101–110 of 224 posts
It is amazing to see how Bill Gates immersed himself in his nonprofit work. I hope he stays rich so he can do more of these.
Thomas Piketty [1] presents a convincing case that Bill will continue to have resources to fund activities he thinks are helpful.
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thomas_Piketty#Capital_in_the_...
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>Money well spent. There have been human costs too, http://www.nytimes.com/2013/02/09/world/africa/in-nigeria-po... Of the nine vaccination workers killed, "Most of the victims were women and were shot in the back of the head"
That doesn’t seem immediately relevant, could you explain why you mentioned it here?
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Having read Slashdot 15 years ago, a part of me is shocked to hear anyone wish that Bill Gates stays rich. But don't worry, Bill will be just fine.
Gates is worshipped by most millennials, including the techies. For those of us who've been around for a while - as your reference to Slashdot points out - this can be surprising considering just how hated he was a decade or two ago when Microsoft was in a much different position than they are now. I still have a negative opinion of him, and feel his business practices were extremely negative to the world. But I will…
You think spending billions of his own money every single year is about cleaning up his image over the anti-trust case? Give me a break.
Why does the 6th largest oil exporter in the world need a $76M loan paid? Edit: Downvotes? Legitimate question guys. Can someone explain how that works?
Wikipedia gives 2.231 million barrels exported per day for Nigeria in 2013. At $50 per barrel this amounts 40 billion Dollar per year. I have no idea what the profit margins are but at 10 % this yields only 4 billion Dollar in profits per year which seems rather little to me, especially given that it is the 6th largest oil exporter. So 76 million Dollar would be 1.9 % of the annual profits from oil exports, not much…
Profit margins do not give the correct picture, which is rather complex, and involves royalties, multiple layers of taxation, "production sharing agreements, etc.
A good way to look at this is to take production costs (around US$ 20-25 per barrel in Nigeria) from the oil price, giving a margin of say $30/bbl. This should be applied to the entire production, not just the exports, since the country would need to import the oil for domestic needs if it did not produce it. Furthermore, a part of the production costs is internal spending, but there are also profits repatriated, so to keep things simple let's make the rough assumption that these two are roughly equal... this gives the benefits from oil production (at 2.7 mmbbl/d) at about US$80 million per day, or about $30 billion per year.
I'm I the only one who thinks that Japan kinda looks bad here? I mean, Bill's foundation is already dedicating $3B a year on development assistance, couldn't Japan just say to Nigeria: "You don't have to pay us back. Consider it a donation". How could they reasonably expect Nigeria to pay them back $76M?
"when you observe or interact with a problem in any way, you can be blamed for it. At the very least, you are to blame for not doing more. Even if you don’t make the problem worse, even if you make it slightly better, the ethical burden of the problem falls on you as soon as you observe it. In particular, if you interact with a problem and benefit from it, you are a complete monster."
https://blog.jaibot.com/the-copenhagen-interpretation-of-eth...
To all the commenters too busy being aghast at giving money to a government to read the article: > Nigeria’s debt to Japan is the result of Overseas Development Assistance (ODA) provided by the Japanese government in 2014 for increased polio eradication. efforts. > The country has made great strides in its efforts to eliminate the disease thanks to this funding. > Nigeria did not record a wild case of polio from July…
This is the correct perspective. It seems that, Reddit style, many people here comment just the titles, don't read the articles. Polio is on the way to complete eradication all over the world. AFAIK the only place where it remains endemic is Baluchistan in Pakistan where the warlords are suspicious of vaccination agents. Victory on polio is a fantastic story that doesn't get the attention it deserves.
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I would probably feel the same way. But it was a loan, and if I were a citizen of Japan, I also might not be happy about the government loaning out that much money to a foreign country and then forgetting about it.
I didn't mean they should forget about it in the literal sense. I meant that when Nigeria started putting out the feelers for their loan to put the final nail in the coffin of polio someone in the international community, perhaps Japan, perhaps the US, should have just gifted them the money. The fact that it was a loan in the first place is the problem.
I used to think very badly of Bill Gates. (New corporate PCs often came bundled with Word. The newest PCs wouldn't be compatible with older ones, so everyone had to constantly upgrade. It was a huge scam.) But it's nice he's giving his money away. I look forward to hearing about more acts of charity in the years ahead.