Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

A letter to our daughter

facebook.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

251–260 of 555 posts

Re: A letter to our daughter

#251

Post by abalone »

Couple problems with this otherwise well-intentioned effort:

1. It's a drop in the bucket compared to what governments spend on a regular basis trying to solve these problems. (Bill Gates has said as much.)

2. Private charity by the billionaire class is not a scalable solution. Historically most social advancement has happened through popular organization and government programs, not charity.

Silicon Valley itself is a product of government spending. The Internet and thus Facebook wouldn't exist without billions of taxpayer investment in early stage high risk research and procurement via DARPA and other government agencies. That continues today (just a couple examples: Siri and autonomous vehicles).

If we are serious about accomplishing social change and "long term investments over 25, 50 or even 100 years," the answers lie in greater government investment in these areas. Just like Silicon Valley. And that means all Silicon Valley companies should be paying back to the government just as they would an early stage investor. Not as a "noble choice" but as an obligation. (Currently they get the core tech pretty much for free.) That would drum up an order of magnitude more funding for much-needed social projects.

I'd like to hear more Silicon Valley CEOs talk about that.

Re: A letter to our daughter

#253

Post by CodyReichert »

Retra wrote: post #245
mikeg8 wrote: post #172

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think you were right in your initial comment about being "significantly jaded". The dude is literally trying as hard as he can to fix problems in the world but both your comments do little other than detract from his effort/energy.

What problems do you think his letter is fixing?

The letter doesn't do much fixing, but the billions of dollars do.

Re: A letter to our daughter

#254

Post by scott_karana »

unchocked wrote: post #203
fabrice_d wrote: post #171

Earlier quoted context omitted.

While Facebook is not doing everything it can to evade taxation in many countries, right? And let them choose what to do with the money. Why isn't Zuckerberg pledging to drive his company as a good citizen?

Your question is a good response to the framing of this philanthropy as "giving back". Indeed, if the point of it is to give back, why not simply mold your corporate behemoth into something kinder and gentler. I don't think this sort of thing is about "giving back" however. I think it's something more ambitious than that: to "do something", do something transformative for the future. Though Zuck's manifesto isn't wel…

> Because hoarding up billions of dollars into family dynasties is pretty much doing nothing.

Well, his money isn't stuffed under sofa cushions, so it would bankers choosing what to invest in, but your point still stands. ;)

Re: A letter to our daughter

#255

Post by peter303 »

agorabinary wrote: post #72
prezjordan wrote: post #2

> We will give 99% of our Facebook shares -- currently about $45 billion -- during our lives to advance this mission. We know this is a small contribution compared to all the resources and talents of those already working on these issues. But we want to do what we can, working alongside many others. Ninety. Nine. Percent.

Will this ~$45 billion go to efficient use? Based on his track record of $100 million to newark and how effective that was, I am skeptical. Good intentions in philanthropy are a dime a dozen, actual results are less common.

Improving schools is HARD for techies and non-techies alike. Education is one of the major iniatives of the Gates Foundation and Mrs Jobs main charity.

Re: A letter to our daughter

#256

Post by benihana »

kansface wrote: post #184
myth_buster wrote: post #176

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think it's a good sign if people don't take words at face value and be critical of it.

Their public pledge to donate 45 billion dollars to charity within their lifetimes with an eye towards long term solutions deserves criticism? Seriously, WTF?

The post you're responding to never said this essay deserved criticism. It said it's good people aren't taking it at face value and are being critical of it. They are not the same thing.

Being critical of the claim to donate 45 billion dollars is pretty natural. First, they didn't say 45 billion, they said a percentage of their worth which right now is 45 billion dollars. You would have a very strong point if they had just delivered the check for 45 billion dollars and people were criticizing it.

But they didn't do that. They wrote a post on the internet saying they're going to give away their money sometime in their lifetime.

Re: A letter to our daughter

#257

Post by andreyf »

danielrm26 wrote: post #174
6stringmerc wrote: post #35

Okay, maybe it's just me, but after reading the introduction and getting through the list of extremely difficult "Can we..." challenges followed by the "We must..." directives, the first quote that popped into my head was a variation of “a poor man is crazy, but a rich man is just ‘eccentric.’” I get the desire to solve the world's ills, of society's shortcomings, of essentially fixing the thousands of years of evolu…

Man tries to help the world with his money and he's greeted with criticism.

I don't think cynicism and criticism are the same here. This is the man that about a decade ago who called his users "dumb fucks" for trusting him with their personal data [1]. The same man who used failed password logins to Facebook to access a journalist's email address [2].

Now he's giving 99% of his wealth to a charity he controls. This is an awesome step: dynastic wealth is stupid. However, it will take a few more good deeds to convince me that he's grown out of his youthful moral indiscretions.

1. http://www.businessinsider.com/well-these-new-zuckerberg-ims...

2. http://www.businessinsider.com/how-mark-zuckerberg-hacked-in...

Re: A letter to our daughter

#258

Post by scott_karana »

Omniusaspirer wrote: post #143
grp wrote: post #119

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What about the concrete initiative of just paying taxes in each countries where the real business is done?

If you're in the US and want to actually make the world better there are ridiculously more efficient ways to do so than handing your money to the government. Tax dollars paid in the US are probably more of a negative force in the world than a positive one when you consider the damage our military and corporate subsidies have done over the last 50 years.

Facebook has oodles of untaxed cash by virtue of the Double Irish, so it could choose any of a number of EU governments to invest charitably in. Not just the USA.

I wonder what Greece would think of free cash injections, for example? What could improved infrastructure do for that struggling country?

Re: A letter to our daughter

#259

Post by Chathamization »

toomuchtodo wrote: post #93
cwe wrote: post #51

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Which is exactly the type of stuff Zuck is talking about here, although in less power-hungry ways. So you're kind of proving @austenallred's point.

I think Zuck is still power hungry, he's just more veiled about it. Everyone with enough power (through money) wants to shape the world in their specific ideal.

Agreed. The fact that they're having a big press release about all the awesome stuff they're going to be doing before they've done any of it, heck before they're even ready to say what they're actually going to be doing, is telling. As is naming their initiative after their daughter.

It's nice when vanity projects end up helping the masses (and we'll have to wait and see how successful it is at that). However, we shouldn't act like this very public display of wealth (again, before anything is even done) has motives that are so different from, say, giant statues of oneself or giant mausoleums.

Re: A letter to our daughter

#260

Post by Joof »

6stringmerc wrote: post #35

Okay, maybe it's just me, but after reading the introduction and getting through the list of extremely difficult "Can we..." challenges followed by the "We must..." directives, the first quote that popped into my head was a variation of “a poor man is crazy, but a rich man is just ‘eccentric.’” I get the desire to solve the world's ills, of society's shortcomings, of essentially fixing the thousands of years of evolu…

>Citation needed. Like, really.

I'm of two minds about this. This is an excellent piece of writing and is extremely persuasive and accomplishes all of it's intended goals. This is very effective writing and may change someone's opinion from emotional calls. It's very human, easy to understand and people flock to it.

However; we have seen the constant and repeated abuse of using this style of writing. Advertisements are the most prominent and politics the most dystopian. It's also very easy to convince people that certain things are facts when that may be disputed or outright wrong.

So there's a weird question to come out of this: how accurate and cited do we really need our emotional appeals to be? Given the effectiveness of the writing, citations seem completely unnecessary. Given the context (letter to child; although I'm fairly certain it was orignially intended for a broader audience this is what they claim) you would assume it has no need to be entirely factual, but that context is changed now that it's become a public letter. A public piece of writing should ethically cite or have some backing for any statistics they claim (in my opinion). Although overall hacker news' culture would probably say that if you make a decision, it should probably be based on real data.

Personally, I think it's a piece of writing meant for a wide audience which in my opinion means they should cite any claims they make in this case. It's easy to mistake it for something else entirely because of how it's written, which is why it appears to get a pass.

Post reply on HN