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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
by 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 agoIn 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.