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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

#521

Post by calepayson »

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.

I don't think you can. I think the best we have is intention and Gates seems to have good intentions to me.

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

#522

Post by frereubu »

nostromo wrote: post #459
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…

I worked there and would encourage you not to do that. It'd be smarter to see who they are giving money to (which is all public) and give directly to those orgs. The Gates foundation itself spends a lot of money on consultants, "government engagement" (aka lobbying by another name), and fancy dinners. That's fine or maybe even noble for a family foundation, but it's probably not something individuals would want to fu…

Anecdata, but the brother of a friend was working on malaria in a SE Asian country and the Gates Foundation got interested in what they were doing, and wanted to find out more about it before possibly funding some of their work. They flew the entire team to the US, put them up in expensive hotels for a few days and flew them all back. They calculated that the cost of that was three times their annual budget. It would have made more sense to me to either (a) fly someone from the Gates Foundation to the country so they could see things first hand or (b) conduct the investigation / interviews via the internet. Given that the Foundation's people weren't in-country anyway, (b) seems like the best option all round given the environmental costs of flying.

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

#524

Post by calepayson »

faku812 wrote: post #404
yodsanklai wrote: post #401

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

It's all about virtue signaling. All he cares about is if people someday decide to "eat the rich" he won't be the first one on the menu.

This is a silly way to interpret someone donating over $100B to charity.

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

#525

Post by Beijinger »

Beijinger wrote: post #483

Not all of his wealth is so clean as it looks. The competition against Linux was often nasty. Governments often got a bad deal. Think Munich and Linux. And I still remember ugly stories about licensing of windows and Africa. This was not necessary Billy who did it, but he profited from the corruption. Admire Linus. Admire Richard Stallmann. Don't admire Bill.

I am not sure why this gets downvoted. Just google it.

https://www.lioness.co/post/microsoft-is-using-illegal-bribe...

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

#526

Post by jkestner »

JumpCrisscross wrote: post #500
SteveNuts wrote: post #473

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That much wealth could probably fund every food bank in the country indefinitely, even at extremely conservative returns.

> That much wealth could probably fund every food bank in the country indefinitely That seems like an incredibly stupid way to spend money that has been eradicating diseases and saving lives in countries where food insecurity isn’t a choice.

Food insecurity is a choice in the US? I suppose yes, if you mean it's the government's choice: https://www.nbcnews.com/news/us-news/food-banks-usda-cuts-im...

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

#527

Post by mgraczyk »

cyberax wrote: post #513
mgraczyk wrote: post #481

Earlier quoted context omitted.

OPV unfortunately does cause paralytic polio disease indirectly by infecting unvaccinated people. It's worth it IMO because the total number of paralyzed people has decreased, but in the long term we have to switch to IPV to completely eliminate polio. This will take decades and many billions of dollars though.

Yes, it's called cVDPV. It's caused by the virus in the live vaccine "unweakening" itself, and it's typically happening in people with weakened immune systems (e.g. from chronic malnutrition). It's not causing unvaccinated people to get infected, per se. Most cases are mild, and on average there are about 300-400 cases per _year_ for the entire world. But it's absolutely heinous to accuse Gates of deliberately infect…

I largely agree, but there is essentially no possibility of ever eradicating polio with the current OPV strategy.

If you stop vaccinating, cVDPV will spread person to person. Some people carry virus for decades and it can become infectious at any time, many years after they were first vaccinated or infected. There will sparse but significant episodes until all humans who were vaccinated with OPV (or infected with the wild virus) have died.

but that doesn't mean we shouldn't do it! It's ok if we don't eradicate the virus. The point is to prevent children from being paralyzed, and it works for that.

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

#528

Post by 2muchcoffeeman »

PaulRobinson wrote: post #490
jncfhnb wrote: post #479

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The Red Cross is not equipped to make effective use of all that money at once

Says who? They can (ethically) invest it and fund programs off a 5%-8% or better return. They can find new things to do. They can donate some of it into health research that is currently under-funded.

And with such a sum of money they would surely have to hire staff to work all that out. Can thy do that?

I’ve tried volunteering at certain orgs before, I filled out forms and literally they rejected me because they had no more staff to organise and oversee more volunteers.

If your solution is just invest it, well, the Gates Foundation may as well hang on to it (you think you can do better job than Buffet?) and setup a system to dole it out.

If the org has to find new uses for it, surely the Gates Foundation is in a better position to get that done?

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

#529

Post by calepayson »

gwern wrote: post #173
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…

He can have other motivations. Between 2020, 2024, Mackenzie Bezos & Laurene Powell Jobs, the deeply unimpressive philanthropy of the Buffett children, and his own divorce, a very rich philanthropist has excellent reasons to aim for the foundation being liquidated in his lifetime, and not handed off to administrators like, yes, the Ford Foundation or Harvard... (And then, of course, given his enthusiasm for AI, there…

I'm an AI skeptic when it comes to business cases. I think AI is great at getting to average and the whole point of a business is that you're paying them to do better than average.

But I think current AI (not where it might be in a few months or years) is absolutely amazing for disadvantaged people. Access to someone who's average is so freaking cool if you don't already have it. Used correctly it's a free math tutor, a free editor for any papers you write, a free advice nurse.

This sucks in a business setting but I could see it being incredible in a charitable setting. When businesses try to replace someone great with something average it sucks. But if you're replacing something non-existent with something average, that can be life changing.

I'm an AI skeptic and I can empathize with his AI enthusiasm given the problems he's trying to address (or at least professes to be trying to address).

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

#530

Post by quesera »

lillecarl wrote: post #447
pnw wrote: post #370

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yes, Denmark, Sweden and Finland combined don't even have 20% of the Norwegian fund. Norway is basically the Saudi Arabia of Europe.

Norway is basically anything but the Saudi Arabia of Europe. The ONLY thing that is similar is that they both have oil and natural gas in their territory. It's a gross comparison.

I was 100% of the impression that GP was comparing petroleum resources, and explicitly not climate, traditional dress, or human rights.
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