Mark Zuckerberg Agrees to Give Away Fortune

Post by lionhearted » Thu, Dec 09, 2010, 9:23 AM UTC

ZeroGravitas wrote: post #93

lionhearted wrote: post #63

Fantastic. I wonder if all these very public proclamations are going to shift people's attitude towards taxes? Most people think of the government as wasteful, inefficient, incompetent, and corrupt to more or less degrees, and I know I'd prefer to see money allocated by smart people like Gates, Buffet, Zuckerberg than by politicians who need to keep constituents happy and win votes. I committed a while back to giving…

You should start (or locate) a charity that dedicates itself to decreasing government waste and donate the money to them. You'd probably get more bang for your buck, even if it didn't focus purely on the humanitarian side of government.

Post by burgerbrain » Thu, Dec 09, 2010, 9:28 AM UTC

zohebv wrote: post #97

mquander wrote: post #57

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's certainly a testament to the power of perspective that you've dismissed a quarter of the planet living sick, hungry, and in poverty as "problems that will always exist", and decided that doing something about it produces no "real value."

To his credit he does call himself burgerbrain :-)

Post by stretchwithme » Thu, Dec 09, 2010, 9:32 AM UTC

tlrobinson wrote: post #95

stretchwithme wrote: post #91

Earlier quoted context omitted.

by consuming government money making sports cars? Please, no, Mark.

Starting with sports cars seems like a good plan to me. Let the people who can afford to pay a premium help fund development of the technology which can then be used in cheaper cars for the masses. A lot of automobile technology is developed in race cars like Formula 1 many years before making it's way into mainstream cars. I can't comment on the government subsidies though.

Post by petercooper » Thu, Dec 09, 2010, 9:38 AM UTC

mquander wrote: post #73

lionhearted wrote: post #65

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> It's certainly a testament to the power of perspective that you've dismissed a quarter of the planet living sick, hungry, and in poverty as "problems that will always exist", and decided that doing something about it produces no "real value." Can we spare the moral condemnations? Today's advances in the cutting edge of sciences become the life-saving and enhancing cheap commodities of the future, and being skeptica…

I find it a really shameful comment. It seems like unbelievably wishful thinking to claim that high-tech startups are the most important thing everyone should be doing when the going rate for saving lives from tuberculosis or malaria is in the hundreds of dollars per (e.g. http://www.givewell.org/charities/top-charities ). I'd like to hear why that is not real value. No doubt most First World businesses produce techn…

Post by jacoblyles » Thu, Dec 09, 2010, 9:50 AM UTC

sshumaker wrote: post #87

DevX101 wrote: post #74

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't like estate taxes. Governments are typically terrible financial stewards and bad examples of financial responsibility. Give the government one billion and it will find a way to spend two. But I also don't like the idea of a permanent aristocratic class where generation after generation are born into opulence because your great grandfather created a great company. The movement towards philanthropy is a great a…

I'd argue one of the points of estate taxes (which are heavily favored by Buffet, Gates, et. al) is to encourage you to will your fortunes to philanthropy - so it doesn't end up in the hands of the government.