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Paul Allen commits majority of his wealth to philanthropy

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Re: Paul Allen commits majority of his wealth to philanthropy

#61

Post by Tyrannosaurs »

mrtron wrote: post #52
c1sc0 wrote: post #32

Earlier quoted context omitted.

And what is wrong with that?

Given our economical system - it is a certainty that certain individuals will be so wealthy they can afford anything. The inevitable is hardly wrong!

It's only inevitable if you assume that our economic system is right and immutable. Personally when it creates gaps as big as it does between rich and poor I dispute that's the case.

Don't get me wrong, we need to encourage risk takers and wealth creators but how many sports teams or super yachts does one man really need as just reward for his efforts? Particularly in the case of Paul Allen when many will dispute that the actions of the company who made his wealth were in the best interests of the industry.

Re: Paul Allen commits majority of his wealth to philanthropy

#62

Post by qq66 »

Ardit20 wrote: post #50
qq66 wrote: post #47

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Charging less for his products would have primarily benefitted shareholders and white-collar professionals in American and Western European corporations. Why should he have benefitted them over abjectly poor people in the rest of the world?

How would have shareholders benefited more if the company is making less profit?

Shareholders of customers. Ambiguous grammar.

Re: Paul Allen commits majority of his wealth to philanthropy

#63

Post by anigbrowl »

andreyf wrote: post #51
parallax7d wrote: post #37

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Not only does gates throw lots of money at problems, they follow up the results with effectiveness studies.

And what makes his definition of "effectiveness" any good? When goals are as clear as "maximize profit", I have no doubt Bill Gates is one of the most competent in the field. However, when it's as vague as "improve education", I have serious doubts. I'd trust a passionate fifth grade teacher to make good judgements of what's best for their students' education over a billionaire entrepreneur any day.

Where do you think the mantra of 'smaller class sizes = better education' came from in the first place? Though I don't doubt the advice was was honestly intended, teachers do have an economic interest in reducing class sizes (as it increases demand for their educational skills and accordingly, wages). It's got to be easier to teach 10 kids than 20, and we generally feel we're more productive when we're not overly stressed, the economic implications of the 'small is beautiful' policy were incidental or even unconscious [1].

So, the Gates foundation spent a lot of money discovering that this has little real effect on educational outcomes. I don't regard that as a waste - it may have been an expensive lesson, but I presume the money was spent on subsidizing smaller class sizes in schools. The understanding we've gained will save many billions of taxpayer dollars from being spent on a widespread but mistaken belief about teacher:student ratios, which is a significant public good.

[1] I say 'were', because now that we have evidence of the policy's ineffectiveness, many teachers' union members have designated the Gates Foundation and Obama's education secretary as evil corporatists out to wreck public education.

Re: Paul Allen commits majority of his wealth to philanthropy

#64

Post by anigbrowl »

yumraj wrote: post #22

Even at the expense of sounding like a troll, it always amazes me, really it does, that Bill Gates and Paul Allen the two founders of the so called "evil" MS have given so much money to charity while we haven't seen any such moves from Jobs and Woz the founders of "think-different" Apple. Makes you wonder, doesn't it.

That's a bit unfair. Woz donates, Jobs has thrown money and time into improving organ donation, and in any case Jobs has only become super-rich in the last few years - Gates passed that point somewhere in the mid-90s, so he has had much more time to think about it. I imagine Jobs wants to groom a credible successor for the next few years, so that the company's price doesn't plummet when he retires.

Re: Paul Allen commits majority of his wealth to philanthropy

#65

Post by anigbrowl »

c1sc0 wrote: post #2

Now that is a worthy goal to set for a budding entrepreneur: becoming a future philanthropist.

Chuck Feeney's Atlantic Philanthropies are well worth studying in this regard - they basically apply the same standards and practices to giving money away as Feeney did to making the money in the first place: http://www.atlanticphilanthropies.org/learning/atlantic-repo...

Feeney is the guy who came up with the idea of duty-free stores at airports. By the time anyone noticed he was a multi-billionaire, he had already set up his foundation and put almost his entire fortune into it.

Re: Paul Allen commits majority of his wealth to philanthropy

#66

Post by orangecat »

Retric wrote: post #44
rbanffy wrote: post #30

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Ruthless competition, mostly. The example that illustrates his character is not related to this kind of behaviour, but to how he treated his workforce. The Homestead strike was caused by a broken promise to tie salaries to profits which, made in a downturn, reduced payments. When profits returned, he broke the promise, refused to keep salaries tied to profits, locked out the union workers who protested and used viole…

FYI: There is no reason to use url shorteners on hn and many people will not click on them.

Yes. In fact strike "on hn".

Re: Paul Allen commits majority of his wealth to philanthropy

#67

Post by crystalis »

andreyf wrote: post #51
parallax7d wrote: post #37

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Not only does gates throw lots of money at problems, they follow up the results with effectiveness studies.

And what makes his definition of "effectiveness" any good? When goals are as clear as "maximize profit", I have no doubt Bill Gates is one of the most competent in the field. However, when it's as vague as "improve education", I have serious doubts. I'd trust a passionate fifth grade teacher to make good judgements of what's best for their students' education over a billionaire entrepreneur any day.

"I'd assume my conclusion any day over considering that maybe my hero isn't also the best hero of all."

Re: Paul Allen commits majority of his wealth to philanthropy

#68

Post by sadapsi »

wallflower wrote: post #36
yumraj wrote: post #22

Even at the expense of sounding like a troll, it always amazes me, really it does, that Bill Gates and Paul Allen the two founders of the so called "evil" MS have given so much money to charity while we haven't seen any such moves from Jobs and Woz the founders of "think-different" Apple. Makes you wonder, doesn't it.

I remember reading this great article about Woz back when I subscribed to Wired. > One of the great Woz quotes of all time is his half-apologetic explanation for his failure to be more aggressive about staying rich: "I don't feel attached to my money in normal ways." > Undaunted, Woz describes for this graduating class his original vision of a technological revolution. Although he no longer designs computers, he reta…

Sorry but Apple's approach of no-options and very high starting price have only hurt consumers. The near dominance of MS is due to the fact that it allowed really cheap machines, which lead to its adoptions in Industry and then in the whole world. I remeber Bill Gates even claiming that he does not cares about pirated version of Windows in India/China. I remember correctly, my first computer 9 years back had pirated version of windows.

Also you can see Apple following similar strategy again: While Andorid is open source and allows product at multiple price points, iphone gives no options.

Also finally Woz is pretty powerless guy now!

Re: Paul Allen commits majority of his wealth to philanthropy

#69

Post by sadapsi »

burriko wrote: post #25
yumraj wrote: post #22

Even at the expense of sounding like a troll, it always amazes me, really it does, that Bill Gates and Paul Allen the two founders of the so called "evil" MS have given so much money to charity while we haven't seen any such moves from Jobs and Woz the founders of "think-different" Apple. Makes you wonder, doesn't it.

Woz is fairly well known as a philanthropist, and has been since the early 80s. I'd guess that he just hasn't drawn the same level of press attention that the Microsoft billionaires have. I'm also quite sure that he has nowhere near as much cash as them, despite how well Apple are doing now, they've had much harder times than MS. I've no idea about Jobs though. His personal life has always been very secretive, and I…

You are plainly biased in favor of Apple inc!

MS sold an O.S. while Apple tried to sell the whole bundle. Whatever B.S. reasons you have for user x, I can tell you that people can live with a 1 bsod per day if they are getting the machine at nearly half the price.

Apple tried to become vertical monopoly, and made only enemies in the process.It is repeating same mistakes in mobile space as well.

Jobs actions arent exactly better than Bill Gates, and as far as Woz is concerned he is a pariah and steve jobs doesnt gives a shit about him

Re: Paul Allen commits majority of his wealth to philanthropy

#70

Post by gwern »

anigbrowl wrote: post #64
yumraj wrote: post #22

Even at the expense of sounding like a troll, it always amazes me, really it does, that Bill Gates and Paul Allen the two founders of the so called "evil" MS have given so much money to charity while we haven't seen any such moves from Jobs and Woz the founders of "think-different" Apple. Makes you wonder, doesn't it.

That's a bit unfair. Woz donates, Jobs has thrown money and time into improving organ donation, and in any case Jobs has only become super-rich in the last few years - Gates passed that point somewhere in the mid-90s, so he has had much more time to think about it. I imagine Jobs wants to groom a credible successor for the next few years, so that the company's price doesn't plummet when he retires.

Organ donation, eh? How very selfless of him. Reminds me of an article I read once: http://exiledonline.com/memphis-where-the-oligarchs-eat-thei...
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