Indeed. Not to criticize, though, but the underlying premise that industrial scale "charity" is necessarily good deserves a critical reassessment. Investment

Indeed. Not to criticize, though, but the underlying premise that industrial scale "charity" is necessarily good deserves a critical reassessment. Investment works and turns countries and companies into net producers. That's the story of countless Asian Tigers. At the largest scale, aid did not fix China and India, capitalism did. This is because charity/aid doesn't scale. It's zero sum, it does not teach the guy on the other side of the transaction to catch a fish, to determine what they can produce which is worthy of trading in the global market. I understand that Gates, Buffet, and now Zuckerberg had to throw their money away to buy respectability, in the same way people in olden times gave money to the church for various mumbo jumbo rituals. But I often wonder what could have happened had more of those billions been channeled into genuine positive sum activities like Nobel Laureate Mohammed Yunus' Grameen Bank.[1] Entities not necessarily focused on absolutely maximum profit, but which are at least self sustaining like Craigslist and hence not infinitely dependent on yet more infusions of cash from third parties. [1] I'm sure that with all the billions spent, at least some has gone into real social entrepreneurship, meaning profitable standalone organizations. But it's hard to escape the fact that Gates, by his own admission, wasted literally billions on education with little to show for it. The goal instead should be to identify the next Craig Newmark, Jimmy Wales, Salman Khan, or Mohammed Yunus and back them. Have them create a few billion in value and capture enough to remain afloat, and maybe dial up the next few efforts of this kind.