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It's just that I might not agree with the purposes he chose. But hey, he is the boss, he can do whatever he wants.
It's interesting he decided to go this way rather than put it into a sustainable trust and just trickle money out indefinitely. I suspect he believes that these causes need shock therapy. To eradicate a disease, you are better off doing it all in one go. I also wonder if he looks at something like the Ford Foundation and realize in the long run that any charitable trust will just turn into an overstuffed political ad…
Arguably he's already done so much for billions of people. Had typing on computers not became the main way businesses communicate , anyone with bad, handwriting would be stuck in menial work.
When I was growing up in the 90s my hand writing was so bad it was assumed I would never amount to anything.
Then computers completely take over all aspects of business in the early 2000s. No one is writing TPS reports by hand.
All of a sudden my horrible handwriting doesn't matter. It's still really bad. But I've made 6 figures for well over a decade, along with an amazing year at about 200k.
None of this would of been possible without Gates. I also owe the creator of Android Andy Rubin. It's been a while ( and it might of been one of the other co founders), but I was able to thank Rubin. His response was something like "Well, we still need to get building applications working on Android."
I've also been able to thank( on this forum) Brendan Eich, the inventor of my first programming language, JavaScript. Amazingly humble for someone who helped create trillions in wealth.
Apart of me thinks Gates could still lead some innovation in computing. I hope somehow he's still coding under a pseudonym perhaps, and occasionally answering tech questions.
His gift to us has been this amazing industry.
How much power is concentrated in the hands of individuals... It's great that Gates is choosing to use that power philanthropically, but it also raises questions about the long-term role of private wealth in solving public problems.
His foundation really does seem to do a good job with 'effective altruism'. There's a reason they're marked as secondary beneficiaries on all my accounts. Also, as a recommendation, you guys should look into whether your employer matches charitable donations to 501Cs in any amount. I find giving a solid chunk of my discretionary budget to charity every year lends a sense of purpose to a job that wouldn't otherwise ha…
Strictly speaking, the foundation discourages individuals from donating directly to them, mostly because the tax treatment of giving that way isn't necessarily favorable. They've set up Gates Philanthropy Partners as a 501(c)(3) charity which is aligned to the same philanthropic goals.
(Of course there's also many other worthwhile players in the broader EA space.)
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For you (or other folks) working in tech and giving to charity, apart from corporate match, another couple pieces of advice are to consider a Donor Advised Fund. They are really easy to set up, and then you get some benefits, like the ability to "bunch" your donations (can help with tax deductions) or donate appreciated investments (like RSUs) without paying capital gains tax.
> without paying capital gains tax. It's a funny day when you're feeling charitable, but go out of your way to avoid helping the entity that should be the ideal charitable recipient.
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> We seem to have decided, collectively, that we'd rather have more problems. ... because a faction of the rich decided they wanted the poors to believe government can't do anything useful, and launched an ongoing decades-long propaganda campaign to that effect.
I think that's an incredibly simplistic and naive view of why large public projects gobble up colossal sums of money and don't have much to show for it.
Libertarians may want to ask themselves what happens to the private sector - aerospace, energy, R&D, infrastructure, education - when public investment stops.
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> without paying capital gains tax. It's a funny day when you're feeling charitable, but go out of your way to avoid helping the entity that should be the ideal charitable recipient.
The state is never going to be as agile as private people engaging on topics they are passionate about on their private time.
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He is literally buying indulgence for his earlier sins.
Ah yes, saving millions of kids’ lives through vaccination and virtually eradicating polio is a way to make up for … checks notes… bundling a browser into an OS and not being nice with open source. Some grass is in need of touching.
> We now understand the essential role nutrition—and especially the gut microbiome—plays in not only helping kids survive but thrive. Glad we finally know now that babies need nutrition.
which part of "not only" and "but thrive" weren't relevant to his point? We've always known that babies need nutrition, but knowledge of the role of the gut microbiome, how to develop it and ensure it is healthy is relatively new.