8 ms·

I mean, what else are you going to do with $45 Billion? Build a really big house? I've had the opportunity to rub shoulders with a few billionaires over the pa

• AndrewKemendo 11y ago
  >I mean, what else are you going to do with $45 Billion? You are thinking about it the wrong way. You don't spend $45B on stuff for yourself. You spend $45B on changing the way governments and populations live work and how power is balanced. When Bud Fox asked Gordon Gekko "How much is enough" Gekko knew immediately that Fox wasn't in the same league. Money isn't about stuff, it's about power and influence.
  • cwe 11y ago
    Which is exactly the type of stuff Zuck is talking about here, although in less power-hungry ways. So you're kind of proving @austenallred's point.
    • toomuchtodo 11y ago
      I think Zuck is still power hungry, he's just more veiled about it. Everyone with enough power (through money) wants to shape the world in their specific ideal.
      • AndrewKemendo 11y ago
        I'd go one better: "Everyone ... wants to shape the world in their specific ideal." Most people give up on this idea in their mid-20s though or never really believe that they can.
        • circlefavshape 11y ago
          That's because most people actually can't.
      • chc 11y ago
        If we define "power-hungry" so broadly that it encompasses merely wanting to make the world a better place, I'm not sure what use the term is anymore.
        • bigbugbag 11y ago
          I sincerely doubt Zucker wants to make the world a better place, else why would he be doing the opposite while making billions out of it ? Usually a billionaire giving his fortune away does it out of vanity, out of guilt, for the tax breaks, out of conviction that their success in business makes them equally expert in solving the world’s problems or last but not least as “legacy” as explained by John Caudwell: http://www.theguardian.com/society/2012/mar/07/new-philanthropists-wealthy-people http://www.theguardian.com/society/2012/mar/07/new-philanthr...
          • Veedrac 11y ago
            I sincerely doubt he thinks he has been doing the opposite.
          • reddytowns 11y ago
            What is so awful about Facebook? I mean it's hardly an original idea, and if Facebook never existed, I'm sure that Myspace or Friendster or some hereto unknown company would have taken its place. It's like hating Ford because they make cars, while ignoring all other automobile companies.
            • DanBC 11y ago
              Yur analogy makes more sense if Ford make cars that contain cameras and microphones and they monitor everything you say and do and where you go and they send all that information back to the mothership. And they want to build cars for all poor people, but those cars can only travel to certain destinations on certain roads, but Ford making and providing these cars means other organisations who sell bicycles or mopeds or small cars (which provide a lot more freedom) are hampered.
        • toomuchtodo 11y ago
      • Chathamization 11y ago
        Agreed. The fact that they're having a big press release about all the awesome stuff they're going to be doing before they've done any of it, heck before they're even ready to say what they're actually going to be doing, is telling. As is naming their initiative after their daughter. It's nice when vanity projects end up helping the masses (and we'll have to wait and see how successful it is at that). However, we shouldn't act like this very public display of wealth (again, before anything is even done) has motives that are so different from, say, giant statues of oneself or giant mausoleums.
        • deleted 11y ago
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        • lifeformed 11y ago
          How is any of that stuff bad, though? Seems like a good trade. You put $45B into improving the world, we'll sing your praises. What's the difference between it being all done in vanity and it being all done in goodwill? It's literally the same thing to the rest of the world, the only difference is some internal chemical state in his brain.
          • psykovsky 11y ago
            Except he still didn't do a thing besides putting out a press-release. Do you think his real intentions will not shape the way he acts in the future? How can you say it is a good trade when no trade happened yet?
            • lifeformed 11y ago
              You think he's going to just put a press release out and not actually do it?
              • psykovsky 11y ago
                I still remember what Internet.org was supposed to be and what it turned out to be. The man is an egocentric liar.
      • ArkyBeagle 11y ago
        I see more and more that hubris is apparently a deprecated concept.
    • AndrewKemendo 11y ago
      although in less power-hungry ways Yes, well that's 100% the distinction. The OP seems to think that the obvious choice is for money to "go to something meaningful" without specifying what "meaningful" actually is. Within this context, that would seem to mean the "meaningful" thing is "greater -good" charity. My point is that more frequently, this type of money go toward direct influence of power like setting up Super PACs, hosting power networks like Sun Valley Conference, establishing think tanks, grants to universities for certain research etc...
  • Cookingboy 11y ago
    Exactly, when you have that much wealth, you buy things that don't have price tags on.
  • slg 11y ago
    >You spend $45B on changing the way governments and populations live work and how power is balanced. $45B is even overkill for that. Each presidential candidate spent (or had spent on their behalf) roughly $1B in 2012. Zuckerberg therefore could have doubled a candidates spending for each presidential election for the rest of his life and still have half his fortune. $45B is that huge. EDIT: The multiple downvotes seem to indicate I said something that is disagreeable. I'm not implying that buying elections would be a better use of Zuckerberg's money, just that he has so much money that elections are just more "stuff" he could buy without even thinking hard about it.
    • AndrewKemendo 11y ago
      The Koch brothers have a combined $100BN and they still haven't gotten the influence that they want. So yes, $45B is a shitload, but practically once you spread it out to where you need it to be to make the world look like you want it to, it still only makes a dent.
      • slg 11y ago
        The Koch brothers are the most influential political backers in the country and they spend somewhere in the neighborhood of $200M per election cycle. They are the closest someone has come to trying to buy an election, but even their donations are still only rounding errors in comparison to their overall fortune. Politics is a relatively cheap game for someone with tens of billions of dollars.
        • brbsix 11y ago
          It is a cheap game for someone with millions of dollars even. ROI on these sort of political contributions can be absolutely insane. Apparently corporations on average receive ~$760 for every $1 spent influencing politics. Depending on the industry, ROI is anywhere from 5,000 to 77,000 percent. http://www.zerohedge.com/news/2015-03-16/words-greatest-investment-every-dollar-spent-influencing-us-politics-corporations-ge http://www.zerohedge.com/news/2015-03-16/words-greatest-inve...
  • sytelus 11y ago
    I strongly feel this power, influence, giant houses, jets, personal cruise ships etc are old generation stuff - something that grey haired Gekko will personify. The "new rich" is dramatically different and for the better. Today's centi-millionairs wants to stay anonymous, don't want to have butlers, have houses that they can manage without permanent staff and often prefers travelling first class or renting Yatch instead of buying them even if they can afford it. The new rich sets target to make X amount of money and then "retire". Their "retirement" consist of working hard doing their favorite activities and travelling the globe to sample the "regular folks" flavors. Most of them don't have desire to keep growing billion dollar business which will sip away their time and energy. They have strong political belief but have no desire for acquiring political power directly or indirectly. They are not in to heavily influencing how rest of the population shall live. They consider time to do their favorite activities far more important than keeping money scoreboard. They want to buy fashionable cloths and accessories but not those that will immediately attract attention and single them out in the crowd. They want to be physically fit and avoid having family as long as possible. They like to invest in ideas and technology more than traditional financial instruments. I think new rich crowd will almost completely replace old generation wealthy in next 50 years or so. People who are born in this decade will have very hard time understanding philosophies and life style choices of Gorden Gekko.
    • AndrewKemendo 11y ago
      Hate to break it to you but what you described about the "new" millionaires is the majority of all multimillionaires, regardless of generation. See: The Millionaire next door
      • majani 11y ago
        I accidentally downvoted you due to fat finger error, sorry.
        • AndrewKemendo 11y ago
          Well I'm crushed, but hopefully I can get over it ;)
  • ams6110 11y ago
    $45B is not enough to change governments. That's about 4 days worth of US federal spending.
    • HaloZero 11y ago
      Yeah but it's more than enough to bribe the hell out of a lot of senators.
    • deleted 11y ago
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    • wheels 11y ago
      It's more than the annual budgets of about 2/3rds of the world's countries, including places like Croatia, or the Philippines. I'd call that politically significant.
    • kamaal 11y ago
      ISRO spent a mere $73 million to go to mars. Big and small are perspectives between what one can do and what one can't.
  • ArkyBeagle 11y ago
    Nah. It's about ego(tism). Power & influence use different currency. You have to either - 1) not know or 2) not care - how badly you'll mess this up. And you will.
• vinceguidry 11y ago
  Spending money meaningfully is hard work. John D. Rockefeller had such a hard time with it that after awhile he just left it up to his son, who devoted his life to philanthropy. At the Cleveland church he went to, significant portions of his time spent there was to write checks to parishioners. I'd say it takes roughly the same amount of effort to spend money as it does to make it. You still need an organization, you still need to make really hard decisions day in and day out. It seems that there's something fundamental about philanthropy that doesn't scale. Personally, I think the work a person does to earn that kind of money, assuming of course it's from legitimate commercial activity, is plenty enough, one shouldn't feel morally compelled to donate it back. But like you said, what else are you going to do with it? Doesn't make a lot of sense anymore to leave billions to heirs.
  • lloyddobbler 11y ago
    > Personally, I think the work a person does to earn that kind of money, assuming of course it's from legitimate commercial activity, is plenty enough, one shouldn't feel morally compelled to donate it back. Agreed. And not to get too political, but I'm thankful that individuals in the U.S. are exceptionally generous, and do think about these things. And that those who DO earn copious amounts of money have the choice of what to donate it to - rather than having 90% of it confiscated and doled out by someone else who didn't earn it.
  • visakanv 11y ago
    Relevant bit from Playboy's interview with Steve Jobs: > Playboy: What does the money actually mean to you? > Jobs: I still don’t understand it. It’s a large responsibility to have more than you can spend in your lifetime—and I feel I have to spend it. If you die, you certainly don’t want to leave a large amount to your children. It will just ruin their lives. And if you die without kids, it will all go to the Government. Almost everyone would think that he could invest the money back into humanity in a much more astute way than the Government could. The challenges are to figure out how to live with it and to reinvest it back into the world, which means either giving it away or using it to express your concerns or values. > Playboy: So what do you do? > Jobs: That’s a part of my life that I like to keep private. When I have some time, I’m going to start a public foundation. I do some things privately now. > Playboy: You could spend all of your time disbursing your money. > Jobs: Oh, you have to. I’m convinced that to give away a dollar effectively is harder than to make a dollar.
• deleted 11y ago
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• equalarrow 11y ago
  > I've had the opportunity to rub shoulders with a few billionaires over the past few weeks, and it's remarkable how differently they think about money than the people who don't have it. Yah, I don't necessarily disagree with their mindset. I've crossed a lot of spectrums, including chilling and rubbing shoulders with the rich to scraping by. I definitely do agree with a lot of the lofty 'moon shots' and some of these people have achieved remarkable things not just for themselves, but for society as well. But, with Zuck, I just don't know. Gates got rich off operating systems and crushing opponents at all costs (a success story for capitalism). Zuck, from advertising and selling 'your' data. It's admirable that he's giving 99% away, but, I just don't get a warm fuzzy feeling about it. Time will tell and I hope it turns out good.
  • austenallred 11y ago
    > Zuck, from advertising and selling 'your' data IMO that's a really narrow-minded read of what Facebook is. >1B people log into products he founded every day. He lets advertisers target you using data you've provided, as you sit on the platform he helped build, but I'm not convinced that makes him an evil dude.
    • tjl 11y ago
      My problem is him collecting data on people who aren't even using the service. They collect data on any site with a Facebook button. I don't even use the service and he has my data. I'm not getting any value from his product, so what right does he have to my data?
      • saiya-jin 11y ago
        well, I don't think there are many FB users who would like that to be done to them either, I know I am not. FB might not be some evil company, but they are definitely not nice guys.
    • joering2 11y ago
      "Dude they just give me their info. Yeah... Dumb suckers!" Okay perhaps he was young and naive. But is Facebook naive now in Belgium where they want to track people outside of facebook "for their own safety"? This is EVIL!!
• yongjik 11y ago
  ...Meanwhile, Samsung's owner Lee Kun-Hee is still officially alive (even though nobody has seen him in months after he had a heart attack), because the company still hasn't tied up all the loose ends for transferring the company's ownership to Lee's son while paying as little tax as possible. So, yes, you can do a lot worse (to your society) with $$billions. (Sorry for the rant. Please carry on.)
• morgante 11y ago
  > I mean, what else are you going to do with $45 Billion? Build a really big house? Leave it to your children so you can perpetuate hereditary wealth on a grand scale. Because your great-great-great-great-great-great-great grandchildren should never have to work, right?