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

gatesnotes.com

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

#501

Post by lillecarl »

yupitsme123 wrote: post #489
lillecarl wrote: post #424

Earlier quoted context omitted.

While it might be hypocritical it doesn't matter whatsoever what he does with his personal life if his foundation is pouring billions into making the world a better place. Helping people out of poverty is really bad for the environment too but I don't think we should be complaining when someone does that. On a global scale his yacht(s?) and private jets are nothing, and if it helps him do good by establishing/maintai…

I'll ask the same question I've asked elsewhere because "I want to believe:" How do you measure how much someone has made the world a better place? Especially when so much of their actions, their consequences, and their second and third order effects are either unknowable or papered over by PR campaigns.

You can't really measure how much good someone has done, but their foundation has been going for 25 years and as mentioned in the article they've donated 100billion dollars to something already.

If anyone deserves a bit of good faith it'd be the Gates family, it's probably not all pretty and perfect but I am convinced they're doing a lot of good.

You'll have to ask someone else about proof, but I imagine someone would've leaked something within these 25 years if they were running a tax evasion scheme or something else fishy.

So without hard proof I repeat: Let Bill have his toys, it's a piss in the bucket on a global scale and the donated 100 billion dollars will have offset that in some way or another many times over.

Let's just say my "sniff test" says good, and while not always right I think I am here and that's good enough for me.

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

#503

Post by 9rx »

psunavy03 wrote: post #445
mmooss wrote: post #360

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's a very narrow aspect of government, and one that I have hardly ever encountered. Law-abiding people don't do it because of government coercion but because they believe in being cooperative members of their community and don't want to hurt others. Another, much larger aspect of government, especially democratic, is people getting together and doing things as a community that can't be done individually.

"I have not encountered something" != "it does not exist." The logical conclusion to defying a government is people with guns showing up to put you in cuffs and take you to jail. Even over something as piddling as a littering fine or parking ticket . . . watch what eventually happens if you refuse to pay it. People getting together and doing things as a community does not require a government. We can and should do th…

> People getting together and doing things as a community does not require a government.

That may be true, but government (at least a democratic one) is just people getting together and doing things, so if you already have one you can save the effort of the community trying to organize a second community on top of the community they already have for no good reason.

> But labeling them as "people getting together and doing things as a community" ignores their ability to enforce their laws, including the sanctioned use of violence or the threat of violence to coerce people into obeying or to punish them.

That literally tells of people getting together and doing things. These are not magical powers. They are simply community action. I suppose it highlights that people getting together and doing things isn't all sunshine and rainbows, despite your apparent dream for a world where there is only happiness, but such is reality.

I expect the aversion is that those who wish to donate to charity only want their friends, not entire communities, to benefit. The "trouble" with a community at large is that everyone is able to participate, whether you like them or not. That's not to say that a community cannot see a charitable benefit indirectly, but the key point is that they want to keep the primary benefit away from strangers.

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

#506

Post by larodi »

wongarsu wrote: post #394
hamburglar wrote: post #304

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Good point, "Reducing population growth" is a more accurate portrayal of what Gates actually said. But in practice they are the same thing. Almost the entire developed world has a fertility rate below the replacement rate. Even the upper half of developing countries are below replacement rate. If you bring health care, urbanization and the economy across Africa to levels comparable to Russia or Brazil we can expect t…

Well, here's something else he's saying as of like - today

https://www.politico.eu/article/elon-musk-to-blame-for-world...

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

#507

Post by AlexandrB »

guywithahat wrote: post #405
yoyohello13 wrote: post #50

Gates seems like a real embodiment of "Effective Altruism". 1. Get a bunch of money by any means necessary. 2. Donate/invest in altruistic causes. Unfortunately, most people that use effective altruism to justify themselves hoarding wealth seem to forget the second part.

> by any means necessary. While I agree this is technically accurate, it implies there was something imoral about how he got his money. He created the most popular modern OS and a myriad of other technical innovations. It would be almost impossible to create more positive good in the world through his charitable donations than Microsoft

This is such a whitewash of Microsoft's history. There's a reason Microsoft is a convicted monopolist - they used brutally unfair tactics to push out competitors, including open source ones. Have we all forgotten the IE winter when browser innovation stopped for almost a decade thanks to Microsoft killing Netscape in the crib?

Microsoft is not an ethical company - a pattern that has continued today with their user-hostile decisions.

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

#508

Post by jll29 »

It is an interesting game-theoretic question how to spend money x (say, hundreds of billions) to maximize good.

- Should you first educate anyone who cannot read or write?

- Should you first feed anyone hungry/thirsty?

- Should you first provide shelter for all without homes?

- Should you first make peace for all without safety?

(all the way down the Maslow pyramid of needs)

How would the philanthropic billaires united ensure peace, if he had even more money? (Should one "buy" a military force that is mightier than any country's, to send out the message that every nation that started an armed conflict would regret it? Not sure if that could suppress war, but perhaps one would not feel inclined to call that "peace"...)

If I had the financial means, by gut instinct I would start out with the most vulnerable, those that can least help themselves, e.g. orphaned small children, the handicapped, the unborn.

However, in a geopolitically unstable world one could then argue it is a "waste" of resources to help people by first feeding them when they get invaded and killed by their neighboring country soon after. But creating world peace has historically not been something that a single person - billionair or otherwise - has been able to solve.

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

#509

Post by johnwheeler »

Taqas wrote: post #502

I've been reading about him giving away his fortune for 20 years. If I say I give away my fortune it's done within a week. Yet, he is still one of the richest people on earth. He's done good, but still I'm cynical about his motives.

You can’t spend 2 hundred billion dollars in “weeks”. Haven’t you seen Brewster’s Millions?

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

#510

Post by AlexandrB »

surement wrote: post #361
yoyohello13 wrote: post #50

Gates seems like a real embodiment of "Effective Altruism". 1. Get a bunch of money by any means necessary. 2. Donate/invest in altruistic causes. Unfortunately, most people that use effective altruism to justify themselves hoarding wealth seem to forget the second part.

> by any means necessary This implies that they got rich by pillaging instead of countless people voluntarily giving them money in exchange for what they offered.

They got rich by cheating, stealing, and breaking the law. They were even convicted of it[1].

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_v._Microsoft_Cor....

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