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Can anyone point to a list of problems the Gates foundation has solved through program(s) it has funded? Edit: took out some things about Gates and the dual nature of his work at Microsoft and the Gates Foundation.
it's almost like you've never read a single thing about the organization. nearly every annual letter and report details their impact.
Hot take: Bill Gates is massively underrated today, compared to how he will be viewed by history. When the reckoning of history books happens, I could see him in the running for “most positive social influence of anyone 1800-2100”. His humanitarian work is second to none and we can expect 20+ more years of his direct influence on global policy. The world is a better place thanks to Mr and Mrs Gates.
Not really. You look at Andrew Carnegie who has a similar history, and even a hundred years out, no one cares. People like Einstein and Picasso are who lasts. No one really gives a shit about businessmen, regardless of their philanthropy.
So, the question with Gates is whether he manages to fund something that materially changes the world in a way people in the future will remember.
Saving some lives? Probably not that meaningful 100 years from now. Funding a technology that solves climate change and/or provides cheap clean energy? People will probably remember.
So it's hard to tell. Gates has funding in both areas of potential, and he's taking a very hands on approach to his philanthropy so he's more liable to get some credit, in the same way library afficionados do remember Carnegie.
Can anyone point to a list of problems the Gates foundation has solved through program(s) it has funded? Edit: took out some things about Gates and the dual nature of his work at Microsoft and the Gates Foundation.
a) The impact his wife Melinda had on his worldview;
b) That people are nuanced and full of contradictions;
c) The person you are at 30 and the person you are at 60 is defined by the accumulation of experiences, not the accumulation of wealth.
Can anyone point to a list of problems the Gates foundation has solved through program(s) it has funded? Edit: took out some things about Gates and the dual nature of his work at Microsoft and the Gates Foundation.
it's almost like you've never read a single thing about the organization. nearly every annual letter and report details their impact.
Yes, I have read none of the annual reports. I did pop over to the site and found this for 2017:
https://www.gatesfoundation.org/Who-We-Are/Resources-and-Med...
Maybe the site's layout is just hiding the actual report, but this just looks like an executive summary, and enumerates no solved problems.
Either way, I'd like to get something that would span multiple years of effort and billions spent. It would talk about the specific problems the Gates Foundation has solved through its efforts.
Does something like that exist?
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Not really. You look at Andrew Carnegie who has a similar history, and even a hundred years out, no one cares. People like Einstein and Picasso are who lasts. No one really gives a shit about businessmen, regardless of their philanthropy.
Carnegie was worth only $5 billion in inflation-adjusted dollars. Gates is worth $100 billion, so we can expect him to have a philantropic impact 20 times greater.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
in other words, war is dangerous and he pays too little tax. i think too they are platitudes.
The idea that billionaires pay too little tax is considered a radical idea in mainstream media, so that doesn't seem like a platitude.
Can anyone point to a list of problems the Gates foundation has solved through program(s) it has funded? Edit: took out some things about Gates and the dual nature of his work at Microsoft and the Gates Foundation.
Can anyone point to a list of problems the Gates foundation has solved through program(s) it has funded? Edit: took out some things about Gates and the dual nature of his work at Microsoft and the Gates Foundation.
I think trying to point to something "solved" is not the right approach. The goal of the foundation is to solve through research. While it's impossible to say that his funding of these goals will actually solve them, because the solution may come on a different grant from another source but where a scientist learned something from one of the scientists on a gates funded project. I feel that's a reasonable situation where complexity makes it impossible to directly attribute a solution to Mr. Gate.
Instead I'd look at the social impact of someone in the 0.1% looking to the poorest in the world with empathy (whether genuine or not) and how that's changed how we look at philanthropy.
Malaria is a bitch. It's one of the worst things about going to many countries out there and Dengue is even worse in many cases. While survivable as an adult, it is no joke, and the idea that solving this should be something we focus on even though people (for practical purposes) can't get malaria in the USA is awesome.
Anecdotal evidence inbound => As someone who has prepared for an extended stay in South America, this was 100% the worst thing to focus on. I got Salmonella in Haiti and shit man that was rough. I can't even imagine Malaria.
Anyway, back to the point. The fact that he's focusing on this is the important thing. Investigating results of his 50bn dollars would require it's own research with a ton of nuance and assumptions.
Hot take: Bill Gates is massively underrated today, compared to how he will be viewed by history. When the reckoning of history books happens, I could see him in the running for “most positive social influence of anyone 1800-2100”. His humanitarian work is second to none and we can expect 20+ more years of his direct influence on global policy. The world is a better place thanks to Mr and Mrs Gates.
Not really. You look at Andrew Carnegie who has a similar history, and even a hundred years out, no one cares. People like Einstein and Picasso are who lasts. No one really gives a shit about businessmen, regardless of their philanthropy.
Artists even more than scientists. When the Italian comedian Totò died in the late '60s this happened [1]:
> Totò died at the age of 69 on 15 April 1967 in Rome after a series of heart attacks. Due to overwhelming demand, there were no fewer than three funeral services: the first in Rome, a second in his birth city of Naples—and a few days later, in a third one by the local Camorra boss, an empty casket was carried along the packed streets of the popular Rione Sanità quarter where he was born
A similar thing happened when the Russian folk singer Vysotsky died in 1980 [2]:
> After a mourning ceremony involving an unauthorized mass gathering of unprecedented scale, Vysotsky was buried at the Vagankovskoye Cemetery in Moscow.[78] The attendance at the Olympic events dropped noticeably on that day, as scores of spectators left to attend the funeral. Tens of thousands of people lined the streets to catch a glimpse of his coffin.
I'm pretty sure no businessman on this planet would have his/her funeral attended by tens of thousands of people nor will they be interred thrice "by popular demand", so to speak.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Carnegie was worth only $5 billion in inflation-adjusted dollars. Gates is worth $100 billion, so we can expect him to have a philantropic impact 20 times greater.
$372 billion for Carnegie in 2014 dollars: http://money.com/money/3977798/the-10-richest-people-of-all-... 3x gates.
If you actually do the math based on an inflation calculator, you find $5 billion: https://www.forbes.com/sites/chloesorvino/2014/07/08/whats-b...