Maybe because he promised his kids a few million, or fail to
| give it away on his terms, and he doesn't want to be nagged
| about it.
| bdcravens wrote:
| Because there will probably be enough left at the end that for
| most would be wealthy beyond their richest dreams.
| zellyn wrote:
| It's hard to get by with only 1.08 billion dollars...
|
| Not that I think giving away most of his money isn't
| admirable. But I think he'll still qualify for "he died
| rich".
| 9rx wrote:
| Because "20 years to give away all my wealth" would be
| misleading? He plans to retain some of his wealth.
| Cthulhu_ wrote:
| Not to mention it's pretty difficult to give away all money.
| Some of it will need to pay for the administration of
| programs in existence after these 20 years, accountants, and
| of course himself - if he's still alive by then.
| netsharc wrote:
| Because keyboard-warrior pedants will moan if he bought himself
| a $200K Porsche (0.0001% of that $200B) or even just a dinner
| for his kids...
| geodel wrote:
| I can totally see here the headline "While millions sleep
| hungry in Asia and Africa Bill Gates throws away uneaten
| fries after dinner at a local restaurant like its nothing"
| gtirloni wrote:
| "all his wealth" would mean ALL of his wealth, which is
| unrealistic.
|
| Saying "99.999%" of my wealth invites critics later on when he
| donates "99.98%".
|
| Substitute "virtually" by "almost" and it's the same. It's just
| style.
| jarbus wrote:
| Say what you want, but I respect this a lot. Sure as hell beats
| giving it all to your kids.
| RataNova wrote:
| You don't have to love Gates or everything the foundation does
| to recognize that putting billions toward global health and
| poverty is way better than setting up a dynasty or letting it
| sit in investments
| freeamz wrote:
| Foundation is a way to set a dynasty! Just look at all the
| robber baron foundations out there.
| lostmsu wrote:
| > letting it sit in investments
|
| Depends on investments. Arguably tech advances are more
| effective for alleviating hunger than direct food donations
| long term.
| danvoell wrote:
| And/or when you die. We need more people trying to make the
| world better while they are here instead of treating the finish
| line like the, well, finish line.
| throwaway5752 wrote:
| Exactly. Look at the Walton and other families hoarding wealth
| by abusing tax law and lobbying to make it even worse, and the
| armies of advisors and attorneys parasitically helping them.
|
| Gates is thousands of times better than most. He and Melinda
| have done more good for the world than all but a few handfuls
| of individuals. I've heard estimates his original MSFT stake
| would be worth over a trillion dollars now.
| js8 wrote:
| Among billionaires maybe he is on the good side. But in
| general?
|
| Linus Torvalds did more for the world than Bill Gates, IMHO.
| And he didn't need to set up a system that first appropriates
| money in order to "be generous" later.
| stewx wrote:
| What diseases has Torvalds eradicated?
| pclmulqdq wrote:
| What diseases has Gates eradicated? Polio has been
| surging back and nOPV (which Gates stands to generate a
| lot of personal wealth from, by the way) has been a bit
| of a bust. Measles is going strong, too, and Malaria
| seems to have been a bit of a token effort for Gates.
| oulipo wrote:
| Sure, but only capitalism concentrates so much wealth in such
| few hands
|
| An alternative would be that company like Microsoft couldn't
| gain so much wealth, simply because their revenue would be
| capped / taxed high enough that the extra money they make goes
| back directly to people and governments
|
| In this case, *everyone* gets to vote and choose for what
| philanthropies the amount gets used, rather than having just
| "one guy" deciding for himself how to spend all this money,
| which is prone to errors
| celeritascelery wrote:
| The government spends about 10x the amount of money on
| foreign aid than the gates foundations entire budget ever
| year. Not to mention the hundreds billions spent on domestic
| aid every year. So your dream is already a reality.
| ipunchghosts wrote:
| How can u get some of this funding to do fundamental AI research?
| lknuth wrote:
| Aren't there more important issues than tossing more money into
| that particular furnace? Touch some grass man.
| tootie wrote:
| Gates is betting very heavily on AI and thinks it will
| greatly improve health outcomes. Both for medical research
| and even primary care. You may not like it, but I'm sure he
| is offering grants for AI research. Not necessarily for
| training models, but for finding effective ways to apply
| models to achieve the foundation's goals. So, it's not a
| stupid question to ask at all.
| rswail wrote:
| Why do you think something that is getting extensive investment
| from private sources needs philanthropy?
|
| Also, billg has laid out the goals of his Foundation and what
| they aspire to achieve. Which one of those aspirations do you
| think should be replaced with "fundamental AI research"?
|
| A lot of the Foundation money goes on disease research and
| preventative and curative vaccine and medicine development. All
| of those areas are already being transformed by AI as a tool,
| and a lot of that development happens as a result of
| philanthropic, government, and private investment.
| tootie wrote:
| https://www.gatesfoundation.org/about/how-we-work/grant-appl...
| Cthulhu_ wrote:
| AI is already heavily funded / invested in by many companies,
| how much more is needed?
| 1970-01-01 wrote:
| 99% of 100B puts him with 1B in wealth remaining in 20 years.
| Bill will die extremely wealthy by any measure.
| tantalor wrote:
| That would put him in the ranks of Marissa Mayer, Sundar
| Pichai, Sheryl Sandberg, Reid Hoffman, Palmer Luckey, Tim Cook,
| Evan Spiegel.
| RataNova wrote:
| How much power is concentrated in the hands of individuals...
| It's great that Gates is choosing to use that power
| philanthropically, but it also raises questions about the long-
| term role of private wealth in solving public problems.
| CamperBob2 wrote:
| Well, it's not as if the public sector is solving many problems
| these days. We seem to have decided, collectively, that we'd
| rather have _more_ problems.
|
| At least that's what we've been voting for.
| whattheheckheck wrote:
| How can it when it's a thankless job that other psychopathic
| politicians will rally the people you're trying to help
| against you?
| alabastervlog wrote:
| > We seem to have decided, collectively, that we'd rather
| have more problems.
|
| ... because a faction of the rich decided they wanted the
| poors to believe government can't do anything useful, and
| launched an ongoing decades-long propaganda campaign to that
| effect.
| eej71 wrote:
| I think that's an incredibly simplistic and naive view of
| why large public projects gobble up colossal sums of money
| and don't have much to show for it.
| TheOtherHobbes wrote:
| A lot of that public money somehow ends up in the private
| sector, usually as corporate profits.
|
| Libertarians may want to ask themselves what happens to
| the private sector - aerospace, energy, R&D,
| infrastructure, education - when public investment stops.
| eej71 wrote:
| I am guessing that in your mind that if a private
| corporation bids on a contract it should only break even?
| Is that it? Or perhaps - for you - even better would be -
| the whole thing would be done by the government. There is
| no private corporation?
| jjj123 wrote:
| Can both things be true?
|
| I have no doubt that a nationalized healthcare system
| would be bureaucratic and inefficient. But I also know
| our current system is worse by almost every metric and
| stays that way due to lobbying and, yes, propaganda
| against alternatives like Medicare for all.
| GuinansEyebrows wrote:
| It's not as naive as you're painting it to be:
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dark_Money_(book)
| eej71 wrote:
| I'm sure a similar book could be written where the
| political stripes are all changed. Instead of Koch, we
| have Soros. Instead of Musk, it would be Gates. Instead
| of whoever owns Sinclair Media, its Carlos Slim or Lauren
| Powell Jobs.
| GuinansEyebrows wrote:
| And? I would welcome that. This isn't team sports where
| I'm rooting for my favorite billionaire.
|
| That said, this book actually exists.
| eej71 wrote:
| I know the book exists as I'm very familiar with the
| kinds of claims that get repeated in threads like this.
|
| To me - these claims seem to fuel a conspiracy like mind
| set about why certain efforts or movements fail. "Because
| the billionares didn't want it to". "Or they bought the
| media and control the narrative". "Its all just a
| uniparty!".
|
| If I were to replace the word billionare with the name of
| the first Abrahamic religion, you and I would both see
| that view point as low intellect nonsense. And it would
| be. But somehow, sub in the word billionare and then it
| becomes brilliant analysis for some.
| GuinansEyebrows wrote:
| well, you're changing from "people only complain about
| some billionaires" to "people complain about all
| billionaires and it's just a conspiracy theory" so I'm
| not sure what point you're trying to get across.
|
| maybe you could read the book to dispel your mistaken
| notion that it's just "billionaires bad", since it's
| stated (and successful) objective is to cover a specific
| group of highly-influential people that have worked on
| very specific projects in furtherance of a specific
| political/economic ideal that we're reaping the fruits of
| now in real time.
| alabastervlog wrote:
| Boiled down, all I'm really claiming is that some rich
| people spent a bunch of money on lobbying, largely in
| favor of making money better for buying influence and in
| favor of making it easier for the rich to get richer with
| some populist culture-war-stoking side-quests to drum up
| the necessary votes, and the effort was pretty
| successful. I don't think that's an out-there or
| "conspiracy like mind"ed take, especially given that's
| just... what happened.
| CamperBob2 wrote:
| Except it's not what just happened. More billionaires
| supported the Harris ticket than the Trump ticket. It's
| just that Trump's pet billionaires -- especially one in
| particular -- hustled harder for him.
| GuinansEyebrows wrote:
| i don't want to speak for GP but they did say "a
| _faction_ of the rich " and not "all billionaires"
|
| again, i dont think this is a matter of political party.
| it's a matter of capital interference in politics.
| alabastervlog wrote:
| Plus what I'm getting at started shortly pre-WWII and
| really started to see serious policy and "Overton window"
| effects in the 70s. There was a _huge_ boom in organized
| pro-(big)-business and pro-rich lobbying starting in the
| late 30s and really taking off just after the war. I
| think it 'd be pretty surprising if the following shifts
| in public perception and opinion, and in policy, just
| happened to align with what they were promoting by
| coincidence.
|
| I don't think any of the folks pushing for deregulation
| of media ownership (to allow it to consolidate) and
| defanging anti-trust and cutting rich people's taxes and
| reducing government social spending or other spending
| that competed with potential "market solutions" or made
| the labor force less-desperate, or pushing anti-union
| policies, while promoting the view that "actually all of
| that is good for normal people, so you should vote for
| the party promoting it... also, the blacks and gays are
| out to get you, in case that other argument didn't
| convince you" had in mind getting someone like Trump,
| specifically, into power, though without their actions
| over several decades it surely wouldn't have been
| possible.
| alabastervlog wrote:
| That's a non sequitur, so... OK.
| nradov wrote:
| You're correct to an extent, but "the rich" also have a
| point there. As a taxpayer, the level of waste and
| incompetence in government spending on those problems is
| horrifying. It doesn't have to be that way. We don't need
| to spend billions of dollars and decades of time just to
| get minor infrastructure projects completed.
|
| https://www.simonandschuster.com/books/Abundance/Ezra-
| Klein/...
| biophysboy wrote:
| The public sector has many problems, but they do pick up the
| tab when disaster strikes.
| bogwog wrote:
| Well, consider how our voting priorities would change if
| billionaires had less of an impact on elections? Would we be
| where we are today if, for example, Musk couldn't spend over
| a quarter billion dollars influencing the 2024 election?
| lesuorac wrote:
| I honestly don't think Musk affected 2024 to any real
| extent. Look at how much narrower Harris's loss was than
| other incumbent losses in 2024. If anything you could make
| the argument Musk tanked Trump's lead like Trump tanked
| Poilievre.
|
| Democrats running a candidate that lost their only attempts
| during a competitive primary. As well as that candidate
| being unable to read the room and saying they'd do the same
| economic decisions as the unpopular _incumbent_ Biden. And
| they still were within 1% of votes!
| bombcar wrote:
| It is much easier to assume that someone else funneled
| money somewhere on the other side and caused your side
| (which is always perfect and without fault) to lose.
|
| It is absolutely disheartening and horrible to face the
| reality that democracy may result in outcomes you don't
| like, and people may have voted wrong with full knowledge
| and forethought.
| knowitnone wrote:
| the rich have always impacted elections through
| advertisements, campaigns donations, etc.
| lapcat wrote:
| That's because the ultra-wealthy control the elections via
| unlimited campaign contributions, "independent" group
| spending, lobbying, providing lucrative jobs to ex-
| politicians, or even running for office themselves. Both of
| the major political parties are corrupted by money, just in
| different ways, different funding sources. The news media has
| also been centralized, monopolized, and increasingly, owned
| directly by billionaires.
|
| The public sector doesn't work because it's been sabotaged by
| the private sector.
| tootie wrote:
| He talks about this in today's NY Times interview and he is
| pretty unsparing against Elon Musk in particular for his role
| in killing USAID. Says he is directly complicit in killing
| children while at the same time, he is technically still a
| signatory of the Giving Pledge.
| nfriedly wrote:
| Wow, he lays it out pretty bluntly:
|
| > _the world's richest man has been involved in the deaths of
| the world's poorest children_
|
| https://www.nytimes.com/2025/05/08/magazine/bill-gates-
| found...
| codr7 wrote:
| Pot calling kettle black?
|
| If anyone is directly responsible for killing children, that
| would be Gates.
| Cthulhu_ wrote:
| When the government doesn't do it, private parties have to;
| when there's a significant percentage of the population voting
| for "small government" parties, more responsibility goes to
| (wealthy) individuals.
| coryfklein wrote:
| > private parties have to
|
| No they don't. It can also be that _neither_ the government
| _nor_ private parties give.
|
| Making it an either/or often makes space for the individual
| to make excuses for why they don't share because out there
| somewhere there exists some government program that vaguely
| looks like charity.
| newsclues wrote:
| If the government do it, because they are lobbied not to, so
| that private parties (with lobbyists) can, there is potential
| moral hazard.
| otikik wrote:
| When the government doesn't do it, it's because wealthy
| individuals have already bought the government. And have
| invested huge amounts of money into bamboozling the
| population into voting against their own interests.
| toenail wrote:
| If there's a problem to solve, there is a business opportunity.
| What do you propose instead?
| malcolmgreaves wrote:
| No. Capitalism is ineffective at solving lots of problems.
| Particularly problems of the kind where there is universal
| inelastic demand, where competition makes the end arrive or
| product less affordable or efficient, where externalities are
| not priced in, and where there are single/few or a unique
| instance of a thing that can be used by the public.
|
| Examples: healthcare, food and water for sustenance;
| insurance; pollution; parks and roadways, residential
| property; respectively.
| toenail wrote:
| You didn't answer the question. I get it, you think
| capitalism is bad. What do you propose instead?
| energy123 wrote:
| Regulated capitalism, where cases of market failure are
| addressed.
| toenail wrote:
| The Chinese model, got it.
| GoatInGrey wrote:
| I sometimes wish we actually had unregulated capitalism.
| Housing and healthcare would be much less terrible
| without legislated bottlenecks, among other areas.
| jokethrowaway wrote:
| Regulation never works because people can be corrupted
| and banks can be bailed. Regulation might look like it's
| protecting the little guy for PR reasons, but it will
| always leave a way out for the big guy. This is why
| inequality keeps raising.
|
| I wish we had completely unregulated capitalism, so that
| middle class people would have more weapons to climb up
| society instead of paying the bill for everyone while
| drowning in debt and soulcrushing careers.
| adverbly wrote:
| +1
|
| This is great, but what about the rich people who don't give?
| Won't they just continue to get more and more power?
|
| The scales are tipped and this is not sustainable. Gary
| Stevenson is a bit extreme, but he's not wrong about
| centralization and it's dangers!
| 0_____0 wrote:
| His letter basically says this, explicitly stating that
| government is needed for things like eradicating Polio.
| wing-_-nuts wrote:
| His foundation really does seem to do a good job with 'effective
| altruism'. There's a reason they're marked as secondary
| beneficiaries on all my accounts.
|
| Also, as a recommendation, you guys should look into whether your
| employer matches charitable donations to 501Cs in any amount. I
| find giving a solid chunk of my discretionary budget to charity
| every year lends a sense of purpose to a job that wouldn't
| otherwise have much (at least, in the sense of helping others).
|
| I enjoy being a dev, and I've given serious thought to simply
| continuing working once I reach my FIRE number and donating half
| of what I earn to charity. I think most charities would have more
| use for my money than my time, given my disability
| Ozzie_osman wrote:
| For you (or other folks) working in tech and giving to charity,
| apart from corporate match, another couple pieces of advice are
| to consider a Donor Advised Fund. They are really easy to set
| up, and then you get some benefits, like the ability to "bunch"
| your donations (can help with tax deductions) or donate
| appreciated investments (like RSUs) without paying capital
| gains tax.
| wing-_-nuts wrote:
| Yep, I've considered a DAF and donating stock, but it
| wouldn't be eligible for my employer match.
| dmoy wrote:
| Depends on the employer I guess. Some companies will do
| match even for DAF distributions (not the initial transfer
| obviously)
| 9rx wrote:
| _> without paying capital gains tax._
|
| It's a funny day when you're feeling charitable, but go out
| of your way to avoid helping the entity that should be the
| ideal charitable recipient.
| monooso wrote:
| That assumes a lot about the current administration.
| gambiting wrote:
| It might be surprising, but there are charitable people
| outside of USA too. I do consider paying taxes the best
| way to help those in need, but I don't live in the US
| personally.
| 9rx wrote:
| Presumably the current administration is what has made
| the day funny (in a sad way).
| dingnuts wrote:
| It assumes a lot about future administrations too. When
| Obama was in office I complained a lot about the
| Executive branch consolidating power and using executive
| orders, and the Democrats were fine with it because he
| was a "good" administration.
|
| But guess what? If you give too much power to a position,
| people who want to abuse the power will try to get
| themselves there.
|
| I wasn't upset that Obama was consolidating power because
| I thought Obama would abuse it. I'm upset that he
| consolidated power and then left it to whoever would come
| next, and then has the gall to be surprised that
| consolidating power under the Executive would undermine
| the power of the Legislature the moment a President who
| was willing to abuse said power was sworn in.
|
| We're cooked because of the fucking team sports. Both
| parties have had the chance to reign in the Executive and
| neither has the balls to use it against their own guy
| cyberax wrote:
| Obama didn't "consolidate power", he issued fewer EO than
| Bush (276 vs. 291). Trump has issued 142 just within
| these 100 days.
| fallingknife wrote:
| Number of EOs issued is a poor measure of centralization
| of power. Most exercise of executive power these days
| don't even require an EO, just a decree from one of the
| executive agencies. And looking at Trump vs Obama is
| myopic. This process has been going on continuously since
| at least the FDR admin.
| cyberax wrote:
| No, it was not. If you look at the EOs by president, they
| were fairly stable or even trending down until Trump: htt
| ps://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_United_States_federal_
| ...
|
| Even in qualitative terms, the "consolidation" was
| incorrect. Congress abdicated its responsibilities, and
| the Federal agencies picked up the slack. They're not
| controlled _centrally_, it's not like Obama was ordering
| agencies to write particular rules.
|
| We now see what the central consolidated control actually
| looks like.
| ToValueFunfetti wrote:
| Assumes a lot about every administration. I don't see how
| anyone can look at what the US Government has done and
| failed to do over the last decades and call it the ideal
| charitable recipient. Even when it's doing the right
| things, it wastes enormous amounts of money to do so and
| the primary beneficiary is one of the wealthiest
| populations in the world.
|
| Of course, you wouldn't expect them to be the ideal
| charity; they are explicitly not a charity. Anyone who is
| actually trying to be a charity should have little
| trouble using funds more charitably than any government
| in the world.
| wing-_-nuts wrote:
| If that entity used my tax dollars wisely (looking at
| nordic countries), yes I agree paying taxes is superior. I
| have no interest in contributing more towards our 1T/yr
| defense budget or subsidizing oil and gas.
| vinceguidry wrote:
| The sovereign wealth funds of the Nordic countries
| weren't built with tax dollars, but rather with oil
| revenue. We could do the same thing here if there were
| political appetite for holding energy companies
| responsible and the wealth they produce as belonging to
| the people living on the land the resources are coming
| out of.
|
| We're doing better now than we were 50 years ago, but the
| Nords are light years ahead.
| Nullabillity wrote:
| The oil fund isn't a Nordic Thing(tm), it's norwegian. We
| in the rest of the nordics don't even _have_ (significant
| amounts of) oil.
| pnw wrote:
| Yes, Denmark, Sweden and Finland combined don't even have
| 20% of the Norwegian fund. Norway is basically the Saudi
| Arabia of Europe.
| carlhjerpe wrote:
| Norway is basically anything but the Saudi Arabia of
| Europe. The ONLY thing that is similar is that they both
| have oil and natural gas in their territory.
|
| It's a gross comparison.
| throwawaymaths wrote:
| Well they do both have monarchs! Though the royal palace
| in Oslo is a public park. As I was strolling the park, to
| my surprise I attended a quick fanfare as the king left
| his palace and his driver (I presume) almost ran over a
| dumb kid that darted in front of the royal sedan. then at
| the end of the royal avenue, at the foot of the most
| glorious mathematician sculpture, the royal sedan turned
| a corner directly into rush hour traffic, which his
| highness had to endure just like the rest of us
| commoners.
| quesera wrote:
| I was 100% of the impression that GP was comparing
| petroleum resources, and explicitly not climate,
| traditional dress, or human rights.
| victorbjorklund wrote:
| Grass is always greener on the other side. Trust me there
| is plenty of waste of tax money in the nordics too.
| Recent example. Every month the govt pays 4 million
| dollars for a healthcare journaling system that is not
| used (because it does not work). And that is just the on
| going cost (even more was spent building it).
|
| Or a school admin system built for 100 million dollars
| and crap. They even spent a lot of money trying to
| prevent a open source client that solved a lot of the
| issues they had.
|
| Maybe in absolute money it is less than the US. But
| remember US also have a lot more people.
| vasco wrote:
| The state is never going to be as agile as private people
| engaging on topics they are passionate about on their
| private time.
| bombcar wrote:
| You can donate directly the pay down the debt:
| https://www.treasurydirect.gov/government/public-debt-
| report...
|
| Supporting government programs at the same time as you
| insist money could be better used elsewhere (at
| charities) is somewhat amusing.
| 9rx wrote:
| A group of people engaging in topics they are passionate
| about in their private time is what a state is. Perhaps
| what you are trying to say is that you only want to help
| out your friends?
| psunavy03 wrote:
| Yeah, no. A government is not "a group of people engaging
| in topics they are passionate about." A government is an
| entity with authority to tell you what you have to do,
| and if you don't do it, eventually people with guns will
| show up at your door and take you to jail.
| 9rx wrote:
| _> A government is an entity with authority to tell you
| what you have to do_
|
| If it is authoritarian, perhaps, but even that is still a
| matter of a group of people. Most seem to believe that
| government should be democratic. You may not find
| yourself in a democratic state, but that would only
| continue to contribute to what makes the day funny.
| Perhaps you didn't read the entire thread and are posting
| this without understanding the full context under which
| it is taking place?
| sswatson wrote:
| No, all governments have the authority to tell people
| what to do. Some governments operate within a legal
| framework that limits that authority in many ways, but if
| an organization has no authority over the people who live
| in a given area then it isn't a government.
| 9rx wrote:
| _> all governments have the authority to tell people what
| to do._
|
| But, again, that government is the very people we're
| talking about, at least as far as a democracy goes.
| Although even in the case of an authoritarian government,
| the individual authority is only as strong as the people
| are willing to go along with recognizing it, so it is not
| really that much different. No magic here, just people.
| jokethrowaway wrote:
| Democracy is the dictatorship of the majority on the
| minority.
|
| It's nothing to be proud of.
|
| What you can be proud of is in REDUCING dictatorship, by
| removing power in centralised entities and giving it back
| to the individuals.
| mmooss wrote:
| > Democracy is the dictatorship of the majority on the
| minority.
|
| It is not - that would be some theoretical pure
| democracy, also called 'mob rule'. Democracy, as the word
| is actually used, requires universal human rights which
| protect the minority. For example, freedom of speech
| means the majority can't control the minority's speech,
| whether they like it or not.
|
| Democracy also includes separation of powers, usually
| between legislature, executive, and judicial, which
| prevents the concentration of power.
|
| > It's nothing to be proud of.
|
| It's only something to be proud of if we make it that
| way.
| mmooss wrote:
| That's a very narrow aspect of government, and one that I
| have hardly ever encountered. Law-abiding people don't do
| it because of government coercion but because they
| believe in being cooperative members of their community
| and don't want to hurt others.
|
| Another, much larger aspect of government, especially
| democratic, is people getting together and doing things
| as a community that can't be done individually.
| psunavy03 wrote:
| "I have not encountered something" != "it does not
| exist." The logical conclusion to defying a government is
| people with guns showing up to put you in cuffs and take
| you to jail. Even over something as piddling as a
| littering fine or parking ticket . . . watch what
| eventually happens if you refuse to pay it.
|
| People getting together and doing things as a community
| does not require a government. We can and should do that
| of our own free will. That's not to say governments
| aren't needed. But labeling them as "people getting
| together and doing things as a community" ignores their
| ability to enforce their laws, including the sanctioned
| use of violence or the threat of violence to coerce
| people into obeying or to punish them.
| 9rx wrote:
| _> People getting together and doing things as a
| community does not require a government._
|
| That may be true, but government (at least a democratic
| one) is just people getting together and doing things, so
| if you already have one you can save the effort of the
| community trying to organize a second community on top of
| the community they already have for no good reason.
|
| _> But labeling them as "people getting together and
| doing things as a community" ignores their ability to
| enforce their laws, including the sanctioned use of
| violence or the threat of violence to coerce people into
| obeying or to punish them._
|
| That literally tells of people getting together and doing
| things. These are not magical powers. They are simply
| community action. I suppose it highlights that people
| getting together and doing things isn't all sunshine and
| rainbows, despite your apparent dream for a world where
| there is only happiness, but such is reality.
|
| I expect the aversion is that those who wish to donate to
| charity only want their friends, not entire communities,
| to benefit. The "trouble" with a community at large is
| that everyone is able to participate, whether you like
| them or not. That's not to say that a community cannot
| see a charitable benefit indirectly, but the key point is
| that they want to keep the primary benefit away from
| strangers.
| jokethrowaway wrote:
| There are plenty of such organisations. Some are legal,
| some are not.
|
| The government is the only one with a legal monopoly on
| violence; it redistributes resources in the society and
| it's not run by incorruptible angels but by fallible
| human beings - human beings who were put there thanks to
| investments of millions of dollars.
|
| It's a recipe for disaster.
| mmooss wrote:
| > It's a recipe for disaster.
|
| Government is a recipe for disaster? Democratic
| government has worked for centuries without disaster.
|
| > it's not run by incorruptible angels but by fallible
| human beings - human beings who were put there thanks to
| investments of millions of dollars.
|
| Yes, that is the trick of every human endeavor, the great
| ones and the failures. It depends on you and me - let's
| make it happen.
| mmooss wrote:
| > The logical conclusion to defying a government is
| people with guns showing up to put you in cuffs and take
| you to jail. Even over something as piddling as a
| littering fine or parking ticket . . . watch what
| eventually happens if you refuse to pay it.
|
| That may be logical, but it doesn't happen. I've had
| unpaid parking tickets for long periods and nobody showed
| up at all, much less with guns. Where do you live that
| they jail you for it, much less go out and find you? Your
| local government must be very well-funded to have
| resources for that, not to mention having a fascist
| attitude - how popular is that with constituents?
|
| > People getting together and doing things as a community
| does not require a government.
|
| It depends - many times it is the most or only effective
| way. It has decision-making mechanisms - including
| elected representatives, hearings, experts - and
| executive mechanisms including employees, equipment,
| contract managers, processes, institutional information
| such as maps of infrastructure, and loads of experience.
| Imagine some neighbors in NYC trying to put in just a new
| streetlight.
|
| > But labeling them as "people getting together and doing
| things as a community" ignores their ability to enforce
| their laws, including the sanctioned use of violence or
| the threat of violence to coerce people into obeying or
| to punish them.
|
| It doesn't ignore it, but your prior comment repeats the
| Internet trope that that's what goverment is - a coercive
| mechanism with guns. That's only one narrow aspect - the
| great majority of what government does, and how society
| works, has nothing to do with that. It's for the outlaws,
| not for the great majority.
| njdas wrote:
| I'm trying to reconcile how
| https://www.hawaii.edu/powerkills/20TH.HTM is 'helping
| out your friends.' See, we can all create straw-men. It's
| not very useful for discourse. The vast majority of us
| want what is best for humanity, but we have different
| views on how to deliver it.
| 9rx wrote:
| You can fund the people (government) or you can fund
| specific people whim whom you have an intimate trust
| (friends). The only other choices are to fund yourself or
| nobody, neither of which are applicable here. Not sure
| why that is so hard to reconcile.
| njdas wrote:
| You are framing it as a binary "you either fund the
| government or only your friends." You really believe
| there is no in between? You are framing this as if you're
| on some high ground and we either have to agree with your
| opinion or we are selfish. There are other ways to
| advance humanity than your opinions. Government is not
| some benevolent entity. The supposition that it is has no
| basis in data from present reality or history. As one
| example, see marxist/communist governments killing their
| own people as the leading cause of death in the 20th
| century.
| 9rx wrote:
| _> Government is not some benevolent entity._
|
| Of course not. It's quite literally just the people. If
| you cannot trust the people with your charitable
| donations, but still wish to donate to a person, then
| you're going to have to narrow that down to the specific
| person you can trust (i.e. your friends). There is no in-
| between.
| ryandrake wrote:
| When it comes to funding various "public good" efforts,
| we don't need agility. We need fairness and at least some
| kind of public influence over what gets funded.
|
| The problem with leaving everything to private charity is
| that only the wealthy people and churches doing the
| donating dictate what counts as "public good" without you
| and I having any say over it. We luck out when the donor
| has good intentions and chooses to donate to an
| organization doing good, and we have no say when the
| donor has evil intentions and chooses to donate
| elsewhere. Allowing a small handful of rich donors to
| decide what counts as a good cause is not ideal.
| zozbot234 wrote:
| > The problem with leaving everything to private charity
| is that the wealthy people doing the donating dictate
| what counts as "public good" without you and I having any
| say over it.
|
| The thing about public goods is that people tend to agree
| pretty closely about what they are. The wealthiest person
| in the world benefits from, e.g. clean air just as much
| as you do. You should be a lot more worried about wealthy
| folks who _don 't_ donate to charity and just spend the
| money on big luxury yachts and the like, because these
| folks are essentially free-riding on everyone else.
| ryandrake wrote:
| Given (at least the USA's) increasingly polarized
| population, I don't think it's at all true that people
| agree closely about what should be funded, and I'll admit
| that fact makes my argument weaker: The danger of a
| particular wealthy person "donating to evil" is similar
| to the danger that the majority of the country votes to
| "fund evil."
|
| I also agree that wealthy folks spending their wealth on
| luxury yachts while the public suffers is also something
| to worry about. Who knew? Gargantuan wealth inequalities
| are mostly downside for everyone but the wealthy!
| zozbot234 wrote:
| Shouldn't we be a lot more worried about how political
| polarization might impact government choices, compared to
| private sector ones? Private actors who spend their own
| money have to pay for their own choices and are
| accountable to themselves in a way that political
| operatives fundamentally don't. I see a lot more
| potential for 'evil' on the political/state actor side.
| mmooss wrote:
| > The thing about public goods is that people tend to
| agree pretty closely about what they are.
|
| Is there some data that shows that?
|
| > The wealthiest person in the world benefits from, e.g.
| clean air just as much as you do.
|
| We can find public goods in common for many groups, but
| that's actually a bad example. Wealthy people care about
| clean air in their neighborhood; pollution is therefore
| concentrated in poor areas. They don't site the new
| incerator (or drug treatment facility) on the Upper East
| Side of Manhatten.
|
| Many needs are specific to poverty. For example, wealthy
| people are not subject to malaria; they are no
| illiterate; they don't need toilets or labor rights; they
| can afford college for their kids regardless of tuition;
| they have unlimited access to safe, fresh, healthy food.
| They don't need more available and less expensive health
| care, so they donate to cancer research and high-tech
| therapy and not to the medical clinic in the poor
| neighborhood.
| vasco wrote:
| Yeah but it's not either or. And people are always want
| to contribute to their pet causes. Go tell someone who's
| sibling died of cancer or whatever that they shouldn't
| donate to cancer research because the state should do it.
| Like yes it should but however much they do you may have
| personal reasons to want to do more. So private charity
| is always going to be a thing in parallel to public
| works.
| mmooss wrote:
| > The problem with leaving everything to private charity
| is that only the wealthy people and churches doing the
| donating dictate what counts as "public good" without you
| and I having any say over it. We luck out when the donor
| has good intentions ...
|
| It is problematic even with good intentions.
|
| People don't have time, expertise or usually even the
| motive to systematically examine ROI. They or someone
| they know has a 'good cause' and they support it. For
| example, endowments at their alma mater - likely a school
| for wealthy kids, new buildings for the hospital (that
| serves wealthy people), new research in diseases that are
| problems for the wealthy, etc.
|
| They can't know without talking to people who have
| experience with poverty, for example, and those aren't
| the people coming to dinner tonight.
| knowitnone wrote:
| It's OK to do both and who is this ideal charitable
| recipient you are talking about? You mean the one that
| takes your money and does whatever it wants with it?
| toast0 wrote:
| The state goes out of their way to encourage it.
|
| Let's say you just won the startup lottery and you've got a
| significant amount of now tradable stock. Some of which was
| early exercised and the cost basis is effectively zero.
| Some of which was RSUs or non-qualified options and you owe
| ordinary income. And that you're way over into the top tax
| brackets.
|
| If your zero cost basis stock is Qualified Small Business
| Stock (QSBS), there's a very nice discount on federal
| capital gains, so you might not need to do the rest of the
| stuff.
|
| Otherwise, if you donate your apprechiated zero basis
| stock, you get to save federal capital gains of 20% + 3.8%
| net investment income. Plus it offsets against your
| ordinary income that's 37%. So that's a 60.8% discount on
| being charitable for the feds. If you live in California,
| capital gains are regular income, so you're saving 13.3%
| because the capital gains go away and offsetting 13.3% on
| your ordinary income, so your total discount is 87.4%. In
| other words, your difference in cash after taxes for
| selling $1M of zero basis stock or donating $1M of zero
| basis stock is $126k.
|
| When the government is telling you it only costs $126k to
| give a charity $1M, it's pretty compelling. The math used
| to be different, when you'd get credit for state taxes on
| the federal return, but that was many years ago now.
| waynesonfire wrote:
| Explains why there is a non-profit writing sudo in Rust
| recently featured on HN.
| jorvi wrote:
| That is not their argument.
|
| You lowering your tax rate and giving that money to
| charity isn't magicking more money into the world, it is
| just a different allocation.
|
| The government's tax income is allocated by the masses
| (in theory anyway). It is fair and dispassionate.
|
| Philanthropy / charity is picking winners and losers
| based on your personal whims, and for many it is about
| gaining social capital.
| zozbot234 wrote:
| > You lowering your tax rate and giving that money to
| charity isn't magicking more money into the world, it is
| just a different allocation.
|
| This is only ever true if you assume that government tax
| spending is 100% efficient, with nary a fraction of a
| cent being wasted. I don't think that's a safe
| assumption.
| intrepidhero wrote:
| No. The assumption is that charity and government have
| roughly equivalent efficiency. Both government and
| charities have (wildly varying) overhead and government
| agencies may enjoy economies of scale that charities do
| not. Yet another area of the world that contains a
| surprising amount of detail.
| jonas21 wrote:
| Even under ideal circumstances, the priority of a
| government is to serve the needs of its citizens.
| Sometimes, these happen to align with global needs, and
| sometimes not.
|
| In order to improve global health or address other issues
| that impact countries beyond where you live, the
| government (even an idealized version without waste,
| corruption, or political games) might not be the most
| effective way to accomplish this.
| jorvi wrote:
| Right. But taking the combined $140 billion net worth of
| Bill and Melinda, about 30% (or whatever 'fair' rate you
| want to assume) shouldn't have been theirs to give away.
| Let them spend the other part however they want.
|
| What I find kind of interesting is that Bill Gates and
| Warren Buffet argue that they should be taxed more, but
| they don't do anything to further that goal aside from
| media soundbites and headlines. They could fund an
| incredible war chest for a lobbying apparatus who's sole
| purpose would be to create a more fair tax system. But no
| such thing happens.
| skybrian wrote:
| Some government programs are good, but if it went to the
| US government then Trump could cancel them. (Unless the
| courts stop it.)
|
| It seems fortunate that some charitable funds aren't
| subject to that risk. They have other risks, but they
| seem lower.
|
| In an imperfect world, government funding alone seems
| insufficiency diversified. That's too much power in one
| place.
| threetonesun wrote:
| Charitable funds fall victim to the same fundamental
| issue, leadership is more interested in benefiting
| themselves than putting the money towards the aims of the
| charity. In general I donate to places local to me. I'd
| much rather see a bench at a local park than hold on to
| some hope that my money does something meaningful to a
| large international charity organization.
| skybrian wrote:
| I think what it comes down to is that there's no general
| rule. There are a lot of organizations you could give
| money to and it all depends on what it is.
| mmooss wrote:
| > The state goes out of their way to encourage it.
|
| People with lots of money and power get their
| representatives to pass laws that reduce their taxes.
| njdas wrote:
| Yet people still advocate for giving these reps endless
| increases in taxation.
| didgetmaster wrote:
| Perhaps the government 'should' be the ideal charitable
| entity; but it most definitely is not.
|
| The waste, fraud, and abuse that runs rampant throughout
| the government tells us that the powerful often use
| taxpayer dollars as their own slush fund.
|
| Sure the government does much to relieve the suffering of
| people around the globe; but it could do far more with
| substantially less.
| mmooss wrote:
| > The waste, fraud, and abuse that runs rampant
| throughout the government tells us that the powerful
| often use taxpayer dollars as their own slush fund.
|
| I don't know that it's worse than any other institution?
| At least voters can remove the corrupt, and they are
| prosecuted. Are you saying these uber-wealthy and CEOs
| aren't just as corrupt or worse?
| didgetmaster wrote:
| What I am saying is that I have a choice whether my money
| goes to a corporation or to a charity. I don't get to
| choose whether I pay taxes or not.
|
| More often than not, corruption in government does not
| result in the perpetrator being prosecuted or even
| removed from office.
|
| I am amazed at all the people who are so sure that
| corporations and/or wealthy investors are corrupt, but
| give big government a pass. As if the same types of
| people don't run both.
| 9rx wrote:
| _> but give big government a pass._
|
| Its probably not so much that government gets a pass as
| much as government is the organization that, by virtue of
| being a citizen, they own and control, so when things go
| wrong it is their own fault, and they really don't want
| to accept blame for their own faults. They would have to
| ask "How did _I_ manage to fuck this up? ", which is a
| hard question for most people to ask themselves.
|
| When it is distinctly someone else's organization it's
| much easier to throw pointless shade to make one feel
| better about their own failings.
| mmooss wrote:
| > I am amazed at all the people who are so sure that
| corporations and/or wealthy investors are corrupt, but
| give big government a pass.
|
| Where do you find these people? I've never met them. It
| seems like everyone complains about government waste and
| corruption - even when it's not happening!
| pcthrowaway wrote:
| > Sure the government does much to relieve the suffering
| of people around the globe;
|
| If we're talking specifically about the U.S. government,
| I suspect its decisions cause more suffering globally
| than they alleviate, though of course there are open
| philosophical questions inherent in any attempt to
| quantify suffering.
| Ozzie_osman wrote:
| So, there is a limit to these deductions, meaning, the
| government is still usually getting the lion's share of
| most people's taxes (and, generally, I think 50% of your
| income is the max you can deduct).
|
| I think there is value to letting people allocate some
| percentage of their income directly to causes they are
| passionate about. Even if you assume the government is
| efficient and not bloated, and benevolent, this lets people
| contribute to causes without waiting for political
| consensus, or to smaller causes that would not be on the
| government's radar (yet) or ever. It's more pluralistic. It
| lets smaller causes bloom. It keeps me civically engaged.
|
| On a personal note, I do take issue with the amounts spent
| on "defense" (which is often bombing people or threatening
| to directly or indirectly), and would rather help folks
| than bomb other folks.
| Zaheer wrote:
| https://charityvest.org/ is a great modern DAF tool. I use it
| to get 1 single charity receipt at the end of the year and
| track my giving.
| newfocogi wrote:
| Another happy CharityVest user here. I recommend it to
| everyone I talk to when DAFs are remotely relevant to the
| conversation.
| MattSayar wrote:
| Money managing tools like Betterment also have native UI
| features to donate investments to charities as well
| nonce42 wrote:
| Agree on the Donor Advised Fund (I use Fidelity). If you have
| highly-appreciated stock, you definitely should look into a
| DAF. Another benefit is that it is extremely easy to donate
| to a charity; click and submit and you don't have to worry
| about paperwork and putting each donation down on your taxes.
| _bin_ wrote:
| I have to disagree. I am an ordo amoris enjoyer and cannot
| agree with Gates giving a red cent to overseas causes until we
| fix things like drug treatment, cancer treatment, and cures for
| neurodegenerative diseases.
|
| He's of course within his rights to ignore this but I am within
| mine to remind everyone to please help your friend, your
| neighbor, your town, state, and country before you look further
| afield.
| olivermuty wrote:
| A dollar will help someone abroad much more than the same
| dollar will in the US though.
| closewith wrote:
| I don't think any individual should have the power to
| unilaterally choose where to deploy billions of dollars, but
| your vision is equally myopic. Nothing about being a US
| citizen gives you any moral priority over any other person.
| mlyle wrote:
| > I am within mine to remind everyone to please help your
| friend, your neighbor, your town, state, and country before
| you look further afield.
|
| Nah. We have memberships in families, neighborhoods, friend
| groups, local areas, cultural groups, nations, and the whole
| world. And problems at any of these levels can grow to the
| point where they affect us, too. And places where the needs
| are most acute and broad stand the greatest chances of
| developing to not be as acute of problems anymore and indeed
| to offer value to the overall world community through trade.
|
| Indeed, the extreme version of what you're saying is why _so
| many_ only give to their church communities which are insular
| and isolated. Or to just retain everything.
|
| 70% of my giving is domestic, but I think it's nuts to ignore
| the rest of the world. Yes, things improved in distant lands
| maybe are harder for me to see and have less of a direct
| impact on those around me; so discount their benefit some,
| but that marginal benefit is so much larger...
| _bin_ wrote:
| You have to weigh that against the fact that you are much
| more able to figure out how to actually do what's needed at
| levels where you see things firsthand. At least, that's
| been my experience; it's much more realistic to start a
| nonprofit that can make a real difference locally, then
| perhaps scale with time, than it is to found something with
| a global mission, lacking global context on how things
| manifest around the world.
|
| More importantly, I'm not a utilitarian, and do not
| subscribe to "effective altruism" or other utilitarian
| philosophies. At the end of the day it's Gates' money to do
| with as he wishes and it's my internet account to argue
| against that as I wish.
| mlyle wrote:
| Sure, but even when you apply discount rates due to
| uncertainty of efficacy and distance of effects, the
| numbers can still be big.
|
| At this point, I spend substantially my entire life in
| local service (I am a schoolteacher and I give away 6
| figures locally annually). I still don't think it would
| maximize my effective impact to ignore the rest of my
| country or the rest of the world.
| packetlost wrote:
| You clearly have never actually looked at effective altruism
| and what it _tries_ to be. You would otherwise know that your
| values are diametrically opposed to the values of that
| movement and said values are neither right nor wrong, they
| 're personal.
| _bin_ wrote:
| Of course I have. I am well aware that my values are
| diametrically opposed to it at a first-principles level; I
| find utilitarianism to be an incredibly hollow worldview
| that fails on many grounds, not least of which are the
| teleological (disordered love is no virtue.)
|
| I don't have to argue from the first principles of the EA
| crowd. Everyone believes in something and I believe they
| are wrong; your epistemic relativism makes no sense to me.
| Borderline absurdist.
| packetlost wrote:
| fwiw I'm not an EA and I generally agree with you. It's
| fine to believe they're wrong, but it's an entirely
| different thing to tell other people they should think
| they're wrong.
| willvarfar wrote:
| If you were to live very close to the border of, say, Canada
| or Mexico, would you support giving financial support to
| alleviate suffering in those countries?
| criddell wrote:
| I think he wants Gates to focus his philanthropy on the
| Seattle region before expanding the scope of his giving to
| all of Washington. That could probably consume Gates'
| entire fortune, so the question of what to do next is
| irrelevant.
| _bin_ wrote:
| That depends. Generally nation is a big part of how one
| defines rightly-ordered love. But if, say, I lived near the
| border, regularly went down to Mexico, had friends or
| colleagues there, then probably so. but more focused on
| alleviating their suffering than that of the country or
| state.
| justsocrateasin wrote:
| did you even read the article? He talks about how he has/will
| continue to invest significant resources into alzheimers
| research.
| _bin_ wrote:
| Sure I did. I'm aware his giving isn't just mosquito nets.
| That doesn't mean I believe the money is being directed
| correctly.
|
| If your position is "it's his money so none of us should
| comment", I'd expect equal pushback on people saying "wow I
| really agree with how he's spending it."
| knowitnone wrote:
| It's his money. He can give it to North Korea or China if he
| wants. Entitled and selfish.
| actionfromafar wrote:
| Giving it to North Korea used to be associated with risks,
| but things are changing fast these days.
| fallingknife wrote:
| Actually, no he can't. OFAC will absolutely destroy him if
| he does. I have a remote job and I am even explicitly
| banned from doing any work for my company while I am in
| China or a bunch of other countries.
| energy123 wrote:
| This is just cruel nativism, a rejection of humanity except
| for the in group you happened to be born in. I hope everyone
| rejects this sociopathic outlook on the world.
|
| And Gates is investing in Alzheimer's research FYI.
| _bin_ wrote:
| Reducing rightly-ordered love to "cruel nativism" is an
| incredibly uncharitable representation. I'd urge you to do
| some reading in comparative religion. Although I'm a
| Christian, I've found it instructive to spend some time
| going through other religions' texts, other philosophies,
| because dismissing them as backward or wrong does nobody
| any good. Learning more makes my conversations more
| productive and helps me better understand my own beliefs.
| otikik wrote:
| > help your friend, your neighbor, your town, state, and
| country before you look further afield
|
| Many of my friends and family don't live on my neighborhood,
| town, state or country. They live in the world. Consider
| broadening up your social circle a little bit. Our lives
| don't have to be limited to where a horse can travel to any
| more.
| _bin_ wrote:
| Sure, the world has changed. But rightly-ordered love isn't
| about geographical layout, it's about the natural order of
| community and social structure. That has changed but
| "mosquito nets in zimbabwe" being on the way outer end of a
| right ordering of love hasn't.
| otikik wrote:
| I think the world has changed more than you think.
|
| You are assuming that I don't have friends or family in
| Zimbabwe. Which is true in this particular case. But it
| might as well not. As I said I have friends and family in
| several countries.
| niam wrote:
| > I am an ordo amoris enjoyer
|
| You seem to think this phrase implies a prescription that
| people ought to donate first to their adjacents
| (unambiguously enough to be worth including without a
| definition).
|
| I'll note that, given how many sources seem to contravene
| that interpretation, the probability that your use of this
| term did _not_ come downstream from Vice President Vance has
| dropped precipitously. Which might be useful information for
| anyone looking to diversify their information diet.
| _bin_ wrote:
| Not physical adjacents, no. If your brother lives two
| thousand miles away you should still focus on him more than
| your neighbor.
|
| I'm unsure what Vance has to do with this. My belief comes
| from my religious upbringing and (in this case) Saints
| Augustine and Aquinas. Vance is not a spiritual leader or
| theologian of any sort.
|
| I think I absorbed much of this when I was pretty young - I
| had sort of settled on this way of thinking before ever
| picking up Civitas Dei - but reading and writing on it
| during my schooling helped me understand why.
| derektank wrote:
| As someone who grew up in a Christian faith tradition that
| said Jesus Christ died for the sins of all of us and that we
| are all made in God's image, I find this position so bizarre.
| If we are all children of God, why should I prioritize the
| well being of a single stranger in Ohio over twenty strangers
| in Kenya? I can understand an argument for prioritizing one's
| family, especially if you are a parent, or even one's
| immediate community, but while I personally love America, the
| vast majority of Americans are as distant from me as anyone
| else in the globe.
| _bin_ wrote:
| This is a pretty common question that's raised: how can we
| square this with loving our fellow man?
|
| The short answer is Christianity isn't a utilitarian belief
| system. While God loves everyone equally, he puts some of
| us closer together in love: family, friends, neighbors,
| countrymen. This incurs a greater _obligation_ , plus we
| ought to love more those who are closer to us.
|
| Sadly, a lot of Christian faiths teach dogma before the
| underlying reasoning or take a Bible-only approach which I
| find to be incredibly incomplete. In case your upbringing
| didn't include much theological reading, I would strongly
| recommend Civitas Dei and Summa Theologiae; the latter is
| less explicitly relevant to its definition but probably a
| better book overall.
| mmooss wrote:
| I think you are going too far in telling other people
| that their religious beliefs are wrong, and that you know
| better (unless you are God yourself).
| mmooss wrote:
| Why should some arbitrary border be drawn? And if we don't
| take care of the world, who will? I think that's an
| abdication of the most serious responsibilities.
| blargey wrote:
| A single cent? I think you vastly underestimate how little a
| dollar does in the US, and how much it does outside.
|
| Moreover, insisting on going all-in on medical research
| before doing any immediate lifesaving sounds to me like a
| gross perversion of what should be, in its most simple case,
| an urging to make sure your kids are clothed and fed before
| donating to the food bank. Surely ordo does not make it
| unvirtuous to save a drowning foreigner even if your kids
| would miss a meal for it.
|
| I'm under the impression that Aquinas says outright that it
| makes sense to make exceptions to the general ordering to aid
| those in grave need that are "low" in the order, and stuff
| like mosquito nets are a prototypical example of this imo.
| Lives saved, families preserved, terribly unjust suffering
| averted, etc for literal pennies on the dollar.
| JB_Dev wrote:
| I actually have the opposite position on this. 1st world
| countries already have the funds and economy to pursue
| exactly what you describe. Just they lack the political will.
| I don't care to subsidise that intentional lack of
| investment.
|
| I would much rather give to charities focusing on countries
| that don't have the economy/ability to fix their basic
| issues.
| kubb wrote:
| Oh it's you again, you're the guy echoing specific
| contemporary political figures, and dressing up American
| isolationism in rhetoric. In the other thread you were
| claiming that America subsidises Europe's healthcare by
| paying for its defence.
| zozbot234 wrote:
| > There's a reason they're marked as secondary beneficiaries on
| all my accounts.
|
| Strictly speaking, the foundation discourages individuals from
| donating directly to them, mostly because the tax treatment of
| giving that way isn't necessarily favorable. They've set up
| Gates Philanthropy Partners as a 501(c)(3) charity which is
| aligned to the same philanthropic goals.
|
| (Of course there's also many other worthwhile players in the
| broader EA space.)
| prvc wrote:
| Have to disagree about the 'effective' part. Gates seems to
| have had a knack for massive inefficiencies and negative
| externalities in every way that he has impacted the world.
| Think of how many man-hours (measured in human lifetimes) have
| been wasted due to the shortcomings of various MicroSoft
| programs. Weigh that against his health initiatives in the
| third world. Or the impact of dimming the sun by depositing
| massive quantities of particles in the atmosphere: the
| resources consumed and carbon emissions that placing them would
| entail, and of course the intended effect, which is to impede
| human progress as measured by the Kardashev scale. Everything
| starts to look much more efficient if this is taken as the
| goal, though.
| mgraczyk wrote:
| Helping to cure polio doesn't outweigh imagined future harms
| by George engineering that didn't happen yet?
| ok123456 wrote:
| He's not curing polio, though. His polio program is
| spreading it because they use a live virus, and a low
| percentage of the population is getting it. People are now
| getting paralytic polio from others who got the vaccine.
|
| This is just one example of the Kreuger-Dunning that
| permeates all aspects of the Gates Foundation. His
| interventions have been mainly disasters, distorted public
| policy, and gobbled up biotech IP in the process. He
| controls the money spicket and is very petty and cocksure
| about what is "right." Researchers and public policy
| experts who disagree with his ideas get cut off.
|
| Governments should set public health policy and manage the
| needs of their people, not billionaires, biotech companies,
| or NGOs.
| codr7 wrote:
| Plus, he wouldn't touch a project he couldn't make a
| profit from somehow.
|
| People don't change much.
| therein wrote:
| Yup, the Gates worship is incredibly sad.
| mgraczyk wrote:
| How does he profit from giving away all of his money?
| cyberax wrote:
| > He's not curing polio, though. His polio program is
| spreading it because they use a live virus
|
| Wow. Just wow. Where the heck do you get this garbage
| from?
| mgraczyk wrote:
| OPV unfortunately does cause paralytic polio disease
| indirectly by infecting unvaccinated people. It's worth
| it IMO because the total number of paralyzed people has
| decreased, but in the long term we have to switch to IPV
| to completely eliminate polio. This will take decades and
| many billions of dollars though.
| cyberax wrote:
| Yes, it's called cVDPV. It's caused by the virus in the
| live vaccine "unweakening" itself, and it's typically
| happening in people with weakened immune systems (e.g.
| from chronic malnutrition). It's not causing unvaccinated
| people to get infected, per se.
|
| Most cases are mild, and on average there are about
| 300-400 cases per _year_ for the entire world.
|
| But it's absolutely heinous to accuse Gates of
| deliberately infecting people with the live virus. The
| weakened vaccine has been the standard for polio
| vaccination for the last 80 years. There is simply no
| alternative for it for places like DRC or Chad.
| Inactivated vaccines require refrigeration and
| injections, and this is not feasible.
|
| We're >.< this close to eradicating polio:
| https://polioeradication.org/wild-poliovirus-count/ -
| there are only two countries with the wild virus. A
| little bit more, and we can actually stop vaccinating
| from polio altogether.
| mgraczyk wrote:
| I largely agree, but there is essentially no possibility
| of ever eradicating polio with the current OPV strategy.
|
| If you stop vaccinating, cVDPV will spread person to
| person. Some people carry virus for decades and it can
| become infectious at any time, many years after they were
| first vaccinated or infected. There will sparse but
| significant episodes until all humans who were vaccinated
| with OPV (or infected with the wild virus) have died.
|
| but that doesn't mean we shouldn't do it! It's ok if we
| don't eradicate the virus. The point is to prevent
| children from being paralyzed, and it works for that.
| pclmulqdq wrote:
| Unfortunately, if you look at the situation with type 2,
| you will see what happens when OPV stops too early (and
| type 2 is a much less aggressive disease than type 1). In
| a perfect world, OPV cessation happens in most healthy
| communities rather soon, while the people who are in need
| of a much stronger vaccine continue to get OPV.
|
| Also, Gates's pet project of a novel OPV has been shown
| to have caused a few confirmed cases of VAPP now, so it
| seems that project won't save OPV.
|
| Essentially the best hope for eradicating polio within 20
| years seems to be giving out a lot of OPV to places like
| Afghanistan and the DRC and forcing the local warlord to
| give it to the kids who need it (the latter has generally
| been a total failure of the Gates project). Once OPV gets
| wild-type and cVDPV outbreaks under control, a global
| switch to IPV seems safe to prevent future outbreaks.
| But, to get there, it seems a very aggressive OPV
| campaign is necessary compared to where we are now. It
| may take a militarized organization to do this, also,
| given the fact that you necessarily have to deal with
| tribal warlords. Shame we don't have USAID any more...
|
| We aren't going to do that because it seems we generally
| aren't capable of doing that. So we're likely stuck with
| a decent amount of polio for a long time.
| mgraczyk wrote:
| There are issues with the oral vaccines, but what you're
| saying is completely untrue. The total number of
| paralyzed kids has gone down dramatically as a result of
| the work Gates has done. By any metric, this is a good
| thing
| adwf wrote:
| Forgive me if I find it somewhat difficult to take seriously
| an argument by a person judging progress on the Kardashev
| scale...
|
| You could pick some slightly less sci-fi measures like
| "number of trivially preventable deaths from diseases for
| which we have vaccines", for example.
| giantg2 wrote:
| It seems his foundation already has significant funding. I
| would give to other charities, focusing on high impact work in
| specific regions or domains that knight not be as popular.
| yodsanklai wrote:
| My issue with Gates is that he wants to fight climate change,
| yet he's personally an environmental disaster with his yachts
| and jets. I'm not saying he has to live like a monk to be
| credible, and maybe his foundation is doing a good job (never
| looked into it), but either he's an hypocrite, or I disagree
| with him on how to fight climate change.
| faku812 wrote:
| It's all about virtue signaling. All he cares about is if
| people someday decide to "eat the rich" he won't be the first
| one on the menu.
| calepayson wrote:
| This is a silly way to interpret someone donating over
| $100B to charity.
| abound wrote:
| I think it's pretty clearly hypocritical, but also if his
| actions are (far) more than offsetting his own emissions and
| impact, it's still a net positive.
|
| Of course, he could choose to not live a super-high
| consumption lifestyle in addition to his climate philanthopy,
| but if I had to take one or the other, I'd rather him
| continue throwing money at climate work than take fewer
| private jet rides.
| eastbound wrote:
| My issue is, he wants to fight climate change... then tries
| to spend $200bn in less than 20 years. This afflux of money
| creates a spike of consumerism, then a sudden dip after
| that. Consultants in foundations will scramble to spend
| that money for sure, and they themselves will buy private
| jets for that.
|
| The way to fight climate change is to keep people at a low
| level of consumption, and spend his own money very slowly,
| very scarcely. And keep people with small cars, no Cadillac
| for any consultant.
| yupitsme123 wrote:
| How do we measure if something is a net positive or
| negative when we're talking about global-level decisions?
|
| This has always been the sticking point for me when it
| comes to supporting large charities.
| xienze wrote:
| But... he could easily do both. This is why I have such a
| hard time taking anything said about climate change
| seriously from the likes of Gore, Gates, and celebrities.
| They don't practice what they preach.
|
| And it's not like we're talking about some huge sacrifices
| here. Go from a 50K sqft house to a "modest" 10k sqft one.
| Don't sail around on personal yachts. Fly commercial. Use
| Zoom. Simple stuff that would give them a lot more
| credibility. As it is, it's a whole lot of "do as I say,
| not as I do."
| im3w1l wrote:
| I think it matters how it's done. If someone has super high
| consumption but also invests in clean energy to save the
| climate that's cool by be. If someone has super high
| consumption but also invests money into lobbying to deny
| the lower classes access to consumption as a means of
| saving the climate I would resent that person.
| carlhjerpe wrote:
| While it might be hypocritical it doesn't matter whatsoever
| what he does with his personal life if his foundation is
| pouring billions into making the world a better place.
|
| Helping people out of poverty is really bad for the
| environment too but I don't think we should be complaining
| when someone does that.
|
| On a global scale his yacht(s?) and private jets are nothing,
| and if it helps him do good by establishing/maintaining
| relationships with the right people they're an "investment"
| into a stopping climate change.
|
| A bit of a naive take as opposed to yours.
| yupitsme123 wrote:
| I'll ask the same question I've asked elsewhere because "I
| want to believe:" How do you measure how much someone has
| made the world a better place? Especially when so much of
| their actions, their consequences, and their second and
| third order effects are either unknowable or papered over
| by PR campaigns.
| carlhjerpe wrote:
| You can't really measure how much good someone has done,
| but their foundation has been going for 25 years and as
| mentioned in the article they've donated 100billion
| dollars to something already.
|
| If anyone deserves a bit of good faith it'd be the Gates
| family, it's probably not all pretty and perfect but I am
| convinced they're doing a lot of good.
|
| You'll have to ask someone else about proof, but I
| imagine someone would've leaked something within these 25
| years if they were running a tax evasion scheme or
| something else fishy.
|
| So without hard proof I repeat: Let Bill have his toys,
| it's a piss in the bucket on a global scale and the
| donated 100 billion dollars will have offset that in some
| way or another many times over.
|
| Let's just say my "sniff test" says good, and while not
| always right I think I am here and that's good enough for
| me.
| calepayson wrote:
| I don't think you can. I think the best we have is
| intention and Gates seems to have good intentions to me.
| comboy wrote:
| If his net effect on the climate is positive then you are
| only arguing that he could be even more efficient at it - but
| you are not in position to do that without knowing all his
| personal context. Outside you can only judge the net result -
| which is not a bad one.
| PoignardAzur wrote:
| Serious question: how bad is the footprint of Gate's yachts
| and jets and similar luxury stuff? I genuinely have no idea.
|
| I mean, having more than one of either already seems
| ridiculously wasteful to me, and I don't care if that's
| standard billionaire lifestyle.
| BeetleB wrote:
| Being a hypocrite is a fairly minor sin, and doesn't take
| away from the good he does. I could make a long list of worse
| qualities Bill Gates possesses, but I'll still acknowledge
| the good.
| yupitsme123 wrote:
| The thing that's always made me skeptical of Gates and any
| other enormous foundations is that they operate at such a high
| level and with such enormous budgets that they basically exist
| in the same "amoral" world of nation states and corporations,
| but yet they face none of the scrutiny or criticism that those
| entities face.
|
| How do you judge the actions of someone when those actions are
| powerful enough to move markets, take down regimes, and change
| people's lives for generations?
|
| We take them at their word and assume that everything they do
| is well-intentioned and good and has zero negative impact or
| secondary effects, but is that really the case?
|
| To me it seems like the only charity that can be trusted is a
| small-scale one that acts locally and with lots of
| transparency.
| david-gpu wrote:
| Why would they have to be perfect to deserve donations? A _"
| small-scale charity that acts locally with lots of
| transparency"_ may be great, or it may be terribly
| inefficient in their real-world ability to improve the well-
| being of the people they are supposed to benefit. And either
| choice would be better than not donating anything to anybody.
| yupitsme123 wrote:
| May be great or may be terrible applies to both the small
| and the the nation-state sized charity right?
|
| Maybe my judgement or efficiency is bad when I try to help
| my neighbor. Okay, whoopsie. Now apply that margin of error
| to a foundation whose decisions impact millions of people
| and possibly entire societies, possibly for generations.
| The unintended or possibly negative effects can be enormous
| and long-lasting.
| cyberax wrote:
| Small-scale local charities are fine, but they are by
| definition _local_.
|
| And even the poorest parts of the US are doing much better
| than a lot of poor countries in Africa and Asia.
| yupitsme123 wrote:
| Yes they're local, but its not like there's a limit to how
| many local charities there can be in the world.
|
| Operating at a huge scale requires you to lump people
| together into groups and make assumptions about who they
| are and what they deserve, as you've done in your example.
| To me that sounds antithetical to the concept of charity.
| And even with the best intentions, if you mess up, you're
| messing up a huge scale.
| therein wrote:
| > There's a reason they're marked as secondary beneficiaries on
| all my accounts.
|
| That's just insane. Bill Gates is absolutely not a good guy but
| you cannot be convinced to that given how much you idealize
| him. Have children. I would have replied to the sibling comment
| saying the same but comments become unreplyable once they get
| enough downvotes.
| nostromo wrote:
| I worked there and would encourage you not to do that.
|
| It'd be smarter to see who they are giving money to (which is
| all public) and give directly to those orgs. The Gates
| foundation itself spends a lot of money on consultants,
| "government engagement" (aka lobbying by another name), and
| fancy dinners.
|
| That's fine or maybe even noble for a family foundation, but
| it's probably not something individuals would want to fund.
| reaperducer wrote:
| Exactly. He doesn't need 20 years. That's just him trying to
| draw attention to himself.
|
| If he was really serious about giving away his money, he
| could write a single check to the Red Cross || Doctors
| Without Borders || _insert charity here_ and in five minutes
| be done with it.
|
| The world doesn't need more vanity charities. It needs its
| existing charities to be better funded.
| kurthr wrote:
| I'd be more willing to give this idea credit, if the total
| annual budget for the ICRC ($2B) and Doctors Without
| Borders ($1.6B) was more than a few percent of the total
| amount being proposed (>$100B invested or ~$8B/yr for 20
| years).
|
| You'd require those organizations to more than double in
| size to use the funding provided. That's not a good plan.
| Bluntly, his plan is better than yours.
|
| I've got no love for Gates, but are you just trying to draw
| attention to yourself? What's your agenda? You're the one
| making a fairly outrageous unsupported claims.
| SteveNuts wrote:
| That much wealth could probably fund every food bank in the
| country indefinitely, even at extremely conservative
| returns.
| JumpCrisscross wrote:
| > _That much wealth could probably fund every food bank
| in the country indefinitely_
|
| That seems like an incredibly stupid way to spend money
| that has been eradicating diseases and saving lives in
| countries where food insecurity isn't a choice.
| jkestner wrote:
| Food insecurity is a choice in the US? I suppose yes, if
| you mean it's the government's choice:
| https://www.nbcnews.com/news/us-news/food-banks-usda-
| cuts-im...
| JumpCrisscross wrote:
| > _Food insecurity is a choice in the US? I suppose yes,
| if you mean it 's the government's choice_
|
| That's what I mean. Like the housing shortage, food
| insecurity is trivially solved if voters cared about it.
| We don't at almost every political level.
| jncfhnb wrote:
| The Red Cross is not equipped to make effective use of all
| that money at once
| PaulRobinson wrote:
| Says who? They can (ethically) invest it and fund
| programs off a 5%-8% or better return. They can find new
| things to do. They can donate some of it into health
| research that is currently under-funded.
| JumpCrisscross wrote:
| > _They can (ethically) invest it and fund programs off a
| 5%-8% or better return_
|
| They can also lose or squander it. One of the Gates
| Foundation's value adds is monitoring.
| 2muchcoffeeman wrote:
| And with such a sum of money they would surely have to
| hire staff to work all that out. Can thy do that?
|
| I've tried volunteering at certain orgs before, I filled
| out forms and literally they rejected me because they had
| no more staff to organise and oversee more volunteers.
|
| If your solution is just invest it, well, the Gates
| Foundation may as well hang on to it (you think you can
| do better job than Buffet?) and setup a system to dole it
| out.
|
| If the org has to find new uses for it, surely the Gates
| Foundation is in a better position to get that done?
| qingcharles wrote:
| Lobbying is ugly, but essential in the system we live in. You
| have to be pragmatic about it :(
| delusional wrote:
| That depends on what you are lobbying for. I don't think we
| have to treat all lobbying the same.
| frereubu wrote:
| Anecdata, but the brother of a friend was working on malaria
| in a SE Asian country and the Gates Foundation got interested
| in what they were doing, and wanted to find out more about it
| before possibly funding some of their work. They flew the
| entire team to the US, put them up in expensive hotels for a
| few days and flew them all back. They calculated that the
| cost of that was three times their annual budget. It would
| have made more sense to me to either (a) fly someone from the
| Gates Foundation to the country so they could see things
| first hand or (b) conduct the investigation / interviews via
| the internet. Given that the Foundation's people weren't in-
| country anyway, (b) seems like the best option all round
| given the environmental costs of flying.
| michaelt wrote:
| _> They flew the entire team to the US, put them up in
| expensive hotels for a few days and flew them all back.
| They calculated that the cost of that was three times their
| annual budget._
|
| Are you sure about that?
|
| Let's say every employee gets a $1000 round trip flight,
| plus $2000 for 4 nights in a decent hotel, a total of $3000
| per head. Are you telling me that employee is paid $1000 a
| year or less?
| hermitcrab wrote:
| >I enjoy being a dev ... I think most charities would have more
| use for my money than my time, given my disability
|
| You could be massively wrong about that. Many charities are
| desparate for IT help. I am a developer and volunteer at a
| charity. I have done some IT stuff for them (mostly setting up
| some Airtable databases) and it has been (modesty aside)
| transformative for them.
| lvass wrote:
| >His foundation really does seem to do a good job with
| 'effective altruism'
|
| Can you provide some sources for this? I'm by no means an
| expert in this area, but my city happened to receive some of
| his modified A. Aegypti since 2017 and it didn't make the
| people here happy, at all. Though I don't even think there's a
| comprehensive study on how much good or harm came from it.
| skandium wrote:
| One of the great tragedies of the world is that while he is
| arguably the philanthropist with the highest positive impact in
| human history, a significant part of the population seems to
| still think he is the literal Antichrist.
| philosopher1234 wrote:
| Because, not despite. Let no good deed go unpunished.
| sam_lowry_ wrote:
| He is literally buying indulgence for his earlier sins.
| Voloskaya wrote:
| Ah yes, saving millions of kids' lives through vaccination
| and virtually eradicating polio is a way to make up for ...
| checks notes... bundling a browser into an OS and not being
| nice with open source.
|
| Some grass is in need of touching.
| dekrg wrote:
| Yes and Bill Gates is such a good guy that he even remained
| friends with Jeffrey Epstein after Epstein's conviction. To
| help children of course. Truly a Bill Gates is a true hero
| looking out for all the children.
| gambiting wrote:
| Do you have any details on the exact nature of their
| relationship, so we can read up on it?
| foldr wrote:
| Not OP, but this information is easily available by
| Googling 'Bill Gates Epstein'. I'm not trying to be
| snarky. It's just a widely covered news story.
| gambiting wrote:
| So I googled exactly that, and what comes up is mostly
| about Epstein trying to extort gates:
|
| https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2023/may/21/jeffrey-
| epst...
|
| Gates addressing their relationship:
|
| https://people.com/bill-gates-addresses-jeffrey-epstein-
| frie... https://www.cnn.com/2021/08/05/business/bill-
| gates-regrets-j...
|
| Articles saying that they met "sometimes for a few
| hours":
|
| https://pagesix.com/2025/04/15/celebrity-news/melinda-
| gates-...
|
| Etc etc.
|
| Nothing (as far as I can see, and tbh I'm not going to
| read past the first page of google results) suggesting
| that they were close friends in any meaning of the word.
|
| Like, I don't know what kind of conclusion OP wants
| people to draw out of this. A lot of people were
| "friends" with Epstein, since he knew pretty much
| everyone, there are pictures of him smiling and shaking
| hands with lots of well known VIPs.
|
| Which is why I asked OP for a source so we can just read
| about this - the whole "do your whole research" thing is
| just such an easy cop out because like you said "just
| google" doesn't really confirm anything, it's just a
| bunch of news articles from more or less reputable
| sources.
| foldr wrote:
| This is the first result for me:
|
| https://www.nytimes.com/2019/10/12/business/jeffrey-
| epstein-...
|
| "Bill Gates Met With Jeffrey Epstein Many Times, Despite
| His Past".
| dekrg wrote:
| You mean aside his wife divorcing him over his
| relationship with Epstein and it being widely reported in
| the news? I guess we will never know if Epstein and Gates
| even knew each other.
|
| For anyone actually curious and unaware there are plenty
| of new articles that talk about Gates and Epstein, it's
| not some hidden secret. However it's a topic those who
| like Gates philanthropy like to ignore and pretend it
| doesn't exist as can be seen in this thread.
| gambiting wrote:
| >>You mean aside his wife divorcing him over his
| relationship with Epstein
|
| She divorced him over Gates cheating, not over the
| relationship with Epstein - if I'm wrong please correct
| me.
|
| >>like to ignore and pretend it doesn't exist
|
| I honestly don't want to, like the other commented said
| "just google" - so I "just googled" and none of the
| articles I found suggest they had anything beyond a very
| superficial relationship where they met a few times.
| Again, if I'm wrong _please_ correct me.
| dekrg wrote:
| Yeah, sure. Just cheating.
|
| >In a 2022 interview, Melinda said, "I did not like that
| he had meetings with Jeffrey Epstein, no. I made that
| clear to him," per Page Six, adding that she only met the
| child sex offender once because she "wanted to see who"
| he was. "I regretted it the second I walked in the door,"
| she went on, adding, "He was abhorrent. He was evil
| personified. My heart breaks for these women."
| https://www.hindustantimes.com/world-news/us-
| news/melinda-ga...
|
| If you just Google what Bill Gates later said then of
| course you will find how he only met a few times.
| https://www.nytimes.com/2019/10/12/business/jeffrey-
| epstein-...
| gambiting wrote:
| Well but that's _exactly_ what I was asking for - thank
| you for posting this. I asked to be corrected and I was.
|
| But let me quote what the article you linked says:
|
| "claimed that Bill had met the disgraced financier on
| "numerous occasions." One of those meetings allegedly
| lasted for hours."
|
| Does that sound to you like they had a deep relationship
| of any kind? I'm just trying to form my own view on it -
| and that just doesn't read to me like the kind of
| relationship that people try to portray it as. If I met
| with someone "numerous times, sometimes for hours" you
| wouldn't immediately think we are friends or that we even
| share any values together, would you?
|
| >> https://www.nytimes.com/2019/10/12/business/jeffrey-
| epstein-...
|
| I can't access that without a sub, you'll have to give me
| the jist or some quotes.
| exoverito wrote:
| Bro you're on Hacker News and you don't know how to get
| past a NY Times paywall. Embarrassing, though
| unsurprising given your blue-pilled beliefs.
|
| https://web.archive.org/web/20250505081209/https://www.ny
| tim...
| gambiting wrote:
| What do you mean by blue pilled beliefs?
|
| And thank you for the archive link, I didn't know you
| could do it this way. If this surprises you then I'd link
| to link you this:
|
| https://xkcd.com/1053/
| lobotomizer wrote:
| More like making up for enabling genocide through critical
| support for the Israeli and US militaries.
| BSOhealth wrote:
| My guess would be, actually a very small number of people think
| he's the antichrist. Why would anyone other than someone with
| decades of operating system passion even care who this guy is?
| They know he's a rich guy. Big deal. I'd guess most people just
| live their lives and don't care about Microsoft monopoly or
| FOSS or anything. The same can probably be said for his
| altruism--most people probably have no idea.
| wincy wrote:
| Huh? You must not hang around middle America, out here people
| act like Bill Gates wants to vaccinate all of Africa in order
| to sterilize them and also put microchips in your brain. I
| guarantee if I asked five random people on the street in
| Kansas about what they think of Bill Gates, half of them
| would say "oh right he's like doing bad stuff with the
| Illuminati?" or something similar.
| nicce wrote:
| But that is not Bill Gates' fault because he hasn't been
| doing it in reality. I think the difference still matters.
| Only the restricted set of conspiracy theorists and their
| audience thinks otherwise.
| macintux wrote:
| That 'restricted set' is incredibly powerful politically
| at the moment.
| adamc wrote:
| This is true, because Trump caters to them. It isn't
| clear that their numbers drove this -- I think rather it
| is a function of their willingness to be completely loyal
| to him, which is what he craves.
| keybored wrote:
| Let's not Trumpwash history. There are critiques of Bill
| Gates philanthropy which have no link to anything Trump
| or his supporters have ever said.
| swiftcoder wrote:
| The antivax movement has been demonising the medical side of
| his foundation for decades at this point - I'd wager the
| folks who weren't born in the 90s are more likely to have
| heard about that than about the genesis of Windows
| SoftTalker wrote:
| The antivax movement is a tiny number of fringe wackos.
| Normal people are not against normal vaccines, even if some
| of them had concerns about one recent one in particular.
| kridsdale1 wrote:
| Tiny fringe whackos yes.
|
| But they were a significant force in electing the current
| president and his health secretary who is currently
| endangering whether we all get a flu and Covid booster
| this autumn.
| jonas21 wrote:
| 16% of American adults believe that vaccines are unsafe
| [1]. That's 40 million people, which is not exactly a
| tiny number.
|
| While concerns about the Covid-19 vaccine are highest
| (24%), significant numbers of people still feel that
| "normal" vaccines are unsafe, like MMR (9%) and flu
| (11%).
|
| [1] https://www.annenbergpublicpolicycenter.org/vaccine-
| confiden...
| SwamyM wrote:
| Yea, his involvement with the Covid vaccine research seems to
| have made him a target for a large portion of the GOP/MAGA
| contingent. They are convinced that he wants to use the
| vaccine to implant a microchip in everyone and control them.
| Azkron wrote:
| For many people "wealthy = evil". And "poor = good". It is
| easier to demonize someone that is doing better than you than
| to admit that maybe he is just making better choices.
| keybored wrote:
| The poor can be anything. A wealthy person could have
| worked hard for it. A wealthy person could have also
| exploited others in order to get wealthy.
|
| Virtually all (meaning systemically) very wealthy people
| had to exploit others to get to their very wealthy state.
| throwaway5752 wrote:
| Some people will always believe some dumb shit. There is no
| tragedy, just the regular condition of many people being
| ignorant.
|
| He also did awful things in the business world when he was
| younger. He's no saint, either, he is just a normal, messy
| person. But he's done more for the poorest and neediest people
| in the world than most countries.
| tasuki wrote:
| Can't he be both?
| nicce wrote:
| I think he is both. Maybe you need to do some evil before you
| can do some good, because the general evil does whatever
| necessary to win in competition, and that is challenging. He
| would have never got the money he has if he didn't do that.
| rendaw wrote:
| This is assuming that huge wealth inequality is a given and
| all we can do is pray for a rare oligarch to give some of
| that money back to those in need.
|
| Edit: I think it's great that he is doing this, but I don't
| think it's a good system. Giving money is so hard at scale
| that you need to set up a corporation just to figure out
| how to do it, and either it's so hard that they can barely
| shave away at the amount they have or their MO has evolved
| to include preserving themselves as an entity. If that
| wealth were more distributed, the social distance between
| those in need and those with money would be less.
| nicce wrote:
| We don't have general system in place that would somehow
| prevent this. The world runs on capitalism and everyone
| needs food and roof. Whoever has the power to give them
| or take them, has the total power, and can play with the
| system more they have wealth. Social democracy is some
| sort of middle-ground but it is not enough, because it is
| not applied everywhere equally, and it is hard to define
| what is _selfish_ and _non-selfish_.
| jayd16 wrote:
| Laissez-faire capitalism is not synonymous with all forms
| of capitalism. We could and have in the past curbed
| runaway wealth and power. Pretending nothing can be done
| is, at best, ignoring history.
| nicce wrote:
| Absolutely something should be done. We just haven't
| found the method yet and we should keep looking for it.
| jayd16 wrote:
| We could also decide to live in a society that doesn't
| allow for such runaway wealth consolidation we need the
| robber barons' hand-outs to do good. C'est la vie.
| nicce wrote:
| We could, but we haven't yet figured it out how to.
| neilv wrote:
| Sure you can. You have an equitable society, and when
| someone inevitably tries to take more than their share
| (because there will always be sociopaths), you make them
| stop.
| nicce wrote:
| That works only if majority agrees that we put such
| system in place and enforce it globally in the world.
| Some could say that communism was a failed attempt for
| this.
| neilv wrote:
| Why does it have to global? Isn't that just imperialism?
| Why can't it be scoped to a geopolitical unit that wants
| it?
|
| (I'm highly skeptical of social movements that claim to
| be for equality, but of course there are officials who
| suspiciously enjoy non-equal luxuries. Then it just looks
| like greedy sociopaths leveraging 'equality' PR in bad
| faith, as a tactic.)
| nicce wrote:
| There are democratic countries in Africa, for example,
| but people in there still seek "better life" by moving to
| other countries, or other countries abuse these
| countries, because the have the wealth do so, and on
| individual level, it is very hard to resist some
| additional comfort for life if you are below certain
| level. People look social media and want what others
| have. It is very difficult problem.
|
| Natural resources also are not distributed equally and
| e.g. living longer life is a basic human need. What if
| some other country has the technology to save humans but
| they don't give it for free? Some start hoarding wealth
| in order to get that and it changes the political
| attitude in general.
| jayd16 wrote:
| Heavy progressive taxes and subsidized services would go
| a long way.
| tootie wrote:
| Yeah, and vaccines are a big reason why. He has seen the
| benefits of mass vaccination first hand and was a big advocate
| for pandemic prevention before COVID. COVID really broke a lot
| of people's brains.
| codr7 wrote:
| Benefits like less people in Africa and more resources for
| the ruling class?
| closewith wrote:
| No billionaire will ever be a net positive to society. The
| wealth he accrued was literally stolen from the labour of
| millions of people. No token donations at the end of your life
| will ever remediate that situation.
| bombcar wrote:
| I don't even think you need to go that far - nobody who is
| not at least somewhat sociopathic will even _become_ a
| billionaire (Buffett, that includes you) - because they 'll
| happily step off the rat race at 10 or 100 million.
| gambiting wrote:
| >> The wealth he accrued was literally stolen from the labour
| of millions of people.
|
| It's such a weird take I don't even know where to begin. Are
| you suggesting that all people who worked at Microsoft to
| make Windows and IE and all their other products had their
| labour "stolen" from them? If yes, can you expand on that?
|
| What do you do for a living? Do you perform some kind of a
| job that you get compensated for? If yes, do you also feel
| like you're being stolen from?
| Nullabillity wrote:
| > It's such a weird take I don't even know where to begin.
| Are you suggesting that all people who worked at Microsoft
| to make Windows and IE and all their other products had
| their labour "stolen" from them? If yes, can you expand on
| that?
|
| We have a metric for the difference between what you charge
| for something and what you paid to provide it, it's called
| net income. Here's Microsoft's: https://www.macrotrends.net
| /stocks/charts/MSFT/microsoft/net...
|
| Elsewhere, we tend to call that embezzlement.
| gambiting wrote:
| That's not embezzlement by any definition of the word.
|
| >>What do you do for a living? Do you perform some kind
| of a job that you get compensated for? If yes, do you
| also feel like you're being stolen from?
|
| Care to reply to this?
| Nullabillity wrote:
| > That's not embezzlement by any definition of the word.
|
| This is just mental gymnastics on the level of "it's not
| murder when the military does it!".
|
| > Care to reply to this?
|
| No, because it's not relevant to the discussion.
| gambiting wrote:
| >>This is just mental gymnastics on the level of "it's
| not murder when the military does it!".
|
| What definition of embezzlement includes both parties
| willingly engaging in exchange of labour for financial
| compensation? I think you are right, there is mental
| gymnastic happening, just not where you think it is.
|
| >>No, because it's not relevant to the discussion.
|
| How so?
| cjustin wrote:
| I often see this sentiment whenever a billionaire is in
| conversation, but I don't understand. Can you elaborate on
| how his wealth was "stolen" from people?
|
| The way I see it, he's wealthy because he founded a wildly
| successful technology company by first creating something of
| value (MS-DOS). Microsoft has since grown to be one of the
| largest companies in the world, which hundreds of thousands
| of people voluntarily work for in exchange for a high salary,
| at least for engineers.
| vinceguidry wrote:
| Billionaires become billionaires because of preferential
| treatment by governments, not out of any kind of merit.
| There are lots of better things the world could have had,
| Linux and the software commons would be much much much
| better if Microsoft hadn't hired all the best software
| engineers to make proprietary software and if the federal
| government hadn't coddled it and overlooked its
| monopolistic practices. The Internet would be a much better
| place without the likes of Google and Microsoft throwing
| their weight around.
|
| It's perfectly accurate to say that billionaires steal from
| the public, it's just that what's being stolen isn't easily
| quantifiable because it's effectively 'potential'. Think of
| the constant enshittification of everything and you get a
| sense for what's being stolen.
| Lalabadie wrote:
| Correct. When billionaires gain money, they gain it
| personally. When several billionaires start losing money,
| it's a recession.
| Rebelgecko wrote:
| Why did Bill Gates get preferential treatment for his
| operating system over others like Steve Jobs or Vinod
| Khosla? Government connections?
| vinceguidry wrote:
| Sure. They ask him for government backdoors, to add stuff
| to it for military purposes. It's quid pro quo. Bill
| Gates gets to capture the lion's share of the wealth from
| his government-protected monopoly with all its anti-
| competitive practices and the public is left out in the
| cold.
| Rebelgecko wrote:
| So other OS's like Sun and MacOS refused to put in
| backdoors, and that's why Bill Gates is richer?
| closewith wrote:
| In a capitalist society, to a rounding error, most people
| work out of necessity - to house, clothe, and feed their
| families. This creates an inherently unequal relationship
| between capital and labour which is exploited to accrue
| wealth in the hands of a very few people.
|
| This is literal theft from the working class of the fruits
| of their labours.
| 1970-01-01 wrote:
| Are we talking about Bill putting 5G chips in our vaccines, or
| are we talking about Bill Gates the total asshole[1]?
|
| [1]
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bill_Gates#Treatment_of_collea...
| pphysch wrote:
| Anyone with a truly global perspective will notice multiple
| elephant-sizes omissions from Gates' statement. The premise
| that deep, systemic societal issues can be addressed directly
| while stepping on egg-shells around political topics is
| laughable. In 2025, you cannot separate starving kids and
| poverty alleviation from global politics and the world order.
|
| His #1 goal listed is almost offensive when you consider what
| is happening right now in May 2025 -- an utterly preventable
| scenario that he can't even mention lest it get "too political"
| and tar his image.
|
| In other words, it's perfectly valid to be skeptical of his
| motives, which seem primarily to be around elevating his
| personal brand and legacy.
| JamesBarney wrote:
| > No mom, child, or baby dies of a preventable cause
|
| This goal might offend you but it doesn't offend me, and I
| don't think his motives (whether it's for legacy or personal
| brand) matter to me or the mother of a child who didn't shit
| itself to death because a vaccine for the rotavirus.
| larodi wrote:
| This statement is so 90s and so BOFH-centered that it is
| irrelevant to a level of stupidity. Gates has done a lot to
| prove he's not a cold-hearted mf and compared to all the bros
| in their prime at the moment, dude, just think of Elon or Larry
| Ellison, well our man Billy is really very much a bright
| persona.
| posix_compliant wrote:
| Rationally, you're correct. But emotionally, there's a lot of
| people who don't understand why someone would provide a free
| service without an ulterior motive. Gates talks about this a
| bit on the Trevor Noah podcast.
| turnsout wrote:
| Agreed--I spent the 90s idolizing Jobs and despising Gates.
| But today I have deep respect for Gates and the way he's
| using his wealth as a positive force in the world. Jobs had
| better taste and was a more effective product leader, but I'm
| sorry to say that he sucked as a philanthropist. It's
| disappointing that he spent ANY of his mental energy at the
| end of his life building that dumb $100M yacht, rather than
| focusing on his legacy.
| kmoser wrote:
| Better taste? How so, and why does that matter when we're
| talking about moral character?
| kridsdale1 wrote:
| I'm making a stretch to find an answer, but there's an
| argument to be made to putting great works of art and
| beauty in to the world counts as an act of bettering
| humanity. Look at The Vatican for an example. The
| patronage of that wealth concentration gave us many of
| mankind's greatest achievements.
|
| So if you consider Jobs' boat or Apple Park or the fact
| that 700M people hold a literal masterpiece of design and
| engineering in their hands in order to send nudes and
| memes to each other a work of benevolence then it makes
| sense.
| turnsout wrote:
| It has nothing to do with moral character--just an
| opinion about Steve Jobs's strengths. Note that taste is
| subjective.
| mhh__ wrote:
| The impression I get is that he's just cold hearted but
| directing it towards charity. Not in an evil sense although
| perhaps it's lucky.
|
| People like the bill gates of the 90s don't just disappear
| crossroadsguy wrote:
| > irrelevant to a level of stupidity
|
| Is that ever?
|
| I am not saying Gates is a monster. So I am not commenting on
| him. I am commenting on your logic of doing supposed good and
| hence they becoming good.
|
| When you look at the history of most colonial monsters you
| will notice is an often repeated trend. Those despicable
| monster amassing wealth literally on the bodies of natives
| and then going back home (including some to USA) and buying a
| "good name" (sometimes literally in the form of those fancy
| titles and peerages etc).
|
| Oh by the way, Musk and Ellison from your example are benign
| non-beings compared to pretty much all those "monsters".
|
| I don't know where you are from or where you are now but a
| lot of world sees " _good_ deeds of _good_ people " with
| great suspicion.
| el_benhameen wrote:
| I think the comment was referring more to the
| antivax/conspiracy crowd who often mix Gates in with Soros,
| etc. in their stories. Still plenty of those folks.
| wongarsu wrote:
| Microsoft's company practices under Gates don't help, but
| they are far from the main issue people have with him
| nowadays. Most people aren't even aware of the things
| Microsoft did.
|
| People think he is the antichrist because he promotes
| vaccines and because there are multiple quotes of him where
| he explains that he wants to reduce the world's population.
| By raising the standard of living and giving healthcare to
| the poor, which empirically seem to cause lower birth rates,
| but lots of nutjobs assume he tests weaponized vaccines or
| something like that. And people are distrusting of people who
| appear too altruistic in general, thinking it's some kind of
| con (and often they are right).
| hamburglar wrote:
| There is a difference between reducing the world's
| population and slowing its growth rate. The highest growth
| rates are necessarily in areas with high mortality. People
| have more babies to compensate for this mortality. Improve
| mortality rates and the population growth naturally goes
| down.
| wongarsu wrote:
| Good point, "Reducing population growth" is a more
| accurate portrayal of what Gates actually said.
|
| But in practice they are the same thing. Almost the
| entire developed world has a fertility rate below the
| replacement rate. Even the upper half of developing
| countries are below replacement rate. If you bring health
| care, urbanization and the economy across Africa to
| levels comparable to Russia or Brazil we can expect their
| birth rate to similarly fall below the replacement rate
| too.
| larodi wrote:
| Well, here's something else he's saying as of like -
| today
|
| https://www.politico.eu/article/elon-musk-to-blame-for-
| world...
| knowitnone wrote:
| a significant part of Americans are dumb as bricks
| amelius wrote:
| > still think he is the literal Antichrist.
|
| And then I suppose that Steve Jobs is the Christ in this story.
|
| You only have to look at the research output of Microsoft
| Research to know that it is the other way around. Kind of weird
| how even smart people get things mixed up.
| mithametacs wrote:
| What research?
| amelius wrote:
| https://www.nature.com/nature-index/institution-
| outputs/gene...
| coryfklein wrote:
| > a significant part of the population seems to still think he
| is the literal Antichrist.
|
| Beware that you don't fall into the trap of thinking the 1% of
| the population that makes 90% of the noise on the internet is
| "significant" or a representative sampling of the population.
| Most everyone else's views are quite boring and detached from
| extremism, they just don't shout their moderation on the
| rooftops.
| marssaxman wrote:
| Al Capone ran a Chicago soup kitchen during the Great
| Depression, serving hundreds of thousands of free meals. Did
| this philanthropy absolve him of the harm done while acquiring
| the fortune which paid for the charity?
| ipaddr wrote:
| He is not the greatest. He is literally taking the playbook
| from Andrew Carnegie or John D. Rockefeller who amassed great
| wealth then gave it away. These days you have Warren Buffett or
| Saros doing the same.
|
| Many in tech were along for the Bill Gates show and felt he was
| a negative actor to the industry in many ways. The fact that he
| is taking that wealth and channeling it through charity to
| achieve what he believes is important worries many on both
| sides of the political divide because of the enormous amounts
| of power he has.
|
| Specifically over the foundation: 1. Influence Over Public
| Policy Criticism: The foundation's massive financial power
| allows it to heavily influence public health, education, and
| agricultural policy, sometimes without democratic oversight.
|
| Example: In education, their support for charter schools and
| Common Core standards drew criticism for pushing reforms
| without enough input from teachers and communities.
|
| 2. Pharmaceutical and Vaccine Influence Criticism: The
| foundation has been accused of favoring pharmaceutical-based
| solutions, sometimes at the expense of broader public health
| approaches.
|
| Example: Critics argue that funding pharmaceutical companies
| during vaccine rollouts (especially during COVID-19)
| prioritized private profits over equitable global access.
|
| 3. Corporate Ties Criticism: The foundation has invested in
| companies that contradict its stated goals (e.g., Coca-Cola,
| ExxonMobil), raising ethical questions.
|
| Example: Investments in fossil fuel companies were seen as
| inconsistent with health and development goals.
|
| 4. Global South Criticism Criticism: Some argue that Gates
| Foundation programs in Africa and other regions can be top-
| down, lacking local input, and continuing a form of
| "philanthropic colonialism."
|
| 5. Agricultural Interventions Criticism: Through the Alliance
| for a Green Revolution in Africa (AGRA), the foundation
| promoted industrial farming and GMOs.
|
| Response: Some say this undermines traditional, sustainable
| farming practices and increases dependence on multinational
| corporations for seeds and fertilizers.
|
| 6. COVID-19 Vaccine Access Criticism: Gates opposed waiving IP
| rights for COVID-19 vaccines, which some argued delayed access
| in poorer countries.
|
| Defense: The foundation claimed that maintaining IP was key to
| quality and speed, though many public health experts disagreed.
|
| He is an interesting and unique character who achieved much but
| don't polish those angel wings just yet.
| oulipo wrote:
| I'm not sure he's actually the philanthropist with the "highest
| positive impact", when looking at the "net value"
|
| he's "extorted" a lot of money from various states by locking
| and price-gouging, money that would have otherwise been spent
| on social projects
|
| basically he has done
|
| Gates -> extort money -> fantastic personal wealth -> gave back
| to organization *he* decides to give too
|
| while the normal path would be
|
| Governments and people have lower spending because they don't
| need to give Microsoft too much cash -> governments and people
| decide by themselves how to spend extra money -> there are
| more, and more diversified, humanitarian actions
| queuebert wrote:
| I didn't realize Xerox had so many employees.
| haarolean wrote:
| It's hard to take him seriously or consider him a good guy.
| While advocating for the environment, he doesn't hesitate to
| short tesla, an EV company (questionable nature aside).
|
| There are two possible reasons for this (the 'why' remains --
| not enough money?):
|
| - He's admitting he doesn't care about the environmental
| mission, just the returns
|
| - He thinks tesla is a fraud, but isn't saying it publicly
|
| Either way, it's sus, so it's tough to trust him.
| altruios wrote:
| Well it seems obvious why anyone would (and morally should)
| short tesla... but let me break it down for those in the
| bleachers with two facts.
|
| Musk 1: behind the presidential podium during the
| inauguration with the country watching twice did a salute of
| the enemy of the American people in WW2. And 2: controls the
| vast majority of tesla shares and is their current CEO.
|
| It is patriotic to short tesla. And Bill Gates clearly cares
| about the future direction of this country.
| staticman2 wrote:
| What educator taught you that to short a company was to
| attempt to destroy it and it's mission, and to go "long" on a
| company was to support its mission?
|
| I'm guessing it was Musk, and you should ask for a refund of
| your tuition fees.
|
| A Google search suggests you are paroting Musk comments about
| Gates and shorting as if they were your own ideas.
| bko wrote:
| I could understand some of the criticism for charitable work.
|
| For instance, his foundation pushes birth control in developing
| nations. On the surface, it look like a just and noble cause.
|
| But imagine how a developed nation would view an act like this
| on its own people from a foreign body. Imagine some wealthy
| Chinese national started taking out ads on American television
| telling Americans to have fewer children and going to poor
| neighborhoods in the US and handing out free contraceptives.
|
| It's a kind of soft imperialism and social engineering that I
| imagine a lot of people object to. The guy can't even keep his
| marriage together and he's insistent on telling people half way
| around the world how to run their life?
| pessimizer wrote:
| You'd be saying the same thing about Epstein if he hadn't been
| caught.
|
| What I don't understand is the comradeship I see in people
| competing to effusively praise oligarchs. Bill Gates fought
| against technological progress, fought against free and open
| source software, fought against antitrust, even bribed
| officials to push out competitors. Why would people pat each
| other on the back for admiring him?
|
| Even afterwards, when he bought his redemption by showering
| money upon dubious nonprofits, and by creating other, even more
| dubious nonprofits - simply paying everyone who could possibly
| have a problem with him, including dozens of journalistic
| organizations and hundreds of individual journalists - all of
| his charitable efforts are still obviously ways to play with
| various social theories that he has, not to help people.
|
| It takes a real psychopath to accumulate that much power, with
| so few principles, and then to use it to play games with
| people's lives. His entertainment and the entertainment of his
| class is endangering the world.
|
| And I still listen to Michael Jackson, so whatever, but we know
| that his relationship with Epstein was pretty extensive, and
| what was said during his divorce (in relation to that) was
| alarming, as well as the fact that he immediately crumbled and
| gave her the farm. There's your conspiracy theory; I'm not
| going to be caught praising a guy for mosquito nets whom I
| pretty much knew hung out with Epstein for a time as intensely
| as anyone else did. Epstein was giving away money for elite
| approval, too.
|
| What's money for if not for patronage? You can't take it with
| you.
| BurningFrog wrote:
| A lot of people genuinely believe that all rich people are
| evil, and that they somehow have stolen their wealth.
|
| That people can _create_ wealth is alien to most people!
|
| They think wealth is money, which leads to a zero sum belief
| system. That is, if Bill has $200B, he must have taken it from
| the rest of us.
| legitster wrote:
| It's interesting he decided to go this way rather than put it
| into a sustainable trust and just trickle money out indefinitely.
|
| I suspect he believes that these causes need shock therapy. To
| eradicate a disease, you are better off doing it all in one go.
|
| I also wonder if he looks at something like the Ford Foundation
| and realize in the long run that any charitable trust will just
| turn into an overstuffed political advocacy group that does
| little to advance his charities or even his legacy.
| biophysboy wrote:
| His strategy also may have changed due to recent events
| affecting foreign aid...
| ghaff wrote:
| Was just talking with some folks last weekend about this in a
| different context. Open-ended foundations can easily have their
| missions drift and also become essentially sinecures for an
| executive director.
|
| Ford Foundation is a great example of what can happen. Olin is
| a good example of a foundation that was set up to dissolve
| after some length of time.
| ivape wrote:
| I've always wondered about the Gates and Buffets commitment
| about giving away their wealth in death. It assumes that the
| people of the future are more worthy of it than the people of
| now. Whatever poverty will exist in the future also exists
| now. I suspect they've thought about this too, hence the
| acceleration. If anything, addressing the issues now has a
| chance of reducing the issues in the future.
|
| There's always something to learn from everyone. Elon
| reiterated one thing frequently - "We have to get to Mars
| soon because I don't want to be dead before it happens"
| (paraphrasing). If this philosophy is used for the right
| purpose, we can get some cool things happening sooner. Recent
| events also show that there are people who are not interested
| in being charitable at all, so it's even more of an
| imperative.
| owebmaster wrote:
| > It assumes that the people of the future are more worthy
| of it than the people of now
|
| I don't think that is the assumption. The assumption is
| that people will treat them well for planning to give away
| their money without them needing to live their life without
| their precious wealth.
| Cthulhu_ wrote:
| Isn't the Gates Foundation effectively a trust in itself? I'm
| no economist, I don't know the exact definitions but the
| projects they do aren't overnight or one-off donations, they
| need long term (financial) support and guidance; vaccination
| development takes years, vaccination programs with the intent
| to eradicate diseases like polio take generations - e.g. the
| vaccine was developed in the 50's, it took ~70 years to mostly
| eradicate the virus in humans (only 30 known new cases in 3
| countries in 2022).
| adverbly wrote:
| Who manages that trust? There is not shortage of short term
| needs, and short term value added can compound over time. I
| think this is a fine approach. He's Bill Gates - his legacy is
| ensured regardless.
| gwern wrote:
| He can have other motivations. Between 2020, 2024, Mackenzie
| Bezos & Laurene Powell Jobs, the deeply unimpressive
| philanthropy of the Buffett children, and his own divorce, a
| very rich philanthropist has excellent reasons to aim for the
| foundation being liquidated in his lifetime, and not handed off
| to administrators like, yes, the Ford Foundation or Harvard...
|
| (And then, of course, given his enthusiasm for AI, there is a
| major question of whether 'keeping your powder dry' is a huge
| mistake - one way or the other.)
| calepayson wrote:
| I'm an AI skeptic when it comes to business cases. I think AI
| is great at getting to average and the whole point of a
| business is that you're paying them to do better than
| average.
|
| But I think current AI (not where it might be in a few months
| or years) is absolutely amazing for disadvantaged people.
| Access to someone who's average is so freaking cool if you
| don't already have it. Used correctly it's a free math tutor,
| a free editor for any papers you write, a free advice nurse.
|
| This sucks in a business setting but I could see it being
| incredible in a charitable setting. When businesses try to
| replace someone great with something average it sucks. But if
| you're replacing something non-existent with something
| average, that can be life changing.
|
| I'm an AI skeptic and I can empathize with his AI enthusiasm
| given the problems he's trying to address (or at least
| professes to be trying to address).
| Wowfunhappy wrote:
| > The whole point of a business is that you're paying them
| to do better than average.
|
| ...this is a really interesting idea, but I'm not sure if
| it's entirely true?
|
| If it's your business's core competency, I think this makes
| sense. You need to be better than your competition.
|
| But businesses also need a whole lot of people to work in
| human resources, write contracts, and so on. (Not to
| mention clean the bathrooms, but that's less relevant to
| the generative AI discussion.) I can certainly imagine how
| having a world-class human resource team _could_ provide a
| tire manufacturer with a competitive advantage. However, if
| those incredible HR employees are also more expensive, it
| might make more sense to hire below-average people to do
| your HR so you can invest more in tire manufacturing R &D.
| timewizard wrote:
| You could eradicate a disease by killing all the hosts. I worry
| that the people who want to "eradicate disease" don't actually
| care about long term outcomes, they just want to have their
| likeness cast in bronze, with a nice plaque beneath it, lauding
| their "oversized" achievements in life.
|
| Anyways, the type of person who can earn a lot of money in this
| economy, and the type of person who can best decide how to
| spend it altruistically, are almost certainly not the same
| person. The person who earned the money certainly understand
| this. Yet. Here we are.
| aDyslecticCrow wrote:
| Economies of scale could vastly benefit a lot of charity work,
| but few charities can attain sufficient scale to achieve that.
| There is an unfortunate amount of overhead and administration
| in charities that do not directly benefit the cause.
|
| In that sense, I suspect targeted and planned large investments
| into charities with scalable plans is a lot more efficient than
| years of trickle donations.
| fallingknife wrote:
| If you have more money than anyone else on earth, the highest
| leverage use of that money is going to be to fund projects that
| require more capital than anyone else can afford to fund and
| that governments are unwilling to fund. That way you know you
| are actually adding to the opportunity set and not just
| displacing someone else. The difficult part is, of course,
| deciding which of those projects that only you can fund will
| actually be a good bet, but that doesn't change the fundamental
| calculation. Not sure if that's Gates' strategy, but it would
| make sense if it was.
| yoyohello13 wrote:
| Gates seems like a real embodiment of "Effective Altruism".
|
| 1. Get a bunch of money by any means necessary.
|
| 2. Donate/invest in altruistic causes.
|
| Unfortunately, most people that use effective altruism to justify
| themselves hoarding wealth seem to forget the second part.
| ascagnel_ wrote:
| I was talking about this with a friend recently -- Romans
| flaunted their wealth by improving shared social infrastructure
| (open market spaces, parks, etc), and the robber barons of the
| 19th century flaunted their wealth by building cultural
| institutions (eg Carnegie libraries).
|
| It seems like most "effective altruists" want to do things that
| help "humanity" but don't help "people" -- so developing
| technology to explore the stars is on the table, but fighting
| poverty is not.
| zozbot234 wrote:
| > It seems like most "effective altruists" want to do things
| that help "humanity" but don't help "people" -- so developing
| technology to explore the stars is on the table, but fighting
| poverty is not.
|
| You seem to have very weird ideas about how EA funding works
| in practice. Long-termism is flashy and peculiar so it gets a
| lot of excess visibility, but "fighting poverty" tends to get
| the bulk of EA money, and the most controversial cause that
| still gets real sizeable funding seems to be animal welfare.
| kridsdale1 wrote:
| Well all we in HN-adjacent spaces hear about is the EA
| people getting rich so they can build a RoccoBasilisc-
| countering super weapon or something.
| zozbot234 wrote:
| That's the e/acc folks actually. Different acronym.
| flexagoon wrote:
| > developing technology to explore the stars is on the table,
| but fighting poverty is not.
|
| Weird that you have that impression, since most EA-related
| organizations (GiveWell, Effective Altruism Foundation, etc)
| are heavily focused on donating to charities that address
| poverty or malaria in Africa
| antisthenes wrote:
| > 1. Get a bunch of money by any means necessary.
|
| This assumes the money would not have been better spent by
| giving it to the workers of the company that generated it in
| the first place.
| kridsdale1 wrote:
| Microsoft's first 10,000 employees became phenomenally
| wealthy at the IPO. That's far more of a worker paradise than
| any startup unicorn you'll see today.
| surement wrote:
| > by any means necessary
|
| This implies that they got rich by pillaging instead of
| countless people voluntarily giving them money in exchange for
| what they offered.
| AlexandrB wrote:
| They got rich by cheating, stealing, and breaking the law.
| They were even convicted of it[1].
|
| [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_v._Microsoft_
| Cor....
| guywithahat wrote:
| > by any means necessary.
|
| While I agree this is technically accurate, it implies there
| was something imoral about how he got his money. He created the
| most popular modern OS and a myriad of other technical
| innovations. It would be almost impossible to create more
| positive good in the world through his charitable donations
| than Microsoft
| AlexandrB wrote:
| This is such a whitewash of Microsoft's history. There's a
| reason Microsoft is a convicted monopolist - they used
| brutally unfair tactics to push out competitors, including
| open source ones. Have we all forgotten the IE winter when
| browser innovation stopped for almost a decade thanks to
| Microsoft killing Netscape in the crib?
|
| Microsoft is not an ethical company - a pattern that has
| continued today with their user-hostile decisions.
| kcatskcolbdi wrote:
| > We now understand the essential role nutrition--and especially
| the gut microbiome--plays in not only helping kids survive but
| thrive.
|
| Glad we finally know now that babies need nutrition.
| rswail wrote:
| which part of "not only" and "but thrive" weren't relevant to
| his point?
|
| We've always known that babies need nutrition, but knowledge of
| the role of the gut microbiome, how to develop it and ensure it
| is healthy is relatively new.
| kcatskcolbdi wrote:
| We have known well before the gates foundation descended
| their giant pile of gold coin that nutrition was required for
| children to thrive.
| burkaman wrote:
| I don't think promises like this should be considered news. Take
| a look at the list of people who have signed Gates' own Giving
| Pledge and ask yourself if making the pledge changed their
| behavior at all: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Giving_Pledge.
| Invictus0 wrote:
| Historically, it's pretty typical that rich people don't give
| their money away until their death, and the Pledge itself is
| not a statement of intent to give the money away during their
| life.
| bombcar wrote:
| Giving during your lifetime is a much, much better way of
| ensuring that it does what you want. It is very hard to
| control things from the grave, as someone administers it and
| can do what they want, as long as they follow the letter.
| abetaha wrote:
| It is heartwarming to see him continuing to give away most of his
| wealth even if he's left with a billion or more at the end, and I
| wish other uber-rich would follow suit.
| joezydeco wrote:
| You could maybe compensate all the people and companies you put
| out of business by throwing your weight around in the 80s and
| 90s.
|
| Maybe throw Jerry Kaplan a billion or two for fucking up his
| launch of the Go Communicator.
|
| Seeing downvotes, which means you haven't been around long enough
| to remember all the shit Gates pulled back in the go-go 90s. ANY
| new technology would instantly get a press release from Microsoft
| saying they were working on the same thing, leaving customers and
| investors to wait for Microsoft's product. Which most of the time
| never came or was stillborn. Gates was an asshole, and he might
| still be, but a tidal wave of greenwashing can fix anything in
| the good 'ol USA. Now he's a fucking saint, right?
| geoka9 wrote:
| My (bigger) problem with his legacy is Windows on every
| government (or otherwise important) computer and all the
| botnets and compromised elections, espionage and destruction
| enabled by it over the years.
| ChicagoDave wrote:
| That's a people problem. Not a Bill Gates problem.
|
| Any system will eventually attract corrupt people.
| cruffle_duffle wrote:
| It's too bad this guy turned into one of the bigger fear mongers
| during Covid times. He was one of the main pushers of the whole
| "New Normal" narrative and his doomsday prognostications did
| significant damage to society and generally went completely
| against every value he claimed to have.
|
| But hey, people like him got a free pass to spit whatever
| nonsense came out of their mouth as long as it was pro-doom. Good
| news was never allowed and Gates was great at stirring up fear,
| panic and bad news.
| bryanlarsen wrote:
| It's 1999 over again. The whole world was panicking that all
| the computers would blow up over the Y2K problem. Which mostly
| didn't happen because we spent billions fixing the problem.
| Were the doomsayers wrong?
| bigstrat2003 wrote:
| > Were the doomsayers wrong?
|
| They certainly were, but you've elided the reason why. The
| doomsayers were predicting that we would have complete
| civilization collapse when the year rolled over to 2000. Vast
| quantities of wealth erased by bank computer errors, planes
| falling from the sky and killing thousands upon thousands,
| etc. Such extreme scenarios were never plausible. The
| doomsayers were wrong because there was a real problem and it
| did get fixed, but that problem would never have amounted to
| the apocalyptic event they said it was going to.
| mrtksn wrote:
| It seems like he intends to give away the same way he did until
| now.
|
| How is this a good idea considering that a political instability
| can wipe out all that effort?
|
| Here's an idea: Give away your wealth to run unprofitable but
| essential "machines" like social media and news organizations to
| stop the vicious circle the humanity plunged in. Do it just like
| Musk but hand it to an independent organization that does't push
| for an agenda or profits.
|
| Russians for example, pay social media personalities to push
| their talking points or even better they pay people who push
| talking points that are beneficial to them without directly
| agreeing on the transaction. Hijack the method, pay influencers
| you believe are beneficial for your causes and ideals.
|
| It may look like just another billionaire trying to influence
| politics but you can make it into transparent institution. You
| can award prizes(monetary and honorary) like Nobel did.
|
| Wouldn't be great if Twitter was run buy a transparent
| institution that releases logs, stats and full source code and
| doesn't need to do sketchy shit? Sure it would be imperfect but
| it can be beneficial, like Wikipedia for example.
|
| Make social media into an impartial infrastructure with decades
| of runway and let people build the specialized things around it.
| tootie wrote:
| From his perspective, there are millions of people dying of
| infectious diseases and other very treatable conditions. That's
| the urgent problem and the one he can solve very directly.
| mrtksn wrote:
| True but he also says that Trump policies might kill
| millions:
|
| https://www.ft.com/content/bdd9bb89-ac3c-4043-9ca4-bc7efbd41.
| ..
|
| https://www.reuters.com/business/healthcare-
| pharmaceuticals/...
|
| He seems to agree that politics are just as consequential
| Cthulhu_ wrote:
| Throwing money at media just turns it into a financial arms
| race against other rich forces like that, with the recipients
| of that media (you and I) as the targets. The only way to win
| is not to play. Or at least support independent media, use the
| money to boost politicians that will advocate for and defend
| the free media.
| devenson wrote:
| >There are too many urgent problems to solve for me to hold onto
| resources that could be used to help people.
|
| You can't hold onto it regardless.
|
| The best you can do is choose who gets it.
| toenail wrote:
| > You can't hold onto it regardless.
|
| I can, I can take my bitcoin private keys with me when I die.
| He could do the same if he wanted to.
| bombcar wrote:
| Even that doesn't hold onto it. It just inflates the value of
| the remaining stash, and effectively "donates" it to all
| other holders.
|
| Of course, if the keys are later found, then you crash
| everyone out.
| toenail wrote:
| Nobody magically knows why coins don't move. Could just be
| generational savings.
| amanaplanacanal wrote:
| In theory, doesn't that just distribute the value to all
| other Bitcoin holders? I dunno. It's hard to think about the
| value of something this abstract.
| mithametacs wrote:
| _You_ don't hold onto it. It's just lost when you die.
|
| Heaven has no bitcoin ATMs.
| toenail wrote:
| You can't know the unknown.
| wormlord wrote:
| Remember when Gates refused to lift IP restrictions on the COVID
| vaccine
|
| https://www.wired.com/story/opinion-the-world-loses-under-bi...
| argsnd wrote:
| There were, I think, fair reasons to do this. A patent-free
| "people's vaccine" may well have reached fewer people because
| there's got to be money in scaling up the production of
| something like this.
| wormlord wrote:
| It also conveniently benefits him greatly.
| PieTime wrote:
| He's also buying up a lot of farm land in US...
| ChicagoDave wrote:
| How? Guy doesn't need anything. He's never played the
| greedy billionaire part.
|
| Vaccine IP is also a moving target. You need experts to
| work at it non-stop. Covid-19 mutates every three months.
| dyauspitr wrote:
| Thank you Mr. Gates, for everything your foundation has
| accomplished.
| WillAdams wrote:
| Can he do something to make up for taking away MacBasic?
|
| https://www.folklore.org/MacBasic.html
| ferguess_k wrote:
| I actually do believe that he genuinely wants to give all of his
| money to some purposes. I mean money is just a number to him now.
| You definitely don't want to die with a huge pile of assets left
| behind.
|
| It's just that I might not agree with the purposes he chose. But
| hey, he is the boss, he can do whatever he wants.
| 999900000999 wrote:
| >The Gates Foundation's mission remains rooted in the idea that
| where you are born should not determine your opportunities.
|
| Arguably he's already done so much for billions of people. Had
| typing on computers not became the main way businesses
| communicate , anyone with bad, handwriting would be stuck in
| menial work.
|
| When I was growing up in the 90s my hand writing was so bad it
| was assumed I would never amount to anything.
|
| Then computers completely take over all aspects of business in
| the early 2000s. No one is writing TPS reports by hand.
|
| All of a sudden my horrible handwriting doesn't matter. It's
| still really bad. But I've made 6 figures for well over a decade,
| along with an amazing year at about 200k.
|
| None of this would of been possible without Gates. I also owe the
| creator of Android Andy Rubin. It's been a while ( and it might
| of been one of the other co founders), but I was able to thank
| Rubin. His response was something like "Well, we still need to
| get building applications working on Android."
|
| I've also been able to thank( on this forum) Brendan Eich, the
| inventor of my first programming language, JavaScript. Amazingly
| humble for someone who helped create trillions in wealth.
|
| Apart of me thinks Gates could still lead some innovation in
| computing. I hope somehow he's still coding under a pseudonym
| perhaps, and occasionally answering tech questions.
|
| His gift to us has been this amazing industry.
| sokoloff wrote:
| > None of this would have been possible without Gates.
|
| Though he and his company did a lot to change the prevalence of
| typing, if he or Microsoft didn't come along, someone else
| would have led the computing revolution with probability 1.
| pfannkuchen wrote:
| I feel like if, in the counterfactual where people continued
| writing things by hand, as an adult you thought your
| handwriting was holding you back, you could probably improve
| it? It's not an innate property of a human, it's a practiced
| skill. And as a child there is not a good incentive structure
| to make kids who aren't for some reason perfectionistic learn
| to write really well.
| bombcar wrote:
| In no way would I want to downplay Gates' effect on the
| industry (though I personally think it was much more in the 80s
| and early 90s than in the heyday of the 2000s) I think people
| would have built computers without him, and its possible that
| we would have been better off overall in a world where the
| Amiga won, not the IBM PC, or the Mac, etc.
|
| Gates is more notable for NOT Netscaping or Sunning or
| Lotus-123ing his company than for any particular decision.
| 999900000999 wrote:
| I don't see computers being widely adapted without Microsoft
| deciding to essentially give Windows away to OEMs.
|
| Of course this was anti competitive, but it was a massive net
| good.
|
| The point is computers became extremely cheap. We're at the
| point where you can get a used laptop for 100$, install Linux
| on it and write code to your hearts content. The only thing
| limiting you is your own skill set.
|
| I don't think computers become affordable without Microsoft
| toast0 wrote:
| > I don't see computers being widely adapted without
| Microsoft deciding to essentially give Windows away to
| OEMs.
|
| I'm not sure how making the OEMs pay for a license on all
| the computers they sold (and report on those numbers),
| regardless of what was installed is 'essentially giving
| away'. Yes, the OEM price was a lot lower than the retail
| price, but OEM versions came without direct support, and at
| least for large OEMs, without all of the trappings of
| retail (wholesalers/distributors/cross marketing
| expenses/shelf rental/etc)
| FridayoLeary wrote:
| Why would bad handwriting be a barrier to success? I'm asking
| honestly. After all it's a trope that doctors have terrible
| handwriting, and typewriters and word processors have been
| around for ages. Also, talking from experience bad handwriting
| can easily be improved by paying a bit more attention to what
| you are doing and some practise.
| tgv wrote:
| What an exaggeration. We had typewriters before the 90s. Apple,
| Commodore, and Atari arguably had an earlier influence than
| Gates.
| zabzonk wrote:
| Gates (who I admire) did not invent the computer terminal, the
| word processor or the spreadsheet.
| Johanx64 wrote:
| Pretty much everything you named is simply first-to-the-market
| horror-show from design perspective.
|
| Javascript? Check.
|
| Android? Check.
|
| Windows? Again, capturing market via transitioning from DOS.
|
| They did focus on many important things like having exceptional
| backwards compatibility (transitioning from DOS, etc), and
| kernel team does a decent job usually, but none of this is
| necessarily attributable to Gates and it's simply what you have
| to do to capture a market/platform.
|
| I don't know if this is genuine sentiment you're expressing or
| just naivety, but people that can glaze this hard this easily
| usually go very far in life. I'll give you that, I wish I could
| do this.
| queuebert wrote:
| I agree with this. We had multiple windowing environments,
| all arguably superior in various ways, and we had multiple
| office suites, all with better technology than the Microsoft
| versions. Then I wonder how much worse off are we because
| Windows and Office came to predominate instead of one of the
| others? How much rent seeking has gone into building Gates'
| fortune? How much has been lost financially by innocent users
| to Windows security vulnerabilities?
|
| On the handwriting thing, I see a general decline in my
| children's handwriting because they spend so much time
| typing. That bothers me personally, since I appreciate good
| handwriting, and I would think it spills over into other
| fine-motor skills tasks.
| 999900000999 wrote:
| >I don't know if this is genuine sentiment you're expressing
| or just naivety, but people that can glaze this hard this
| easily usually go very far in life. I'll give you that, I
| wish I could do this.
|
| Ohh it's 100% genuine, I went from living on food stamps,
| multiple evictions to 200k at my peak. Making a bit less now
| , but I'm still very comfortable.
|
| Ultimately these technologies made computing and programming
| extremely easy and cheap. You can make a lot of money using
| your Windows PC to code Android apps in JavaScript.
|
| I'm a not tech purist, if it works it works. Yes better OSes
| and languages exist, but they weren't really accessible to
| me. I still suggest most new programmers start with
| JavaScript or Python so you don't get too bogged down with
| boilerplate and type systems.
| schmookeeg wrote:
| > When I was growing up in the 90s my hand writing was so bad
| it was assumed I would never amount to anything.
|
| I'm curious where you grew up? I am high school class of 1992.
| I skipped third grade, where a lot of penmanship is taught. We
| had a computer lab in Junior High (so late 1980s), I had a PC
| Clone at home that we bought in 1985. I'd turn in writing
| assignments printed on my epson dot matrix printer. To my
| knowledge, my appalling handwriting was never considered by
| anyone.
| abeyer wrote:
| This feels like one of those threats teachers use to
| reinforce something they don't have any other strong argument
| to support... while reminding you that it will end up "on
| your permanent record."
| padjo wrote:
| Is this satire? Bill Gates didn't invent computers, he just
| started the company that won the PC revolution, very talented
| and intelligent, but also well placed and lucky.
| codr7 wrote:
| And greedy/ruthless.
| toast0 wrote:
| > When I was growing up in the 90s my hand writing was so bad
| it was assumed I would never amount to anything.
|
| I dunno, my 3rd grade teacher in the 80s said of my handwriting
| "We've done all we can do. He'll have a secretary, so it'll be
| ok"
|
| Sadly, I never had a secretary; but my terrible handwriting
| hasn't been a major deterrent to getting things done.
| adverbly wrote:
| Amazing to see how much wealth he was still gaining these past
| years.
|
| This giving will have a huge impact. It sure is needed at the
| moment!
| lapcat wrote:
| > Today, the list of human diseases the world has eradicated has
| just one entry: smallpox... I'm optimistic that, by the time the
| foundation shuts down, we can also add malaria and measles.
|
| What is Gates going to do about the anti-vaxxers, especially now
| that they're running the US government health programs?
|
| Many of the problems that the Gates Foundation wants to solve are
| effectively political. In other words, the dysfunction of
| governments allows these problems to fester, such that the only,
| temporary solution is for someone like Gates to step in. What is
| Gates doing to solve the fundamental political problems? The
| foundation is trying to do the work that governments should be
| doing, so what happens after Gates dies and/or his money runs
| out?
|
| Gates has a scathing critique of Elon Musk, accusing Musk of
| killing millions of children, but that's the inevitable outcome
| of a system where everything depends on the whims of
| billionaires. Gates himself appears like a rarity among them now,
| with a bit of a conscience and sense of public responsibility. We
| may praise Gates for his philanthropy, but it would be
| irresponsible of us, the non-billionaires, to leave the public's
| welfare to chance like that, and neither should Gates, about to
| turn 70 years old, support a world that depends on his personal
| existence in that world.
| xlbuttplug2 wrote:
| Surely the people with these knee-jerk reactions lead lives that
| would hold up under similar scrutiny :)
| remus wrote:
| No criticism of the man, but I think he may fail in this part of
| his goal
|
| > People will say a lot of things about me when I die, but I am
| determined that "he died rich" will not be one of them.
|
| It's easy to forget how absurdly wealthy the very richest in
| society are. Say he started this initiative on his 70th birthday
| and he's spreading his giving fairly lineraly over the next 20
| years but dies just 1 day short of his 90th birthday, he'd still
| have about $13,698,630 to his name. I think most would consider
| someone with that money to their name rich.
| tough wrote:
| Every billionaire running these are just doing tax avoidalnce at
| the highest levels i assume?
| PieTime wrote:
| Yes, https://youtu.be/KO3-xkVACgE?si=suWJxu_TCPq37V6W
|
| Cannot ignore that his communicable disease research and
| treatment has been effective. But his school voucher and
| farming initiative have been awful. Ultimately it would have
| been better as general revenue to provide these services
| through government.
| tough wrote:
| hey at least they're doing things.
|
| i guess
|
| tbh seems a lot of this setup is also good ole corruption
| with a legal veneer of goodwill wrapping
| Spinnaker_ wrote:
| You think that they hate paying the government money so much
| that they.... give it all away instead? Yeah, that's some
| brilliant tax avoidance.
| tough wrote:
| Aren't those donations the equivalent of buying out foreign
| governments through these?
|
| Seems like that to me
| GeoAtreides wrote:
| they ''''give'''' it to their own foundation, controlled by
| their heirs....
| Disposal8433 wrote:
| In a democracy, they would give it indirectly through taxes.
| That should teach you something about both their goals and
| the world we're living in.
| akomtu wrote:
| What would you do with so much money?
|
| At his level, he doesn't just spend or give away a pile of money,
| he is somewhat like a force of nature: he controls and directs a
| significant portion of the money stream in the world. Think of
| what the Gulfstream does for air, but for money.
|
| His story started with computers: he was among the few who built
| the foundation of the technocratic civilization. Computers and
| machinery have created a good deal of prosperity, but there is a
| grave problem with it: computers and machinery have been
| completely isolated from ethics. Research in AI is no longer
| guided by what's good for humanity, but by what's possible. Today
| this manifests in such relatively innocent crimes as disregarding
| copyright and data privacy when training AI. But that's a sign of
| a deeper disease: the isolation from ethics. If it's allowed to
| continue like that, in a few decades this anti-ethical AI will
| kill at first humanity within humans and then the civilization
| itself.
|
| IMO, the biggest difference he can make now is finishing the
| story that he started long ago, by bringing the AI beast under
| the umbrella of ethical control. It won't stop it, but will
| significantly reduce the fall out.
| revskill wrote:
| The website is fast, Gates knows how to make a website !
| adamc wrote:
| It's a noble goal.
|
| But the track record of the rich does not inspire confidence that
| this is the route our society should take in reclaiming these
| assets.
| SoftTalker wrote:
| He's almost 70. Pretty optimistic of him to think he's still got
| 20 years.
| dexwiz wrote:
| High 80s is doable with the best care in the world and no
| chronic health issues.
| IncreasePosts wrote:
| And his dad lived for 94 years
| xyst wrote:
| The thought that a _few_ benevolent billionaires will save the
| world was a preposterous notion in the 2000s and is still an
| absurd notion today.
|
| This is nothing more than a billionaire (with a rich history of
| his own in destroying society) trying to buy his reputation back.
|
| Reminds me of all of the billionaire shitheads (Walmart/Walton
| Family, Purdue Pharma/Sacklers, ...) that buy the naming rights
| on education facilities, dying arts academies, and even
| libraries. Nothing but trying to wash away the guilt.
|
| Our shitty family contributed to the opioid addiction en masse
| all in the name of profit, but hey at least you get a reduced or
| free tuition to pristine art academy or academic institution (if
| you meet criteria).
|
| Tax the rich. End subsidies given to ultra wealthy.
| jmward01 wrote:
| I am glad to see this approach by Gates, but relying on
| billionaires to do the right thing is not a reliable strategy for
| society.
| justanotheratom wrote:
| Use to admire Gates, and good on him for doing what he is doing.
|
| For me now, this statement by Larry Page resonates better:
|
| "You know, if I were to get hit by a bus today, I should leave
| all of it to Elon Musk."
| mikkelam wrote:
| >While I respect anyone's decision to spend their days playing
| pickleball, that life isn't quite for me--at least not full time.
| I'm lucky to wake up every day energized to go to work
|
| Bit of an unfair comparison though.. Most people dont retire from
| a job where you're literally handing people money.
|
| That said, I'm a huge fan Bill's work post-microsoft :)
| codr7 wrote:
| He did a good job at cleaning up his public image, no doubt
| that cost quite a fortune.
|
| Still the same greedy asshole though.
| beloch wrote:
| The one problem Gates doesn't seem willing to tackle in earnest
| is the billionaire problem.
|
| i.e. Somebody close to the control of money funnels a
| disproportionate (based on expertise, intelligence, effort,
| contribution, etc.) amount to themselves. They quickly come to
| view this as the just natural order and view anyone who disagrees
| as a communist hater.
|
| Elon Musk is the current best example. Despite spending most of
| his time at twitter last year, Tesla was trying to set Musk's
| compensation at over $100 billion[1]. For what, exactly?
|
| Bill Gates was every bit the problem billionaire in his own time.
| Only a tiny proportion of billionaires ever decide to engage in
| significant philanthropy, much of which wouldn't be necessary if
| their peers weren't draining society of the capital to do it's
| own research and building. Some argue that billionaires can serve
| society by hoarding resources and then directing them
| intelligently in directions governments are too stupid to
| consider, but that argument falls flat if _most_ billionaires
| never get past the hoarding stage. Gates has called on his peers
| to do more. Few have listened.
|
| It's great that a few former robber barons are engaged in serious
| philanthropy, but it's like slapping a band-aid on a bullet
| wound. It would be far better to stop the shooting. Reigning in
| executive pay would be a solid start. How do we do that?
|
| [1]https://www.investopedia.com/elon-musks-multi-billion-
| dollar...
| bilbo0s wrote:
| Sorry. But you don't get to be a billionaire working as an
| executive.
|
| Don't misunderstand me, I'm all for reigning in excessive
| executive pay. We should do so in any case. However, what I'm
| trying to say is, we can reign in executive pay as much as we
| like, and billionaires will simply siphon that leftover money
| to themselves in addition to the money they currently hoover
| up.
| srvo wrote:
| This is the way that foundations and endowments should operate.
|
| Too many well-intentioned organizations wind up milquetoast tax-
| exempt hedge funds aimed primarily at self-preservation because
| the received wisdom is that they should focus on building
| endowments and keep their withdrawal rates below 4% in order to
| achieve immortality.
|
| I'm a big believer in research-driven philanthropy and mission-
| driven organizations. But i've seen the institutional desire for
| self-preservation supersede essential purposes at a few of them,
| with disastrous implications for their effectiveness.
|
| The Gates foundation probably controls ~5% of the ~$2T that
| charitable foundations have in endowments globally. If the
| majority of these organizations adopted these sorts of depletion
| goals, their program budgets could probably more than double.
|
| Thank you for coming to my TED talk.
| nojvek wrote:
| If wealth can be immortal why deplete it?
|
| All money spent is voting for allocation of resource. Sometimes
| there is too much money fighting the same goods in which case
| it may not be a good allocation of resources. That money can
| sit to become more money.
| Arainach wrote:
| At a societal level, immortal wealth is incredibly bad.
|
| At a personal level, because wealth sitting still, having 4%
| pay for the overhead of maintaining the 96% and then using
| the pennies left doesn't accomplish much of significance.
| aDyslecticCrow wrote:
| You can always wait another year. And then another. When is
| it time? 50 years? 100 years? "We will maximise good by
| donating it all in 1000 years" is questionably not a charity
| at all; it's just a massive pile of money that isn't used for
| anyone but paying the people sitting on it.
|
| Even if you trick-feed donations to charity over 100 years,
| the sums may be insufficient to reach a usable scale. - A big
| investment in research. - A concentrated push to vaccinate
| against a Disease so it goes away for good. - An
| infrastructure investment that lifts a community out of
| poverty.
|
| These themselves produce "good over time," perhaps even
| faster than the money in the fund rises in value. It's a
| balance, but immortal trickle donations are likely quite far
| off to one direction of that scale.
| heresie-dabord wrote:
| > Thank you for coming to my TED talk.
|
| Ha ha, well here's mine. First, I'm way ahead of Mr Gates: I'm
| already worth almost nothing.
|
| But _if I had billions to give_ , I would be supporting Science
| Education, Democracy and Journalism. Scholarships for bright,
| motivated students.
|
| With all due respect to Mr G, I don't believe any of his
| objectives is possible with stable, educated, science-
| orientated social progress. Humanity depends on it.
| peter-m80 wrote:
| Bullshit. He's not donating. He's investing.
|
| It would be more effective to use his wealth to put a president
| that is not a war criminal and stop making US the bully of the
| world. That would be a blessing for humanity
| swyx wrote:
| i think it is telling that we trust Bill Gates to give away his
| wealth more effectively than if the same assets were handed over
| to the UN or some other global health charity. why?
| iancmceachern wrote:
| Good, I hope they distribute it in ways that last, and have
| lasting positive impact.
| MagicMoonlight wrote:
| How brave, giving all your money away by the time you will die.
| When you've got absolutely no skin in the game.
|
| Why not just do it now? Why did you act so evil for decades? You
| don't just get to "be good" now
| Levitz wrote:
| I can go on and on on how Bill Gates has done immense damage to
| software freedom etc and that is precisely the reason I will
| very much allow him to "be good" now.
|
| Doesn't fix what he has already done, totally, but not only is
| he away from that now, he is doing stuff I actually respect.
| Absolute best case scenario.
| rvnx wrote:
| It could have an unintended effect.
|
| Injecting this money may create inflation and accidentally
| increase poverty as more money becomes freely available and
| circulating.
|
| Could be in some way better to just destroy it ?
| guywithahat wrote:
| While I agree giving away money can have negative secondary
| effects, destroying the money makes no sense and is positively
| moronic. He should just give it to his kids if he doesn't know
| what to do with it.
| BirAdam wrote:
| I'll take a million, thanks.
| dayvid wrote:
| I really like the idea of a non-profit with an end goal. It makes
| it much more targeted and accountable. Even providing bonuses
| (within reason and making it difficult to game) for completing
| the goal quicker would work as well.
| astrolx wrote:
| "Taxes, taxes, taxes. All the rest is bullshit in my opinion."
| https://www.vox.com/future-perfect/2019/1/30/18203911/davos-...
| seraphsf wrote:
| Bravo!
|
| Future generation will be richer and better-off than the present.
| Saving your charity for the future is, effectively, stealing from
| the poor and giving to the rich.
|
| Also, giving now maximizes the compounding effect of your
| charity. Saving 100 lives today is way better than saving 10
| lives every decade for the next 10 decades.
| brutuscat wrote:
| Nice! And with what he will be left he could, if he deploys it
| also during 20y, help 1200 people per month. With 1k daily give
| aways.
|
| https://ayudaefectiva.org/simula
|
| Or with 10k daily, 310k monthly, adjusted by historical inflation
| it's 100 million during 20 years.
|
| That's 3 million people helped.
| fallingknife wrote:
| The only less beneficial way I can think of to use his money
| would be to turn it all into cash and set it on fire to lower
| the money supply.
| toast0 wrote:
| I've been getting email for 3 decades about Bill Gates giving
| away his money like this.
| keybored wrote:
| I try not to spare a thought to what the true person or character
| is when they have the means to buy their reputation a hundred
| times over.
| CIPHERSTONE wrote:
| I don't see his post as an attempt to self-promote as some
| commenters here have made. To what purpose? He's already known to
| most adults, already rich beyond anyone could possibly dream to
| be. And it sounds like from the post that he already had this
| path planned albeit several decades after his death.
|
| I think accelerating that timeline is a good thing as I think he
| will be better than anyone who came after to direct how the funds
| as applied.
| Ecstatify wrote:
| It looks like he's been focused on building his public image
| over the past few years, perhaps aiming for a Nobel Prize.
| Beijinger wrote:
| Not all of his wealth is so clean as it looks.
|
| The competition against Linux was often nasty. Governments often
| got a bad deal. Think Munich and Linux.
|
| And I still remember ugly stories about licensing of windows and
| Africa. This was not necessary Billy who did it, but he profited
| from the corruption.
|
| Admire Linus. Admire Richard Stallmann. Don't admire Bill.
| Beijinger wrote:
| I am not sure why this gets downvoted. Just google it.
|
| https://www.lioness.co/post/microsoft-is-using-illegal-bribe...
| ghssds wrote:
| Look at me! Look at me! I give money! Look at me while I'm doing
| it!
| esoterae wrote:
| The fact that this must occur to address even a portion of
| humanitarian necessity is an indelible indication that our
| current government systems are incompetent likely through
| capture.
| Taqas wrote:
| I've been reading about him giving away his fortune for 20 years.
| If I say I give away my fortune it's done within a week. Yet, he
| is still one of the richest people on earth. He's done good, but
| still I'm cynical about his motives.
| johnwheeler wrote:
| You can't spend 2 hundred billion dollars in "weeks". Haven't
| you seen Brewster's Millions?
| Falimonda wrote:
| What do you believe are his motives?
| n2dasun wrote:
| My body is ready
| dhosek wrote:
| Oh man, I shouldn't have deleted that email from Bill Gates
| offering me four million dollars that ended up in my spam folder.
| jll29 wrote:
| It is an interesting game-theoretic question how to spend money x
| (say, hundreds of billions) to maximize good.
|
| - Should you first educate anyone who cannot read or write?
|
| - Should you first feed anyone hungry/thirsty?
|
| - Should you first provide shelter for all without homes?
|
| - Should you first make peace for all without safety?
|
| (all the way down the Maslow pyramid of needs)
|
| How would the philanthropic billaires united ensure peace, if he
| had even more money? (Should one "buy" a military force that is
| mightier than any country's, to send out the message that every
| nation that started an armed conflict would regret it? Not sure
| if that could suppress war, but perhaps one would not feel
| inclined to call that "peace"...)
|
| If I had the financial means, by gut instinct I would start out
| with the most vulnerable, those that can least help themselves,
| e.g. orphaned small children, the handicapped, the unborn.
|
| However, in a geopolitically unstable world one could then argue
| it is a "waste" of resources to help people by first feeding them
| when they get invaded and killed by their neighboring country
| soon after. But creating world peace has historically not been
| something that a single person - billionair or otherwise - has
| been able to solve.
| daveguy wrote:
| > If I had the financial means, by gut instinct I would start
| out with the most vulnerable, those that can least help
| themselves, e.g. orphaned small children, the handicapped, the
| unborn.
|
| You left out expectant mothers under control of a repressive
| regime that demands their death sacrifice.
| svieira wrote:
| Mothers are vulnerable too. All that means is that two
| vulnerable people need care. The law in some places says that
| only one of them does. Anywhere that it says that, it is
| wrong.
| wewewedxfgdf wrote:
| The only billionaire worthy of deep respect.
|
| And I don't care about your Gates hating, for whatever reasons
| you have I am just not interested the cynicism and conspiracy
| theories about Gates - tell it to the hand.
| calepayson wrote:
| _high-fives the hand_
| akudha wrote:
| Good on him for giving away his fortune.
|
| Anyone else feeling uneasy that society is increasingly dependent
| on a handful of ultra wealthy people's generosity for investment
| in certain good initiatives? We live in a time where there are
| individuals who have more money than many small countries,
| governments are cutting funding for good programs while
| individuals are stepping in to help. What is the point of living
| in a democracy if big investments depend on the mood of some
| billionaire?
| eirikbakke wrote:
| The government has a fixed pie to allocate to various projects.
| Businesses, by contrast, can create more pie, from labor and
| raw materials that cost less than the value of the final
| product. So funding charitable causes with money earned from
| honest business is a win-win for society.
|
| But then we can debate if Microsoft made their money honestly
| or not. If Microsoft exploited their monopoly, then perhaps
| Bill Gates stole from the rich to give to the poor...
| purpleidea wrote:
| Bill Gates has done more harm to software and innovation than
| anyone in history.
|
| He's a bad dude, and the only reason he does all this is so that
| waiters don't spit in his food at fancy restaurants.
|
| The world suffers under the crippling weight of proprietary M$
| Windoze everywhere, and we're far worse off because of it.
|
| Want to help, donate money to support Free Software projects with
| strong copyleft licenses.
| mancerayder wrote:
| While many of us Linux and open source nerds share the
| sentiment you described, I seriously doubt waiters see him and
| remember how they murdered the competition by bundling software
| with Windows OS in the 90s and 2000s.
| orochimaaru wrote:
| You could always buy a Linux laptop or an android tablet.
| Tablets and smartphones is where windows lost. Those devices
| far outnumber PCs. Your complaint about windows is old. You
| have options to not use it today.
|
| Now he did lose my trust and that's because of two things:
|
| 1. His association with Epstein. It is documented and quite
| possibly the reason for his divorce.
|
| 2. His trust made controversial deals during Covid. The poorer
| countries wanted the formula so that they could scale up
| production themselves. However, the gates foundation supported
| the patent on the vaccines instead and had themselves and
| middlemen to arbitrate price on the supply
| piyuv wrote:
| Wrong crowd, but upvoted nonetheless.
| nashashmi wrote:
| If Bill Gates gave away 10% every year of the wealth he has,
| after 20 years, he would have remaining 12%.
|
| He should dedicate the remaining 12% to venture capital for all
| of the businesses he crushed and the people who suffered, for
| "boiling the tech space" and killing the innovation. The least he
| can do.
|
| And the rest of the rich crooks should do the same dedicating
| their wealth to reversing the harm that they caused.
| ChristopherDrum wrote:
| I have seriously mixed feelings about this kind of philanthropy.
| Yes, it is good that he's going to give his wealth away like
| this. I do not want to diminish his efforts in that!
|
| But also, why collect such wealth in the first place? What was
| the point? Was the money really better off being hoarded by one
| person with the _fingers crossed_ hope that they 'll spend it
| altruistically someday? The existence of the wealth imbalance
| itself, and the general practice of wealth hoarding, are
| frustrating counterbalances to the good of giving it away.
___________________________________________________________________
(page generated 2025-05-08 23:01 UTC)