301–310 of 555 posts
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Either way, if Zuckerburg doesn't live up to his promise, his daughter is going to be as schizophrenic as the world her father helped create.
Parenting style doesn't cause schizophrenia.
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Don't know about the Saudi princes however the Koch Brothers have given away millions of dollars (and I am sure there also give away money anonymously as well). http://www.kochfamilyfoundations.org/foundationsdhk.asp Also rest assured that Facebook also "evades taxes" in the same way that the Koch brothers do, that is by taking advantage of the US Tax Code in a legal way. And none of us have any idea what the Koch Br…
One of the organizations the Koch brothers fund is FIRE, which is dedicated to free speech on college campuses. It's really hard to find fault in that. I really hate the Manichean judgment common in modern public discourse. Everyone is either a saint or a devil, depending on which side you're on.
Not that hard. Social justice advocates increasingly view support of free speech as equivalent to defense of racism/sexism/homophobia/etc.
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Whether or not the letter is narcissistic, one has to admire their initiative. It is not, unfortunately, the obvious thing to do, and they deserve to be applauded for that. Whatever personal faults the man has, I'd argue this kind of philanthropy more than makes up for it.
Exactly. Bill Gates came late to the game. He pretty much had to conquer the whole world before developing an interest in philanthropy. Now it's his "real work" and I guarantee you he'll be remembered more for that than MS-DOS! Zuckerberg, like Gates, is a brilliant but deeply flawed person. However, Zuckerberg appears to be maturing much faster than Gates. I have lots of hope for him left.
Carnegie's wiki page "Andrew Carnegie was a Scottish-American industrialist who led the enormous expansion of the American steel industry in the late 19th century. He built a leadership role as a philanthropist for the United States and the British Empire."
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"I hope that if I ever get into a position like that, I too will be able to look beyond my personal greed and desire to increase the high score." Are you an American? Well sir, your butt is full and you're keeping it all to yourself. Stolen metaphors aside, you're in the 1% of the world and you can actually make a difference. "How hard is it?" You tell me.
The US has 4% of the world's population. If you're not in the top 25% of the US, you're not in the top 1% of the world. Europe has 10%, and Slovenia and the ex-Yugoslav countries are not known for their wealth.
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I find that I don't agree with the whole thing. It just seems like a PR stunt to me :( Why the fuck are you posting a letter to your daughter across the globe? Why do you have a letter at all, can you just say it to her sometime when she is actually able to understand. I guess for him completely different rules apply, but my wife and I don't even post any pictures of our daughter online nor are we sharing anything ab…
Pretty clear you didn't read the thing. The guy just pledged to give away 45 Billion dollars to try and improve humanity in various ways. Seems like a pretty expensive 'PR stunt'.
The PR stunt is making this public under the guise of a supposed letter to his child, he could have done all this without the media fuss.
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> within the top 1% of global wealth > but struggle to feed themselves Wealth means assets. If you can't feed yourself you do not have assets and therefore you don't have wealth. There is extreme lack of poverty in the U.S. (not complete, and compared to all countries). There is no reason for anyone to go without food.
> There is extreme lack of poverty in the U.S. There is no reason for anyone to go without food. I'm not sure which US you're referring to but it's not one I recognise. There is massive inequality in the US that I know and the results of that are visible everywhere that I visited. Homeless people abound like nowhere else in the developed western world that I've been to (Europe, Australia) and there is a real edge of…
I'm from an African country and with that perspective I stand by this phrase:
> There is extreme lack of poverty in the U.S. There is no reason for anyone to go without food.
Name one area in the U.S. where a homeless person cannot get a meal.
My claim is simple. The U.S. is the most prosperous place on the planet, the inequality doesn't touch at least a hundred other countries. Again, inequality isn't necessarily an indicator of poverty.
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Since when is wealth synonymous with comfort? There are people in America who are within the top 1% of global wealth but struggle to feed themselves, or to keep themselves healthy, or to shelter themselves, etc.
> within the top 1% of global wealth > but struggle to feed themselves Wealth means assets. If you can't feed yourself you do not have assets and therefore you don't have wealth. There is extreme lack of poverty in the U.S. (not complete, and compared to all countries). There is no reason for anyone to go without food.
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Their public pledge to donate 45 billion dollars to charity within their lifetimes with an eye towards long term solutions deserves criticism? Seriously, WTF?
If I may paraphrase the sentiment here: Firstly, Their public pledge to donate 45 billion dollars That number is based on current valuation of Fb and cannot be equated to someone writing a check for $45B. If Fb goes the MySpace way, how much is that donation worth? Secondly there appears to be a duality between how the company operates and what this post tries to rally for. Finally, using the pretense of writing a le…
If Fb goes the Google way and its value continues to go up, the donation will be worth more. It's true that the donation is of unclear value. But calling it $45 billion is a way to communicate the scope of the pledge that they've committed to.
> Secondly there appears to be a duality between how the company operates and what this post tries to rally for.
It's important to distinguish between the behavior of a person and the behavior of Facebook, Inc. Every time the Bill & Melinda Gates foundation does something, we don't get dozens of people rising out of the woodwork harping on Microsoft's unethical business practices - but Bill Gates' mid-90s Microsoft was definitely on par with Facebook at its worst. It's okay to celebrate good things done, as long as we don't fully forget how we got there. We should continue to criticize Facebook as a company even as we recognize that the individual here is attempting something great.
> Finally, using the pretense of writing a letter to their newly born daughter rubs some the wrong way.
It's a pretty easy and effective rhetorical device. The letter is obviously targeted at the world, or he wouldn't have published it. But it's a good way to present some emotional framing - this is why he cares so much, why he's invested in a better world. Not all attempts to inspire pathos in the reader are rooted in evil, it's just a tool for effective writing.