My new deadline: 20 years to give away virtually all my wealth • Hacker News Board

Re: My new deadline: 20 years to give away virtually all my wealth

#411

Post by abound » Thu, May 08, 2025, 6:36 PM UTC

yodsanklai wrote: post #401

wing-_-nuts wrote: post #39

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…

My issue with Gates is that he wants to fight climate change, yet he's personally an environmental disaster with his yachts and jets. I'm not saying he has to live like a monk to be credible, and maybe his foundation is doing a good job (never looked into it), but either he's an hypocrite, or I disagree with him on how to fight climate change.

I think it's pretty clearly hypocritical, but also if his actions are (far) more than offsetting his own emissions and impact, it's still a net positive.

Of course, he could choose to not live a super-high consumption lifestyle in addition to his climate philanthopy, but if I had to take one or the other, I'd rather him continue throwing money at climate work than take fewer private jet rides.

Re: My new deadline: 20 years to give away virtually all my wealth

#412

Post by gambiting » Thu, May 08, 2025, 6:36 PM UTC

dekrg wrote: post #262

gambiting wrote: post #240

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>>You mean aside his wife divorcing him over his relationship with Epstein She divorced him over Gates cheating, not over the relationship with Epstein - if I'm wrong please correct me. >>like to ignore and pretend it doesn't exist I honestly don't want to, like the other commented said "just google" - so I "just googled" and none of the articles I found suggest they had anything beyond a very superficial relationshi…

Yeah, sure. Just cheating. >In a 2022 interview, Melinda said, “I did not like that he had meetings with Jeffrey Epstein, no. I made that clear to him,” per Page Six, adding that she only met the child sex offender once because she “wanted to see who” he was. “I regretted it the second I walked in the door,” she went on, adding, “He was abhorrent. He was evil personified. My heart breaks for these women.” https://www…

Well but that's exactly what I was asking for - thank you for posting this. I asked to be corrected and I was.

But let me quote what the article you linked says:

"claimed that Bill had met the disgraced financier on “numerous occasions.” One of those meetings allegedly lasted for hours."

Does that sound to you like they had a deep relationship of any kind? I'm just trying to form my own view on it - and that just doesn't read to me like the kind of relationship that people try to portray it as. If I met with someone "numerous times, sometimes for hours" you wouldn't immediately think we are friends or that we even share any values together, would you?

>> https://www.nytimes.com/2019/10/12/business/jeffrey-epstein-...

I can't access that without a sub, you'll have to give me the jist or some quotes.

Re: My new deadline: 20 years to give away virtually all my wealth

#413

Post by gambiting » Thu, May 08, 2025, 6:37 PM UTC

Nullabillity wrote: post #281

gambiting wrote: post #190

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>> The wealth he accrued was literally stolen from the labour of millions of people. It's such a weird take I don't even know where to begin. Are you suggesting that all people who worked at Microsoft to make Windows and IE and all their other products had their labour "stolen" from them? If yes, can you expand on that? What do you do for a living? Do you perform some kind of a job that you get compensated for? If ye…

> It's such a weird take I don't even know where to begin. Are you suggesting that all people who worked at Microsoft to make Windows and IE and all their other products had their labour "stolen" from them? If yes, can you expand on that? We have a metric for the difference between what you charge for something and what you paid to provide it, it's called net income. Here's Microsoft's: https://www.macrotrends.net/st…

That's not embezzlement by any definition of the word.

>>What do you do for a living? Do you perform some kind of a job that you get compensated for? If yes, do you also feel like you're being stolen from?

Care to reply to this?

Re: My new deadline: 20 years to give away virtually all my wealth

#414

Post by yupitsme123 » Thu, May 08, 2025, 6:39 PM UTC

wing-_-nuts wrote: post #39

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…

The thing that's always made me skeptical of Gates and any other enormous foundations is that they operate at such a high level and with such enormous budgets that they basically exist in the same "amoral" world of nation states and corporations, but yet they face none of the scrutiny or criticism that those entities face.

How do you judge the actions of someone when those actions are powerful enough to move markets, take down regimes, and change people's lives for generations?

We take them at their word and assume that everything they do is well-intentioned and good and has zero negative impact or secondary effects, but is that really the case?

To me it seems like the only charity that can be trusted is a small-scale one that acts locally and with lots of transparency.

Re: My new deadline: 20 years to give away virtually all my wealth

#415

Post by timewizard » Thu, May 08, 2025, 6:39 PM UTC

legitster wrote: post #49

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…

You could eradicate a disease by killing all the hosts. I worry that the people who want to "eradicate disease" don't actually care about long term outcomes, they just want to have their likeness cast in bronze, with a nice plaque beneath it, lauding their "oversized" achievements in life.

Anyways, the type of person who can earn a lot of money in this economy, and the type of person who can best decide how to spend it altruistically, are almost certainly not the same person. The person who earned the money certainly understand this. Yet. Here we are.

Re: My new deadline: 20 years to give away virtually all my wealth

#416

Post by therein » Thu, May 08, 2025, 6:39 PM UTC

wing-_-nuts wrote: post #39

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…

> There's a reason they're marked as secondary beneficiaries on all my accounts.

That's just insane. Bill Gates is absolutely not a good guy but you cannot be convinced to that given how much you idealize him. Have children. I would have replied to the sibling comment saying the same but comments become unreplyable once they get enough downvotes.

Re: My new deadline: 20 years to give away virtually all my wealth

#417

Post by therein » Thu, May 08, 2025, 6:40 PM UTC

codr7 wrote: post #378

ok123456 wrote: post #232

Earlier quoted context omitted.

He's not curing polio, though. His polio program is spreading it because they use a live virus, and a low percentage of the population is getting it. People are now getting paralytic polio from others who got the vaccine. This is just one example of the Kreuger-Dunning that permeates all aspects of the Gates Foundation. His interventions have been mainly disasters, distorted public policy, and gobbled up biotech IP i…

Plus, he wouldn't touch a project he couldn't make a profit from somehow. People don't change much.

Yup, the Gates worship is incredibly sad.

Re: My new deadline: 20 years to give away virtually all my wealth

#418

Post by aDyslecticCrow » Thu, May 08, 2025, 6:40 PM UTC

legitster wrote: post #49

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…

Economies of scale could vastly benefit a lot of charity work, but few charities can attain sufficient scale to achieve that. There is an unfortunate amount of overhead and administration in charities that do not directly benefit the cause.

In that sense, I suspect targeted and planned large investments into charities with scalable plans is a lot more efficient than years of trickle donations.

Re: My new deadline: 20 years to give away virtually all my wealth

#419

Post by DavidSJ » Thu, May 08, 2025, 6:42 PM UTC

modo_mario wrote: post #155

DavidSJ wrote: post #52

Earlier quoted context omitted.

MSFT is up 18x during that time and the S&P 500 is up 5x during that time. His investments are some mixture of MSFT and other things, so we might say he would have been up around 10x if he'd given no money away. Since his net worth is only up 3x, that means he gave away about 70% of his wealth.

He said he would do it over 5 years. MSFT was up roughly 2x not 18x

However long he took, he has ~70% less wealth than he would have had if he didn't do it. If it took him longer, that only means he gave the wealth after it had more time to appreciate.

Re: My new deadline: 20 years to give away virtually all my wealth

#420

Post by therein » Thu, May 08, 2025, 6:42 PM UTC

babelfish wrote: post #272

hiuyty wrote: post #252

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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So you are saying his life is miserable because he will never know the joy of giving to Bill Gates because he is giving to his children. I think you're living that life.