13 ms·

I love the self-awareness in their response to question #8 - we are fortunate that “the king is just” in the case of the foundation, but it is very undemocratic

• qaq 9y ago
  ? It's his money that he actually decided to give away why should you or I have a say in it?
  • makotech222 9y ago
    The argument is, why do we as a society allow people to amass wealth on the scale of nations. Instead, perhaps that wealth should be democratically owned, and then put towards what the society needs, rather than what one person decides.
    • qaq 9y ago
      What is "democratically owned"? State owned companies? That has being tried did not work out too well.
      • sgift 9y ago
        That works very well and is used in many countries. What didn't work well is a state-owned economy. Two different things.
        • qaq 9y ago
          OK give a single example that is not related to raw material extraction or power generation. (A company receiving massive government subsidies to not go bankrupt would not be considered a good example at least in my opinion.)
          • Daishiman 9y ago
            Most European public transportation companies have a majority stake by the government, and they work exceptionally well in executing their mission. A huge amount of banks are government-owned and they're as profitable as their private counterparts. There's a huge number of examples (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_government-owned_companies https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_government-owned_compa...).
            • qaq 9y ago
              Most public transportation companies are subsidized. I never dealt with gov. bank that was run well but there are might be some that are. I def never heard of gov. owned software company that was doing well though.
              • BerislavLopac 9y ago
                That is the whole point. State-owned companies make total sense when their goal is to ensure some common benefit (like mass transport, public utilities, health care etc), as opposed to making profit. With that in mind, subsidies are logical, because the alternative is to have a purely state-owned system (like police or military) which has no income except for government subsidies. Essentially, if you think of government subsidies to private companies as assistance in making profit (which happens often when a government wants to promote a certain industry, even if it's only in form of a tax cut), having commercial companies to take care of common utilities is a way to assist the government paying for those utilities.
        • TomMarius 9y ago
          Can you post some examples where it works well?
          • allendoerfer 9y ago
            VW, the largest car company in the world, is partly state-owned. Same for Deutsche Bahn, KfW bank and a few others. They don't always work perfectly, but they sure can compete or are even market leaders.
            • qaq 9y ago
              VW is not run by government appointed managers and gorvernment does not have control of the votes. Now even if it did I doubt we want to use VW as an example of good corp. citizen.
              • allendoerfer 9y ago
                VW basically does what everybody else is doing (see news about Daimler and BMW). The state-owned aspect changes nothing, it just says that 30% of VWs profits go into the pockets of the German state of Niedersachsen instead of the pockets of a private investor. That was the key point of the original discussion about Gates' money and rising inequality, so the example is very valid.
                • qaq 9y ago
                  It's valid in a sense that if government does not control voting rights and plays no role in day to day operations sure there is no difference. If you start taxing the stock and transferring stock to government eventually government will have control of all entities though.
            • TomMarius 9y ago
              >They don't always work perfectly, but they sure can compete or are even market leaders. Most of the time it's because these companies are government-approved monopoly (no other company can enter the market) or because they're heavily subsidised using taxes (no other company can enter the market practically because competing against someone who you fund at the same time is impossible and because the prices are below the actual expenses) and are actually losing huge amounts of money. Typically railways all around Europe are not profitable at all. Volkswagen is a very special case, but you're partially right. I'd say it's an exception to the rule though.
    • ianai 9y ago
      Two things can happen. We can be a society that ensures social needs are met while allowing vast concentrations of wealth.
      • leetcrew 9y ago
        > We can be a society that ensures social needs are met while allowing vast concentrations of wealth. I don't know exactly what you mean by "social needs" here. you could be referring to a specific level on the mazlow hierarchy, if so, I'd like to know why you pick this specific level as the benchmark. or you might be referring to some more vague concept of societal needs. the particular definition of "needs" is very important to the validity of the quoted claim. if basic or "social" needs are defined as some absolute standard of living, this will be increasingly easy to fulfill as society grows richer. I very rarely see anyone talking about needs this way though. instead, the definition of needs seems to move as people at the top grow more wealthy. it seems more likely to me that, as long as billionaires exist and live lavish lifestyles, people will never agree that their needs are being met.
      • ryukafalz 9y ago
        Perhaps we could be. But that's not the society we live in today, and has that ever happened before?
        • deleted 9y ago
          [deleted]
      • Daishiman 9y ago
        That is, historically, false. Concentration of wealth always ends up implying power, whether soft or hard. Having such amount of power outside of democratic institutions is a threat .
        • tatersolid 9y ago
          This is, historically, true: in communist countries with “equal sharing of misery”, power and wealth was 100% concentrated into the hands of a few elites or outright tyrants.
    • bmelton 9y ago
      Because we, as a society, allow people to do things that we don't like. We aren't usually very good at it, but when you consider that it affords people the luxuries of doing things that others might not approve of, like having a relationship or marriage with a member of the same sex, or creating video games with unpopular themes, or creating rap music, or burning the American flag, etc. If we only allowed people to do the things that everyone approved of, we wouldn't actually allow people to do very much at all. Freedom, art, society, and speech would all suffer.
    • scarface74 9y ago
      While you are thinking that "we" shouldn't allow "them" to amass that type of wealth, remember that the average household income in the United States is $60,0000 a year. If you are an average experienced developer in a major city in the US - especially if you are part of a dual income household -you are probably in the 85-90th percentile. Meaning when people start voting in policies that "tax the rich", you will probably be considered one of "them" by the average working class American. Look no further than the new tax code that basically hurt the "rich" in places like CA and NY.
      • qaq 9y ago
        Very good point. People love to frame it in us vs them not realizing that most likely to majority of the world you are likely one of "them".
  • ianai 9y ago
    Yep, we should have say in it at the point where we contribute money to his largesse. Ie viable market alternatives.
  • icebraining 9y ago
    1) Why is it their money? Were the processes that funneled all that money to a single person, fair? Or are they overcompensating certain individuals? Even if we think "the deal is done" in this case, should we change things for the future? 2) We impose many restrictions on use of money. Some things can't be bought at any price; others already have restrictions (e.g. campaign contribution limits). Are all of these inadmissible?
    • kthejoker2 9y ago
      If someone in their garage invented teleportation or a cure for cancer or a battery that ran on happy thoughts, why would it not be their money? I'm not saying this is the case I Bill Gates but I'm not sure of any other way to encourage risk taking at the bottom except the promise of obscene wealth.
  • ryandrake 9y ago
    I think the point is, we're extraordinarily lucky that he is choosing to use his money for good rather than for evil (for whatever definition of good and evil exists). The idea that the public should not be involved with determining what counts as "public good" is super risky. The problem with relying on philanthropy to fund the public good is that we the people are counting on the philanthropist to have goals that align with our goals. Imagine a world where the top two richest guys, instead of deciding to use their wealth to fund vaccines and education, used it to fund warlords and dictators. We could have just as easily gotten that dice roll instead of the Warren Buffet and Bill Gates world. This is ostensibly one of the reasons "we" choose to democratically organize a government to fund the public good: So that we're not so reliant on the whims of a few rich people. It's to avoid the nightmare scenario where the worlds richest person decides instead to use his money for evil. Not saying that government can't use their power for evil, just that, at least in theory, we can vote in new government. We can't vote for different World's Richest People.
    • hawkice 9y ago
      This is deeply strange to me. If he wanted to support an evil empire or grow a petroleum multinational, you admit you'd have no say. But Gates wants to serve the public good -- now suddenly you're in charge. Seems backwards, at the very least.
      • ryandrake 9y ago
        I'm saying we, the public, are not in charge either way, and we're very lucky he wants to actually serve the public good.
    • qaq 9y ago
      "The idea that the public should not be involved with determining what counts as "public good" is super risky". You are involved in democratic process that drives the laws being passed which not only can determine "public good" but actually enforce behavior that will maximize "public good".
    • dotancohen 9y ago
  • patja 9y ago
    There is an argument that the tax breaks mean that some portion of the money is really the public's and should serve the public interest. When you give a million to a charity and get a tax break for 250k or 300k or whatever, is that money really yours? If you hadn't given it you would only have 700k or so, not 1m. You would not have all of it if you hadn't made the gift.
    • schoen 9y ago
      Apart from any philosophical considerations about whether the money is "really yours", this evaluation is already built in to the 501(c)(3) process because the IRS reviews charities before granting them that status to see if they serve a public purpose. Not all not-for-profit organizations quality. The status can also be revoked if the IRS determines that an organization isn't meeting the 501(c)(3) criteria in the future. You can't get the tax deduction by donating money to organizations that haven't passed through this review process.
    • qaq 9y ago
      At this scale you you would have 1m of stock that you would not have to sell if you didn't want to donate that 1m to charity. How that would make things better?
  • madez 9y ago
    It's so trivially obvious and endlessly discussed that things are taken away from individuals by the society for the greater good, for example with taxes, that your comment has no substance and gives no insight.
    • qaq 9y ago
      He is not trading in money he is trading in ownership to give to charity. There are many individuals that are not doing that and for the most part no country is taxing owning stock.
      • madez 9y ago
        I avoided focussing on the financial aspect, because even ownership of things/lands/rights can be, and is taken away from individuals by the society under certain conditions. It is intellectually lazy and moot to say everybody is free to do what they want with what they have (be it money or not) because that's not how we live nor want to live. A proposal to take from an inidivual for the greater good can be worth a discussion. Just crying out for extremist, reality-ignoring individualism is not an acceptable comment worthy of HN, in my eyes.
        • qaq 9y ago
          Coming from USSR no surprise to me that left leaning individuals deem it acceptable to determine what is worthy or not worthy to be discussed. Those certain conditions are very narrow and in societies were they are not narrow USSR, North Korea etc. things have not worked out too well.
          • madez 9y ago
            There are successful countries with very high taxes and other means by which the society takes from individuals. Just the amount of how much is taken is not an important metric. It does not matter how much is taken, but under what circumstances, i.e. is it equal law and equally binding for everybody, was it decided in a democratic way, is it used for what it is intended for, and can it practically and effectively be challenged in a fair trial? Please, let's discuss proposals, but reasonably and with thoughtful arguments, and not with "? It's his money that he actually decided to give away why should you or I have a say in it?".
  • mars4rp 9y ago
    Because it is tax deductible!
    • qaq 9y ago
      It's sale of stock to fund this donation. He would not have to pay any tax if he simply keeps the stock.
  • MrLeap 9y ago
    It's as simple as society gives his money value, and American society is getting anxious and resentful. As an abstraction, I like to think of money as crystalized human effort. Society makes decisions by the power of individual behavior in aggregate. A bunch of people buy a ~new thing~. Over time and at scale, society creates a river of money towards the ~new thing~. Its depth and breadth calibrated to reward other people for working towards bringing that ~new thing~ to society. Entrepreneurs gather marketing, sales and laborers to build a village by the river. This is society's intuitive understanding of business. Society's intuitive understanding of competition between villages is that it occurs as an innovation arms race. Lower prices, better products are the result. The experienced village builder learns that the best way to win is to divert the river into a cave and build a moat around the entrance. Patent portfolios, information asynchrony, non compete employee contracts, vendor lock-in, yearly subscriptions, Byzantine government regulations and a hundred other things deepen your moat. These kinds of moats improve your margin -- but in a different way than what society is used to. It isn't resulting in better products at lower prices, it's making competition more difficult. Other experienced builders try to take a tiny drop from every river, for every transaction. They're starting to build their villages vertically and profit from the organically grown river network. Exploiting insider knowledge on the foreign exchange market, transaction fees, whatever. These kinds of businesses intercept money that would normally return to society when the people in the villages go home. The village builders have begun consolidating and moving upstream, getting closer to society. Society has BENEFITED. Their desires are now easier and faster to fulfill than ever before! And yet.. society (remember, people in aggregate) is starting to get weary. Most people are restless and anxious, despite full employment, stock market blowing up, etc. Your average person can feel the reservoir getting lower, while other people are filling lakes. "U.S. consumer spending rises; savings drop to 10-year low". Money is power. Your average run of the mill person is slowly shifting from a belief in the Virtuousness of the American System, Land of Opportunity to one of Powerlessness within inevitability of whatever that system hands you. Ultimate power is derived from a mandate from a masses, and most people on some level know that! They just feel like they're strapped in to a slow motion train wreck, and they're afraid of how it's all going to end. Just my opinion on why people might have the audacity to discuss and critique how some billionaires spend their money.
    • 9y ago
• TomK32 9y ago
  > it is very undemocratic for the wealthy to solely pick causes they care about at such a large scale. This is my biggest critique about charities, but if there are transparent rules and processes that can be fixed. But in general, I think the govt would be a in a better position to serve their people than charities would.
• jVinc 9y ago
  While some might feel that it is unfair for the market to decide who gets billions and who gets nil, democracy isn't perfect either. Frankly I feel more comfortable having Bill Gates picking what causes are just than Donald Trump.
  • sharkweek 9y ago
    I’m not assuming your politics here, but replace Bill Gates with Koch Brothers, and Donald Trump with Barack Obama, would you still feel comfortable with your statement?
    • JasonFruit 9y ago
      I'm not the GP, but I'm comfortable saying I'd prefer for people to decide what to do with their own money than have politicians do it for them, yes — even if they put it toward causes I don't personally consider wise.
    • scarface74 9y ago
      I use to believe that the Koch Brothers were the boogeyman. No, I don't agree with many of the politicians they support, but they are also donating to causes like criminal justice reform, getting rid of civil asset forfeiture. They have spoken out against the demonization of "other". They have worked with the ACLU to abolish mandatory minimums. On the other hand, they have funded studies that try to dispel that global warming is real, and they have been accused of having undue influence on colleges they give grants to.
  • Maarten88 9y ago
    The problem, of course, is not Bill Gates but the many other billionaires, who are less enlightened. There are also billionaires who use their fortune to actively influence politics (in a way that is probably mostly beneficial to themselves - such as the Koch family supporting Trump). There must also be lots of billionaires who, just by passively remaining billionaires and taking no broader responsibility, add to the problem.
    • 9y ago
• _rpd 9y ago
  > it is very undemocratic for the wealthy to solely pick causes they care about In this case the cause they 'care about' is getting the most good out of each dollar. We have to ask why democratic/government giving does not have the same goal. Answering this question may very well lead to the conclusion that having some non-democratically controlled donors is better for everyone.
• wu-ikkyu 9y ago
  >Just last week, Gates himself was arguing that he and other billionaires need to be paying significantly more taxes. Instead of trying to tackle problems of wealth inequality in such a roundabout bureaucratic way, why not just start directly dividing income up more evenly with your employees to begin with?
  • maym86 9y ago
    Arguing is not the same as doing something about it. Gates has shown he can take on problems he cares about by using his money and get results. Why doesn't he put money/resources into making the tax system more fair rather than just saying it should be different. Until he acts it's just marketing.
• maym86 9y ago
  Does he lobby for higher taxes? Buffet, Gates etc. always say they should be taxed more but I haven't heard of them actively supporting candidates and causes that will actually do this. If they really want it to change they have a lot of power (money) to influence politicans and help make it happen.
• chongli 9y ago
  very undemocratic for the wealthy to solely pick causes they care about It's undemocratic, but is it actually worse? Looking at the results of democratic processes, I'm not so sure the answer is yes. Democracy optimizes for the popular, the sensational, the scandalous. The hard work on the ground that Bill & Melinda put in doesn't square with that model. The public has the attention span of a toddler; they just aren't captivated by a decades-long vaccination and prevention campaign against malaria or river blindness.
• rayiner 9y ago
  The top 400 taxpayers pay about $100 billion in income each year. Let's use that as a rough proxy for how much income billionaires make (there's about 550 billionaires in the U.S., but billionaires won't necessarily be the highest-income people in any given year). That $100 billion is taxed at 23% (largely because of lower taxation of capital gains). Even if you taxed their income at 50%, that's just $27 billion more into the Treasury. It's nothing. And the 23% tax rate arises out of a conscious decision to tax capital gains at a lower rate--something that almost every Western country does. Now look at the top 10% (minus the top 1%). That's the income range of $100-350k. They have 25% of the U.S. income--$4 trillion. In Europe, these folks are taxed like rich people. In Germany, individual income above 52,000 Euro is taxed at 42% (the highest marginal rate is 45%). In the U.S., these people have been redefined as "middle class." The tax rate is just 24% up to $150,000. If you taxed these folks as the Germans do, you could raise maybe half a trillion dollars in extra revenue. Talking about the tax rate of billionaires is a red herring. It's not tax cuts for billionaires that are keeping us from increasing NIH spending, etc. It's tax cuts for ordinary rich people.
  • twiceaday 9y ago
    > The tax rate is just 24% up to $150,000. This is just the federal tax rate. What about state taxes? What about cost of living? Healthcare?
    • rayiner 9y ago
      Depending on the state you may not even have state taxes. In most states the top marginal rate with state taxes will be under 30%. Also, Germany has 20% VAT, plus health and social security contributions which I’m not counting.
      • twiceaday 9y ago
        I doubt the top 10% of earners come from these "most states." I presume strong correlation between income and high cost-of-living high state tax states.