Slashdot Mirror
Billions Donated to Charity
Anonymous Philanthropist writes " Warren Buffet , the world's second-richest man, announced over the weekend that he will soon donate 85% of his entire net worth, weighing in at around $37 Billion, to charities, with over 80% of it going to the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation. This makes it the single largest monetary donation in history."
Although, it's hard to believe that the timing is entirely coincidental... especially since Bill said he'd be leaving Microsoft over the next two years, and Warren said:
Visualize the world of wine
this is fucking awesome
.cig
"The man who dies thus rich, dies disgraced,"
--Andrew Carnegie
I'd never pay that much to get into the Guiness Book of Records
Bravo, sir.
"Live as if you'll die tomorrow." Ridiculous. You could die later today.
Don't knock it. Does it matter right now?
I'm not a MS appologist, just thought that was interesting.
Visualize the world of wine
Regardless of any comments about the B&MG foundation or Buffet's motives... ...Jesus Christ, nice going Warren.
By summer it was all gone...now shesmovedon. --
I sincerely applaud Both Bill and Warren for their recent contributions. This is SO important, because they will set an example for other wealthy individuals. When the rich (and that means most of us in the West) start to realize that giving(rather than flaunting) wealth garners the most prestige, the world will be a far better place. Bravo!
Jeremy
Mark 12: 41-44
41 And he sat down opposite the treasury, and watched the multitude putting money into the treasury. Many rich people put in large sums.
42 And a poor widow came, and put in two copper coins, which make a penny.
43 And he called his disciples to him, and said to them, "Truly, I say to you, this poor widow has put in more than all those who are contributing to the treasury.
44 For they all contributed out of their abundance; but she out of her poverty has put in everything she had, her whole living."
Interesting that a guy who clearly has a serious talent for generating wealth, only asks for $100,000 per annum salary.
Puts the salaries of other less talented CEOs who demand far larger pay packets into perspective doesn't it?
It has become appallingly obvious that our technology has exceeded our humanity. --Albert Einstein
Isn't good enough for you? The prize for abolishing disease, starvation, education and humanity isn't worthy?
come on
if only they diverted a fraction of that amount to my charity, me. ;)
http://hoopsdonuts.com/
It's his right to do as he pleases. But donating to the Bill and Melinda show puts rather a lot of financial muscle in one place; with that kind of money he could have established his own foundation, for an independent view of things. Is the Bill and Melinda Foundation able to act in ways which might be other than in the interest of Microsoft ? For example, how would a funding request from Free Software Foundation, or Electronic Freedom Foundation, go down ?
In a show of one-upsmanship, the FSF gives away free software to starving children in Africa. And SCO sues the FSF for violating its patent for giving free software to starving children.
None of the $30 billion is coming from Microsoft. It's coming from Warren Buffet's stock in Berkshire Hathaway, the company he founded. The existing endowment of the Gates Foundation comes from Bill Gates' stock in MS, and is a result (if you will) of MS's monopoly and predatory practices.
There is a long tradition of this (supporting charities through monopolistic profits), such as the Carnegie Foundation, the Russell Sage Foundation, the Ford Foundation, etc. Bill and Melinda are following in the footsteps of their capitalist predecessors.
The question of whether a charity should accept money from donors with questionable business ethics has been long debated and never resolved. George Bernard Shaw wrote several plays about this question, and he didn't have an answer. His best was probably Major Barbara, in which the Salvation Army must decide whether or not to accept support from a gin distiller and an arms manufacturer.
Get some up to date info please... The last time that the data that page uses was SEVEN years ago. SEVEN.
I wish they would put the money into AI research. If it worked it would help poor people and everyone else more than anything else.
I live in South Carolina. "Poor" and "AI" are basically the same term. I know the following sounds like a joke or a half-truth, but it isn't. Our "Education Lottery" is primarily used to fund vocational school for prisoners, ex-prisoners, and high-school dropouts. I guess it is a waste of time and money to give them a good education before they turn 18. Instead, train them for a low-paying job after they turn 18.
The previous comment is purposely vague and generalized, but all of the facts are completely true.
Are you kidding me? That's absolutely rediculous. As much as I dislike Microsoft's monopoly, and Bill Gates' business practices, his philanthropic activities are much more than 'scraps thrown to charity to buy the hearts'. And Warrenn Buffett is certainly NOT donating 'scraps', he is donating 85% of his net worth, in the form of stock in the company that he spent the last 30 years building.
Moreover, I think the idea of spending that much money on AI research is absolutely ludicrous! You're telling me that AI is going to be more helpful to sick and starving children in Africa and other parts of the third world than medicine and food? The Gateses are actively engaged in curing disease and saving lives and you're suggesting that research into artificial intelligence would be a more intelligent philanthropic investment? If that's actually what you think then for god's sake read something other than Slashdot every once in a while because you have a magnificently skewed view of the world.
Visualize the world of wine
This passage is not meant to deride those who have earned much and given generously (as the parent seems to intend for it to do); it is intended to countermand society's view (throughout history, in all of society) which respects those who have power (which in many cases == money) and looked down absolutely upon those of modest means despite whether they are persons of great honor, dignity, and heart.
Certainly if those who have attained great wealth have done so via exploiting others then those wealthy deserve derision. But merely to be successful and powerful is not an indictment. The old camel-through-the-eye-of-a-needle quote is often misinterpreted in the same way. The meaning of that passage is to point out that with wealth comes great power and with great power comes great temptation. So if you don't have the wealth/power, it may be easier for you to live a clean/good life (i.e. to pass into heaven).
That's about the worst thing you could have said. Come back when you have thrown $37 billion ("scraps") at some school system or whatever you think is the best thing to save humanity from its own stupidity. THEN and only then can you talk. /.; the M&B Gates Foundation does not finance alcoholics and good-at-nothings - actually they are one of the few charities that DO follow up on what they finance and they withdraw funding if not satisfied with the results.
Really you should realize that what "this kind of people" wants has got *nothing* to do with you, they won't even acknowledge your presence because you're a worthless piece of... scrap. Do you really think they *care* about keeping you in line or any of the bullshit you were spewing? Geez, the arrogance. Oh and take the time to do your research before your next idiotic post on
Global warming is a cube.
Gates is an avid card player so he might even appreciate the analogy. He's done some evil things, but it came out all right in the end because he's donating practically all his winnings to charity, and doing so at a relatively young age. Had he not been so greedy and obsessed, a much broader spectrum of people in the software business might have become wealthy or affluent, and we would undoubtedly have had a more interesting marketplace ecology in the personal computing business over the past 15 years. But I doubt that the incremental contributions to charity would have had nearly the same impact that Gates and Buffett are making now.
He and Buffett will be remembered as great Americans for their charity, while his past role as founder and leader of Microsoft will be debated for decades.
Yeah, I wondered the same thing. Although we don't often think of charities as something that "compete" with each other, in reality they do; only instead of competing for business, they compete for places to spend money -- that is, projects to work on. They basically compete to out-good each other.
It seems like giving more money to one massive charity, although it might allow them to take on projects that are even larger in scale than before, is not as good for everyone as starting a second charity would have been.
Just think that you're some organization who would like to get some funding for something. Wouldn't it be better if there were two multi-billion-dollar charities you could apply to, instead of just one? That way, if Bill and Melinda had their fill of feeding starving [Asian/African/Mideastern] people this year, there would be another place to apply to. But by giving the money to one giant charity, in effect we create a monoculture: if you don't get any money from the One Giant Charity, or heaven forbid you're doing something that the One Giant Charity doesn't like or doesn't choose to support (cough*OLPC*cough), then you're shit outta luck. Or what if the leadership of the One Giant Charity goes downhill in time? Having two charities might serve as counterpoises to each other, keeping themselves honest. There are lots of reasons why a duopoly is better than a single overwhelming entity, even in the field of charities.
There's room in the world for more than just Bill and Melinda's pet charity...I would have liked to see something set up that could have given funding to the things that they choose not to support.
"Ladies and gentlemen, my killbot features Lotus Notes and a machine gun. It is the finest available."
Gates isn't a nazi but he uses nazi tactics? Microsoft is evil? WTF??? My parents occasionally give me presents too. Nazi tactics? My boss runs a business that benefits 90% of people who uses her product, but has many unhappy customers due to a bad service ethic...is her company evil? Dude, get some perspective.
Good people do good things. And evil things. Bad people do bad things, and good things. It is not the result that assigns the morality, it is the approbation of the means, the intent, and total content of the person's character. I submit to you that you know basically none of these things about Bill Gates.
Oh, and p.s., Bill Gates, the person, is not isomorphic with Microsoft, the company; hasn't been since the halcyon days of, well, never. The company, if a company can be conceived as a group of people, was always more than him. I also take issue with the idea that a corporation, as an entity in itself, has a moral valence. People are good or evil; corporations are merely a mechanism for a group of people to do something efficiently in a capitalist system.
All the techniques ever used to make men moral have been themselves thoroughly immoral... (Nietzsche)
Also note that as much as this guy hates the M$ pyramid scheme, he used Excel 95 to provide his information...
An objective-driven foundation would seem natural for businessmen to push.
It isn't.
Why? Because they're afraid of what setting certain achievable and sustainable marks would do for their reputations.
I scream. You scream. I assume that means we're both acquainted with the problem. We proceed.
Godwin much? Microsoft never hurt anyone. They made crappy products and made those crappy products unfairly dominant in the marketplace, pointlessly annoying millions. Big deal. The Gates Foundation is already saving the lives of thousands of children a year though throwing millions at the "low hanging fruit" of easily preventable deaths from things like diarrhea (which kills more people than any disease but pneumonia and AIDS).
Convincing people to use an annoying product on the one hand, saving thousands of lives a year, proabably hundresed of thousands a year in a few decades on the other. None of the people who's lives are saved by the Foundations efforts give a crap about Windows.
Socialism: a lie told by totalitarians and believed by fools.
Actually, Melinda Gates is showing his charitable side.
C|N>K
Seriously, that's not funny. Maybe if their practices weren't so predatory then we wouldn't have to donate so much to charity because the original companies would still be around...
So, let's see here... the Gates foundation does things like fix up millions of kids with innoculations they wouldn't otherwise get, bringsd truckloads of networking infrastructure to places like New Orleans when the local government doesn't have a chance of procuring it on their own that fast, provides millions for scholarships, and so on. Are you actually suggesting that if Netscape had managed to make a real go at being a stand-alone business, or if BeOS had thrived, that there wouldn't be no place for the billions in philanthropy that Gates is doing?
Are are you certain that part of Netscape's plans included clinics in Africa? Or that despite Novell being largely annoying in so many ways, they would have somehow also gotten into fund raising if they'd pursuaded more people to stick with their NOS? You're trying to set up a false dichotomy just because you like demonizing Bill.
Don't disappoint your bird dog. Go to the range.
Gates obviously was listening when the man in charge of this asked for money :)
Thanks for the tip...think I'll send them a few bucks myself.
rj
Why is it the billionare philanthropists in the US don't finance prizes for objective criteria?
Because life is not some reality tv show where a conclusion is needed within 12 1 hour episodes with a final live show for that extra ratings hit.
Doing "good work" is a long and slow process and hard enough without quarterly process reports.
The surprise isn't how often we make bad choices; the surprise is how seldom they defeat us.
One of the strengths of the US academic science funding model is that the government tends hedge its bets by setting up multiple agencies with overlapping agendas. For example, in engineering, there's DARPA, there's the NSF, several of the armed forces have their own quasi-independent funding arms, larger states like California have significant grant programs, etc.
Yes, there is the inefficiency of duplicated administration costs. But the upside is, a truly good idea has a better chance of finding funding, even if the program manager at one of the agencies is not sold on the idea. This lessons the risk of a game-changing idea going unfunded.
Buffet would have been better off setting up an independent foundation making independent funding decisions, rather than doubling BMGs bets, especially since BMG really has enough money to pursue multiple large goals.
This is an old person trying to get into heaven.
That is not the case here. No one can afford to give away 37 billion dollars, not even the second richest man in the world. Only special people walk away from 80 percent of their life savings, whether they've saved a few bucks a month like that janitor who gave $2 million to the University of Great Falls or the laundry lady who gave $150000 to the University of Southern Mississippi, or they've amassed amazing wealth through high finance.
Would that we all had the principle and bravery to finally deny the love of money and consumerism. "Where your treasure is, there your heart will be also". Whatever else Warren Buffett is, he managed to make the end product of his life's work into charity.
Q: What did the comedian say to the crowd?
A: If I knew, this joke would be funny.
Microsoft is not evil. They engage in some unfair business practices, and make a lot of pretty mediocre products. To call that evil trivializes truly evil actions, like the ongoing genocide in Sudan. Do people on here even realize how fortunate they are to be able to devote their time to complaining about DRM or IE security holes? How many people have died because of Microsoft? Few, if any. How many people can be saved by things like vaccination programs? Millions. Gates is no saint, but what he's doing is good, and he deserves to be applauded for it.
While I agree with you that this was the best thing for him to have done, there are always other options. To go with what the GP said, he could have set it up as a contest to find a cure to something like AIDs with the prize covering the research costs plus a nice bonus. This could get a lot more focus put into research. But since there is no way to know if this would work or not, his actions are the best possible currently.
First off it's not real charity.
Much of it is simply targeted to block F/OSS. Even the actual charity parts deal with dumping millions on ineffective, corrective treatments involving expensive medications and getting some level of matching funding from the local governments. And those expensive medications come from big pharmas which, surprise, Gates is heavily invested in.
There is also a strong element of PR in the Foundation: since 1995 MS has had various plans on how to direct corporate giving in ways that guarantee the greatest returns to the company. We've also been seeing loads and loads of vanity puff-pieces appearing across a wide variety of news publications. The NYT even publishes ones written by (or ghost written for) Chairman Gates himself.
The point here is that in this case it appears that charity is simply being used as tool to affect the market in ways that lobbying and plain old sales can't. It allows individual institutions or regions to be targeted quickly with a level of speed that defending governments and businesses have trouble reacting to.
It's seems that with this infusion of funding from Buffet, MS, through the Gates Foundation, crosses the line from being a lobbying entity to being fully a political/ideological movement.
Welcome to the next level.
Beta is broken and the link to classic doesn't work. Stop wasting our time or there won't be anybody left here.
Don’t tell me you’ve bought into the right-wingers’ rhetoric on this issue. Not with that signature line.
The extreme centre is the paper's historical position. --Geoffrey Crowther
memorably screwing over hundreds of thousands of homeless in the wake of Hurricane Katrina
Hello, Mr. Troll.
Please try a little bit of reality in there, somewhere. B-H does not provide insurance to homeowners, or own companies that do. They re-insured insurance companies so that those had anything like the financial backing to even be in the insurance business at all. If you think you can raise the capital to start offering insurance to people who live below sea level in a hurricane zone, only charge them a few dollars a month because that's all they can afford, and then pay out enormous amounts to the residents of thousands of square miles while staying solvent enough to continue to cover the cars, businesses, and other customers you have all around the country... go for it.
Oh, and just in case you forgot: private insurace never covers floods. That's the government flood insurance program you're thinking about. Warren Buffet has absolutely nothing to do with that, never did, and never could. Just relax, have a nice cold Coke, and cool down before you post again.
Don't disappoint your bird dog. Go to the range.
I have some great news for you them. There is a floor amount before the government sees anything. On a federal level that floor is at $2 million. State taxes vary from state to state b ut in New York, for example, the floor is $1 million. This article is one of the sources I found from a quick google search.
We've already created intelligent entities smarter than the smartest humans. And we've taken advantage of the increased intelligence to do what no human could ever achieve alone. The intelligent systems of this type currently rely on crude electro-mechanical and optical interface circuits (keyboards and monitors). The combination of a computer and a human can be thought of as a single thing with more intelligence than the human alone. The fact that computers and humans aren't welded together makes it hard to recognize, but a keyboard is no less a connection than an electro-chemical neuron interface, just slower. Increasing our knowledge has solved a lot of problems. Computers, or in other words, increased intelligence, has helped us solve a lot of problems. Nothing is for certain, but it's a good bet that more intelligence would be very helpful.
"Today, with a $60 billion fortune, Gates is both hated and loved. Unlike many, he has promised to contribute over 90% of his wealth to charities when the big guy calls his number." 90% of the richest man is more than 85% of the second richest man. Gates is just being more low-key about it.
Yes, assassinating union leaders.
Also, in several parts of India, local Coca-Cola bottlers have been known to use pesticides and other chemicals in their product Link. Since the bottling plants distribute the coca sludge leftover from making drinks to farmers who need the organic mess to provide nutrients for overfarmed fields, the pesticides and toxins present in the drink itself are also present in the sludge in much greater qualtities. Several villiages near Coke facilities have complained of high cancer rates, abnormally high infant mortality rates, and other problems.
As for Katrina, that was indeed a bit trollish.
Even if we were talking about money that were aquired that way, then there is no undoing the aquisition of the money. Even if it was blood money, then $37 billion being put to good use can never be a bad thing.
Using an extreme example: If a drug baron donated a million dollars to charity it would still be a million dollars and would still make the world a better place.
As some of us may know there is a project named One-Laptop-Per-Child that wants to "evolutionize how we educate the world's children".
They chose Redhat OS for their system after offers from MS and Apple to prevent monopoly and restrictions they will imply, and to protect children to be dependent to one company even for a charity like job like this.
I hope they spend some amounts for this project if they want to make some benefit for humanity.
Be like shadow in the light or darkness.KMZ
While Warren may trust Bill and Melinda to use the money wisely (he is older and probably anticipates dying before them), what happens when Bill and Melinda are gone too? What do we end up with? Well, we could end up with another Ford Foundation. In other words, it could end up straying from some of the common-sense approaches applied now, such as distributing mosquito nets to prevent malaria. It could degenerate into an organization with a questionable agenda, or an organization that simply parcels out donations to other orgs, the primary results of which are (though probably not intentionally) to finance the lifestyles of the "chattering class" in Washington DC and various other world capitols. So, Bill and Melinda, while you still have time, you need to figure out a way to keep that from happening. Poor people can't eat UN studies, and no "blue ribbon commission" ever swatted a single mosquito. When the visionaries pass on, it's inevitable that the committees take over. Maybe that's why Carnegie built libraries in his own lifetime. Today, many are still in use, and there's only so much lunacy that can take place in a building, whereas a monied organization can create no end of politically-oriented drivel.
For all intensive purposes, "whom" is no longer a word. That begs the question, "who cares"?
So were you joking with the Bill Parish article? Was that a joke. I'm just not getting it. (If it was, Huzzah, deliciously ironic.) I read the article and he doesn't say a single way Microsoft is creating a "pyramid", he just says a lot of conspiratorial allegations and never backs them up. He even goes as far as to pull some numbers out of his ass for the barchart up top. It's a prime example of propaganda technique and poor critical thinking. He even bothers to chide the company for talking up it's own stock. It's a true Michael Moore meets Microsoft, story at 11.
This is a hilarious article. I'm liking it more the further I read. This is BRILLIANT! Check out the pie chart titled "Microsoft is a Cash Machine" there's a 36% chunk labeled "Tax Loophole/Corporate Welfare". No references are provided, no method of calculation given. This has to be a parody.
I love this article!
Cheers.
I have a theory that the truth is never told during the nine-to-five hours. - Hunter S. Thompson
Leaders / Copyrights
A radical rethink
Jan 23rd 2003
From The Economist print edition
The best way to foster creativity in the digital age is to overhaul current copyright laws
IMAGE (Reuters)
CRITICS have derided a 1998 extension of American copyrights as the “Mickey Mouse Protection Act” because it stopped early images of the Disney company’s mascot from entering the public domain. But such laws, they argue, are no joke. Extending and strengthening copyrights, they claim, will help a handful of big corporations crush creativity in the digital age. On the contrary, say Hollywood studios and big record companies. Without stronger copyright protection, a wave of piracy will destroy their industries, depriving consumers everywhere of a broad choice of movies, music and books.
Last week America’s Supreme Court weighed into what is rapidly becoming a nasty worldwide battle about the scope and enforcement of copyrights, by rejecting a challenge to the 1998 law on constitutional grounds. But even as it upheld the law, the court expressed misgivings. Blistering dissents from two justices dismissed the 20-year extension of copyright as unwarranted, and even the majority’s opinion hinted that Congress’s decision may have been “unwise”.
The court’s ambivalence is understandable. The growing quarrel over copyright is just one of the many difficult issues thrown up by the spread of the internet and related technologies (see our survey of the internet society in this issue). But of all these issues, the copyright battle is becoming one of the most urgent, and bitterly fought, because it could yet determine the future character of cyberspace itself.
Both sides have a point. Digital piracy does indeed threaten to overwhelm so-called “content” industries. As the power and reach of the internet continue to grow, the illicit trading of perfect copies may well devastate the music, movie and publishing industries. The content industries want to protect themselves with anti-copying technology, backed by stronger laws. So far, they have been at loggerheads with technology firms about how to implement such schemes (see article). But a deal between Hollywood and Silicon Valley is likely eventually. Critics are right to fear that, when such a deal is struck, it will be in the interests of big firms, not the public.
A grand new bargain
The alternative is to return to the original purpose of copyright, something no national legislature has yet been willing to do. Copyright was originally the grant of a temporary government-supported monopoly on copying a work, not a property right. Its sole purpose was to encourage the circulation of ideas by giving creators and publishers a short-term incentive to disseminate their work. Over the past 50 years, as a result of heavy lobbying by content industries, copyright has grown to such ludicrous proportions that it now often inhibits rather than promotes the circulation of ideas, leaving thousands of old movies, records and books languishing behind a legal barrier. Starting from scratch today, no rational, disinterested lawmaker would agree to copyrights that extend to 70 years after an author’s death, now the norm in the developed world.
Digital technologies are not only making it easier to copy all sorts of works, but also sharply reducing the costs of creating or distributing them, and so also reducing the required incentives. The flood of free content on the internet has shown that most creators do not need incentives that stretch across generations. To reward those who can attract a paying audience, and the firms that support them, much shorter copyrights would be enough. The 14-year term of the original 18th-centur
The extreme centre is the paper's historical position. --Geoffrey Crowther
Planned Parenthood advocates adoption foremost, although abortion is in the cards. It probably isn't the morally perfect operation, but the core mission of educating to prevent early-age/unexpected pregnancy is certainly commendable. If you've got to choose between nothing or the sort of help PP can provide, I'm pretty sure the answer is clear. That is, unless you want more unplanned events to take place, after which the young not-yet-fully-developed people can make up their own mind, with no assistance.
While I think it's great that Mr. Buffet has decided to give the lion's share of his estate to charity, it troubles me that people (and the press) fall all over themselves to shower him with accolades and make him out to be more generous than the average citizen. Mr. Buffet could give away 99.9% of his entire net worth and still have $37,000,000 in the bank. There are no hardships or risks involved in his donations.
Contrast this with charitable contributions made by an average middle class worker. If a family man earning $50,000/year donates $100 to charity annually, he is making an actual sacrifice. That's a week's worth groceries. A tank and a half of gas. Half the monthly electric bill.
So, who is more generous? Mr. Buffet or Mr. Middle-class-working-stiff? Who is more deserving of hosannas?
For that price we could have hotels in space, a base on the moon, another on Mars, mining in the asteroid belt, a probe on its way to Alpha Centauri and a probe drilling down do the oceans of Europa. When people throw away good money like that it makes me so angry, I just want to go out and make billions myself so I can spend it on something people will actually care about in a thousand years time. That's it, I'm going to start applying some of my math skills to speculating on the markets.
Doesn't it make you feel good to know that our freedoms are protected by politicans, lawyers and journalists.
For a very simple reason: Buffett believes that Bill does a much better job of allocating capitol than your run-of-the-mill charity.
And he is not alone in this belief. The Gates Foundation has made big waves in the non-profit world by replacing a give-away-money-to-feel-better model with a run-a-charity-like-a-business model. That includes setting targets, measuring results, and providing incentives.
Do you think he had a Scrooge McDuck-style vault filled with gold doubloons? He's an investor for Pete's sake, which by definition means that his money has been out circulating through the world to finance other peoples' dreams. When you say that such a man is worth $n dollars, you really mean that his outstanding loans are approximately worth $n dollars.
Have you ever read about how well such societies tend to do historically?
Dewey, what part of this looks like authorities should be involved?
I want Bill to apply his "evil" skills here as well. With such a monumental pile of money, they could buy the entire US government from President down and make them do something useful for the world for a change. Think about it, instead of spending $500B on Iraq, Gates/Buffet $50-70B could buy the government and spend this money on curing cancer and AIDS.
Unless it's sitting in your wallet that is, it's only cold hard cash which ever stops. Money sitting in a bank account is being used by that bank to invest in stock markets etc. It's being loaned out.
Deleted
Here's ingratitude for you.
Rich people hoard all their people and they're labelled greedy.
A man works all his life, and finally, nearing retirement gives away almost all his fortunes and he is also looked down upon.
You just can't win in this world...
Based on upvotes, Ageism is the only "-ism" Slashdotters care about and think isn't SJW
But if you did, you'd see that two of the conditions of the gift deal with this - specifically
and
Meaning that the gifts to the Foundation only keep going while one of the Gateses keeps running the thing, and that they have to spend all of each gift (plus 5% of whatever else they have) each year, to prevent them from keeping it.
Cue The Sun...
OK, I'm not a Christian, so I haven't spent a lot of time studying and interpreting the New Testament. But it seems to me that you're laying a lot of complicated interpretation on this passage. And why? Are you afraid that Jesus will come across as a Marxist? Or worse, a liberal?
A poor person who shares what little they have is making more of a sacrifice than a rich person who gives away billions — and still has billions left. That's a simple fact. It doesn't mean the rich person is evil. Nor does it mean that person who points it out is "sour grapes".
Since I'm not a Christian, I'm not entitled to say who is and who isn't a Christian. But I suspect the Carpenter of Nazereth would not look kindly on your attempts to denigrate those whose sense of their own Christianity conflicts with your neocon ethics.
"This just in, an anonymous person has just donated $37 billion to the Bill and Melinda Gates foundation. Our analysts are stumped as to who it could be" :D
"When the atomic bomb goes off there's devastation...but when the atomic bong goes off there's celebraaaaation!"
...little pathetic, hate filled lives you people lead. A man gives away a vast fortune and all you people can do is complain about how that's not really all that much. $37,000,000,000 is going to help a lot of people in third world countries. Oh, I'm sorry, you're bitter that he didn't donate the money to the EFF or the FSF to fund your little pet projects.
You heard it here first.
I am all for charity (I volunteered at a homeless shelter once a month for years), but I also think that money could go to research and legit startups even if the foundation distributing that money was non-profit.
Too often times (but not always) a free handout does more harm than good. It's that old saying "give someone a fish, they eat today, teach someone to fish they eat for life..."
With that amount of money I think a LOT of groudbreaking research could take place in the medical fields, the tech sector, and even in the aerospace industry. Also reinvesting it in American business/education can give us a heads up over the up and coming Chinese.
Libertas in infinitum
I wonder if this really is the largest donation in history, if you recast it into inflation adjusted dollars, and compare againt the largesse of Carnegie and others of his ilk?
>As it happens, we use inequality to motivate people, but the downside to this inequality is that when the owners of wealth end up deciding >to "reallocate" it they have no guidance or requirements to do it in the way the people who originally made the wealth would want. >That's why having competition in charities is important and why I find their extremely tight focus on health and US education concerning. >What about disaster relief? Oh, right, the Gates' can only do so much at once so tough luck.
Well, see, that's the nice thing about being the owner of the wealth - you don't even have an obligation to reallocate it the way anyone wants but yourself.
I don't understand this hand-wringing that says somehow the will of all who helped create the wealth have some say in its dispersement. Everyone who helped make the wealth traded away their say in what happens to the fruits of their labors for a paycheck - just like you and I do voluntarily every day.
If someone has the talent to orhestrate an empire by getting people to voluntarily contribute to that empire, by God, the fruit is theirs, and theirs to do with what they will.
Thus if Warren Buffet wanted to take 100% of his fortune and donate it to one-legged polka-dotted red-headed African sheep herders, or any other incredibly narrow-focused venue, that is entirely his right. It doesn't matter a whit what the millions of employees and customers who made the fortune think about it - they already got fairly compensated for their efforts.
Steve
A work that expires before its copyright never enters the public domain and thus enjoys eternal copyright protection.
"The rise of democracy was driven by the citizens' desire to escape from the paternalistic and arbitrary charity of those with money. They accomplished this by replacing charity with a fair, balanced, arm's-length system of public obligation. The principle tool of that obligation was taxation." ... [charity] ..., they can afford the taxes which would ensure that we do not slip into a society of noblesse oblige in which those with get to chose who and how to help those without."
"... if they can afford
- John Ralston Saul
Still, my hat is off for Warren Buffet. He himself has campaigned for a tax code that shifts the majority of the tax burden to the corporations and the rich, and away from the middle class. But if the second richest man in the world can't afford the lobbyists to push that idea through, what hope is there?
...and yours and mine don't correspond. I would criticize your conception of morality as lacking an important element (a proximate and conscious capacity for choice) which goes beyond a programmatic conception of "rules for success". I have a real problem believing that morality (proper choices, even suceessful choices, by your formulation) can be programmatized, because the situations that require moral choices are highly variable. Since a corporation is a union of several disparate moral agents, none of whom are required to shoulder actual moral responsibility for the action of the corporation as a whole (the twin magics of limited liability and compartmentalization of bureaucracy), there is no singular agent capable of applying the moral programme, if such a thing even exists. Thus, no moral center (that's what I meant by the concept).
All the techniques ever used to make men moral have been themselves thoroughly immoral... (Nietzsche)
so you must be 3rd richest man, then?
::
:: rimshot
The IRS is the one organization that you don't want to fuck with. Remember, these are the guys who took down Al Capone.
Bill Gates liquidates all assets of Melinda & Gates Foundation and vanishes into thin air as the World's richest & second richest man...
Online backup with Mozy, sounds like Ozzie, but more!
The rich and the upper class use nonproft foundations to mold the American political culture, specifically to influence leftism towards multicultualism & identity politics, and away from economic leftism, such as progressive taxation, unionism, and universal healthcare. This started decades ago. The rich created a pseudoLeft here in America, a Left that would not threaten their fat wallets. They use the pseudoLeft to divide and conquer us. See my sig for more on this.
Homo Sapiens Americanus--A documentary in p
I think the parent poster brings up an interesting point though, about charity vs. sacrifice
If I were to give away 85% of MY worth, I'd be homeless and relying on the charity of others. Mr. Buffet does not have that problem. He can donate billions and not suffer. because there comes a point at which having more money just means a higher number. If I had ten million dollars, I could do a lot. If I had twenty million, I could do a little more. If I had a billion, I could do pretty much anything I'd want to do. If I had ten billion, or a hundred, would anything change? What does $30 billion get me that $20 billion doesn't?
His donation is fantastic, and I'm staggered, but he does not suffer as a result of giving this gift. All this means is a lower number in a computer somewhere, and that's it. His charity is outstanding, but his sacrifice is non-existent.
What the bible passage quoted is trying to say is that it is sacrifice we should truly applaud, because giving of yourself is far more difficult and far more noble than giving what you have left over, and in the end, that is all Mr. Buffet is doing - giving away what he has left over.
Maybe you should read the intervew, where he talks about this:
or Warren Buffet - I would like it to be known that I will follow in the exact same footsteps as Mr. Warren Buffet. I'm just thinking whether I should contribute 85% or 95% of 40 billion to charitale causes because I'm definitely not going to leave it to my children so they can piss it away into nothingness or, worse, spend it for stupid selfish stuff they may think is appropriate for them.
What a selfless act... I want to work for this man. Fuck. I was in tears when I read it. Did he have any reason to do this (forget looking good - I think he's way past 'looking good')? No. He chose to do it. DAMN!!!!
'A lie if repeated often enough, becomes the truth.' - Goebbels
Are those still around?
I don't think I've ever seen an actual orphanage in my lifetime.
Closest thing I can think of to it would be a group home, but not all the kids that live in group homes are orphans (hardly any, in fact).
File under 'M' for 'Manic ranting'
Moderately non-rich people do create jobs too. It doesn't take a billion dollars to create jobs, it takes an idea and determination. If this country has changed to where only the rich can afford to govern and start businesses, count me out.
-- dieman - Scott Dier
Frankly, there is no death tax, but there is a birth tax. Everyone born in this country is born with a large debt that eventually they will need to pay. The boomers don't really care about the national debt because their kids and grandkids will be the ones that pay for it.
My comment to the ultra-wealthy who wait until they are about to die before they put their excess to good use is... "You've had 10 billion dollars for 30 years and NOW you decide to put the excess to good use?!?!?! Where the hell were you last year?"
It's things like this that make me wish there were a god to teach them the error of their ways...
Support SETI@home
Perhaps, but it is Mr. Buffet who said that he would leave his heirs "enough money that they could do anything, but not so much that they could do nothing."
Well, apparently, you only have to fool the majority of people for a little while.
Not just for questionable business ethics, but apparently for not being proud of Bush: "in 2003, the American Red Cross refused a 1 million dollar donation from the Dixie Chicks."
"Ok...and who knows the personal hell that Bill Gates brought forth into the lives of ex-employees who worked for the MANY companies (and products) that Microsoft bought, and promptly killed."
Please enumerate the companies that Microsoft "bought, and promptly killed". That's not Microsoft's MO, that's Oracle's.
"Or how about being one of the people working at Apple, Corel, Fox Pro, IBM, Lotus etc. who lost their jobs after the MS monopoly illegally (check your facts) pushed their products (in most cases SUPERIOR products) out of the market."
Please enumerate the products that the "Microsoft monopoly illegally pushed out of the market". Note that the government is still allowing IE to be shipped with Windows, so it's clearly not illegal. So you'll have to come up with something besides Netscape. Besides IE and WMP, the apps bundled with Microsoft's "monopoly" product are low-end applets, not competitors of full-featured apps. What, are you worried about the "Calculator" market?
Even among the companies you list, what products of theirs were "illegally pushed out of the market"?
No product of Apple's was pushed out. (And don't suggest Mac OS, because Judge Jackson ruled that Mac OS is in a different market altogether.)
IBM? What product of theirs was illegally pushed out by a monopoly? OS/2? Windows wasn't a monpoly back then.
Lotus? Microsoft's Lotus-competitors aren't bundled with Microsoft's monopoly product, so you can't count them.
Corel? Microsoft did nothing regardign Corel's main product, their Draw apps. WordPerfect was run into the ground by Novel before Corel bought them, and Word isn't bundled with Microsoft's monopoly product anyway, so WordPerferct wasn't pushed out by monopoly tactics either.
Fox Pro? Microsoft bought Fox Pro and still sells it.
And where did you get the idea that the competitors had "in most cases SUPERIOR products"? I remember Microsoft winning the review comparisons regarding Excel vs Lotus, Word vs WordPerfect, Office vs Lotus Smart Suite, etc, from about 1992 onward.
"Please...if destroying peoples lives isn't evil, what is?"
Somehow, I really doubt that God will come down on Gates for bundling a browser in an OS. Get some perspective. If you want to see examples of real corporate "evil", check out I.G. Farben, Enron, polluters, corporations that use Asian sweatshops, corporations that get fat off of free labor, etc.
-- "I never gave these stories much credence." - HAL 9000
Just Thank You
Buffet has made it clear many times that he is planning on giving most of his fortune away, and only leave "small" amounts to his children. The only new thing is that he's decided to give a significant part of it while he's still alive.
Frankly, since the guy is 75 I don't see anything weird about that. He's held the shares so long anyway, it's not like those shares are contributing much to his lifestyle. And this way he does get to enjoy the positive attention.
As for tax exemptions - sure, he may get some write off's, but nothing to make up for giving away 90% of his fortune.
It is an avoidable disease for the most part, don't have unprotected sex, don't share needles, you probably won't get it. That's as much a "cure" as you're supposing Diabetes II has. There are tragic cases where people who didn't make mistakes still got the disease, but don't suppose that those comprise any serious percentage of those afflicted. The Aids rate in Africa is truly stunning and disturbing, but with a rate that high it is obvious that more money needs to be spent on Aids EDUCATION than a blind search for a cure at this point.
If someone can "...think of no other human being who as/is going to change the world in such as positive way as Bill Gates" there are only three possibilities:
... Sheesh. Bill Gates is the son of a banker got lucky and took advantage of a mistake by IBM and then using illegal business practices increased his wealth exponentially. Later, feeling the typical nouveau rich class guilt, he donated money to a philanthropic foundation. Not enough to personally inconvenience himself, mind you, but enough that the ignorant start yelling "OMG BG is the roxor!"
1. Insanity
2. Alzheimer's
3. A paid MS shill
Hello, McFly? Ghandi, Clara Barton, Willam Booth, Mother Teresa, Louis Pasteur, Thomas Jefferson,
I've said this to the BG cultists over and over, but it bears repeating: BG's "philanthropy" is meaningless... to BG. Show me some single mom struggling to make it who give $10 to the United Way and I'm impressed. If there's a middle income family donating 10% of what they make to charity, I think that's noteworthy. When a man gives away a portion of his wealth, but it's so little that he never notices (except for the fawning news articles), that's meaningless. Think widow's mite here.
The mistaken hero worship in the parent is so smarmy it's sickening.
Interested in a Flash-based MAME front end? Visit mame.danzbb.com