Bill Gates' Philanthropic Impact Put in Perspective • Hacker News Board

Re: Bill Gates' Philanthropic Impact Put in Perspective

#101

Post by mblode » Sat, Apr 23, 2016, 12:57 PM UTC

sametmax wrote: post #86

dharmon wrote: post #5

If you put aside the "M$ was evil and he is just atoning" arguments, Gates is a huge inspiration, at least for me. This guy finds problems that he's passionate about and attacks them with such ferocity that it is truly awe inspiring. I'm mildly embarrassed to admit it, but he was my childhood hero through the 90's. Even later when everyone thought Jobs was the bee's knees, I wanted to be as effective as Gates.

And that's a big problem: you are willing to ignore 30 years of bad behavior because now he changed is marketting strategy. Even if he is doing good now (debatable, but for the sake of argument let's say he is), it's a good forget the past. As a society, we need to remember, and we need to stand against it, not praise a bad guy as soon as he start not acting bad. If (and it's a big if), he is doing good right now, it…

Bill Gates reminds me a lot of John D. Rockefeller. He had earned $260 billion (adjusted for inflation) through standard oil and is said to be a ruthless business man. However, in the second half of his life, he turned to philanthropy and created a contrastingly positive image in the public's eye. I'm not sure the depth of their similarities but this is what it seems like to me on a surface level.

Re: Bill Gates' Philanthropic Impact Put in Perspective

#102

Post by forgetsusername » Sat, Apr 23, 2016, 1:02 PM UTC

sametmax wrote: post #88

Don't you find very suspicous that since the past year, we get regularly those stories comming up in reddit, imgur, hacker news, etc ? Think about it: there are a ton of nice people doing nice things around. Even tech people. But you hear only about Bill. The Gate Foundation existed for a long time. It actually paid my bills 7 years ago (wasting half of the money before reaching me, BTW), and we didn't have this incr…

>It actually paid my bills 7 years ago (wasting half of the money before reaching me, BTW)

Maybe you should have taken the moral high ground and declined the money, rather than taking it, criticizing how much was "wasted", then bad-mouthing it on a public forum.

Talk about a sense of entitlement.

Re: Bill Gates' Philanthropic Impact Put in Perspective

#103

Post by PakG1 » Sat, Apr 23, 2016, 1:59 PM UTC

Retric wrote: post #91

nothrabannosir wrote: post #78

Earlier quoted context omitted.

And what people are trying to say is: that may be a bad thing, but it does not cancel out the good thing you did. You now did both a good and a bad thing. Not just a bad thing. We try to judge people based on their actions. Someone messes up and defends themselves with "I was only trying to help!" - "The road to hell is paved with good intentions."[0] The fact that proverb exists at all, means that our society has at…

There is a view that good actions only count if there is sacrifice. As he still has 30+ billion the net impact of his giving at a personal level was Zero. Hell, he said several times he did not like being the worlds richest person. So, arguably he may have been acting in a completly selfish fasion. Consider a Pimp finds out he can londer money and find new girls by setting up a homeless shelter. Is setting up the she…

The analogy is poor. The argument being discussed is whether Bill did something bad and uses the results to fuel the good he does in order to atone for his bad. In your analogy, the pimp does something good and uses it to fuel the bad he does.

For the record, Bill's business practices sucked, but there's no denying that he had better vision for tech than the monster of his day, IBM. Each age has its villain, each of which has been far from what the world considers to be truly evil.

Re: Bill Gates' Philanthropic Impact Put in Perspective

#104

Post by arkades » Sat, Apr 23, 2016, 2:08 PM UTC

muntac wrote: post #20

The size of the Gates Foundation is only impressive if you believe public policy should be disproportionately influenced by the whims of a few rich individuals. Philanthropists may not be motivated by profit like lobbyists, but that doesn't mean they understand the needs of the people any better. For issues related to relatively concrete sciences like medicine this matters less. But in areas such as education for exa…

I proceeded to your linked article, and while I see that the author's opinion is "Gates' Foundation did far more harm than good in education," I don't actually see the examples put forward supporting their (/your) position on that.

The only examples are "The Gates Foundation tried something, found it didn't work, and so stopped doing that thing [smaller schools.]" They're then criticized for attempting teacher metrics, and a couple paragraphs later, "they've since backed off on this, but the damage of their influence has already been suffered!" Which, to me, reads again as "they thought teacher metrics would work. They found it didn't, so they stopped doing that."

Actually, a lot of that article basically reads as "no one should ever make calculated experiments to discover what the most effective interventions are. How dare the Gates Foundation not be all-knowing! And if they're not going to be all-knowing, they have no right to admit to a mistake and back off on a failed intervention!"

I- what?? What?!

Presumably, then, the author (or the people the author is echoing) can put forward a better alternative, rather than just criticize the organization for recognizing failure and re-allocating resources. "Assuming that poverty is not going to be solved overnight, what other, more immediate steps might be taken to address these problems? How might Gates spend its money more wisely? McGoey offers little guidance on this. She seems to have visited few schools and talked to few teachers or parents. Nor does she give much space to the perspective of the Gates Foundation itself."

She then slams the Gates Foundation for doing "considerable good" in public health. What's their flaw, then? The author's unsubstantiated assertion that they ignored opportunity cost. Not even that. She sort of /implies/ that other health interventions would have had greater public health ROI (by pointing out that chronic disease is very expensive, she leads us to conclude "why, then we could save a lot of money by intervening there", ignoring whether that larger cost correlates to more lives saved per dollar spent), and that the Gates Foundation ignores them, but doesn't actually provide any stats on that being the case. Which makes sense, of course, because there aren't any good stats to support that argument: the Gates Foundation particularly staked out their interests in extremely high ROI illnesses. It's shit-tons cheaper to save a man-year from malaria than to save one from type 2 diabetes.

This is not a great article. The author, Michael Massing, appears to have written it with far more bias than critical attention, and you should reconsider letting it inform your opinions.

Re: Bill Gates' Philanthropic Impact Put in Perspective

#105

Post by tunap » Sat, Apr 23, 2016, 2:18 PM UTC

mblode wrote: post #101

sametmax wrote: post #86

Earlier quoted context omitted.

And that's a big problem: you are willing to ignore 30 years of bad behavior because now he changed is marketting strategy. Even if he is doing good now (debatable, but for the sake of argument let's say he is), it's a good forget the past. As a society, we need to remember, and we need to stand against it, not praise a bad guy as soon as he start not acting bad. If (and it's a big if), he is doing good right now, it…

Bill Gates reminds me a lot of John D. Rockefeller. He had earned $260 billion (adjusted for inflation) through standard oil and is said to be a ruthless business man. However, in the second half of his life, he turned to philanthropy and created a contrastingly positive image in the public's eye. I'm not sure the depth of their similarities but this is what it seems like to me on a surface level.

Mobsters, thieves & politicians tend to do "good" after getting caught for malfeasance, too. WG didn't get "caught", he(MS) gamed the system, incorporated others' work & ruined most competitors. Now he gets to live with his conscience.

Extend. Embrace. Extinguish. Atone.

Re: Bill Gates' Philanthropic Impact Put in Perspective

#106

Post by tunap » Sat, Apr 23, 2016, 2:43 PM UTC

lunula wrote: post #80

ZeroGravitas wrote: post #61

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It would appear that taxing people and then using the money for ill-thought out, centrally planned, self-aggrandizing projects is fine as long as it's rich people or corporations, not democratically elected governments doing it.

I am trying to understand the sentiment that leads to this perspective. Perhaps people abhor the inefficiency of democratic systems. Or maybe this is a sign of social decay.

Ponder institutional corruption and you may realize capitalism in it's extremest form is as toxic to the common good as is extremes of communism or socialism. We are parasites to our environs and each other, and that can be a GOOD thing(cooperation, trade, specialization) when it is symbiotic, but when one entity takes all it devolves into parisitoidism(aka, harming or killing the host).

Re: Bill Gates' Philanthropic Impact Put in Perspective

#107

Post by Retric » Sat, Apr 23, 2016, 2:48 PM UTC

PakG1 wrote: post #103

Retric wrote: post #91

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There is a view that good actions only count if there is sacrifice. As he still has 30+ billion the net impact of his giving at a personal level was Zero. Hell, he said several times he did not like being the worlds richest person. So, arguably he may have been acting in a completly selfish fasion. Consider a Pimp finds out he can londer money and find new girls by setting up a homeless shelter. Is setting up the she…

The analogy is poor. The argument being discussed is whether Bill did something bad and uses the results to fuel the good he does in order to atone for his bad. In your analogy, the pimp does something good and uses it to fuel the bad he does. For the record, Bill's business practices sucked, but there's no denying that he had better vision for tech than the monster of his day, IBM. Each age has its villain, each of…

I think you missed the connection. Gates did not want to be the richest person in the world any more. Giving that money to charity was a socially acceptable way of doing so. Thus, it may have been a selfish action with a net positive outcome.

The pimps homeless shelter might also be a net positive impact. It seems far more selfish.

Alternatively it may have started Gates down a different path which changed his mindset. I can't know as this is all internal. The point is some people feel the internal reasoning is just as important as the outcome.

PS: This is one of the reasons the law cares about internal reasoning not just outcomes.

Re: Bill Gates' Philanthropic Impact Put in Perspective

#108

Post by Crito » Sat, Apr 23, 2016, 3:25 PM UTC

forgetsusername wrote: post #100

Crito wrote: post #89

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> This book says that you are envious. No.

Right, don't ever read anything you might disagree with.

No book can demonstrate that the reason he dislikes Bill Gates is envy. The authoritative source for that information is in his skull, not in a book written by somebody who never even met him.

Re: Bill Gates' Philanthropic Impact Put in Perspective

#109

Post by sametmax » Sat, Apr 23, 2016, 3:52 PM UTC

forgetsusername wrote: post #102

sametmax wrote: post #88

Don't you find very suspicous that since the past year, we get regularly those stories comming up in reddit, imgur, hacker news, etc ? Think about it: there are a ton of nice people doing nice things around. Even tech people. But you hear only about Bill. The Gate Foundation existed for a long time. It actually paid my bills 7 years ago (wasting half of the money before reaching me, BTW), and we didn't have this incr…

> It actually paid my bills 7 years ago (wasting half of the money before reaching me, BTW) Maybe you should have taken the moral high ground and declined the money , rather than taking it, criticizing how much was "wasted", then bad-mouthing it on a public forum. Talk about a sense of entitlement.

Yes, I made a bad decision. I don't pretend to be a wonderful person. However, I can see people are trying very hard to make sure people think Gate is. And he is not.

Re: Bill Gates' Philanthropic Impact Put in Perspective

#110

Post by sametmax » Sat, Apr 23, 2016, 3:54 PM UTC

forgetsusername wrote: post #94

sametmax wrote: post #87

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Because my aunt stopped beating his child after 15 years and started to work in a dog shelter, she is an inspiration to me ? Err... no.

> Because my aunt stopped beating his child It's beyond ridiculous to compare anything that Gates did to physical violence . He had a few vicious, harmful business tactics. His overall benefit to society, especially if you include his philanthropic work, is likely beyond what most people here will ever achieve.

People died because Gate financed the green revolution in Africa.

System were corrupt because of him.

Next to that, beating one child is less harm, not matter how awful it is.