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Good News You Might Have Missed in 2013

thegatesnotes.com

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Re: Good News You Might Have Missed in 2013

#81

Post by greeneggs »

pizza234 wrote: post #30
paul_f wrote: post #2

I am proud that the technology industry, of which I am a part, has created Bill Gates, a living saint.

I feel exaclty the opposite, of both the technology industry, and Bill gates. It's really easy to be charitable when you can't even count the money you have. In addition to that, it's also easy to invest your time in charity when you left a company you worked for, with exceptional intensity, for a life, and suddenly you have nothing to do anymore. Don't get me wrong, I'm not saying that Bill Gates is "evil". I'm sayi…

"It's really easy to be charitable when you can't even count the money you have. In addition to that, it's also easy to invest your time in charity when you left a company you worked for, with exceptional intensity, for a life, and suddenly you have nothing to do anymore... Most of the people, with unlimited money and time, and having exhausted their stack of accomplishments, would do the same."

Whether or not it is easy, not only don't most billionaires invest anywhere near as much money or time as Gates into charity, almost none of them do. Check out the Forbes list of 20 billionaires if you don't believe me [1]. A typical example: "At a then estimated $16.3 billion net worth, she contributed a total of $3.5 million cumulatively between 2002 and 2006." [2]

[1] http://www.forbes.com/billionaires/list/ [2] http://www.facesofphilanthropy.com/christy-walton/

Re: Good News You Might Have Missed in 2013

#82

Post by Houshalter »

matthewmacleod wrote: post #54
Houshalter wrote: post #51

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>I especially don't think that the act of charity somehow excuses the dodgy business practices or Microsoft or the long-term damage done to the tech industry. How much damage do you think that is? You don't think all the lives saved have "made up" for that? You don't think the world is better off than it would otherwise be without Bill Gates?

No, because I don't think that positive or good acts can somehow "cancel out" (or as you say, "make up for") bad or negative ones. Karma is not a concrete concept, and the question "is the world better off" is objectively unanswerable.

I am a consequentialist and do believe that "bad acts" are acceptable if there is a net benefit. Comiting a crime should be ok if it saves people's lives. The question is not unanswerable, it's entirely possible to measure or at least estimate how much good a charity has done, or how much harm a business has done.

Re: Good News You Might Have Missed in 2013

#83

Post by Houshalter »

rbanffy wrote: post #64
bmelton wrote: post #61

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Hate the man's business practices. Love the man for his philanthropical work. They don't need to cancel out, and you don't need to forgive one to appreciate the other. Michael Vick was put in prison for dog fighting. I absolutely hate him for that. At the same time, I appreciate his talent on the field as a football player. Orson Scott Card is a rampant homophobe. I absolutely hate him for that. Doesn't affect my opi…

> Hate the man's business practices. Love the man for his philanthropical work At the core of this is trust. Bill lost mine at Microsoft's helm - he has shown a borderline sociopath that will stop at nothing and will destroy anyone on his path. To give this much credit to someone with such dark history is appallingly naive.

Calling him a sociopath is absurd. A sociopath wouldn't care about charity in the slightest. If you think he was doing it for publicity purposes, he wouldn't be putting so much effort into it or avoiding the media at times like was mentioned in the article. You don't have to agree with what he did, but he has certainly shown he is not a bad person and has good intentions.

Re: Good News You Might Have Missed in 2013

#84

Post by suprgeek »

BillG is one of the very few people about whom I have completely changed my opinion.

Post his Microsoft days, he is the highest profile "rich tech person" who has promoted so many projects and efforts to help the poor. While Microsoft was famous for “embrace, extend—and extinguish” where it crushed any product that felt like a threat (saw this first hand with Netscape).

Now BillG is using his enormous wealth in the best possible way! Kudos and Thanks

Re: Good News You Might Have Missed in 2013

#85

Post by ianstormtaylor »

tptacek wrote: post #78
ianstormtaylor wrote: post #77

Earlier quoted context omitted.

McDonalds and Coca-Cola could be perfectly explained by your comment. But surely a for-profit juvenile detention center is a bit of a stretch? And the other private prison the Foundation invested in listed "reductions in crime rates" as one of the risks to its bottom line. Surely common sense (or better-than-common in the case of Gates) would lead you to not invest in a company that literally grows with the crime rat…

I am morally opposed to private prisons and have a very low opinion of juvenile justice in general, but unlike say marriage equality, where I assume most reasonable people are bound to share my beliefs, I do not assume that everyone believes private prisons are evil. Consider that juvenile abuse is endemic in the entire juvenile justice system, and that (a) a reasonable person might believe that private prison system…

Yup, agreed about the consumer type companies. As I was reading the article I was thinking the same thing. I was just a little surprised and disappointed when I got to the prisons. I actually think lobbying and long-term contracts remove the theoretical benefits of privatizing prisons, to the extent that reasonable people would probably agree at levels close to those for marriage equality--but that's for another thread.

Re: Good News You Might Have Missed in 2013

#86

Post by jseliger »

tn13 wrote: post #22

As people in Tech industry we should be very proud of Bill Gates and what he has done with Microsoft and his charity work. A lot of people totally miss the point when they say "hey anybody could do all that if they have enough money". That is simply not true. Charity is not just about throwing money at poor, it is a far more difficult job than say building a company. Working for profit is simpler where clear regulati…

That is simply not true. Charity is not just about throwing money at poor

This is an important and underappreciated point. Ken Stern makes it in his book With Charity For All, which I wrote more about here: http://blog.seliger.com/2013/06/02/with-charity-for-all-ken-... . In essence, we spend a lot of money on various charitable efforts without knowing what those efforts are really doing.

Foreign aid is probably the most interesting part. Since 1945, I've seen estimates that say the U.S. and Western Europe have donated in the neighborhood of $1 – $2 trillion (with a "t") dollars to various developing countries. It hasn't done much. Why not?

That's a question that a host of books have attempted to answer (I recommend Dead Aid, The Bottom Billion, and Why Nations Fail to the curious). I don't think we'll ever get a complete answer but we should at least be asking the right questions.

(Relevant observation: I'm a grant writing consultant for nonprofit and public agencies. I see a lot of stuff that makes me. . . very skeptical, let's say. . . of many aid efforts.)

Re: Good News You Might Have Missed in 2013

#87

Post by anigbrowl »

rbanffy wrote: post #64
bmelton wrote: post #61

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Hate the man's business practices. Love the man for his philanthropical work. They don't need to cancel out, and you don't need to forgive one to appreciate the other. Michael Vick was put in prison for dog fighting. I absolutely hate him for that. At the same time, I appreciate his talent on the field as a football player. Orson Scott Card is a rampant homophobe. I absolutely hate him for that. Doesn't affect my opi…

> Hate the man's business practices. Love the man for his philanthropical work At the core of this is trust. Bill lost mine at Microsoft's helm - he has shown a borderline sociopath that will stop at nothing and will destroy anyone on his path. To give this much credit to someone with such dark history is appallingly naive.

'Dark history'? Aggressive business practices for sure, but it's not like he was dumping toxic chemicals in the water supply or something. How many people were killed as a result of Gates 'sociopathy'? I'm afraid that slowing the popularity of Linux and the open web doesn't strike me as particularly impressive in the Evil Genius stakes.

Re: Good News You Might Have Missed in 2013

#88

Post by sliverstorm »

rbanffy wrote: post #80
sliverstorm wrote: post #76

Earlier quoted context omitted.

So what? If he is a sociopath, so what? Are you trying to insinuate he has dark ulterior motives for his charity efforts? If not, why is his personality worth a damn to the discussion?

> Are you trying to insinuate he has dark ulterior motives for his charity efforts? Dark ulterior motives? No. Being remembered as a philanthropist rather than a robber-baron is quite enough. Hs is doing good, but he is not doing good for the good of others.

Why the f%ck do you care if he is doing it to be remembered? Since when was the value of charitable works derived from the motive?

Re: Good News You Might Have Missed in 2013

#89

Post by PavlovsCat »

bmelton wrote: post #61
matthewmacleod wrote: post #54

Earlier quoted context omitted.

No, because I don't think that positive or good acts can somehow "cancel out" (or as you say, "make up for") bad or negative ones. Karma is not a concrete concept, and the question "is the world better off" is objectively unanswerable.

Hate the man's business practices. Love the man for his philanthropical work. They don't need to cancel out, and you don't need to forgive one to appreciate the other. Michael Vick was put in prison for dog fighting. I absolutely hate him for that. At the same time, I appreciate his talent on the field as a football player. Orson Scott Card is a rampant homophobe. I absolutely hate him for that. Doesn't affect my opi…

It's still a bit like taking with one hand and giving with the other, if you know what I mean? Where the money comes from does matter. So it's not quite as disconnected as the examples you cited, IHMO. Kinda like drug barons who help kids and poor people in their communities; sure it's great for those they help, but it doesn't make you forget the dead bodies they are also responsible for. Not just the companies ripped to pieces, consider all the FUD about open source - haven't heard that stuff in a while, huh? But imagine if that would actually have taken root; and it wasn't for lack of trying, that's for sure. Did Microsoft cost the world more than it gives back? How would the world look if what they wanted, they would have gotten? Hard to tell.

I do think Gates is aging well, and getting cooler as he does; but it would help if he at least could say "in hindsight, some Microsoft tactics and claims were kinda low, oh well", instead of going on about how everything is so wonderful and smart and clean, and the past full of hard work and friendly ribbing and nothing else. But to be fair, that seems to be the norm of the industry, and he seems to be less full of it than most. So yeah, good for him, but still let's not confuse him with people who spend all their life doing good, or saints. If I give someone 5$, my generosity is not measured by how poor that person is, but by how much 5$ are for me. That sometimes gets forgotten in all the money porn.

Re: Good News You Might Have Missed in 2013

#90

Post by phaus »

gfodor wrote: post #50
tptacek wrote: post #17

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't think he's a saint. I think a lot of people on HN, given the same resources Gates has, would do substantially similar things with their lives. It seems like incredibly rewarding and important work. I'm just really glad he chose to do it.

Yeah right. Most of the people on HN will never quit the game, and will keep trying to make more money until they have one foot in the grave. (And no, I don't think there is anything particularly wrong with this.) Gates got to a point where he knew his time as a competitive capitalist was over, and that his time as a generous philanthropist had begun. This isn't about net worth, this is about making that choice at a…

>Most of the people on HN will never quit the game, and will keep trying to make more money until they have one foot in the grave.

That's because, as was already stated, most of them won't have billions of dollars. If they did, they would probably at some point start thinking about something besides personal wealth.

>Anyone who has a good exit has sufficient resources to no longer work and could make a similar choice, even if they won't have the same net impact as Gates.

Getting a good exit is only slightly more likely than winning the lottery. You make it sound like most of us here at HN will be millionaires. That's just ridiculous.

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