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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

#81

Post by throwaway5752 »

skandium wrote: post #48

One of the great tragedies of the world is that while he is arguably the philanthropist with the highest positive impact in human history, a significant part of the population seems to still think he is the literal Antichrist.

Some people will always believe some dumb shit. There is no tragedy, just the regular condition of many people being ignorant.

He also did awful things in the business world when he was younger. He's no saint, either, he is just a normal, messy person. But he's done more for the poorest and neediest people in the world than most countries.

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

#82

Post by ghaff »

Windchaser wrote: post #47
oceanhaiyang wrote: post #4

[flagged]

> So he’s going to selflessly donate it to himself to save himself from taxes? What a hero. You don't really "save yourself from taxes" by donating money to charity. Option A: sell stock for $100, pay taxes of $20, spend $80 on yourself Option B: donate stock of $100 to charity, and spend $0 on yourself Which of these options leaves Gates with more money in his pocket to spend on himself? Giving money away doesn't sa…

>You don't really "save yourself from taxes" by donating money to charity.

That's not really true if you have sufficiently appreciated assets and are in a high tax bracket. You can donate those appreciated assets and collect an annuity from some percentage of the face value donation and basically be shielded from any capital gains.

See e.g. https://www.fidelitycharitable.org/guidance/philanthropy/cha...

I'm sure there are other mechanisms as well.

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

#83

Post by [deleted] »

CamperBob2 wrote: post #44
RataNova wrote: post #33

How much power is concentrated in the hands of individuals... It's great that Gates is choosing to use that power philanthropically, but it also raises questions about the long-term role of private wealth in solving public problems.

Well, it's not as if the public sector is solving many problems these days. We seem to have decided, collectively, that we'd rather have more problems. At least that's what we've been voting for.

[deleted]

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

#84

Post by zozbot234 »

ascagnel_ wrote: post #69
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.

I was talking about this with a friend recently -- Romans flaunted their wealth by improving shared social infrastructure (open market spaces, parks, etc), and the robber barons of the 19th century flaunted their wealth by building cultural institutions (eg Carnegie libraries). It seems like most "effective altruists" want to do things that help "humanity" but don't help "people" -- so developing technology to explor…

> It seems like most "effective altruists" want to do things that help "humanity" but don't help "people" -- so developing technology to explore the stars is on the table, but fighting poverty is not.

You seem to have very weird ideas about how EA funding works in practice. Long-termism is flashy and peculiar so it gets a lot of excess visibility, but "fighting poverty" tends to get the bulk of EA money, and the most controversial cause that still gets real sizeable funding seems to be animal welfare.

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

#85

Post by bogwog »

CamperBob2 wrote: post #44
RataNova wrote: post #33

How much power is concentrated in the hands of individuals... It's great that Gates is choosing to use that power philanthropically, but it also raises questions about the long-term role of private wealth in solving public problems.

Well, it's not as if the public sector is solving many problems these days. We seem to have decided, collectively, that we'd rather have more problems. At least that's what we've been voting for.

Well, consider how our voting priorities would change if billionaires had less of an impact on elections? Would we be where we are today if, for example, Musk couldn't spend over a quarter billion dollars influencing the 2024 election?

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

#86

Post by mrtksn »

It seems like he intends to give away the same way he did until now.

How is this a good idea considering that a political instability can wipe out all that effort?

Here's an idea: Give away your wealth to run unprofitable but essential "machines" like social media and news organizations to stop the vicious circle the humanity plunged in. Do it just like Musk but hand it to an independent organization that does't push for an agenda or profits.

Russians for example, pay social media personalities to push their talking points or even better they pay people who push talking points that are beneficial to them without directly agreeing on the transaction. Hijack the method, pay influencers you believe are beneficial for your causes and ideals.

It may look like just another billionaire trying to influence politics but you can make it into transparent institution. You can award prizes(monetary and honorary) like Nobel did.

Wouldn't be great if Twitter was run buy a transparent institution that releases logs, stats and full source code and doesn't need to do sketchy shit? Sure it would be imperfect but it can be beneficial, like Wikipedia for example.

Make social media into an impartial infrastructure with decades of runway and let people build the specialized things around it.

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

#88

Post by _bin_ »

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…

[flagged]

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

#90

Post by eej71 »

alabastervlog wrote: post #63
CamperBob2 wrote: post #44

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Well, it's not as if the public sector is solving many problems these days. We seem to have decided, collectively, that we'd rather have more problems. At least that's what we've been voting for.

> We seem to have decided, collectively, that we'd rather have more problems. ... because a faction of the rich decided they wanted the poors to believe government can't do anything useful, and launched an ongoing decades-long propaganda campaign to that effect.

I think that's an incredibly simplistic and naive view of why large public projects gobble up colossal sums of money and don't have much to show for it.
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