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Amazon founder Jeff Bezos pledges to give away most of his wealth

27 points by gorbypark 4y ago

dontlaugh 4y ago
Bill Gates pledged the same and yet his wealth hasn't reduced. Worse, the philanthropy has been targetted ideologically (like encouraging private schools) and somehow keeps ending up favouring companies he has ownership in.
- whatwherewhy 4y ago
  Why should his wealth reduce?
  - SuoDuanDao 4y ago
    If I give $10 to charity, my wealth is reduced by $10. The naive assumption is that if Bill Gates gives $10B to charity, his wealth is also reduced by $10B. Can you explain why the naive assumption is wrong? Because I actually can't, not without more thought and research than I've given it.
    - throwaway98797 4y ago
      cuz if i have 100b and give away 10b, but the remaining 90b grows 2x i have more than what i started with
    - WithinReason 4y ago
      You invest $100, now you have $110. You give away $10, you have $100 again.
      - frumper 4y ago
        Then your net worth is $110 and when you give away $10 your net worth goes down $10.
        whatwherewhy 4y ago
        Gates pledged to give his wealth away before he dies, not immediately. And that's good - the world will be getting much more money than it'd get if Gates just gave away all his money the moment he announced it. > Then your net worth is $110 and when you give away $10 your net worth goes down $10. Gates' wealth fluctuates all the time. There was a time when he was rather low due to his donations - multiple 10s of billions down. He got back over $100B from cca $50B - that's $50B more for charity than if he just donated everything he had left.
        frumper 4y ago
        I'm not saying it's bad to do what you're describing, I'm just saying when you actually donate money, not pledge, it decreases your net worth.
        whatwherewhy 4y ago
        It does, but that doesn't mean your net worth will decrease by that amount that year. There are other effects - e.g. the rest of his investment portfolio.
        frumper 4y ago
        if you give away $10 then your net worth at that moment goes down...it may easily recover that price, but if you count it like that then you can surely count that the money you donated would have been worth more too
        whatwherewhy 4y ago
        Yeah but nobody has that granular logs of Gates' net worth and donations. At best, it's calendar months, sometimes you can try to assume weeks, with a big maybe.
    - Workaccount2 4y ago
      Because you can use $10B to give $500M/yr for a limitless period of time. Gates can give substantially more money if he leverages it to grow over time. I would wager that it is going to take decades if ever that the Gates fund will hit $0. Yeah it's not as flashy as "Died with $0 of his fortune left", but under the hood the net good done is orders of magnitude greater.
      - antisthenes 4y ago
        > Because you can use $10B to give $500M/yr for a limitless period of time. If you can do that in perpetuity, then it actually means you're giving away none of your wealth away. You're selling the time value of money back to the people that generated it for you. You've essentially taken out a giant loan, but the interest is being borne by the people who generated that wealth for you in the first place. And your "charity" amounts to sometimes reimbursing those people for paying the interest.
      - SuoDuanDao 4y ago
        In that case, more power to him, and no argument about net good - I guess for me, the issue is with the wording. 'Most of his wealth' to me implies someone's giving away most of the principle, not most of the proceeds. Which of course Bill Gates did, just to a charity he also controlled. Again, more power to him and I'm glad the precedent is set, regardless of how I feel about the Gates foundation's activities. But it still doesn't feel the same as giving it to a charity someone else controls.
    - deleted 4y ago
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  - germinalphrase 4y ago
    Probably, the words “give away” imply that all the wealth will, indeed, be given away. For instance, Chuck Feeney gave away billions until it he was left with only $2 million (or so it was reported).
    - whatwherewhy 4y ago
      As far as I know Bill Gates is still alive
      - germinalphrase 4y ago
        So is Chuck Feeney.
        whatwherewhy 4y ago
        So what? Gates said he will donate before he dies, not immediately.
        germinalphrase 4y ago
        I think the Gates Foundation does good work, but the cynical "so what?" is that creating a structure like this to "give away most of his $124bn (£107bn) fortune during his lifetime" (RE the linked article about Bezos) is a ruse to maintain control over the money without paying taxes - while also producing some good PR. If they truly wanted to just give it away, Chuck Feeney offer a straight forward model for doing so. You just do it. If "giving it away" merely means putting it into a foundation you control, many people would feel that little has, in fact, been given away.
        whatwherewhy 4y ago
        I fully believe they're doing it to retain control of their money, and I don't mind, Bill Gates is a master handler of money - in fact I find the system that led to people like Bill Gates working on things that are good for the general humanity to be genius. It's not like he's going to embezzle the money out of his foundation to buy another villa. Bill Gates doesn't fucking care about a hundreth villa. He's really working on the projects, and he's deploying the money in a way that promises results - that's exactly what I want to happen. I am happy. And the PR? Let the guy have his fame, he's really worked for it.
- gsatic 4y ago
  That's cuz saying you want to give it away is not a simple thing, when most people around you only have the skills to accumulate it or spend it on themselves. Not to mention all the pond scum it draws in that has to be constantly filtered out.
  - toomuchtodo 4y ago
    The people who have the skills to accumulate wealth at this scale don’t have the skills to give it away. They are extraction minded, and philanthropy is a direct contradiction to this mental model. Keep some to stay comfortable of course, but you have to be comfortable with your status, influence, and wealth substantially declining as a second order effect of the distribution logistics, and that’s just not who these people are. MacKenzie Scott can’t give her wealth away fast enough, for example. https://www.nytimes.com/2020/12/20/business/mackenzie-scott-philanthropy.html https://www.nytimes.com/2020/12/20/business/mackenzie-scott-...
    - bilbo0s 4y ago
      MacKenzie Scott can’t give her wealth away fast enough, for example To be fair, neither can Bill Gates. So it points to something fundamental about the way in which wealth works that these people can't give money away fast enough. Doesn't mean it's a problem though. Having money flowing up to Gates, Bezos, Scott and then having them give it away is probably the best we can do in the current legal and regulatory environment. Because the reality is that any efforts to change how things currently work would meet with too much resistance from others in power.
      - deleted 4y ago
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      - deleted 4y ago
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      - ryandrake 4y ago
        Another fundamental that it points to is that we've somehow set up a system where instead of the general public determining (and funding) the public good through democracy, a handful of rich people simply decide what counts as a public good and steer their money toward those causes.
- asadlionpk 4y ago
  The pledge doesn’t mean dumb-throw money at any org you can find.
- chadash 4y ago
  What does that mean his wealth hasn't reduced? Any money that he's given away (and he's given away a lot) has reduced his wealth. He'd be worth more if hadn't given it away.
  - tyingq 4y ago
    The commitment was "commitment to give the majority of their wealth". https://givingpledge.org/about https://givingpledge.org/about
    - chadash 4y ago
      Yes, he has committed to give most of his wealth. And he has also already given a bunch of his wealth.
    - panarky 4y ago
      Promises to do something good in the indeterminate but distant future generate tons of positive press coverage for free. Better to ignore empty PR nonsense and wait for billions in philanthropy to actually materialize before showering sociopaths with praise and adoration.
  - kornhole 4y ago
    His wealth has greatly increased. In retrospect, his donations look more like tax advantaged investments.
- ch4s3 4y ago
  I really don't get the animus against private schools. Surely a one size fits all public school can't possibly best serve the interests of every possible student. Furthermore in a pluralistic society, shouldn't we tolerate people's different preferences in education, especially those who opt for more religious education?
  - hotpotamus 4y ago
    Try opening up a Madrasa in your neighborhood and you may find a lot of pushback to private religious schools, even from people who say they are in favor of such a thing.
    - ch4s3 4y ago
      There are several Madrasas in Brooklyn near where I live. I'd never send my child to one, but the suppression of ethnic/cultural/religious education has a long and ugly history in the US. The first public religious schools in the US were cooked up to force Irish and Italian children out of Catholic education. Is that really who we want to be in the 21st century?
  - nevinera 4y ago
    Most of us don't have a problem with _private schools_, just with state money or charity being aimed at them. Private schools are fundamentally capitalistic - they serve their (generally wealthy) patrons, not society.
    - ch4s3 4y ago
      > Most of us don't have a problem with _private schools_, just with state money or charity being aimed at them. State money already goes to a dizzying array of non-profit and religious institutions. Anywhere from local homeless and addiction services to the University of Notre Dame. Why should primary and secondary schools be excluded? > Private schools are fundamentally capitalistic This is a meaningless statement. The VST majority of private schools in the US are non-profits. > they serve their (generally wealthy) patrons, not society. Religious schools in the US started out as a cheap way to educate the poor in reading. Catholic schools in particular still serve poorer communities and are low cost. Residential assignment in public schools comes from a legacy of segregation and anti-catholic laws. The wealth will always have their pick of education for their children and always have. Denying funding for poor students that want to opt out of their shitty assigned schools just perpetuates injustice.
- pmoriarty 4y ago
  Gates pledged to give most of it away when he dies. In the meantime he's given away billions, but obviously he's invested the billions he still has, so unless his (doubtlessly world-class) money managers were completely incompetent he's going to at least break even. The Bill and Melinda Gates foundation "now spends more on global health every year than the World Health Organization — not to mention more than most countries on the planet."[1] But that philanthropy has its critics. One criticism is that it's very opaque and it's impossible to measure how effective it is. It's also both hugely influential and unaccountable. Also, from the above-linked article: "One 2008 article by two Oxford researchers, published in The Lancet, argued that the Gates Foundation was "misfinancing global health" — paying most of its grants out to rich countries and prioritizing infectious diseases (such as HIV/AIDS and malaria) over major chronic killers such as obesity, cancer, and diabetes." "Another 2009 paper in The Lancet, by a group of University College London health and development researchers, found that despite the Gates Foundation's emphasis on improving the lives of the poor, its grants didn't actually reflect the burden of disease that the poorest face." "An example: the Gates Foundation has received lots of positive press for its role in financing the eradication of polio. And yet, even that campaign had its critics, says McGoey. In her research, she found key stakeholders in some of the countries that were the focus of the campaign expressing the view that "this was really a priority of wealthy nations and not necessarily developing ones, many of which were more preoccupied with battling illnesses that created a far greater health burden in their nations [such as diarrhoeal diseases in India]. They were compelled to emphasize polio [eradication] against their will." "Another concern that comes up in the academic literature is that the Gates Foundation is too focused on drugs, vaccines, and other technological solutions for global health problems. But many researchers, by contrast, would prefer a focus on the less exciting but crucial work of strengthening the health systems of poorer countries." "For similar reasons, the Gates Foundation's work on malaria drew criticism from some corners. In a 2013 article in Global Society, Youde pointed out that the head of WHO’s malaria research, Arata Kochi, sent a memo complaining that the foundation "was stifling debate on the best ways to treat and combat malaria, prioritising only those methods that relied on new technology or developing new drugs."" "The Gates Foundation has played an extremely negative role in efforts to develop replacements for strong patent rights and high drug prices," James Love, the director of Knowledge Ecology International and a critic of the foundation, writes on his blog. Or as McGoey put it: "There’s immense concern surrounding the Gates Foundation’s position on intellectual property rights, and whether this major global health player is cognizant enough to ensure property rights are fair for citizens in wealthy and poor nations." [1] - https://www.vox.com/2015/6/10/8760199/gates-foundation-criticism https://www.vox.com/2015/6/10/8760199/gates-foundation-criti...
- nonameiguess 4y ago
  Was the pledge to give away most of us while still alive? I know Warren Buffett's original plan was to give away nothing until death and then give away all of it and his wife or something convinced him to at least give away some while still alive. Note that while I think most of the other replies are not necessarily pertinent in that giving away trickles is clearly not "most," the Gates Foundation has given a total of $65.6 billion to date, which is more than half of the Gates family's current net worth, but it isn't funded solely by him. That also means he can't decide unilaterally what to spend the money on, though. I was under the impression it was mostly global health until recently. The education initiatives are relatively new. He could easily still be on track to give away some amount equal to whatever his net worth is on death by his death, though, and still meet a pledge to do it while alive. I don't know that anyone of extremely high net worth has ever tried to give away 50% all at once. I'm not sure that's even feasible in terms of finding organizations that could take and use that much money in a single year, other than donating directly to the US Treasury general fund.
- returnInfinity 4y ago
  I think, they create a trust and somebody manages it and grows it and gives away the profits to charity. Unless its the best run hedge fund, it will go to zero eventually in a thousand years.
- ryandvm 4y ago
  It takes a while to be an effective altruist with a hundred or so billion dollars. What did you want him to do? Throw it in a fountain?
fallingfrog 4y ago
Billionaire philanthropy is mostly just another tax shelter. https://thehighasia.com/private-charity-just-another-scam-for-1-rich/ https://thehighasia.com/private-charity-just-another-scam-fo...
- zie 4y ago
  Once the money is in the foundation or DAF, you can't get it back out again to use for personal gain, and you really can't use it to pay yourself. If you make a foundation, you can pay people to run it, and they can be friends of yours, even family members, but it's not like you can pay them ridiculous amounts of money compared to other foundations. That would be illegal. That's not to say some people don't try that, I'm sure. But if they abuse it to much, they will likely get caught eventually. Certainly some probably pad just a little, and nobody raises a fuss, but it's not like some instant magic hide from estate tax thing. It's more like, hire your kid that's to stupid/lazy to work for a living. Sure it can be a totally cushy job. It's not any different than mom and pop's grocery store back in the day hiring their idiot kids to make sure the back wall of the store doesn't fall over. Sure it's a mostly pointless job, but it's not illegal to do that. Since it's their money to control, they can of course use it to prop up some particular viewpoint, but it mostly washes out, since both aisles of the political camp can and do stuff like that. So that article is mostly just uninformed crap, sorry.
  - fallingfrog 4y ago
    Perhaps some references from such dens of leftism like Bloomberg and the New York Times would help? https://www.nytimes.com/2018/08/03/business/donor-advised-funds-tech-tax.html https://www.nytimes.com/2018/08/03/business/donor-advised-fu... https://www.bloomberg.com/news/features/2022-10-03/rich-use-tax-loophole-to-get-deductions-now-for-donating-later#xj4y7vzkg https://www.bloomberg.com/news/features/2022-10-03/rich-use-... Archived links: https://archive.ph/n1AQy https://archive.ph/n1AQy https://archive.ph/EPyJ2 https://archive.ph/EPyJ2 From the bloomberg article: "The Mercers and the Allenders are among a small but growing number of wealthy Americans who’ve discovered how to bypass rules designed more than a half-century ago to ensure philanthropists stay accountable for the billions of dollars in tax breaks they receive each year. The key is the donor-advised fund, or DAF, which is so flexible that charitable dollars can sit in one indefinitely, and so opaque that no one needs to know either way. ... In a study of more than 2,600 DAF accounts, the Council of Michigan Foundations found that the majority of donors paid out less than 5% of assets in 2020. More than one-third gave nothing to charity at all. The biggest sponsors of the funds have rebuffed calls to release that kind of account-level data, even as the number of accounts has swelled to more than 1 million. As of 2020, DAFs held almost $160 billion, an 85% increase in four years. Although the industry says it’s paying out more than one-fifth of its assets a year in aggregate, the reality is probably less: Some of the biggest recipients of grants from the funds are other funds, as donors shift money from one sponsor to another."
Mistletoe 4y ago
Realistically how can he do that without tanking the stock price? He owns 100B in Amazon stock. Anyone with knowledge care to chime in on how he could ever access it? For comparison, Vanguard and Blackrock (shares owned by little folks like us) own 69B and 59B. Mackenzie, his ex-wife, owns 33B and has pledged to give hers away as well on The Giving Pledge.
- wfleming 4y ago
  He can give the shares away directly. Start a charitable foundation, give the shares to the foundation, and then the foundation can liquidate slowly (over decades if need be) to access capital.
  - Mistletoe 4y ago
    Oh that’s an interesting idea.
  - ch4s3 4y ago
    Wouldn't the effect be basically the same, except the ownership changes? I can't imagine he'd have no involvement in such a foundation.
    - Mistletoe 4y ago
      But the charity doesn’t need to liquidate as quickly as he does if he intends to give it away by the end of his life.
      - ch4s3 4y ago
        One imagines that the endgame for him is probably some sort of charity to hand off to anyway.
- chadash 4y ago
  He won't sell it all at once. Bill Gates used to own lots of Microsoft stock. Over time he sold it off and diversified, to the point that it's now only about 25% of his net worth. The key thing is that over time, Microsoft transitioned to a point where Bill Gates wasn't running things day-to-day and investors became comfortable with him not having any control. At that point, him selling shares was no big deal. At the other end of the extreme would be someone like Elon Musk, where Tesla's stock price is almost entirely dependent on him being at the helm. If he were to walk away now, the shares would tank in value. Jeff Bezos is somewhere in between. Clearly, Amazon would run okay without him, but he still has some involvement. He certainly can't sell all of his shares, but if he sells over time and makes it clear (and credible) that he is selling in order to use his money elsewhere (rather than trying to time the market because he thinks the stock is overpriced), the share prices of Amazon should hold up just fine.
erehweb 4y ago
Pledge is a strong word for what he actually said. He has really expressed intent rather than promising. Asked by CNN whether he intended to give away most of his wealth within his lifetime, Mr Bezos told the network: "Yeah, I do."
- Bilal_io 4y ago
  He would probably have given away $300B by the time his net worth is $2T.
pydry 4y ago
Billionaires really don't like being loathed do they?
- SuoDuanDao 4y ago
  Does anyone? I find it a source of hope that unaccountable oligarchs still care about doing the right thing when observed.
  - pydry 4y ago
    Plenty of people seem to be able to tolerate it without giving away billions of dollars.
- WithinReason 4y ago
  Musk's twitter suggest otherwise. He doesn't need to care if people like him. Bezos doesn't need to either.
xyst 4y ago
Probably going into a “donor advised fund” which allows bezos to claim a multibillion dollar tax break for a lifetime without having to prove the money was actually spent towards a cause.
- chadash 4y ago
  Yeah, but once it's in a donor advised fund, it can't come out. No, it doesn't have to be spent right away but at some point it needs to be given away. It's not like you can just put money in a DAF and take it back out when you want to buy a yacht.
alach11 4y ago
You're going to see a lot of cynicism in this thread so I want to be a dissenting voice. This is a great thing. I'm glad the ideas behind the Giving Pledge are catching on.
- Bilal_io 4y ago
  The cynicism is warranted in my opinion. Because we've seen rich people give money only the further their wealth and power by influencing politics around the world, even when it appears that they're helping poor people.
  - karmakurtisaani 4y ago
    Don't forget avoiding taxes. The one and only way we can be sure they gave the money away to someone else and have no control over how it's spent.
greenthrow 4y ago
Stop letting these crooks get away with this tax shelter move while applauding them. It should be called what it is.
gavinray 4y ago
- debacle 4y ago
  The global income distribution model (farmers in India -> Jeff Bezos) is problematic. But it's such a chaotic system that anyone claiming to have the solution (similar to anyone claiming there is no problem) is likely lying. The only solution (to me) that even starts to make sense is some sort of forced worker ownership, but lord knows what the details of that might look like.
  - ada1981 4y ago
    We know pretty well what forced worker ownership looks like. Hundreds of millions of people dead. Needs to be opt-in. The next wave of famous business people will likely be the Platform Coop-ists. Activists building unicorns not for the $$$ but for the Klout of taking on the status quo model.
    - debacle 4y ago
      I'm not talking about socialism, I'm talking about worker coops.
    - pmoriarty 4y ago
      There's a difference between brutal totalitarian regimes in which an elite exercise absolute power over millions of people and actual ownership by workers themselves. It's the elites of those countries which owned everything and controlled everything. If you weren't part of the elite you had to follow orders.
- eloisant 4y ago
  No you're not the only one, plenty of people think like that which is why they keep capturing most of the value created by their employees and getting away with it.
  - 4y ago
johndfsgdgdfg 4y ago
ck2 4y ago
If someone can accumulate that much wealth in a lifetime it means way too much was extracted from each individual. Then they distribute it back to mend the damage as they see fit, not as society deems needed. I'm not against millionaires but the exponential level up to billionaires probably shouldn't exist because it means the balance in the system is beyond broken. No-one has contributed billions of value to society.
- throwaway98797 4y ago
  gates, steve, musk, etc all have you may not like them, but a lack of imagination is no reason to condemn others
  - ck2 4y ago
    I don't think you understand how massive a billion is compared to a million. No-one has contributed billions of value to society. Most scientists who have cured diseases are not billionaires. But for example the founder of instacart is a billionare. That should not be possible. It means the system is beyond broken and it's being exploited.
    - pmoriarty 4y ago
      That someone can make billions of dollars by creating a website while teachers and other workers who actually help people often risk their lives for shitty pay is sheer insanity.
post_break 4y ago
Is it a pledge? Or an Amber Heard pledge? I feel like we're seeing the Michael Scott version of declaring bankruptcy here. I'll believe it when I see it.
- lzooz 4y ago
  More like when Michael Scott promised to pay for the scholarships, haha
  - post_break 4y ago
    They're lithium! I forgot about that type of pledge too.
dncornholio 4y ago
I'm the last who thinks he cares about people well-being, but.. What the F is going on. Apparently this is in response to a lot of criticism towards Jeff on how he should spend his money? I mean, excuse me? He can spend his money any way he freaking wants IMHO.
- 55555 4y ago
  Most people hate people who are significantly richer than themselves.
dev_daftly 4y ago
So he is basically going to be creating a tax free way to pass all of his wealth to his kids? I am against taxing inheritance, but people praising billionaires for pledging to get around it legally is annoying.
jdenoy 4y ago
Yeah, he's learned everything from Amber Heard. Another communication strategy.
DueDilligence 4y ago
.. what a crock. yet another scoundrel ploy to skirt paying relevant taxes, etc. just like gates. just like peter thiel. just like Yvon Chouinard [patagonia ceo]. just like warren buffet. blah, blah, blah ... can't wait for adam conover [adam ruins everything] to jump on this one.
beardyw 4y ago
I am with Jesus on this one: Beware of practicing your righteousness before other people in order to be seen by them, for then you will have no reward from your Father who is in heaven. Thus, when you give to the needy, sound no trumpet before you, as the hypocrites do in the synagogues and in the streets, that they may be praised by others. Truly, I say to you, they have received their reward. But when you give to the needy, do not let your left hand know what your right hand is doing, so that your giving may be in secret. And your Father who sees in secret will reward you.
- ryandvm 4y ago
  Counterpoint: A billionaire publicly giving away most of their wealth probably has a lot of social influence on _other_ billionaires.
- za3faran 4y ago
  Key point here: before other people in order to be seen by them We have a similar notion in Islam called Riyaa' (رياء), where not only will the person engaging in it not get any rewards in the Hereafter, but he would be actively punished for it. Intention matters. It is possible that doing a major good deed in public is the right thing to do in order to get other people to do the same. It's all about setting your intentions right.
deleted 4y ago
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w1nst0nsm1th 4y ago
I didn't read they article but I don't have to... https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0Cu6EbELZ6I https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0Cu6EbELZ6I It's all about avoiding taxes. It's an 120 years old story.
kornhole 4y ago
A wealth tax would solve a lot of issues debated here. The schedule of giveaway and distribution could be democratically determined.
johnea 4y ago
Bozo was part of that pledge with Billionaire Bill, along with Warren Buffet. Billionaires in general are just a sign of the apocalypse, a social defect.

27 points by gorbypark 4y ago

Bill Gates pledged the same and yet his wealth hasn't reduced. Worse, the philanthropy has been targetted ideologically (like encouraging private schools) and somehow keeps ending up favouring companies he has ownership in.

whatwherewhy 4y ago
Why should his wealth reduce?
- SuoDuanDao 4y ago
  If I give $10 to charity, my wealth is reduced by $10. The naive assumption is that if Bill Gates gives $10B to charity, his wealth is also reduced by $10B. Can you explain why the naive assumption is wrong? Because I actually can't, not without more thought and research than I've given it.
  - throwaway98797 4y ago
    cuz if i have 100b and give away 10b, but the remaining 90b grows 2x i have more than what i started with
  - WithinReason 4y ago
    You invest $100, now you have $110. You give away $10, you have $100 again.
    - frumper 4y ago
      Then your net worth is $110 and when you give away $10 your net worth goes down $10.
      - whatwherewhy 4y ago
        Gates pledged to give his wealth away before he dies, not immediately. And that's good - the world will be getting much more money than it'd get if Gates just gave away all his money the moment he announced it. > Then your net worth is $110 and when you give away $10 your net worth goes down $10. Gates' wealth fluctuates all the time. There was a time when he was rather low due to his donations - multiple 10s of billions down. He got back over $100B from cca $50B - that's $50B more for charity than if he just donated everything he had left.
        frumper 4y ago
        I'm not saying it's bad to do what you're describing, I'm just saying when you actually donate money, not pledge, it decreases your net worth.
        whatwherewhy 4y ago
        It does, but that doesn't mean your net worth will decrease by that amount that year. There are other effects - e.g. the rest of his investment portfolio.
        frumper 4y ago
        if you give away $10 then your net worth at that moment goes down...it may easily recover that price, but if you count it like that then you can surely count that the money you donated would have been worth more too
        whatwherewhy 4y ago
        Yeah but nobody has that granular logs of Gates' net worth and donations. At best, it's calendar months, sometimes you can try to assume weeks, with a big maybe.
  - Workaccount2 4y ago
    Because you can use $10B to give $500M/yr for a limitless period of time. Gates can give substantially more money if he leverages it to grow over time. I would wager that it is going to take decades if ever that the Gates fund will hit $0. Yeah it's not as flashy as "Died with $0 of his fortune left", but under the hood the net good done is orders of magnitude greater.
    - antisthenes 4y ago
      > Because you can use $10B to give $500M/yr for a limitless period of time. If you can do that in perpetuity, then it actually means you're giving away none of your wealth away. You're selling the time value of money back to the people that generated it for you. You've essentially taken out a giant loan, but the interest is being borne by the people who generated that wealth for you in the first place. And your "charity" amounts to sometimes reimbursing those people for paying the interest.
    - SuoDuanDao 4y ago
      In that case, more power to him, and no argument about net good - I guess for me, the issue is with the wording. 'Most of his wealth' to me implies someone's giving away most of the principle, not most of the proceeds. Which of course Bill Gates did, just to a charity he also controlled. Again, more power to him and I'm glad the precedent is set, regardless of how I feel about the Gates foundation's activities. But it still doesn't feel the same as giving it to a charity someone else controls.
  - deleted 4y ago
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- germinalphrase 4y ago
  Probably, the words “give away” imply that all the wealth will, indeed, be given away. For instance, Chuck Feeney gave away billions until it he was left with only $2 million (or so it was reported).
  - whatwherewhy 4y ago
    As far as I know Bill Gates is still alive
    - germinalphrase 4y ago
      So is Chuck Feeney.
      - whatwherewhy 4y ago
        So what? Gates said he will donate before he dies, not immediately.
        germinalphrase 4y ago
        I think the Gates Foundation does good work, but the cynical "so what?" is that creating a structure like this to "give away most of his $124bn (£107bn) fortune during his lifetime" (RE the linked article about Bezos) is a ruse to maintain control over the money without paying taxes - while also producing some good PR. If they truly wanted to just give it away, Chuck Feeney offer a straight forward model for doing so. You just do it. If "giving it away" merely means putting it into a foundation you control, many people would feel that little has, in fact, been given away.
        whatwherewhy 4y ago
        I fully believe they're doing it to retain control of their money, and I don't mind, Bill Gates is a master handler of money - in fact I find the system that led to people like Bill Gates working on things that are good for the general humanity to be genius. It's not like he's going to embezzle the money out of his foundation to buy another villa. Bill Gates doesn't fucking care about a hundreth villa. He's really working on the projects, and he's deploying the money in a way that promises results - that's exactly what I want to happen. I am happy. And the PR? Let the guy have his fame, he's really worked for it.
gsatic 4y ago
That's cuz saying you want to give it away is not a simple thing, when most people around you only have the skills to accumulate it or spend it on themselves. Not to mention all the pond scum it draws in that has to be constantly filtered out.
- toomuchtodo 4y ago
  The people who have the skills to accumulate wealth at this scale don’t have the skills to give it away. They are extraction minded, and philanthropy is a direct contradiction to this mental model. Keep some to stay comfortable of course, but you have to be comfortable with your status, influence, and wealth substantially declining as a second order effect of the distribution logistics, and that’s just not who these people are. MacKenzie Scott can’t give her wealth away fast enough, for example. https://www.nytimes.com/2020/12/20/business/mackenzie-scott-philanthropy.html https://www.nytimes.com/2020/12/20/business/mackenzie-scott-...
  - bilbo0s 4y ago
    MacKenzie Scott can’t give her wealth away fast enough, for example To be fair, neither can Bill Gates. So it points to something fundamental about the way in which wealth works that these people can't give money away fast enough. Doesn't mean it's a problem though. Having money flowing up to Gates, Bezos, Scott and then having them give it away is probably the best we can do in the current legal and regulatory environment. Because the reality is that any efforts to change how things currently work would meet with too much resistance from others in power.
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    - ryandrake 4y ago
      Another fundamental that it points to is that we've somehow set up a system where instead of the general public determining (and funding) the public good through democracy, a handful of rich people simply decide what counts as a public good and steer their money toward those causes.
asadlionpk 4y ago
The pledge doesn’t mean dumb-throw money at any org you can find.
chadash 4y ago
What does that mean his wealth hasn't reduced? Any money that he's given away (and he's given away a lot) has reduced his wealth. He'd be worth more if hadn't given it away.
- tyingq 4y ago
  The commitment was "commitment to give the majority of their wealth". https://givingpledge.org/about https://givingpledge.org/about
  - chadash 4y ago
    Yes, he has committed to give most of his wealth. And he has also already given a bunch of his wealth.
  - panarky 4y ago
    Promises to do something good in the indeterminate but distant future generate tons of positive press coverage for free. Better to ignore empty PR nonsense and wait for billions in philanthropy to actually materialize before showering sociopaths with praise and adoration.
- kornhole 4y ago
  His wealth has greatly increased. In retrospect, his donations look more like tax advantaged investments.
ch4s3 4y ago
I really don't get the animus against private schools. Surely a one size fits all public school can't possibly best serve the interests of every possible student. Furthermore in a pluralistic society, shouldn't we tolerate people's different preferences in education, especially those who opt for more religious education?
- hotpotamus 4y ago
  Try opening up a Madrasa in your neighborhood and you may find a lot of pushback to private religious schools, even from people who say they are in favor of such a thing.
  - ch4s3 4y ago
    There are several Madrasas in Brooklyn near where I live. I'd never send my child to one, but the suppression of ethnic/cultural/religious education has a long and ugly history in the US. The first public religious schools in the US were cooked up to force Irish and Italian children out of Catholic education. Is that really who we want to be in the 21st century?
- nevinera 4y ago
  Most of us don't have a problem with _private schools_, just with state money or charity being aimed at them. Private schools are fundamentally capitalistic - they serve their (generally wealthy) patrons, not society.
  - ch4s3 4y ago
    > Most of us don't have a problem with _private schools_, just with state money or charity being aimed at them. State money already goes to a dizzying array of non-profit and religious institutions. Anywhere from local homeless and addiction services to the University of Notre Dame. Why should primary and secondary schools be excluded? > Private schools are fundamentally capitalistic This is a meaningless statement. The VST majority of private schools in the US are non-profits. > they serve their (generally wealthy) patrons, not society. Religious schools in the US started out as a cheap way to educate the poor in reading. Catholic schools in particular still serve poorer communities and are low cost. Residential assignment in public schools comes from a legacy of segregation and anti-catholic laws. The wealth will always have their pick of education for their children and always have. Denying funding for poor students that want to opt out of their shitty assigned schools just perpetuates injustice.
pmoriarty 4y ago
Gates pledged to give most of it away when he dies. In the meantime he's given away billions, but obviously he's invested the billions he still has, so unless his (doubtlessly world-class) money managers were completely incompetent he's going to at least break even. The Bill and Melinda Gates foundation "now spends more on global health every year than the World Health Organization — not to mention more than most countries on the planet."[1] But that philanthropy has its critics. One criticism is that it's very opaque and it's impossible to measure how effective it is. It's also both hugely influential and unaccountable. Also, from the above-linked article: "One 2008 article by two Oxford researchers, published in The Lancet, argued that the Gates Foundation was "misfinancing global health" — paying most of its grants out to rich countries and prioritizing infectious diseases (such as HIV/AIDS and malaria) over major chronic killers such as obesity, cancer, and diabetes." "Another 2009 paper in The Lancet, by a group of University College London health and development researchers, found that despite the Gates Foundation's emphasis on improving the lives of the poor, its grants didn't actually reflect the burden of disease that the poorest face." "An example: the Gates Foundation has received lots of positive press for its role in financing the eradication of polio. And yet, even that campaign had its critics, says McGoey. In her research, she found key stakeholders in some of the countries that were the focus of the campaign expressing the view that "this was really a priority of wealthy nations and not necessarily developing ones, many of which were more preoccupied with battling illnesses that created a far greater health burden in their nations [such as diarrhoeal diseases in India]. They were compelled to emphasize polio [eradication] against their will." "Another concern that comes up in the academic literature is that the Gates Foundation is too focused on drugs, vaccines, and other technological solutions for global health problems. But many researchers, by contrast, would prefer a focus on the less exciting but crucial work of strengthening the health systems of poorer countries." "For similar reasons, the Gates Foundation's work on malaria drew criticism from some corners. In a 2013 article in Global Society, Youde pointed out that the head of WHO’s malaria research, Arata Kochi, sent a memo complaining that the foundation "was stifling debate on the best ways to treat and combat malaria, prioritising only those methods that relied on new technology or developing new drugs."" "The Gates Foundation has played an extremely negative role in efforts to develop replacements for strong patent rights and high drug prices," James Love, the director of Knowledge Ecology International and a critic of the foundation, writes on his blog. Or as McGoey put it: "There’s immense concern surrounding the Gates Foundation’s position on intellectual property rights, and whether this major global health player is cognizant enough to ensure property rights are fair for citizens in wealthy and poor nations." [1] - https://www.vox.com/2015/6/10/8760199/gates-foundation-criticism https://www.vox.com/2015/6/10/8760199/gates-foundation-criti...
nonameiguess 4y ago
Was the pledge to give away most of us while still alive? I know Warren Buffett's original plan was to give away nothing until death and then give away all of it and his wife or something convinced him to at least give away some while still alive. Note that while I think most of the other replies are not necessarily pertinent in that giving away trickles is clearly not "most," the Gates Foundation has given a total of $65.6 billion to date, which is more than half of the Gates family's current net worth, but it isn't funded solely by him. That also means he can't decide unilaterally what to spend the money on, though. I was under the impression it was mostly global health until recently. The education initiatives are relatively new. He could easily still be on track to give away some amount equal to whatever his net worth is on death by his death, though, and still meet a pledge to do it while alive. I don't know that anyone of extremely high net worth has ever tried to give away 50% all at once. I'm not sure that's even feasible in terms of finding organizations that could take and use that much money in a single year, other than donating directly to the US Treasury general fund.
returnInfinity 4y ago
I think, they create a trust and somebody manages it and grows it and gives away the profits to charity. Unless its the best run hedge fund, it will go to zero eventually in a thousand years.
ryandvm 4y ago
It takes a while to be an effective altruist with a hundred or so billion dollars. What did you want him to do? Throw it in a fountain?

fallingfrog 4y ago

Billionaire philanthropy is mostly just another tax shelter. https://thehighasia.com/private-charity-just-another-scam-for-1-rich/ https://thehighasia.com/private-charity-just-another-scam-fo...

zie 4y ago
Once the money is in the foundation or DAF, you can't get it back out again to use for personal gain, and you really can't use it to pay yourself. If you make a foundation, you can pay people to run it, and they can be friends of yours, even family members, but it's not like you can pay them ridiculous amounts of money compared to other foundations. That would be illegal. That's not to say some people don't try that, I'm sure. But if they abuse it to much, they will likely get caught eventually. Certainly some probably pad just a little, and nobody raises a fuss, but it's not like some instant magic hide from estate tax thing. It's more like, hire your kid that's to stupid/lazy to work for a living. Sure it can be a totally cushy job. It's not any different than mom and pop's grocery store back in the day hiring their idiot kids to make sure the back wall of the store doesn't fall over. Sure it's a mostly pointless job, but it's not illegal to do that. Since it's their money to control, they can of course use it to prop up some particular viewpoint, but it mostly washes out, since both aisles of the political camp can and do stuff like that. So that article is mostly just uninformed crap, sorry.
- fallingfrog 4y ago
  Perhaps some references from such dens of leftism like Bloomberg and the New York Times would help? https://www.nytimes.com/2018/08/03/business/donor-advised-funds-tech-tax.html https://www.nytimes.com/2018/08/03/business/donor-advised-fu... https://www.bloomberg.com/news/features/2022-10-03/rich-use-tax-loophole-to-get-deductions-now-for-donating-later#xj4y7vzkg https://www.bloomberg.com/news/features/2022-10-03/rich-use-... Archived links: https://archive.ph/n1AQy https://archive.ph/n1AQy https://archive.ph/EPyJ2 https://archive.ph/EPyJ2 From the bloomberg article: "The Mercers and the Allenders are among a small but growing number of wealthy Americans who’ve discovered how to bypass rules designed more than a half-century ago to ensure philanthropists stay accountable for the billions of dollars in tax breaks they receive each year. The key is the donor-advised fund, or DAF, which is so flexible that charitable dollars can sit in one indefinitely, and so opaque that no one needs to know either way. ... In a study of more than 2,600 DAF accounts, the Council of Michigan Foundations found that the majority of donors paid out less than 5% of assets in 2020. More than one-third gave nothing to charity at all. The biggest sponsors of the funds have rebuffed calls to release that kind of account-level data, even as the number of accounts has swelled to more than 1 million. As of 2020, DAFs held almost $160 billion, an 85% increase in four years. Although the industry says it’s paying out more than one-fifth of its assets a year in aggregate, the reality is probably less: Some of the biggest recipients of grants from the funds are other funds, as donors shift money from one sponsor to another."

Mistletoe 4y ago

Realistically how can he do that without tanking the stock price? He owns 100B in Amazon stock. Anyone with knowledge care to chime in on how he could ever access it? For comparison, Vanguard and Blackrock (shares owned by little folks like us) own 69B and 59B. Mackenzie, his ex-wife, owns 33B and has pledged to give hers away as well on The Giving Pledge.

wfleming 4y ago
He can give the shares away directly. Start a charitable foundation, give the shares to the foundation, and then the foundation can liquidate slowly (over decades if need be) to access capital.
- Mistletoe 4y ago
  Oh that’s an interesting idea.
- ch4s3 4y ago
  Wouldn't the effect be basically the same, except the ownership changes? I can't imagine he'd have no involvement in such a foundation.
  - Mistletoe 4y ago
    But the charity doesn’t need to liquidate as quickly as he does if he intends to give it away by the end of his life.
    - ch4s3 4y ago
      One imagines that the endgame for him is probably some sort of charity to hand off to anyway.
chadash 4y ago
He won't sell it all at once. Bill Gates used to own lots of Microsoft stock. Over time he sold it off and diversified, to the point that it's now only about 25% of his net worth. The key thing is that over time, Microsoft transitioned to a point where Bill Gates wasn't running things day-to-day and investors became comfortable with him not having any control. At that point, him selling shares was no big deal. At the other end of the extreme would be someone like Elon Musk, where Tesla's stock price is almost entirely dependent on him being at the helm. If he were to walk away now, the shares would tank in value. Jeff Bezos is somewhere in between. Clearly, Amazon would run okay without him, but he still has some involvement. He certainly can't sell all of his shares, but if he sells over time and makes it clear (and credible) that he is selling in order to use his money elsewhere (rather than trying to time the market because he thinks the stock is overpriced), the share prices of Amazon should hold up just fine.

erehweb 4y ago

Pledge is a strong word for what he actually said. He has really expressed intent rather than promising. Asked by CNN whether he intended to give away most of his wealth within his lifetime, Mr Bezos told the network: "Yeah, I do."

Bilal_io 4y ago
He would probably have given away $300B by the time his net worth is $2T.

pydry 4y ago

Billionaires really don't like being loathed do they?

SuoDuanDao 4y ago
Does anyone? I find it a source of hope that unaccountable oligarchs still care about doing the right thing when observed.
- pydry 4y ago
  Plenty of people seem to be able to tolerate it without giving away billions of dollars.
WithinReason 4y ago
Musk's twitter suggest otherwise. He doesn't need to care if people like him. Bezos doesn't need to either.

xyst 4y ago

Probably going into a “donor advised fund” which allows bezos to claim a multibillion dollar tax break for a lifetime without having to prove the money was actually spent towards a cause.

chadash 4y ago
Yeah, but once it's in a donor advised fund, it can't come out. No, it doesn't have to be spent right away but at some point it needs to be given away. It's not like you can just put money in a DAF and take it back out when you want to buy a yacht.

alach11 4y ago

You're going to see a lot of cynicism in this thread so I want to be a dissenting voice. This is a great thing. I'm glad the ideas behind the Giving Pledge are catching on.

Bilal_io 4y ago
The cynicism is warranted in my opinion. Because we've seen rich people give money only the further their wealth and power by influencing politics around the world, even when it appears that they're helping poor people.
- karmakurtisaani 4y ago
  Don't forget avoiding taxes. The one and only way we can be sure they gave the money away to someone else and have no control over how it's spent.

greenthrow 4y ago

Stop letting these crooks get away with this tax shelter move while applauding them. It should be called what it is.

gavinray 4y ago

debacle 4y ago
The global income distribution model (farmers in India -> Jeff Bezos) is problematic. But it's such a chaotic system that anyone claiming to have the solution (similar to anyone claiming there is no problem) is likely lying. The only solution (to me) that even starts to make sense is some sort of forced worker ownership, but lord knows what the details of that might look like.
- ada1981 4y ago
  We know pretty well what forced worker ownership looks like. Hundreds of millions of people dead. Needs to be opt-in. The next wave of famous business people will likely be the Platform Coop-ists. Activists building unicorns not for the $$$ but for the Klout of taking on the status quo model.
  - debacle 4y ago
    I'm not talking about socialism, I'm talking about worker coops.
  - pmoriarty 4y ago
    There's a difference between brutal totalitarian regimes in which an elite exercise absolute power over millions of people and actual ownership by workers themselves. It's the elites of those countries which owned everything and controlled everything. If you weren't part of the elite you had to follow orders.
eloisant 4y ago
No you're not the only one, plenty of people think like that which is why they keep capturing most of the value created by their employees and getting away with it.
- 4y ago

johndfsgdgdfg 4y ago

ck2 4y ago

If someone can accumulate that much wealth in a lifetime it means way too much was extracted from each individual. Then they distribute it back to mend the damage as they see fit, not as society deems needed. I'm not against millionaires but the exponential level up to billionaires probably shouldn't exist because it means the balance in the system is beyond broken. No-one has contributed billions of value to society.

throwaway98797 4y ago
gates, steve, musk, etc all have you may not like them, but a lack of imagination is no reason to condemn others
- ck2 4y ago
  I don't think you understand how massive a billion is compared to a million. No-one has contributed billions of value to society. Most scientists who have cured diseases are not billionaires. But for example the founder of instacart is a billionare. That should not be possible. It means the system is beyond broken and it's being exploited.
  - pmoriarty 4y ago
    That someone can make billions of dollars by creating a website while teachers and other workers who actually help people often risk their lives for shitty pay is sheer insanity.

post_break 4y ago

Is it a pledge? Or an Amber Heard pledge? I feel like we're seeing the Michael Scott version of declaring bankruptcy here. I'll believe it when I see it.

lzooz 4y ago
More like when Michael Scott promised to pay for the scholarships, haha
- post_break 4y ago
  They're lithium! I forgot about that type of pledge too.

dncornholio 4y ago

I'm the last who thinks he cares about people well-being, but.. What the F is going on. Apparently this is in response to a lot of criticism towards Jeff on how he should spend his money? I mean, excuse me? He can spend his money any way he freaking wants IMHO.

55555 4y ago
Most people hate people who are significantly richer than themselves.

dev_daftly 4y ago

So he is basically going to be creating a tax free way to pass all of his wealth to his kids? I am against taxing inheritance, but people praising billionaires for pledging to get around it legally is annoying.

jdenoy 4y ago

Yeah, he's learned everything from Amber Heard. Another communication strategy.

DueDilligence 4y ago

.. what a crock. yet another scoundrel ploy to skirt paying relevant taxes, etc. just like gates. just like peter thiel. just like Yvon Chouinard [patagonia ceo]. just like warren buffet. blah, blah, blah ... can't wait for adam conover [adam ruins everything] to jump on this one.

beardyw 4y ago

I am with Jesus on this one: Beware of practicing your righteousness before other people in order to be seen by them, for then you will have no reward from your Father who is in heaven. Thus, when you give to the needy, sound no trumpet before you, as the hypocrites do in the synagogues and in the streets, that they may be praised by others. Truly, I say to you, they have received their reward. But when you give to the needy, do not let your left hand know what your right hand is doing, so that your giving may be in secret. And your Father who sees in secret will reward you.

ryandvm 4y ago
Counterpoint: A billionaire publicly giving away most of their wealth probably has a lot of social influence on _other_ billionaires.
za3faran 4y ago
Key point here: before other people in order to be seen by them We have a similar notion in Islam called Riyaa' (رياء), where not only will the person engaging in it not get any rewards in the Hereafter, but he would be actively punished for it. Intention matters. It is possible that doing a major good deed in public is the right thing to do in order to get other people to do the same. It's all about setting your intentions right.

deleted 4y ago

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w1nst0nsm1th 4y ago

I didn't read they article but I don't have to... https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0Cu6EbELZ6I https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0Cu6EbELZ6I It's all about avoiding taxes. It's an 120 years old story.

kornhole 4y ago

A wealth tax would solve a lot of issues debated here. The schedule of giveaway and distribution could be democratically determined.

johnea 4y ago

Bozo was part of that pledge with Billionaire Bill, along with Warren Buffet. Billionaires in general are just a sign of the apocalypse, a social defect.