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> Even if they are beneficial to the affected populations, can we call that philanthropy? This is just silly zero-sum thinking. Obviously ending world poverty
by ef4 13y ago
> Even if they are beneficial to the affected populations, can we call that philanthropy?
This is just silly zero-sum thinking. Obviously ending world poverty is hugely beneficial to anyone who can sell things to those newly enriched people. But that doesn't make it "not philanthropy".
Even if he's really thinking "let's save 10 million children from dying of malaria so some of them will buy Windows phones" (which is silly), that's still fine by me. What matters are outcomes, not motives.
- rbanffy 13y ago> Even if he's really thinking "let's save 10 million children from dying of malaria so some of them will buy Windows phones" It's more like "let's donate 10% of the money needed to save 10 million children so others can donate the 90% needed to finish developing my vaccine and test it on the kids". Or something like it. > What matters are outcomes, not motives. We have to be careful about that. The most obvious are not necessarily the only outcomes, nor the most relevant and lasting.
- Lucy_karpova 13y agoI completely agree. The whole article seems to be a mix of what people would like to hear re philanthropy and what Bill Gates would like other people to do. Not sure he tells out all the motives he has. But the main idea of the article is good –getting hands on helping the world but doing what you can do the best is cool. What many idealists who work in this area lack is co-working with those who can help them use cutting edge technologies and get reasonable funding. The ideas are great, let’s see what the implementation will be like. And is the Gates foundation the only one that does that?