It astounds me that people are taken in by this. There are so many ways that Zuckerberg can manipulate this to his self-worshiping benefit that I can't even guess which ones he'll pick. Consider the type of charity Zuckerberg has previously favoured: totally monopolistic internet infrastructure in India. Sure, people get internet, but it'll Zuckernet from now until forever. Philanthropy is a broken system, because powerful philanthropists never really give away their money: they retain control of whatever the charity is used to build. When you have everything and it's not enough, that kind of control is worth a lot of dollars to you.
A letter to our daughter
431–440 of 555 posts
Re: A letter to our daughter
#432Earlier quoted context omitted.
Hopefully you're not the only one, as I share your reluctance to embrace it as the "go-to" model of social constructiveness. There's a lot of good that comes from people "giving back" in one form or another, be it financial, skilled labor, or just simple time and attention when possible. I think it's admirable to want to change "institutions" like education for the better - I've been an advocate for 'progress' ever s…
Would you voluntarily give more taxes to your governments? Or would you rather donate that money to a charity of your choosing / research? > the answer to the variety of problems that plague Chicago's South Side, New Orleans, or any number of troubled communities? No one (government, private sector, etc.) has the answer to those problems. Those are really really hard problems that require the cooperation of non-profi…
>Would you voluntarily give more taxes to your governments?
I already voluntarily pay more taxes than I need to. It's pretty easy to (legally) pay much less tax if you are running your own business.
Also, I and quite a few other people I know don't use GiftAid when giving to charity or buying things from charities (GiftAid basically lets the charity claim back the income tax that I've paid on that money) for the reason that the government is better placed to know what projects need money than I am. They are more likely to spend the money on 'unfashionable' things that don't trigger the same emotional response in people but are actually more effective uses of money.
Re: A letter to our daughter
#433It astounds me that people are taken in by this. There are so many ways that Zuckerberg can manipulate this to his self-worshiping benefit that I can't even guess which ones he'll pick. Consider the type of charity Zuckerberg has previously favoured: totally monopolistic internet infrastructure in India. Sure, people get internet, but it'll Zuckernet from now until forever. Philanthropy is a broken system, because po…
Do you think your comments apply to Bill Gates?
Re: A letter to our daughter
#434I'm all for rich people giving their mass fortunes to charity but they sure do seem to take a long time to do it. Bill Gates is STILL the richest person on the planet in 2015 and his wealth GREW $3.2 billion last year. Can we save the praise for giving away $44 billion until he actually gives it away?
Source: http://www.forbes.com/sites/kerryadolan/2015/03/02/inside-th...
Re: A letter to our daughter
#435It astounds me that people are taken in by this. There are so many ways that Zuckerberg can manipulate this to his self-worshiping benefit that I can't even guess which ones he'll pick. Consider the type of charity Zuckerberg has previously favoured: totally monopolistic internet infrastructure in India. Sure, people get internet, but it'll Zuckernet from now until forever. Philanthropy is a broken system, because po…
Do you think your comments apply to Bill Gates?
It's less clear cut with Gates because he has a quite different personality to Zuckerberg. Gates has a genuine desire to understand and fix things, although that is amongst his more positive traits. Zuckerberg/Facebook, on the other hand, has well-documented antisocial and indeed malicious behaviour.
Re: A letter to our daughter
#436Why are the techno-barons so focused on human health? Not that there's anything wrong with these efforts, but human disease is much less of a threat to our species and planet than an ever-increasing human population. What I'm saying is that humans have little difficulty reproducing; it's a solved problem. What's not a solved problem is our disappearing fisheries[1], rhinos going extinct all over the place[2], farmlan…
You make a very good point. Currently, the largest threat to long and happy life is a destroyed habitat.
Re: A letter to our daughter
#437"He has informed us that he plans to sell or gift no more than $1 billion of Facebook stock each year for the next three years and that he intends to retain his majority voting position in our stock for the foreseeable future."
http://www.sec.gov/Archives/edgar/data/1326801/0001326801150...
What an amazing donation! But not for the foreseeable future. I don't care how multiplicative his voting shares are. If there is no plans to sell them in the foreseeable future, this is a pledge spread out across a generation, decades, while real problems are affecting us every year. Every year where he just capped himself at 1 billion dollars in donations.
Why are you applauding this?
Re: A letter to our daughter
#438Earlier quoted context omitted.
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 sho…
How is any of that stuff bad, though? Seems like a good trade. You put $45B into improving the world, we'll sing your praises.
What's the difference between it being all done in vanity and it being all done in goodwill? It's literally the same thing to the rest of the world, the only difference is some internal chemical state in his brain.
Re: A letter to our daughter
#439I'm all for rich people giving their mass fortunes to charity but they sure do seem to take a long time to do it. Bill Gates is STILL the richest person on the planet in 2015 and his wealth GREW $3.2 billion last year. Can we save the praise for giving away $44 billion until he actually gives it away? Source: http://www.forbes.com/sites/kerryadolan/2015/03/02/inside-th...
It's actually quite hard to give away money faster than you get it above a certain level of wealth. I suspect this reflects more the performance of the investments Bill has than the level of charitable investment.
Re: A letter to our daughter
#440"He has informed us that he plans to sell or gift no more than $1 billion of Facebook stock each year for the next three years and that he intends to retain his majority voting position in our stock for the foreseeable future." http://www.sec.gov/Archives/edgar/data/1326801/0001326801150... What an amazing donation! But not for the foreseeable future. I don't care how multiplicative his voting shares are. If there is…
How dare he donate only $1 billion each year? He's literally Hitler.