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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

#561

Post by light_triad »

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…

The decision can be read in the larger political context. There was some controversy a while back on certain directions the Foundation took like the project on sanitation (aka the toilet challenge) and the backing of charter schools. Regardless of one's opinion of those, he is taking a stand and drawing a line in the sand.

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

#562

Post by opo »

srvo wrote: post #330

This is the way that foundations and endowments should operate. Too many well-intentioned organizations wind up milquetoast tax-exempt hedge funds aimed primarily at self-preservation because the received wisdom is that they should focus on building endowments and keep their withdrawal rates below 4% in order to achieve immortality. I'm a big believer in research-driven philanthropy and mission-driven organizations.…

>Too many well-intentioned organizations wind up milquetoast tax-exempt hedge funds aimed primarily at self-preservation because the received wisdom is that they should focus on building endowments and keep their withdrawal rates below 4% in order to achieve immortality.

Which charities are giving away less than 4% a year? Charitable foundations in the US are required to give away at least 5% of their endowment a year:

https://www.ncfp.org/wp-content/uploads/2018/09/The-Five-Per...

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

#563

Post by bdhe »

ivape wrote: post #555
ghaff wrote: post #71

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Was just talking with some folks last weekend about this in a different context. Open-ended foundations can easily have their missions drift and also become essentially sinecures for an executive director. Ford Foundation is a great example of what can happen. Olin is a good example of a foundation that was set up to dissolve after some length of time.

I've always wondered about the Gates and Buffets commitment about giving away their wealth in death. It assumes that the people of the future are more worthy of it than the people of now. Whatever poverty will exist in the future also exists now. I suspect they've thought about this too, hence the acceleration. If anything, addressing the issues now has a chance of reducing the issues in the future. There's always so…

> There's always something to learn from everyone. Elon reiterated one thing frequently - "We have to get to Mars soon because I don't want to be dead before it happens"

I understand the idea of learning from everyone, even those whose values I strongly disagree with.

But after learning about everything Elon has done in the public sphere, would this statement be more likely just narcissism rather than a deep and inspiring virtue?

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

#564

Post by zelon88 »

About time. Where the hell has this guy been? Guy makes hundreds of billions of dollars off the backs of working Americans and then leaves to donate all that American money to India in the form of public toilets under the guise of philanthropy. Meanwhile the country that made him a billionaire is literally falling to a fascist coup.

Seriously, just screw off. We needed you 3 months ago. We'll call you when it's time for your day in court at Nuremburg 2.0.

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

#565

Post by frereubu »

michaelt wrote: post #537
frereubu wrote: post #522

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

> 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. Are you sure about that? Let's say every employee gets a $1000 round trip flight, plus $2000 for 4 nights in a decent hotel, a total of $3000 per head. Are you telling me that employee is paid $1000 a year or less?

The way they talked about it, the total per head was north of $5k, and they lived in an incredibly poor / cheap country. I wasn't fact-checking their figures, but they weren't the kind of person to exaggerate for effect.

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

#566

Post by ivape »

jarbus wrote: post #16

Say what you want, but I respect this a lot. Sure as hell beats giving it all to your kids.

I mean, the lifestyle of rich babies doesn't even require that much money. He can easily provide them the money to travel to a random city and buy a luxury condo and set up a food-truck business. A couple of million is enough to one day decide to pack it up and buy a farm.

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

#567

Post by susiecambria »

biophysboy wrote: post #58
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…

His strategy also may have changed due to recent events affecting foreign aid...

True. But remember that Gates said he could not fill the hole left by funding cuts to USAID: https://www.reuters.com/business/healthcare-pharmaceuticals/....

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

#568

Post by breck »

nicce wrote: post #475
jayd16 wrote: post #465

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Laissez-faire capitalism is not synonymous with all forms of capitalism. We could and have in the past curbed runaway wealth and power. Pretending nothing can be done is, at best, ignoring history.

Absolutely something should be done. We just haven't found the method yet and we should keep looking for it.

[dead]

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

#569

Post by honk »

ghaff wrote: post #71
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…

Was just talking with some folks last weekend about this in a different context. Open-ended foundations can easily have their missions drift and also become essentially sinecures for an executive director. Ford Foundation is a great example of what can happen. Olin is a good example of a foundation that was set up to dissolve after some length of time.

You may know this already, but both Olin Foundations are good examples, actually. I believe the John M. Olin foundation dissolution plans were specifically in response to the Ford foundation's drift. The F. W. Olin foundation (John's Father) coincidentally dissolved in the same year, but that was due to largely accomplishing their original goal of endowing engineering buildings at colleges, and pivoting to founding a new engineering college entirely.

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

#570

Post by calepayson »

Wowfunhappy wrote: post #553
calepayson wrote: post #529

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

> The whole point of a business is that you're paying them to do better than average. ...this is a really interesting idea, but I'm not sure if it's entirely true? If we're talking about a business's core competency, I think the assertion makes sense. You need to be better than your competition. But businesses also need a whole lot of people to work in human resources, file taxes, and so on. (Not to mention clean bat…

Completely agree with this.

I think my sense is that the zeitgeist around AI (at least in business circles) is much more “The only way to ensure our continued survival is by embracing ai in all our core competencies” than “your tire company is going to have some adequate hr for a great price.”

An example that springs to mind is the arms race between tech CEOs over who can have more of their code base written by llms.

It’s amazing tech and it seems like it’s being marketed for all the wrong things based off of some future promise of super intelligence.

I really liked the article posted on here a week or two back along the lines of AI is a normal technology. Imo, the most sane narrative I’ve read about where this tech is at.

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