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Mark Zuckerberg Agrees to Give Away Fortune

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Re: Mark Zuckerberg Agrees to Give Away Fortune

#171

Post by hugh3 »

spatulon wrote: post #113
DevX101 wrote: post #9

After someone asked Warren Buffet why he wanted to give away all of his fortune, he replied: "I want to leave enough money to my children that they can do anything, but no so much that they will do nothing".

The British entrepreneur and investor Peter Jones also worried about that problem and decided to double any money his children earned for themselves.

I don't like that as an incentive. For a start, it keeps your children in your financial orbit for the rest of your life. Secondly, it communicates to your children that you don't expect them ever to make as much money as you did.

Whenever I wish I were super-wealthy, I try to remember that super wealth probably just creates all sorts of problems when raising children. If I ever do get super wealthy I'll plan to spend all but a few million dollars, secretly and out of sight of the children, before they reach the age of twelve, so that I don't have to worry about them growing up with the typical rich-kid problems.

Re: Mark Zuckerberg Agrees to Give Away Fortune

#172

Post by philwelch »

dpatru wrote: post #136
philwelch wrote: post #96

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is a strange question to me. I know there is probably some similarity in how governments and individuals allocate large amounts of money--for instance, federal spending to curtail HIV/AIDS in Africa compared to Gates' spending to curtail malaria--but the bulk of it doesn't overlap. Gates, Buffett, and Zuckerberg shouldn't hire my town's police force, and can't afford to hire my country's military or even maintai…

I don't see why the police, military, and highways need to be funded through government. To the extent that these services provide a benefit, there's no reason to think they couldn't be supplied in a free market.

You don't have a market without a government to protect property rights. You can't have competing entities protecting property rights, because the Marxist gang down the street is going to protect a different set of property rights than the capitalist gang up the street.

Libertarians like to think of private property as some kind of moral essential, and it might be, but that's not enough to make anarcho-capitalism work. While we can probably all agree to outlaw murder, we can't, in fact, all agree on enforcing the same property rights. Plus, there needs to be a way to authoritatively register and adjudicate property claims, not a dozen competing protection rackets[1], each with its own inconsistent rules.

[1] Even actual protection rackets try not to overlap in territory, for exactly this reason.

Re: Mark Zuckerberg Agrees to Give Away Fortune

#173

Post by ohashi »

grandalf wrote: post #54
ohashi wrote: post #44

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The quest to give his fortune away and cowering from a bigger idea? He is changing the way development works. He is better funded than almost anyone else with no obligation to any other stakeholders (namely governments and political entities that use aid as a political chip). He gets the opportunity to, as a private individual, challenge the market failures of our time. Who else is going to fund research aimed at sav…

I don't dispute that his work has helped many, many people. I also acknowledge that simply putting money toward some of those dire problems now will ease a great deal of suffering, which is wonderful. But philanthropy is an old fashioned way to solve problems. I guess I have this hope that someone like Gates would see a solution that took a very unexpected path.

He is investing in people/companies to solve those big issues, like a YCombinator for development with pockets 100x the size.

Re: Mark Zuckerberg Agrees to Give Away Fortune

#174

Post by pclark »

paulitex wrote: post #121

Hey Sergey, Larry, and Steve, heads up. These guys all have around the same net worth as Zuck, but much more liquidity. Sergey "don't be evil" Brin's absence from the list is a particularly curious... Anyone know what his philanthropic track record is like? Is it mostly through Google.org?

is not donating to charity evil now? man, thats escalated.

Re: Mark Zuckerberg Agrees to Give Away Fortune

#175

Post by sp332 »

DevX101 wrote: post #74
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…

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…

> 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.

If you make a ridiculous amount of money, what's wrong with making sure that your family is financially secure for generations?

Re: Mark Zuckerberg Agrees to Give Away Fortune

#176

Post by jhpriestley »

jacoblyles wrote: post #110
petenixey wrote: post #55

I happen to have just watched a brilliant TED talk on the value of angel investment (not aid) in Africa. The talk underlined how it is capitalism rather than charity that creates wealth. It would be wonderful to see some of SV's glitterati create more for-profit investment networks (bigger than Kiva, smaller than VC (...YC?)) in other hungry markets. Kudos to Mark for committing to this. If he applies his product-bri…

I will bet anyone that 20 years from now we will see that China's "greedy" investment in Africa has done more good than all the decades and $billions of "selfless" western aid, both public and private. And I also will bet that privatized school systems will perform better than public school bureaucracies that receive hundred million dollar gifts. The invisible hand is puckish like that.

Hmm, could a free market approach to African development be what we were missing all along? If only we could come to some sort of consensus on that approach. We could call it the Washington consensus.

Re: Mark Zuckerberg Agrees to Give Away Fortune

#177

Post by petenixey »

helium wrote: post #62
petenixey wrote: post #55

I happen to have just watched a brilliant TED talk on the value of angel investment (not aid) in Africa. The talk underlined how it is capitalism rather than charity that creates wealth. It would be wonderful to see some of SV's glitterati create more for-profit investment networks (bigger than Kiva, smaller than VC (...YC?)) in other hungry markets. Kudos to Mark for committing to this. If he applies his product-bri…

Do you have a link to the TED talk?

Sorry, I should have put it in in the first place: http://www.ted.com/talks/ngozi_okonjo_iweala_on_doing_busine...

Re: Mark Zuckerberg Agrees to Give Away Fortune

#178

Post by petenixey »

spatulon wrote: post #113
DevX101 wrote: post #9

After someone asked Warren Buffet why he wanted to give away all of his fortune, he replied: "I want to leave enough money to my children that they can do anything, but no so much that they will do nothing".

The British entrepreneur and investor Peter Jones also worried about that problem and decided to double any money his children earned for themselves.

He's actually even more tactical than that. The multiple depended on the job his kids get. I think he said he'd quadruple a nurses salary but they wouldn't get anything at all if they became investment bankers.

Re: Mark Zuckerberg Agrees to Give Away Fortune

#180

Post by mattmiller »

sp332 wrote: post #175
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…

> 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. If you make a ridiculous amount of money, what's wrong with making sure that your family is financially secure for generations?

It cripples upward mobility for the rest of society. You could make an argument that upward mobility is one of Americas greatest strengths. It keeps people motivated and it allows the entire population the chance to contribute to advancement.
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