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Before the Gates Foundation and The Giving Pledge, billionaires usually did three things: 1. Buy fancy yachts. 2. Continue running the business that made them
by ggreer 12y ago
Before the Gates Foundation and The Giving Pledge, billionaires usually did three things:
1. Buy fancy yachts.
2. Continue running the business that made them rich.
3. Spend a token amount on a feel-good charity. The Foundation to Prevent Euthanasia of Cute Puppies or Whatever.
Gates has managed to convince them of another option:
4. Spend wealth to alleviate large causes of suffering that few/no groups are working on.
More than 3.3 million people who would have died of malaria are alive today.
I realize he can't take full responsibility for that, but considering all he's done, Bill Gates is a living saint.
- res0nat0r 12y agoRockefeller and Carnegie were donating vast sums of money to many different charities long ago. I wouldn't call either of their donation efforts "feel good".
- ggreer 12y agoI'm aware of both. I said, "usually" and I was talking about contemporary billionaires. Both Carnegie and Rockefeller had a sense of effective philanthropy. I find it very impressive that Carnegie managed to spend 90% of his assets before he died.
- mercurial 12y agoGates is comparable with Rockfeller, in the sense that they both had extremely dodgy ways of doing business and managed to create huge monopolies.
- melling 12y agoHoward Hughes? I think he wanted to the avoid taxes but his investment is still paying dividends today. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Howard_Hughes_Medical_Institute http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Howard_Hughes_Medical_Institute It has a $17 billion endowment. Actually, there are other large endowments if you look on the list. http://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_wealthiest_foundations http://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_wealthiest_foundation...
- hellodevnull 12y ago>More than 3.3 million people who would have died of malaria are alive today. This does make him sound like a saint, but is number of lives saved really a good metric? I mean, what's the quality of life like for these three million people, what's their life expectancy? I know this makes me sound like a horrible person but I think keeping extremely poor people barely alive looks good as a statistic and there's more worthy causes to spend our efforts on in those areas where malaria is prevalent.
- adamnemecek 12y ago> This does make him sound like a saint, but is number of lives saved really a good metric? I mean, what's the quality of life like for these three million people, what's their life expectancy? You can't really be improving living conditions of people who are dead can you. So it's a first step.
- lnanek2 12y agoMore people isn't necessarily a good way to improve living conditions, however. It is pretty common for deer populations to become unhealthy when predators are removed, for example, since with no predators they just over produce and then they all starve due to lack of tree bark. You end up with a sickly, miserable population.
- oblio 12y agoThen be glad that someone else did not apply this principle to you. After all, maybe someone out there in the world thinks that 1 person / km2 ought to be enough. Who's to say that you wouldn't be in his "TO TERMINATE" list? And these are humans you're talking about, not deer.
- GFK_of_xmaspast 12y agoOh I can assure you that the people of Africa have plenty of predators, not least of which are the IMF and World Bank.
- freehunter 12y ago
- __Joker 12y agoYes, Gates believes that philanthropy can be part of solutions to alleviate social problems[1]. While most people don't agree to that, at least he is doing something one way or the other. [1] http://www.gatesnotes.com/Books/Why-Inequality-Matters-Capital-in-21st-Century-Review http://www.gatesnotes.com/Books/Why-Inequality-Matters-Capit...
- andreasvc 12y agoI don't think most people have any opinion whatsoever about how social problems can be alleviated. What makes you think they would not not believe in philantropy's effectiveness? I have never heard such a claim.
- dagw 12y agoI know many people, especially in Europe, who think that while philanthropy can do good and offer assistance, only a concerted government led effort can offer any sort of permanent alleviation to social problems.
- ekianjo 12y ago> Bill Gates is a living saint. Maybe he just feels he has a lot to give back after what he did in the business world ?
- skrebbel 12y ago1. Earn shitloads by monopolistically holding back a decade of innovation in the rich west. 2. Give all of it to the poor. If anything, that sounds like Robin Hood to me, more than anything else.
- ekianjo 12y ago1. innovation does not only benefit the "rich west" - computers are everywhere, man. 2. I doubt he has given "all" of his fortune to the poor. 3. Robin Hood is a legend.
- skrebbel 12y ago1. Sure thing, but if you can choose between "faster computers" and "cure malaria" then I'd wager that's pretty easy - except of course when you're called Ray Kurzweil.
- iolsantr 12y ago> 1. innovation does not only benefit the "rich west" - computers are everywhere, man. While this is true, the evidence so far is that innovation (at least of the kind we have been engaging in) benefits the rich far more than the poor.
- ekianjo 12y ago> While this is true, the evidence so far is that innovation (at least of the kind we have been engaging in) benefits the rich far more than the poor. Oh yeah ? Do you ignore the fact that even in the poorest countries people have mobile phones and connect with online services though it ? This has completely changed how they network in the past 10 years. The West is not the only harbour where innovation stops.
- masklinn 12y agoYour descriptions are utterly out of whack with objective reality, and Gates's philantropy is very much in-line with Gilded Age philantropists like Rockfeller, Carnegie, Eastman or Rosenwald. Hell, Rockfeller very specifically championed and helped lead efforts against malaria (amongst many other causes).