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Bill Gates' Philanthropic Impact Put in Perspective

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Re: Bill Gates' Philanthropic Impact Put in Perspective

#111

Post by sametmax »

forgetsusername wrote: post #99
sametmax wrote: post #85

Earlier quoted context omitted.

No but corruption is illegal. Stealing is illegal. And many things he did while legal, were highly immoral, such as: lying, cheating, investing capital in weapon makers and companies doing the opposite of what he is defending now, tax optimization, heavy lobying, retaining a huge part of capital and not letting it flows in the economy, abusing monopoly, patent trolls (and other kind of extorsions), censorship, helpin…

> were highly immoral Your profile says you blog about porn. Personally, I'm a consumer and have no issue. But you have a lot of nerve lecturing people about immorality. That isn't the most "above board" industry, and it may have even harmed a person or three. > but that people are ready to accept anything with a good PR. Yeah, nobody "gets it" but you...

A lot of men watch porn, few men corrupt governments and finance weapons. Your take.

Re: Bill Gates' Philanthropic Impact Put in Perspective

#112

Post by mike2477 »

saretired wrote: post #35
visarga wrote: post #28

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Also, he is giving back the money he took, and then more. That also buys him a lot of forgiveness.

Not to diminish the magnitude of his foundation, but he's still personally worth over $77 billion and is the richest person in the US (Forbes, 2015).

But he's promised to give it all away within 10 years of his death. So this is a null point.

Re: Bill Gates' Philanthropic Impact Put in Perspective

#113

Post by mike2477 »

fauigerzigerk wrote: post #69
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…

But there is no global public policy funded by global taxation and based on global democracy. On a national level, I would agree with you that outsized influence of charity vs public policy is a bad sign, even if the results may not be so bad at some point in time. But on a global level, things are very different. Those who distribute public development funds cannot be voted out of office by those who receive or don'…

It's worth noting that governments contribute far more than private organizations to things like AIDS research. I should have mentioned that in the article.

See this article (fig 1) - http://www.avac.org/sites/default/files/resource-files/Resou...

Re: Bill Gates' Philanthropic Impact Put in Perspective

#114

Post by mike2477 »

solipsism wrote: post #23
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…

Disastrous? Isn't that a bit hyperbolic? Reading the article, perhaps "ineffective" could be argued. Maybe their support of Common Core and such did more harm than good, but they've pivoted based on evidence. They're trying their best to do good with their money. This is more than can be said for most billionaires. Are you suggesting it would be better if all billionaires simply kept their money in the family and did…

Amen.

Re: Bill Gates' Philanthropic Impact Put in Perspective

#115

Post by chongli »

specialist wrote: post #60
chongli wrote: post #43

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's hard to guess what motivated the grandparent's comment but if I had to guess, it has something to do with the cultural aversion to public philanthropy which traces back to Matthew 6:3 But when thou doest alms, let not thy left hand know what thy right hand doeth: As an atheist who was raised Catholic, many of the teachings of Jesus still make sense to me from a moral standpoint. This one does not. Keeping your c…

Presbyterian here. We were taught you can't buy your way into Heaven. Yes, donate to charity. But don't publicly congratulate yourself. I've worked to overcome my WASP reluctance to talk about money. As a geek, we should be comparing salaries. As an activist, to be effective you need resources, which is a nice proxy for buy-in, so you learn how to ask for money.

Yes, donate to charity. But don't publicly congratulate yourself.

Yes, and this is the concept I take issue with. If Bill Gates's continued public dialogue over his charitable actions convinces other billionaires to join the cause, how is that anything other than a net positive? He may yet succeed in wiping out malaria when he might not have succeeded had he kept quiet.

The goal of any charitable act should be to make your charity obsolete. Quiet, private giving in small amounts without a coordinated plan does not accomplish that. It merely serves to feed somebody for another day.

Re: Bill Gates' Philanthropic Impact Put in Perspective

#116

Post by paganel »

forgetsusername wrote: post #96
paganel wrote: post #70

Earlier quoted context omitted.

At least $200 million or so from my Government, the result of straight-up corruption. From here http://www.nytimes.com/2013/03/20/technology/us-said-to-look... : > The Justice Department and the Securities and Exchange Commission have both opened preliminary investigations into bribery accusations involving Microsoft in China, Italy and Romania, according to the person, who spoke on the condition of anonymity because…

> I'm 100% sure that MS (and Gates) actually took that money out of our pockets. So, Microsoft, which was headed by Ballmer at the time (Gates already years into retirement from operations), took a contract from your corrupt government, that might have broken a law (never proven)...and Bill Gates is to blame? You have a lot of misplaced anger.

Bill Gates also visited the country shortly after Ballmer's visit and after the contract had been signed. Yes, Bill Gates is to blame, among many others.

> You have a lot of misplaced anger.

I'm angered by many other things some of which I have control over, economic colonialism (like it happened in this case) I have no control over so no reason to be angered about. Just wanted to add a different perspective to things.

Re: Bill Gates' Philanthropic Impact Put in Perspective

#117

Post by WalterBright »

Nutmog wrote: post #75
ploxiln wrote: post #40

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Sure, it was just smart business plays in the tech industry, not really "evil" like physically harming people or stealing stuff from them. But as an engineer (well, at that time, a tinkerer in high school), it was very frustrating how they had their own flawed formats and protocols. They made it as difficult as possible to interoperate in order to entrench their dominant position. I guess it's what all the biggest te…

You might think the technology sucked, but all the competition sucked worse, much worse. Nobody else could be bothered maintaining so much backward compatibility. Apple kept changing their CPU architecture and resetting the clock on developing apps. Other platforms like Amiga also pursued their own platform blind to the fact that their products couldn't interoperate with the most popular and cheap software and hardwa…

I bought an early Amiga in order to port the compiler to it. It irritated me that they used standard connectors, but changed one pin in order to force people to buy peripherals from them. I thought that strategy would doom Amiga, and decided not to expend my dev time on it.

DEC did the same stupid move with their Rainbow PC (in this case requiring special floppy disks), with the same results.

Re: Bill Gates' Philanthropic Impact Put in Perspective

#118

Post by WalterBright »

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.

> and is said to be a ruthless business man.

Rockefeller reduced the price of kerosene by 70% over the years he ran SO, thus (literally) fueling the industrial expansion of America, and making cheap kerosene available to everyone.

To say that benefitted nobody but him is ridiculous. Read "Titan" by Chernow.

Re: Bill Gates' Philanthropic Impact Put in Perspective

#119

Post by WalterBright »

tunap wrote: post #105
mblode wrote: post #101

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

If you read "In Search of Stupidity" by Chapman, you'll see that most of his competitors ruined themselves all by themselves.

It's not easy to run a successful business. My own, Zortech, would have been far more successful if I'd had half a brain instead of only a quarter of one.

Re: Bill Gates' Philanthropic Impact Put in Perspective

#120

Post by WalterBright »

prodigal_erik wrote: post #8
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.

If we put aside that the money isn't his, he kneecapped better products with such ferocity that a generation later our industry is still struggling to make up for the lost progress.

> lost progress

Actually, MS-DOS was the first more or less standardized platform across diverse computers, which enabled software developers to develop for a market several orders of magnitude larger than what had existed before. The result was an explosion of software being developed.

I don't see how this retarded progress.

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