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A letter to our daughter

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Re: A letter to our daughter

#481

Post by briandear »

marknutter wrote: post #30
nugget wrote: post #28

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I give Mark and Priscilla a lot of credit for this. There's a big difference between 50% and 99%. There's a big difference between leaving your children a few hundred million and many billions. They have certainly exemplified the challenge to ''put your money where your mouth is''. Having said that, the first thing I thought of was the tax implications. If the shares were to eventually be sold (but not donated), the…

> Nonetheless the big winner here is the group of causes they donate to but it comes at the expense of a significant amount of tax revenue Here is the world's smallest fiddle...

Good! Government is far less efficient anyway. How many different agencies and special interest groups does the money now not have to touch to get to where Zuck thinks it's best used? The government would just buy a few more F35s or funnel it to bail out companies like GM. Or squander it on 'investments' such as Solydra or market-distorting Ethanol subsidies. It certainly wouldn't get funneled into meaningful education reform or lowering taxes for the rest of us.

Re: A letter to our daughter

#482

Post by wanderer2323 »

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…

If anything, you are not being cynical enough. This 'letter' can be summarized as "We will use the money for leftist lobbying in our country and establishing a monopoly in other countries AND we're going to say it's charity so no taxes will be paid".

Re: A letter to our daughter

#483

Post by mseebach »

brbsix wrote: post #175
slg wrote: post #154

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The Koch brothers are the most influential political backers in the country and they spend somewhere in the neighborhood of $200M per election cycle. They are the closest someone has come to trying to buy an election, but even their donations are still only rounding errors in comparison to their overall fortune. Politics is a relatively cheap game for someone with tens of billions of dollars.

It is a cheap game for someone with millions of dollars even. ROI on these sort of political contributions can be absolutely insane. Apparently corporations on average receive ~$760 for every $1 spent influencing politics. Depending on the industry, ROI is anywhere from 5,000 to 77,000 percent. http://www.zerohedge.com/news/2015-03-16/words-greatest-inve...

> Depending on the industry, ROI is anywhere from 5,000 to 77,000 percent.

That is clearly not true. If that sort of ROI existed in anywhere near the general case, a lot more people and companies would spend a lot more money on it, and they don't. Perhaps there exists lobbying opportunities with these kinds of ROIs, but they are limited, and there definitely isn't a 5,000% floor on it.

https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/the-fix/wp/2015/05/04/am...

I think the problem with the zerohedge article (and the report it summarises) is that, first, they seem to assume that all corporate welfare benefits the businesses doing the lobbying locally (not to businesses in general, which is probably more the case -- Ford lobbying against foreign competition will help Chevrolet equally, regardless of how much either firm spends on lobbying), and second, that corporate welfare only exists because of lobbying: Politicians still need to get elected, and creating industry, jobs and high-profile ribbon-cutting opportunities in their districts (regardless of whether businesses lobby them for it or not) is likely to remain a popular tactic in the absence of lobbying.

Re: A letter to our daughter

#484

Post by bambax »

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?

Dirty energy isn't the (main) problem; intensive agriculture and aggressive fishing is the main problem.

Humans need to eat less meat and fish. Much less. Like, in rich countries, at least 95% less.

Re: A letter to our daughter

#485

Post by erikrothoff »

hellofunk wrote: post #446

I'm signed up for CNN's "Breaking News" emails that are sent out whenever some earth-shattering crisis occurs or particularly important news that affects everyone. I received one of these email alerts upon the arrival of their daughter. This gave me a great sigh; good news for them, but how did it become worthy of worldwide immediate news notification?

You didn't read the article did you?

Re: A letter to our daughter

#486

Post by ZenoArrow »

fulafel wrote: post #476
ZenoArrow wrote: post #474

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

> "Something else is needed to stop USA, Saudis, China and Russia from digging up the cheap oil and coal."

So you don't think cheap and effective clean energy technologies are very useful to encourage moving away from oil and coal?

Re: A letter to our daughter

#487

Post by fmueller »

dagw wrote: post #420
k__ wrote: post #91

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Is it possible in the US to take both names after marriage? If so, I'm disappointed that Mark didn't choose to be Zuckerberg-Chan.

Is it possible in the US to take both names after marriage? Where isn't it possible?

In Switzerland for example. Either both use the same name or they keep the one they already had.

Re: A letter to our daughter

#488

Post by ZenoArrow »

bambax wrote: post #484
ZenoArrow wrote: post #474

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

Dirty energy isn't the (main) problem; intensive agriculture and aggressive fishing is the main problem. Humans need to eat less meat and fish. Much less. Like, in rich countries, at least 95% less.

> "aggressive fishing is the main problem."

That is a separate problem from ocean acidification. Ocean acidification is directly linked to pollution from fossil fuel usage.

Re: A letter to our daughter

#489

Post by bambax »

ZenoArrow wrote: post #488
bambax wrote: post #484

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Dirty energy isn't the (main) problem; intensive agriculture and aggressive fishing is the main problem. Humans need to eat less meat and fish. Much less. Like, in rich countries, at least 95% less.

> "aggressive fishing is the main problem." That is a separate problem from ocean acidification. Ocean acidification is directly linked to pollution from fossil fuel usage.

Yes, aggressive fishing is a different problem (but a problem nonetheless).

Ocean acidification however, is caused by the fact that the oceans absorb the excess of CO2 present in the atmosphere; and livestock are responsible for more CO2 production than all of transportation.

Re: A letter to our daughter

#490

Post by fulafel »

ZenoArrow wrote: post #486
fulafel wrote: post #476

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

> "Something else is needed to stop USA, Saudis, China and Russia from digging up the cheap oil and coal." So you don't think cheap and effective clean energy technologies are very useful to encourage moving away from oil and coal?

Sure, I believe it's useful in that rich western countries continue their leisurely transition to cleaner energy as it becomes cheaper, combined with gas taxes and carbon trading and such. Billionaires investing more money in cleaner energy can be marginally beneficial, though there is already large and increasing amounts of capital allocated by the markets toward this end.

But the deciding factor is can we make everyone stop using the cheap fossil fuels that are basically free money lying in the ground. Oil price will follow demand. It might get cheaper if western countries cut consumption, but someone will still buy the rest with the lower price. And there is nothing in the horizon that would displace oil and coal at their minimum profitable production prices for developing countries (where most people live) in the requisite timeframe. If we leave it to markets, this is the case by overwhelming odds, Zuckerberg or no Zuckerberg.

Think what needs to happen on the world stage in order to enact a global ban (1) on oil pumping and coal mining within 20 years. That's the job. Interests of nations addicted to the oil income, interests of nations whose agriculture is entirely dependent on cheap imported oil, etc. Easy UN consensus?

And this is just the energy sector, there's more to climate change drivers. So fixing this is necessary but not sufficient. The same political measures that are needed to coordinate the energy sector will also work for the other sectors. But energy tech won't.

(1) A very high tax really, that 99% prevents use in fuel applications. Ban is a simpler word.

edit: added bit about fossil prices reacting to demand in west

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