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His foundation really does seem to do a good job with 'effective altruism'. There's a reason they're marked as secondary beneficiaries on all my accounts. Als

His foundation really does seem to do a good job with 'effective altruism'. There's a reason they're marked as secondary beneficiaries on all my accounts. Also, as a recommendation, you guys should look into whether your employer matches charitable donations to 501Cs in any amount. I find giving a solid chunk of my discretionary budget to charity every year lends a sense of purpose to a job that wouldn't otherwise have much (at least, in the sense of helping others). I enjoy being a dev, and I've given serious thought to simply continuing working once I reach my FIRE number and donating half of what I earn to charity. I think most charities would have more use for my money than my time, given my disability

Ozzie_osman 1y ago
For you (or other folks) working in tech and giving to charity, apart from corporate match, another couple pieces of advice are to consider a Donor Advised Fund. They are really easy to set up, and then you get some benefits, like the ability to "bunch" your donations (can help with tax deductions) or donate appreciated investments (like RSUs) without paying capital gains tax.
- wing-_-nuts 1y ago
  Yep, I've considered a DAF and donating stock, but it wouldn't be eligible for my employer match.
  - dmoy 1y ago
    Depends on the employer I guess. Some companies will do match even for DAF distributions (not the initial transfer obviously)
- 9rx 1y ago
  > without paying capital gains tax. It's a funny day when you're feeling charitable, but go out of your way to avoid helping the entity that should be the ideal charitable recipient.
  - monooso 1y ago
    That assumes a lot about the current administration.
    - deleted 1y ago
      [deleted]
    - gambiting 1y ago
      It might be surprising, but there are charitable people outside of USA too. I do consider paying taxes the best way to help those in need, but I don't live in the US personally.
    - 9rx 1y ago
      Presumably the current administration is what has made the day funny (in a sad way).
    - dingnuts 1y ago
      It assumes a lot about future administrations too. When Obama was in office I complained a lot about the Executive branch consolidating power and using executive orders, and the Democrats were fine with it because he was a "good" administration. But guess what? If you give too much power to a position, people who want to abuse the power will try to get themselves there. I wasn't upset that Obama was consolidating power because I thought Obama would abuse it. I'm upset that he consolidated power and then left it to whoever would come next, and then has the gall to be surprised that consolidating power under the Executive would undermine the power of the Legislature the moment a President who was willing to abuse said power was sworn in. We're cooked because of the fucking team sports. Both parties have had the chance to reign in the Executive and neither has the balls to use it against their own guy
      - cyberax 1y ago
        Obama didn't "consolidate power", he issued fewer EO than Bush (276 vs. 291). Trump has issued 142 just within these 100 days.
- Zaheer 1y ago
  https://charityvest.org/ https://charityvest.org/ is a great modern DAF tool. I use it to get 1 single charity receipt at the end of the year and track my giving.
  - newfocogi 1y ago
    Another happy CharityVest user here. I recommend it to everyone I talk to when DAFs are remotely relevant to the conversation.
- MattSayar 1y ago
  Money managing tools like Betterment also have native UI features to donate investments to charities as well
- nonce42 1y ago
  Agree on the Donor Advised Fund (I use Fidelity). If you have highly-appreciated stock, you definitely should look into a DAF. Another benefit is that it is extremely easy to donate to a charity; click and submit and you don't have to worry about paperwork and putting each donation down on your taxes.
_bin_ 1y ago
[flagged]
- olivermuty 1y ago
  A dollar will help someone abroad much more than the same dollar will in the US though.
- closewith 1y ago
  I don't think any individual should have the power to unilaterally choose where to deploy billions of dollars, but your vision is equally myopic. Nothing about being a US citizen gives you any moral priority over any other person.
- mlyle 1y ago
  > I am within mine to remind everyone to please help your friend, your neighbor, your town, state, and country before you look further afield. Nah. We have memberships in families, neighborhoods, friend groups, local areas, cultural groups, nations, and the whole world. And problems at any of these levels can grow to the point where they affect us, too. And places where the needs are most acute and broad stand the greatest chances of developing to not be as acute of problems anymore and indeed to offer value to the overall world community through trade. Indeed, the extreme version of what you're saying is why so many only give to their church communities which are insular and isolated. Or to just retain everything. 70% of my giving is domestic, but I think it's nuts to ignore the rest of the world. Yes, things improved in distant lands maybe are harder for me to see and have less of a direct impact on those around me; so discount their benefit some, but that marginal benefit is so much larger...
  - _bin_ 1y ago
    You have to weigh that against the fact that you are much more able to figure out how to actually do what's needed at levels where you see things firsthand. At least, that's been my experience; it's much more realistic to start a nonprofit that can make a real difference locally, then perhaps scale with time, than it is to found something with a global mission, lacking global context on how things manifest around the world. More importantly, I'm not a utilitarian, and do not subscribe to "effective altruism" or other utilitarian philosophies. At the end of the day it's Gates' money to do with as he wishes and it's my internet account to argue against that as I wish.
zozbot234 1y ago
> There's a reason they're marked as secondary beneficiaries on all my accounts. Strictly speaking, the foundation discourages individuals from donating directly to them, mostly because the tax treatment of giving that way isn't necessarily favorable. They've set up Gates Philanthropy Partners as a 501(c)(3) charity which is aligned to the same philanthropic goals. (Of course there's also many other worthwhile players in the broader EA space.)
prvc 1y ago
Have to disagree about the 'effective' part. Gates seems to have had a knack for massive inefficiencies and negative externalities in every way that he has impacted the world. Think of how many man-hours (measured in human lifetimes) have been wasted due to the shortcomings of various MicroSoft programs. Weigh that against his health initiatives in the third world. Or the impact of dimming the sun by depositing massive quantities of particles in the atmosphere: the resources consumed and carbon emissions that placing them would entail, and of course the intended effect, which is to impede human progress as measured by the Kardashev scale. Everything starts to look much more efficient if this is taken as the goal, though.
- mgraczyk 1y ago
  Helping to cure polio doesn't outweigh imagined future harms by George engineering that didn't happen yet?
  - ok123456 1y ago
    He's not curing polio, though. His polio program is spreading it because they use a live virus, and a low percentage of the population is getting it. People are now getting paralytic polio from others who got the vaccine. This is just one example of the Kreuger-Dunning that permeates all aspects of the Gates Foundation. His interventions have been mainly disasters, distorted public policy, and gobbled up biotech IP in the process. He controls the money spicket and is very petty and cocksure about what is "right." Researchers and public policy experts who disagree with his ideas get cut off. Governments should set public health policy and manage the needs of their people, not billionaires, biotech companies, or NGOs.
    - codr7 1y ago
      Plus, he wouldn't touch a project he couldn't make a profit from somehow. People don't change much.
      - therein 1y ago
giantg2 1y ago
It seems his foundation already has significant funding. I would give to other charities, focusing on high impact work in specific regions or domains that knight not be as popular.
hiuyty 1y ago
[flagged]
- deleted 1y ago
  [deleted]
- altruios 1y ago
  What a completely unhelpful comment: for all you know they are infertile. Having children shouldn't be done for such selfish reasons as mere personal fulfillment. I care about the kind of life a hypothetical human offspring would have (which is why I choose not to have any currently). Creating a family is a really weird solution to bring up. But your rage is valid, I think it is just misplaced. The above commenter to you could perhaps be more effective in their decision making regarding filling their existential void. But family planning is a rash and presumptuous 'solution' to filling that need.
  - hiuyty 1y ago
    [flagged]
yodsanklai 1y ago
My issue with Gates is that he wants to fight climate change, yet he's personally an environmental disaster with his yachts and jets. I'm not saying he has to live like a monk to be credible, and maybe his foundation is doing a good job (never looked into it), but either he's an hypocrite, or I disagree with him on how to fight climate change.
- faku812 1y ago
  It's all about virtue signaling. All he cares about is if people someday decide to "eat the rich" he won't be the first one on the menu.
  - calepayson 1y ago
    This is a silly way to interpret someone donating over $100B to charity.
- abound 1y ago
  I think it's pretty clearly hypocritical, but also if his actions are (far) more than offsetting his own emissions and impact, it's still a net positive. Of course, he could choose to not live a super-high consumption lifestyle in addition to his climate philanthopy, but if I had to take one or the other, I'd rather him continue throwing money at climate work than take fewer private jet rides.
  - eastbound 1y ago
    My issue is, he wants to fight climate change… then tries to spend $200bn in less than 20 years. This afflux of money creates a spike of consumerism, then a sudden dip after that. Consultants in foundations will scramble to spend that money for sure, and they themselves will buy private jets for that. The way to fight climate change is to keep people at a low level of consumption, and spend his own money very slowly, very scarcely. And keep people with small cars, no Cadillac for any consultant.
  - yupitsme123 1y ago
    How do we measure if something is a net positive or negative when we're talking about global-level decisions? This has always been the sticking point for me when it comes to supporting large charities.
yupitsme123 1y ago
The thing that's always made me skeptical of Gates and any other enormous foundations is that they operate at such a high level and with such enormous budgets that they basically exist in the same "amoral" world of nation states and corporations, but yet they face none of the scrutiny or criticism that those entities face. How do you judge the actions of someone when those actions are powerful enough to move markets, take down regimes, and change people's lives for generations? We take them at their word and assume that everything they do is well-intentioned and good and has zero negative impact or secondary effects, but is that really the case? To me it seems like the only charity that can be trusted is a small-scale one that acts locally and with lots of transparency.
- david-gpu 1y ago
  Why would they have to be perfect to deserve donations? A "small-scale charity that acts locally with lots of transparency" may be great, or it may be terribly inefficient in their real-world ability to improve the well-being of the people they are supposed to benefit. And either choice would be better than not donating anything to anybody.
  - yupitsme123 1y ago
    May be great or may be terrible applies to both the small and the the nation-state sized charity right? Maybe my judgement or efficiency is bad when I try to help my neighbor. Okay, whoopsie. Now apply that margin of error to a foundation whose decisions impact millions of people and possibly entire societies, possibly for generations. The unintended or possibly negative effects can be enormous and long-lasting.
- cyberax 1y ago
  Small-scale local charities are fine, but they are by definition _local_. And even the poorest parts of the US are doing much better than a lot of poor countries in Africa and Asia.
  - yupitsme123 1y ago
therein 1y ago
> There's a reason they're marked as secondary beneficiaries on all my accounts. That's just insane. Bill Gates is absolutely not a good guy but you cannot be convinced to that given how much you idealize him. Have children. I would have replied to the sibling comment saying the same but comments become unreplyable once they get enough downvotes.
nostromo 1y ago
I worked there and would encourage you not to do that. It'd be smarter to see who they are giving money to (which is all public) and give directly to those orgs. The Gates foundation itself spends a lot of money on consultants, "government engagement" (aka lobbying by another name), and fancy dinners. That's fine or maybe even noble for a family foundation, but it's probably not something individuals would want to fund.
- reaperducer 1y ago
  Exactly. He doesn't need 20 years. That's just him trying to draw attention to himself. If he was really serious about giving away his money, he could write a single check to the Red Cross || Doctors Without Borders || insert charity here and in five minutes be done with it. The world doesn't need more vanity charities. It needs its existing charities to be better funded.
  - Blankono 1y ago
    I don't think you understand really how thngs work if you believe, giving something like the Red Cross Billions would just work. Just googling it delivers enough critisism on worst level than you think Bill Gates Foundation is: "misusing funds, poor logistical planning, inadequate responses to specific crises, and even allegations of fraud and theft. " Impact matters. Impact doesn't mean to just give money to some organization. Bill Gates actually played a significant role in Ebola vacination. Why? Because he/his team revisted why just giving out vacines was not enough. Impact means helping as efficient as possible with the money. And btw. a lot of other charities of this style (especially christians ones we all know) have also borderline ways of missusing believers to do their work. My aunt worked for nuns and got paid shit. This is now a problem for her retirment. Guess who pays that? Yeah the state...
  - kurthr 1y ago
    [flagged]
  - SteveNuts 1y ago
    That much wealth could probably fund every food bank in the country indefinitely, even at extremely conservative returns.
hermitcrab 1y ago
>I enjoy being a dev ... I think most charities would have more use for my money than my time, given my disability You could be massively wrong about that. Many charities are desparate for IT help. I am a developer and volunteer at a charity. I have done some IT stuff for them (mostly setting up some Airtable databases) and it has been (modesty aside) transformative for them.
lvass 1y ago
>His foundation really does seem to do a good job with 'effective altruism' Can you provide some sources for this? I'm by no means an expert in this area, but my city happened to receive some of his modified A. Aegypti since 2017 and it didn't make the people here happy, at all. Though I don't even think there's a comprehensive study on how much good or harm came from it.

Ozzie_osman 1y ago

For you (or other folks) working in tech and giving to charity, apart from corporate match, another couple pieces of advice are to consider a Donor Advised Fund. They are really easy to set up, and then you get some benefits, like the ability to "bunch" your donations (can help with tax deductions) or donate appreciated investments (like RSUs) without paying capital gains tax.

wing-_-nuts 1y ago
Yep, I've considered a DAF and donating stock, but it wouldn't be eligible for my employer match.
- dmoy 1y ago
  Depends on the employer I guess. Some companies will do match even for DAF distributions (not the initial transfer obviously)
9rx 1y ago
> without paying capital gains tax. It's a funny day when you're feeling charitable, but go out of your way to avoid helping the entity that should be the ideal charitable recipient.
- monooso 1y ago
  That assumes a lot about the current administration.
  - deleted 1y ago
    [deleted]
  - gambiting 1y ago
    It might be surprising, but there are charitable people outside of USA too. I do consider paying taxes the best way to help those in need, but I don't live in the US personally.
  - 9rx 1y ago
    Presumably the current administration is what has made the day funny (in a sad way).
  - dingnuts 1y ago
    It assumes a lot about future administrations too. When Obama was in office I complained a lot about the Executive branch consolidating power and using executive orders, and the Democrats were fine with it because he was a "good" administration. But guess what? If you give too much power to a position, people who want to abuse the power will try to get themselves there. I wasn't upset that Obama was consolidating power because I thought Obama would abuse it. I'm upset that he consolidated power and then left it to whoever would come next, and then has the gall to be surprised that consolidating power under the Executive would undermine the power of the Legislature the moment a President who was willing to abuse said power was sworn in. We're cooked because of the fucking team sports. Both parties have had the chance to reign in the Executive and neither has the balls to use it against their own guy
    - cyberax 1y ago
      Obama didn't "consolidate power", he issued fewer EO than Bush (276 vs. 291). Trump has issued 142 just within these 100 days.
Zaheer 1y ago
https://charityvest.org/ https://charityvest.org/ is a great modern DAF tool. I use it to get 1 single charity receipt at the end of the year and track my giving.
- newfocogi 1y ago
  Another happy CharityVest user here. I recommend it to everyone I talk to when DAFs are remotely relevant to the conversation.
MattSayar 1y ago
Money managing tools like Betterment also have native UI features to donate investments to charities as well
nonce42 1y ago
Agree on the Donor Advised Fund (I use Fidelity). If you have highly-appreciated stock, you definitely should look into a DAF. Another benefit is that it is extremely easy to donate to a charity; click and submit and you don't have to worry about paperwork and putting each donation down on your taxes.

_bin_ 1y ago

[flagged]

olivermuty 1y ago
A dollar will help someone abroad much more than the same dollar will in the US though.
closewith 1y ago
I don't think any individual should have the power to unilaterally choose where to deploy billions of dollars, but your vision is equally myopic. Nothing about being a US citizen gives you any moral priority over any other person.
mlyle 1y ago
> I am within mine to remind everyone to please help your friend, your neighbor, your town, state, and country before you look further afield. Nah. We have memberships in families, neighborhoods, friend groups, local areas, cultural groups, nations, and the whole world. And problems at any of these levels can grow to the point where they affect us, too. And places where the needs are most acute and broad stand the greatest chances of developing to not be as acute of problems anymore and indeed to offer value to the overall world community through trade. Indeed, the extreme version of what you're saying is why so many only give to their church communities which are insular and isolated. Or to just retain everything. 70% of my giving is domestic, but I think it's nuts to ignore the rest of the world. Yes, things improved in distant lands maybe are harder for me to see and have less of a direct impact on those around me; so discount their benefit some, but that marginal benefit is so much larger...
- _bin_ 1y ago
  You have to weigh that against the fact that you are much more able to figure out how to actually do what's needed at levels where you see things firsthand. At least, that's been my experience; it's much more realistic to start a nonprofit that can make a real difference locally, then perhaps scale with time, than it is to found something with a global mission, lacking global context on how things manifest around the world. More importantly, I'm not a utilitarian, and do not subscribe to "effective altruism" or other utilitarian philosophies. At the end of the day it's Gates' money to do with as he wishes and it's my internet account to argue against that as I wish.

zozbot234 1y ago

> There's a reason they're marked as secondary beneficiaries on all my accounts. Strictly speaking, the foundation discourages individuals from donating directly to them, mostly because the tax treatment of giving that way isn't necessarily favorable. They've set up Gates Philanthropy Partners as a 501(c)(3) charity which is aligned to the same philanthropic goals. (Of course there's also many other worthwhile players in the broader EA space.)

prvc 1y ago

Have to disagree about the 'effective' part. Gates seems to have had a knack for massive inefficiencies and negative externalities in every way that he has impacted the world. Think of how many man-hours (measured in human lifetimes) have been wasted due to the shortcomings of various MicroSoft programs. Weigh that against his health initiatives in the third world. Or the impact of dimming the sun by depositing massive quantities of particles in the atmosphere: the resources consumed and carbon emissions that placing them would entail, and of course the intended effect, which is to impede human progress as measured by the Kardashev scale. Everything starts to look much more efficient if this is taken as the goal, though.

mgraczyk 1y ago
Helping to cure polio doesn't outweigh imagined future harms by George engineering that didn't happen yet?
- ok123456 1y ago
  He's not curing polio, though. His polio program is spreading it because they use a live virus, and a low percentage of the population is getting it. People are now getting paralytic polio from others who got the vaccine. This is just one example of the Kreuger-Dunning that permeates all aspects of the Gates Foundation. His interventions have been mainly disasters, distorted public policy, and gobbled up biotech IP in the process. He controls the money spicket and is very petty and cocksure about what is "right." Researchers and public policy experts who disagree with his ideas get cut off. Governments should set public health policy and manage the needs of their people, not billionaires, biotech companies, or NGOs.
  - codr7 1y ago
    Plus, he wouldn't touch a project he couldn't make a profit from somehow. People don't change much.
    - therein 1y ago

giantg2 1y ago

It seems his foundation already has significant funding. I would give to other charities, focusing on high impact work in specific regions or domains that knight not be as popular.

hiuyty 1y ago

[flagged]

deleted 1y ago
[deleted]
altruios 1y ago
What a completely unhelpful comment: for all you know they are infertile. Having children shouldn't be done for such selfish reasons as mere personal fulfillment. I care about the kind of life a hypothetical human offspring would have (which is why I choose not to have any currently). Creating a family is a really weird solution to bring up. But your rage is valid, I think it is just misplaced. The above commenter to you could perhaps be more effective in their decision making regarding filling their existential void. But family planning is a rash and presumptuous 'solution' to filling that need.
- hiuyty 1y ago
  [flagged]

yodsanklai 1y ago

My issue with Gates is that he wants to fight climate change, yet he's personally an environmental disaster with his yachts and jets. I'm not saying he has to live like a monk to be credible, and maybe his foundation is doing a good job (never looked into it), but either he's an hypocrite, or I disagree with him on how to fight climate change.

faku812 1y ago
It's all about virtue signaling. All he cares about is if people someday decide to "eat the rich" he won't be the first one on the menu.
- calepayson 1y ago
  This is a silly way to interpret someone donating over $100B to charity.
abound 1y ago
I think it's pretty clearly hypocritical, but also if his actions are (far) more than offsetting his own emissions and impact, it's still a net positive. Of course, he could choose to not live a super-high consumption lifestyle in addition to his climate philanthopy, but if I had to take one or the other, I'd rather him continue throwing money at climate work than take fewer private jet rides.
- eastbound 1y ago
  My issue is, he wants to fight climate change… then tries to spend $200bn in less than 20 years. This afflux of money creates a spike of consumerism, then a sudden dip after that. Consultants in foundations will scramble to spend that money for sure, and they themselves will buy private jets for that. The way to fight climate change is to keep people at a low level of consumption, and spend his own money very slowly, very scarcely. And keep people with small cars, no Cadillac for any consultant.
- yupitsme123 1y ago
  How do we measure if something is a net positive or negative when we're talking about global-level decisions? This has always been the sticking point for me when it comes to supporting large charities.

yupitsme123 1y ago

The thing that's always made me skeptical of Gates and any other enormous foundations is that they operate at such a high level and with such enormous budgets that they basically exist in the same "amoral" world of nation states and corporations, but yet they face none of the scrutiny or criticism that those entities face. How do you judge the actions of someone when those actions are powerful enough to move markets, take down regimes, and change people's lives for generations? We take them at their word and assume that everything they do is well-intentioned and good and has zero negative impact or secondary effects, but is that really the case? To me it seems like the only charity that can be trusted is a small-scale one that acts locally and with lots of transparency.

david-gpu 1y ago
Why would they have to be perfect to deserve donations? A "small-scale charity that acts locally with lots of transparency" may be great, or it may be terribly inefficient in their real-world ability to improve the well-being of the people they are supposed to benefit. And either choice would be better than not donating anything to anybody.
- yupitsme123 1y ago
  May be great or may be terrible applies to both the small and the the nation-state sized charity right? Maybe my judgement or efficiency is bad when I try to help my neighbor. Okay, whoopsie. Now apply that margin of error to a foundation whose decisions impact millions of people and possibly entire societies, possibly for generations. The unintended or possibly negative effects can be enormous and long-lasting.
cyberax 1y ago
Small-scale local charities are fine, but they are by definition _local_. And even the poorest parts of the US are doing much better than a lot of poor countries in Africa and Asia.
- yupitsme123 1y ago

therein 1y ago

> There's a reason they're marked as secondary beneficiaries on all my accounts. That's just insane. Bill Gates is absolutely not a good guy but you cannot be convinced to that given how much you idealize him. Have children. I would have replied to the sibling comment saying the same but comments become unreplyable once they get enough downvotes.

nostromo 1y ago

I worked there and would encourage you not to do that. It'd be smarter to see who they are giving money to (which is all public) and give directly to those orgs. The Gates foundation itself spends a lot of money on consultants, "government engagement" (aka lobbying by another name), and fancy dinners. That's fine or maybe even noble for a family foundation, but it's probably not something individuals would want to fund.

reaperducer 1y ago
Exactly. He doesn't need 20 years. That's just him trying to draw attention to himself. If he was really serious about giving away his money, he could write a single check to the Red Cross || Doctors Without Borders || insert charity here and in five minutes be done with it. The world doesn't need more vanity charities. It needs its existing charities to be better funded.
- Blankono 1y ago
  I don't think you understand really how thngs work if you believe, giving something like the Red Cross Billions would just work. Just googling it delivers enough critisism on worst level than you think Bill Gates Foundation is: "misusing funds, poor logistical planning, inadequate responses to specific crises, and even allegations of fraud and theft. " Impact matters. Impact doesn't mean to just give money to some organization. Bill Gates actually played a significant role in Ebola vacination. Why? Because he/his team revisted why just giving out vacines was not enough. Impact means helping as efficient as possible with the money. And btw. a lot of other charities of this style (especially christians ones we all know) have also borderline ways of missusing believers to do their work. My aunt worked for nuns and got paid shit. This is now a problem for her retirment. Guess who pays that? Yeah the state...
- kurthr 1y ago
  [flagged]
- SteveNuts 1y ago
  That much wealth could probably fund every food bank in the country indefinitely, even at extremely conservative returns.

hermitcrab 1y ago

>I enjoy being a dev ... I think most charities would have more use for my money than my time, given my disability You could be massively wrong about that. Many charities are desparate for IT help. I am a developer and volunteer at a charity. I have done some IT stuff for them (mostly setting up some Airtable databases) and it has been (modesty aside) transformative for them.

lvass 1y ago

>His foundation really does seem to do a good job with 'effective altruism' Can you provide some sources for this? I'm by no means an expert in this area, but my city happened to receive some of his modified A. Aegypti since 2017 and it didn't make the people here happy, at all. Though I don't even think there's a comprehensive study on how much good or harm came from it.