A letter to our daughter • Hacker News Board

Re: A letter to our daughter

#471

Post by drited » Wed, Dec 02, 2015, 10:31 AM UTC

xyzzyz wrote: post #466

drited wrote: post #455

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You are being too cynical. He's giving away stock not cash because if he sold the stock first to raise cash to donate, he'd have an enormous capital gains tax liability. By gifting stock, he can gift a far greater amount and the tax-exempt recipient charity can sell the stock itself to raise cash. This is standard in situations like this - e.g. it's what Buffett did when gifting away almost all of his billions. Also…

http://www.nytimes.com/2015/12/02/technology/mark-zuckerberg... Mr. Zuckerberg and his wife, Dr. Priscilla Chan, said they were forming a new organization, the Chan Zuckerberg Initiative, to manage the money, through an unusual limited liability corporate structure. [...] By using a limited liability company instead of a nonprofit corporation or foundation, the Zuckerberg family will be able to go beyond making phila…

Someone with more knowledge of the U.S. tax code than me will be able to explain how he's going to achieve this while funding a new corporation (perhaps he'll set up a foundation that owns a corporation, similar to what some endowment funds do to avoid UBTI), but there is no way that he's going to make this gift much smaller by doing it in a way that realizes a taxable gain at the time of gift.

Re: A letter to our daughter

#472

Post by wfn » Wed, Dec 02, 2015, 10:33 AM UTC

morgante wrote: post #448

robert_tweed wrote: post #426

Maybe I'm being too cynical, but this seems about as philanthropic as Ron Hubbard starting a religion. Firstly, the donation is stock not cash, so the value of this foundation will be directly linked to the value of Facebook shares. Secondly, it has been stated that one of the things this foundation will do is "participate in policy debates". If the headline was "Mark Zuckerberg to put $45 billion is stock behind lob…

It sincerely depresses me that the top comment on Hacker News is so incredibly cynical. The man is giving away a huge amount of money and you can only find ways to detract. > Firstly, the donation is stock not cash, so the value of this foundation will be directly linked to the value of Facebook shares. So? The vast majority of his wealth is in Facebook shares. That doesn't change the fact that he's giving away the v…

Try exercising a less naive approach ("incredibly charitable act") perhaps.

In particular, regarding your statement "he has never attempted to make Internet.org anything close to a monopoly", it surely looks like that's the end game here - see https://www.techinasia.com/talk/facebooks-internetorg-evil/ (discussed on HN here: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10568525)

Re: A letter to our daughter

#473

Post by danols » Wed, Dec 02, 2015, 10:33 AM UTC

bigbugbag wrote: post #305

danols wrote: post #130

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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'.

Have you read it? If you have you clearly haven't understood a word of it, he's not giving dollars but stock. And he's not so much giving it but says he will over the course of his lifetime. 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.

By the time he gives it away it is likely worth more than 45B. So unless he is willing to give it away on the spot the same day it is not worth anything and is just a PR stunt? Sure I don't particularly like the letter and the way he announced it or even the guy for that matter but he just committed 99% of his net worth to charity and deserve some credit for that. Not people bitching and moaning about how he did it in the 'wrong way'. Can you really commit 45B dollars to charity in a wrong way? How big portion of your money have you given to charity?

Re: A letter to our daughter

#474

Post by ZenoArrow » Wed, Dec 02, 2015, 10:43 AM UTC

fulafel wrote: post #458

the_economist wrote: post #244

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Bill Gates has teamed up with Mark Zuckerberg to form multi-billion-dollar clean energy fund: http://www.sciencealert.com/bill-gates-has-teamed-up-with-ma... It sounds like they are doing exactly what you request.

Investing in new energy technologies is not an effective way to address any of the problems he mentioned.

So clean energy isn't beneficial in tackling 'farmland desertification[3]' and 'ocean acidification[5]'? You have heard of climate change, right?

Re: A letter to our daughter

#475

Post by bonzini » Wed, Dec 02, 2015, 10:43 AM UTC

cplease wrote: post #315

bonzini wrote: post #46

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Besides taxes, selling 44.5 billion worth of shares would affect the share value negatively. They will probably use some kind of derivative contract to get funds for the non-profit.

He's not selling the shares. He said they "will give 99% of our Facebook shares." If he sold appreciated stock and donated the proceeds, he'd still have to pay tax on the capital gains, and could only deduct the amount of the actual donation, which would be smaller after tax. By donating stock directly, he still gets to deduct the full value of the stock without paying any tax, and the charity (or more likely, privat…

> the charity (or more likely, private foundation) gets to keep the full value without paying any tax. And it could take as long as it wanted to liquidate the stock and get the best price.

Yes, and the foundation will likely not liquidate the stock, but use the proceeds of some kind of swap contract.

Re: A letter to our daughter

#476

Post by fulafel » Wed, Dec 02, 2015, 11:02 AM UTC

ZenoArrow wrote: post #474

fulafel wrote: post #458

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Investing in new energy technologies is not an effective way to address any of the problems he mentioned.

So clean energy isn't beneficial in tackling 'farmland desertification[3]' and 'ocean acidification[5]'? You have heard of climate change, right?

It might be marginally beneficial but it's not an effective way to combat climate change. Something else is needed to stop USA, Saudis, China and Russia from digging up the cheap oil and coal. And to stop everyone from doing all the wasteful and co2-increasing things with agriculture and deforestation etc.

We need intergovernmental coordination and limits on market forces much more than we need an energy MacGuffin.

Re: A letter to our daughter

#477

Post by austenallred » Wed, Dec 02, 2015, 11:03 AM UTC

saiya-jin wrote: post #450

visakanv wrote: post #423

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Relevant bit from Playboy's interview with Steve Jobs: > Playboy: What does the money actually mean to you? > Jobs: I still don’t understand it. It’s a large responsibility to have more than you can spend in your lifetime—and I feel I have to spend it. If you die, you certainly don’t want to leave a large amount to your children. It will just ruin their lives. And if you die without kids, it will all go to the Govern…

honest question - how did that went? I mean donation & public foundation part

He died before it happened.

Re: A letter to our daughter

#478

Post by Ntrails » Wed, Dec 02, 2015, 11:08 AM UTC

joeyspn wrote: post #470

robert_tweed wrote: post #426

Maybe I'm being too cynical, but this seems about as philanthropic as Ron Hubbard starting a religion. Firstly, the donation is stock not cash, so the value of this foundation will be directly linked to the value of Facebook shares. Secondly, it has been stated that one of the things this foundation will do is "participate in policy debates". If the headline was "Mark Zuckerberg to put $45 billion is stock behind lob…

You're just picking the part of the story that you don't like. Zuck maybe has taken decisions that some of us don't share (most likely all related to privacy/monopolies in the internet)... but (like Bill Gates) he's undoubtedly in a unique position to bring deep changes and improvements to the world through philanthropic activities. If having a child has made him rethink his views (which would be normal) then that's…

My first response was "why not just give it to the Gates foundation" since they're already doing it and well. What's his special insight into what makes a cause effective to fund? Are we perpetuating a world in which charities employ a bunch of people to convince any of a hundred different rich philanthropists/foundations to hand over wodges of cash?

It's a hugely net positive thing he is doing no question.

Re: A letter to our daughter

#479

Post by iamsohungry » Wed, Dec 02, 2015, 11:30 AM UTC

morgante wrote: post #448

robert_tweed wrote: post #426

Maybe I'm being too cynical, but this seems about as philanthropic as Ron Hubbard starting a religion. Firstly, the donation is stock not cash, so the value of this foundation will be directly linked to the value of Facebook shares. Secondly, it has been stated that one of the things this foundation will do is "participate in policy debates". If the headline was "Mark Zuckerberg to put $45 billion is stock behind lob…

It sincerely depresses me that the top comment on Hacker News is so incredibly cynical. The man is giving away a huge amount of money and you can only find ways to detract. > Firstly, the donation is stock not cash, so the value of this foundation will be directly linked to the value of Facebook shares. So? The vast majority of his wealth is in Facebook shares. That doesn't change the fact that he's giving away the v…

> Not to mention he has never attempted to make Internet.org anything close to a monopoly.

Do you even know what Internet.org is? They're providing free access to a subset of the internet that Facebook controls, while forcing people to pay if they want to access the internet as a whole. The entire reason Internet.org exists is to create a Facebook monopoly on data access in developing countries.

Your entire comment is naive.

Re: A letter to our daughter

#480

Post by imgabe » Wed, Dec 02, 2015, 11:38 AM UTC

itistoday2 wrote: post #230

imgabe wrote: post #211

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yeah, he wants to give away tens of billions of dollars to help reduce poverty and fight diseases. What a narcissistic jerk.

With Mark, saying and doing are two completely different things. Example: "Helping poor people in third world countries get online" turned out to be: "Deceiving poor people in third world countries into using something called 'Internet' that's actually 'Facebook with apps', and depriving them of real online access." That whole thing ended up being an attack on the free and open web. "Share with friends only" is short…

The last time I checked, using Facebook was entirely voluntary. The existence of it takes away nothing. You have everything you had before, and also the option to use Facebook or not. There's nothing disempowering about that.