I am glad to see this approach by Gates, but relying on billionaires to do the right thing is not a reliable strategy for society.
My new deadline: 20 years to give away virtually all my wealth
301–310 of 704 posts
Re: My new deadline: 20 years to give away virtually all my wealth
#302Earlier quoted context omitted.
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> help your friend, your neighbor, your town, state, and country before you look further afield Many of my friends and family don't live on my neighborhood, town, state or country. They live in the world. Consider broadening up your social circle a little bit. Our lives don't have to be limited to where a horse can travel to any more.
Sure, the world has changed. But rightly-ordered love isn't about geographical layout, it's about the natural order of community and social structure. That has changed but "mosquito nets in zimbabwe" being on the way outer end of a right ordering of love hasn't.
Re: My new deadline: 20 years to give away virtually all my wealth
#303Earlier quoted context omitted.
No billionaire will ever be a net positive to society. The wealth he accrued was literally stolen from the labour of millions of people. No token donations at the end of your life will ever remediate that situation.
I often see this sentiment whenever a billionaire is in conversation, but I don't understand. Can you elaborate on how his wealth was "stolen" from people? The way I see it, he's wealthy because he founded a wildly successful technology company by first creating something of value (MS-DOS). Microsoft has since grown to be one of the largest companies in the world, which hundreds of thousands of people voluntarily wor…
In a capitalist society, to a rounding error, most people work out of necessity - to house, clothe, and feed their families. This creates an inherently unequal relationship between capital and labour which is exploited to accrue wealth in the hands of a very few people.
This is literal theft from the working class of the fruits of their labours.
Re: My new deadline: 20 years to give away virtually all my wealth
#304Earlier quoted context omitted.
This statement is so 90s and so BOFH-centered that it is irrelevant to a level of stupidity. Gates has done a lot to prove he's not a cold-hearted mf and compared to all the bros in their prime at the moment, dude, just think of Elon or Larry Ellison, well our man Billy is really very much a bright persona.
Microsoft's company practices under Gates don't help, but they are far from the main issue people have with him nowadays. Most people aren't even aware of the things Microsoft did. People think he is the antichrist because he promotes vaccines and because there are multiple quotes of him where he explains that he wants to reduce the world's population. By raising the standard of living and giving healthcare to the po…
There is a difference between reducing the world’s population and slowing its growth rate. The highest growth rates are necessarily in areas with high mortality. People have more babies to compensate for this mortality. Improve mortality rates and the population growth naturally goes down.
Re: My new deadline: 20 years to give away virtually all my wealth
#305Earlier quoted context omitted.
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If you were to live very close to the border of, say, Canada or Mexico, would you support giving financial support to alleviate suffering in those countries?
That depends. Generally nation is a big part of how one defines rightly-ordered love. But if, say, I lived near the border, regularly went down to Mexico, had friends or colleagues there, then probably so. but more focused on alleviating their suffering than that of the country or state.
Re: My new deadline: 20 years to give away virtually all my wealth
#306His 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…
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> I am an ordo amoris enjoyer
You seem to think this phrase implies a prescription that people ought to donate first to their adjacents (unambiguously enough to be worth including without a definition).
I'll note that, given how many sources seem to contravene that interpretation, the probability that your use of this term did not come downstream from Vice President Vance has dropped precipitously. Which might be useful information for anyone looking to diversify their information diet.
Re: My new deadline: 20 years to give away virtually all my wealth
#307Use to admire Gates, and good on him for doing what he is doing.
For me now, this statement by Larry Page resonates better:
“You know, if I were to get hit by a bus today, I should leave all of it to Elon Musk.”
Re: My new deadline: 20 years to give away virtually all my wealth
#308Earlier quoted context omitted.
Agreed—I spent the 90s idolizing Jobs and despising Gates. But today I have deep respect for Gates and the way he's using his wealth as a positive force in the world. Jobs had better taste and was a more effective product leader, but I'm sorry to say that he sucked as a philanthropist. It's disappointing that he spent ANY of his mental energy at the end of his life building that dumb $100M yacht, rather than focusing…
Better taste? How so, and why does that matter when we're talking about moral character?
I’m making a stretch to find an answer, but there’s an argument to be made to putting great works of art and beauty in to the world counts as an act of bettering humanity. Look at The Vatican for an example. The patronage of that wealth concentration gave us many of mankind’s greatest achievements.
So if you consider Jobs’ boat or Apple Park or the fact that 700M people hold a literal masterpiece of design and engineering in their hands in order to send nudes and memes to each other a work of benevolence then it makes sense.
Re: My new deadline: 20 years to give away virtually all my wealth
#309Earlier quoted context omitted.
The antivax movement has been demonising the medical side of his foundation for decades at this point - I'd wager the folks who weren't born in the 90s are more likely to have heard about that than about the genesis of Windows
The antivax movement is a tiny number of fringe wackos. Normal people are not against normal vaccines, even if some of them had concerns about one recent one in particular.
Tiny fringe whackos yes.
But they were a significant force in electing the current president and his health secretary who is currently endangering whether we all get a flu and Covid booster this autumn.
Re: My new deadline: 20 years to give away virtually all my wealth
#310>While I respect anyone’s decision to spend their days playing pickleball, that life isn’t quite for me—at least not full time. I’m lucky to wake up every day energized to go to work
Bit of an unfair comparison though.. Most people dont retire from a job where you're literally handing people money.
That said, I'm a huge fan Bill's work post-microsoft :)