Gates Foundation To Spend All Its Assets

El Lobo writes "The Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation has said it will spend all its assets within 50 years of both of them dying. The foundation focuses on improving health and economic development globally, and improving education and increasing access to technology. It also focuses on fighting diseases such as HIV/AIDS, tuberculosis, and malaria. The Seattle-based foundation plans to increase spending to about $3.5 billion a year beginning in 2009 and continuing through the next decade, up from about $1.75 billion this year." The Wall Street Journal (excerpted at the link above) called the foundation's decision "a decisive move in a continuing debate in philanthropy about whether such groups should live on forever."

Comments

The funds may live forever

[davidwr]

How many endowed research programs will this money go to?

Yes, the foundation will cease, but a good chunk of the funds will remain as permanent endowments for the various causes that the Gates support. The most important difference will be management: Each will be managed by people close to the individual projects.

Re:The funds may live forever

[Anonymous Coward]

"How many endowed research programs will this money go to?"

Prick up your ears, boy, start by searching for "well endowed" on AltaVista or Google! You'll come to huge surprises!

Re:The funds may live forever

[tak amalak]

Someone please mod the parent +1 Hilarious.

Seems like a waste

[Jekler]

I think it would be a better move to establish organizational policies that dictate an amount or percentage that must be donated over certain time periods, instead of effectively forcing the end of a charitable foundation.

Building such a large foundation is no small task, it just seems like a waste to dissolve all the work that went into it just because the founders aren't alive. I think it would be smarter to establish a policy that prevents it from hoarding assets and forces continued charitable work. Sort of like a charity/monetary GPL.

Re:Seems like a waste

[jadavis]

Building such a large foundation is no small task, it just seems like a waste to dissolve all the work that went into it just because the founders aren't alive.

But foundations have a tendency to lose their way quickly after the benefactors die. There are no reality checks when it comes to a foundation, there is no feedback cycle that keeps them healthy.

Look at the Nobel Prize. It's more of a political organization than anything else.

Re:Seems like a waste

[Jekler]

I agree that foundations have a tendency to have their original intentions become distorted. I just think there should be some way to preserve it without complete dissolution being the best course of action.

A side note: Not sure how I ended up getting modded troll, that seemed odd.

Re:Seems like a waste

[jadavis]

I just think there should be some way to preserve it without complete dissolution being the best course of action.

"Should" is not a useful word in the real world, unfortunately. A foundation is insulated from all external pressures. This can be good in some cases, but it ultimately leads to uselessness of the foundation.

Everything is a tradeoff. When a foundation spends a dollar, that means the foundation is liquidating $1 worth of capital and labor in the marketplace. If they spend enough money, people lose their jobs, factories shut down, and new businesses are unable to find the resources (capital and labor) to start up.

Of course, that dollar is hopefully spent wisely. If it is spent wisely, the benefits will outweigh the aforementioned costs. With someone like Bill Gates in charge, I'm sure those dollars are spent wisely. After he dies, who will make sure the dollars continue to be spent wisely? There is no feedback cycle to correct the course when they start making bad choices. Businesses do have a feedback cycle: their resources are taken away from them when they become inefficient.

Donating to charity, although it makes you feel good, can actually be bad for society unless you make SURE your resources are used more wisely than where they were before.

The best economic thing a normal person can do for society is to produce as much as possible, and consume as little as possible. It's simple, but rarely said. However, here in the US (like most countries), we tax production and not consumption (or very little, anyway). There are a million ways to make consumption taxes progressive, just like income taxes, but without the problems associated with taxing production.

Re:Seems like a waste

[claes]

Look at the Nobel Prize. It's more of a political organization than anything else.

Please explain your reasoning.

Re:Seems like a waste

[Anonymous Coward]

One great example: Borges..especially some of the Nobel prizes (such as literature) are mostly given to people with certain political affiliations..

Re:Seems like a waste

[Watson Ladd]

Businesses do have a feedback cycle: their resources are taken away from them when they become inefficient.

That's just not true. Food is wasted at fast-food restaurants while people starve outside. If they gave the food to the people, no one would be worse off and one person would be a little happier. So the status quo is inefficient, but no force corrects it. Businesses make profits, but the logic of competition should see the profits decrease to zero as they all undercut one another. Used-car salesmen sell cars for more they you would pay for them if you knew all about their defects. But all these things happen, because the real world is not the happy ideal world of the proof of capitalism's efficiency. And people become satisfied. The proof only works if people are never satisfied. As for producing rather then consuming, it's rather hard to justify useless work as being efficient. Oh, and shouldn't we welcome high unemployment rates as proof that we all have time to spare and still make all the goods we need?

Re:Seems like a waste

[ppanon]

Yeah, I know what you mean. You never see prizes awarded to authors like Newt Gingrich or Bill O'Reilly in spite of their great empathy and insight into the human condition. Oh, wait...

Re:Seems like a waste

[Sapphon]

There are a million ways to make consumption taxes progressive, just like income taxes, but without the problems associated with taxing production.

Really? My taxation professor would be very interested to know about them, I'm sure. Could you provide some sources (preferably academic)?

How, for example, could one overcome the problem that, as the income/consumption ratio is not constant (i.e. the more people earn, the lower the proportion of their earnings they spend on consumption - an empircally proven statement), broadly taxing consumption is necessarily regressive?

High-income earners don't have a consumption basket so vastly different from low-income earners that it is possible to target them on the consumption side to any significant degree; while one can certainly tax luxury goods, the very nature of those goods means their demand elasticity is high enough that the tax burden falls not on the consumer, but the producer.

Aside from your last paragraph, I agree with your post. Donating to a wasteful charity can be worse than spending the same money locally, or putting it aside for the capital market to use. However, most large charities have recognised this and publish breakdowns of their spending (both by project goal and administrative expenses), so it's relatively easy to make an informed choice.

Re:Seems like a waste

[jadavis]

Food is wasted at fast-food restaurants while people starve outside.

Of course businesses aren't 100% efficient. You could pick 1000 other examples. However, the point is that there IS negative feedback that limits how inefficient the business can be. If they sold one meal for every 1000 they threw away, that business would be liquidated by the shareholders and the shareholders would replace it with another more efficient business. That's called negative feedback, and it keeps businesses on the track of efficiency.

the real world is not the happy ideal world of the proof of capitalism's efficiency

The point of capitalism is not that it's perfectly efficient, but it allows correction when things become inefficient. Governments, schools, and foundations have much less in the way of feedback, and what feedback does happen is MUCH slower and MUCH less direct. If the government needs to move in a new direction, it takes YEARS to get new representatives, new bills, and new votes. By that time the correction is long overdue, and everyone's way off course. Also, by that time, the issue has been combined with so many other issues that a voter cannot logically separate the issues or determine causation as easily.

If a business gets a little off-course, people get fired, capital is liquidated, and people are laid off. Those resources are then free for use by another company. This can happen to even a large business in a quarter year, and a smaller business in a few days.

Also, under capitalism, generally the people with the most direct knowledge of a matter and the most interested parties are the ones making the decisions. That information is very valuable, and the processing of that information can't be done by a small group effectively. Capitalism works because the entire population is processing information around them constantly. A small fraction of the population simply can't collect and calculate the information quickly enough to be more efficient than capitalism. That's why socialism fails, and will continue to fail until they solve that problem.

As for producing rather then consuming, it's rather hard to justify useless work as being efficient.

Useless work is not production. Production is creating something that is demanded (by yourself or someone else).

Oh, and shouldn't we welcome high unemployment rates as proof that we all have time to spare and still make all the goods we need?

Nice try. You're using two different definitions of "unemployment". The economic definition is "people looking for work". If they are looking for work, that probably means that they are consuming without producing. That is undesirable because, as I said, we want people to produce more than they consume. In capitalism, there is negative feedback for not working, in specific, if you don't work you are eventually prevented from consuming.

Re:Seems like a waste

[jadavis]

Could you provide some sources

You're thinking of things in terms of "Item X is taxed at rate Y". I am saying that maybe a cheap car isn't taxed at all, but an expensive one is. The first 500 sq ft. might not be taxed at all, but the next 500 might be. Someone who lives very cheaply and for some reason buys a plasma screen might not pay a dime in taxes. Someone with a 500 sq ft apartment in Manhattan might pay taxes, while someone with a 1000 sq ft apartment in Kansas might not.

This is my perspective: There are differences in consumption depending on how much money you have. Let's say you have no taxes on someone who is consuming less than $x, which might be based on someone living in about 500 sq ft. in a median-sized town somewhere, and eating basic food staples and taking the bus to work. If your income is high, you will consume more than that because you can, and you can't take your money with you when you die anyway. So, have progressive taxes going up from there. Want a 750 sq ft place closer to work, and a car? Pay a small amount in taxes. Want a penthouse apartment in Manhattan, a BMW, and steak every night? Pay a lot in taxes. Anything over $x you consume that year is taxed. Anything over 2*$x is taxed more heavily (for example). Progressive.

It's no more complicated than our current income tax, that's for sure. And this way it discourages debt, encourages savings, encourages production, discourages consumption.

most large charities have recognised this and publish breakdowns of their spending

Right. And I applaud charities who spend their money wisely. I'm just trying to show that the money you give to a charity doesn't really come from YOU, it comes from your bank account, which had the money invested in labor and capital elsewhere.

Now, I should have said, if you forego consumption and give to a charity instead, that is all good for society, and should be recognized as such.

Re:Seems like a waste

[Mark_MF-WN]

This isn't entirely true. It's entirely possible to produce things that are negative. Consumption in some cases has no appreciably negative consequences of any kind, and can have enormous positive consequences (assuming we're talking about capitalism here).

Suppose I dedicate my time to producing large amounts of weaponized anthrax, and buying as few consumer goods as possible. My labour serves no purpose and no economic activity is created by me (other than whatever results from me selling weaponized anthrax to the homeless-insane). That would make me pretty much the worst person on Earth. Conversely, suppose you are on disability and spend whatever small amount of disposable income you have on, say, iPods. In that case, you're using up very few resources, and although you produce nothing, you're also not really costing anything other than the waste and complaining that results from redistributing wealth. If we give this hypothetical you even the most meagre, lazy, menial job, at which you hypothetically do very little work, you're now ahead of the curve. You're being mildly productive, creating wealth directly by your labour and indirectly by stimulating commerce for Apple (this hypothetical you is clumsy and breaks iPods quickly, and thus keeps Apple nicely busy). Hypothetical you, the lazy iPod-consuming guy, is way better than our hypothetical me, the ever-toiling breeder of anthrax who lives on pennies a day and buries his wealth in the backyard.

Blah blah blah. Anyway, I totally agree with you about the charities thing though. Best that a charity like the Gates Foundation do its thing and then pass away, making room for the ultra-philanthropists of the future. Otherwise it runs the risk of becoming nothing more than a financial sink-hole. There are enough pseudo-charity-money-pits out there already. I haven't decided about consumption-taxation yet ... I think I'd need to actually study some macroeconomics before really forming a kick-ass, shouting-match-worthy, super elitist opinion on the subject. And really, if you can't be super elitist about something, what's the point?

Re:Seems like a waste

[Detritus]

IIRC, U.S. law generally frowns upon "perpetual trusts". Charitable trusts are expected to eventually give all their money away, not hang around for the indefinite future.

Re:Seems like a waste

[DerekLyons]

Building such a large foundation is no small task, it just seems like a waste to dissolve all the work that went into it just because the founders aren't alive.

But foundations have a tendency to lose their way quickly after the benefactors die. There are no reality checks when it comes to a foundation, there is no feedback cycle that keeps them healthy.

Indeed - the Ford Foundation has also come under scrutiny for its donation patterns.
 
The town I live in suffers greatly because nearly a third of it's downtown real estate is owned by a charitable trust - but the trustees seem to have no ambition beyond getting enough money to pay the property taxes (and their own salaries) each year - plus a minimal amount of income for their nominal purpose. Redevelopment plan after redevelopment plan founders because the trust owns properties in key locations - and they simply aren't interested in playing. (On average, buildings owned by the trust have now stood empty for 15 years.)

Re:Seems like a waste

[rcamera]

Food is wasted at fast-food restaurants while people starve outside

that's where organizations like city harvest come into play.

Re:Seems like a waste

[Marcos Eliziario]

I wish there was a way to mod a post both Funny and Insightful. "... the ever-toiling breeder of anthrax who lives on pennies a day and buries his wealth in the backyard." I am still laughing at this phrase

Re:Seems like a waste

[jadavis]

Suppose I dedicate my time to producing large amounts of weaponized anthrax, and buying as few consumer goods as possible.

Hahah. I think that's an example of "the exception proves the rule". Generally, productivity means you do something useful or create a useful product.

stimulating commerce for Apple

This is an example of visible benefits and invisible costs. The benefits are obvious: people get more jobs making iPods, and the newly-employed iPod makers buy other stuff. The cost is what other, more useful things may have been created and purchased if you didn't buy the iPods. For instance, maybe someone would use the flash memory for other products that are needed more urgently than your iPod collection. There is no free lunch, and you consuming those iPods has a negative overall effect on the rest of society.

Re:Seems like a waste

[vondo]

This is exactly right. There is a Hershey foundation which exists to educate impoverished children in one school or some such. The charter of the foundation is such that this is the only thing they are supposed to do. They now have a lot of children in that school and so much money that the school can't possibly spend it all. But the foundation can't do something reasonable with the money because of the charter.

If the Gates foundation charter is to combat disease in the developing world (let's say) it may be that in 80 years there may be nothing left to do. That'd be nice, wouldn't it? Why not let those who will make fortunes 80 years from now decide how to spend that money and get the maximum "short" term impact out of Bill and Warren's money?

Re:Seems like a waste

[king-manic]

Your proposal simply forces those without the resources to have smaller houses and cheaper cars. You are now errecting a monetary wall, that is arbitrarily set. If you gradiuate the extra tarrifs enough you might get around that but it's become a worse nightmare then the current scheme. The money to fund public projects and services needs to come from somewhere. Income tax is about as fair as you can get it.

Re:Seems like a waste

[jadavis]

Your proposal simply forces those without the resources to have smaller houses and cheaper cars.

And how is that different from income tax?

You are now errecting a monetary wall, that is arbitrarily set.

Doesn't have to be.

a worse nightmare then the current scheme.

How so? You can get money from any source, and you only have to track what you actually spend. For most people, this would just be credit card statements and ATM withdrawls, and a monthly rent check (or mortgage). Add 'em up and pay the taxes. A lot of this could be automated.

Income tax is about as fair as you can get it.

The reason that this is more fair is because people can't get around it when they're living life large. There are many people who pay very low taxes and consume huge amounts of resources. This is because truly rich people usually already have all the money they need, and therefore pay little or no taxes.

You may not make money where you live, but you almost certainly consume resources where you live. That makes it harder to avoid taxes by making money one place, having a legal residence another, and actually living in a high-tax area.

If you think about it, income tax makes no sense at all. It's essentially saying that once you have money in the bank you're free and clear of taxation. So, you have no incentive to keep money there for investment, retirement, etc.

Also, what sense does it make as a society to take money out of one person's bank account through income tax versus some other account? Bank accounts represent the savings of the entire society until the owner of the account chooses to use that money to consume. Until they do that it's not even really "their" money, so society is just stealing from it's own savings by "taxing the rich". Taking their money may restrict their ability to consume and may not, but that's too indirect and pointless.

People think about money in entirely the wrong way. You don't "own" it, money is a marker that you can use to reallocate resources. You don't own any part of it until you decide to reallocate resources to yourself (i.e. consume). It doesn't matter whether rich people can "afford" to pay taxes or not, it matters how the resources that money represents are reallocated.

Re:Seems like a waste

[Cirvam]

The Hershey foundation runs the Milton Hershey school and owns something like 30% or so of the Hershey Company along with various entertainment properties. While they do have a lot of money, they also are expanding the school and the cost of schooling does go up as time goes on. So they could do something else with the money, but then their primary goal would probably suffer, more so since it was organized in 1915 and the organizational papers have been changed for the foundation several times to expand their mission. However since their mission is education of impoverished children, they seem content to use their money to grow in this aspect since I don't think anyone has solved all the issues in just the education field.

Re:Seems like a waste

[h2_plus_O]

There are a million ways to make consumption taxes progressive, just like income taxes, but without the problems associated with taxing production.

Really? My taxation professor would be very interested to know about them, I'm sure.

A flat-rate consumption tax can be made progressive by the same means a flat-rate income tax can be made progressive; by establishing a prebate or standard deductible. This un-taxes the first [n] amount of the taxed activity. If we did away with our income taxes and replaced them with a flat-rate consumption tax but un-taxed basic subsistence-level consumption by sending everyone a check each month for [n] amount of taxable shopping, the result would be that in order to pay a positive amount of taxes, you'd need to consume above [n] level and your effective rate would become progressively higher the more you consume.

High-income earners don't have a consumption basket so vastly different from low-income earners that it is possible to target them on the consumption side to any significant degree

Nor is there a compelling need to. Consumption taxation targets consumption, not income. ...and given that a good portion of tax code is devoted to mitigating the harm of taxing productive behavior and savings (really, the US tax code's 50,000+ lines of code could be interpreted as an expression of an ongoing disagreement about just what taxable income really should be), there's something to be said for getting away from it altogether. Progressiveness is nice, but not when it costs everyone more than it should.

Re:Seems like a waste

[Jahz]

Chances are that 25 years after the Gates die, the foundation will decide that it doesnt want to die and start to fund raise from the rich and powerful moguls of the world. They've already taken a 40 (i think it was 40) billion dollar endowment from a stock billionaire. Who says other ridiculously wealthy people won't also donate unthinkable quantities of money in the future?

Re:Seems like a waste

[BasilBrush]

What are you wittering on about? Bill O'Reilly and Newt Gingrich haven't won the Nobel prize.

Re:Seems like a waste

[arcade]

I used to agree with you, until I read an excellent article in The Economist which changed my perspective. If you take a look at:

http://www.economist.com/printedition/index.cfm?d= 20060701

It's the leader article. Unfortunately it's subscription only, but I think it's fair use to snip the last paragraph, which Bill seems to have taken to heart, and repost it here:

"The second danger lies in the vanity of philanthropists. They often like the notion that their foundations will live on after them, carrying their name down from generation unto generation. But, after the founder has died, foundations tend to become sclerotic and directionless--the fiefs of administrators who have lost sight of the original aims. So if you aim to be a truly philanthropic philanthropist, spend your money fast: do as much good as you can when you're alive, and let posterity go hang."

I think we can conclude that Bill reads the Economist. :p

Re:Seems like a waste

[Sapphon]

Mmmm, I think I see where you're coming from. Instead of saying "the first $x of an income are tax free, amounts beyond that attract tax", you say "the first $x of a good are tax free, amounts beyond that attract tax" - where $x is set so that basic G&S attract minimal tax.

I'm confused by your plasma screen example, though. I assume you want to place the tax on the goods themselves, because tracking 'consumption' as an aggregate for a household is unfeasible (households don't have any motive to do it - less recorded consumption, less tax - , and the Gov't can't keep track of every time I buy a litre of milk), but in that case I can't see a plasma screen falling into "Basic Goods & Services".

Furthermore, because even the richest people have largely overlapping consumption habits with the masses as far as basic G&S are concerned (their bread, butter and milk doesn't cost 3x as much, for example), and the tax base for 'expensive' consumption is therefore quite narrow, the tax rate required to finance.. well, anything, would have to incredibly high.

To draw an example from the income side, simply because I know the figures: it's possible to have a tax system where the first $20-30'000 a person earns - enough for a comfortable lifestyle - is tax free, with tax on amounts above that financing the Gov't. The necessary tax rate, however, was something in the order of 60-70% on amounts above $20/30'000. That's a tough sell.

Your system may elegant, it may be desireable, it may even be practical. But if it's not politically attractive, it's dust.

Re:Seems like a waste

[vondo]

Thanks for the details. But isn't there some controversy that have expanded the mission? There are lawsuits over this, right? Wasn't the intended mission of the founder *only* to run the school? Clearly there are enough problems in education to suck up almost any amount of money. But one either has to make the mission so broad that the later board can change it to be almost anything or risk developments or the amount of money making the mission of the foundation not match very well with the situation on the ground.

Re:Seems like a waste

[Sapphon]

Agreed - there's a very simple theoretical way of doing it. However, it's phenomenally impractical.
See my reply to the other guy.

Re:Seems like a waste

[h2_plus_O]

there's a very simple theoretical way of doing it. However, it's phenomenally impractical.

It's only as impractical as you make it-and based on your comments, it sounds like you're assuming that the only way to pay taxes is by counting on people to track and report their taxable activity honestly and settle up the bill at the end of the year, as is now done with income. This, I agree, would be phenomenally impractical- if, by phenomenally impractical, you mean 'precisely how we already do it'.
A switch to a flat-rate, progressive retail consumption tax (with a standard prebate/rebate/deductible to make it progressive and un-tax necessity-level consumption) would simplify things a lot, be very good for business, and actually make enforcement easier- in the US, instead of 140M+ household returns, there would be ~19M retail points of sale. Auditing sales is vastly simpler than auditing income. Retail sales taxes are already calculated by software, are anonymous, transaction-based, and don't require the kind of invasive nonsense we tolerate today.

Redistributing the wealth

[i_should_be_working]

One thing I really like about the philanthropic gestures from the Bill and Melinda foundation is that their fortune is new money and it all came from selling software to the middle class or above. It's literally taking (willingly) from the rich and giving to the poor.

Re:Redistributing the wealth

[ScentCone]

It's literally taking (willingly) from the rich and giving to the poor.

No, it's not. Exactly not.

He's not taking the cash equivalent of the price of a vaccine and all of the costs of getting that vaccine to a child in Africa, and then just handing that money to that poor person. He's changing the circumstances on the ground so that those people can become middle class folks who will participate in an economy like the one that his existing customers enjoy. That's WAY better than "giving" it to them.

Re:Redistributing the wealth

[Surt]

It's literally taking (willingly) from the rich and giving to the poor.

Willingly is way off. He had a monopoly position in operating systems that made it literally impossible to buy computer equipment without giving Microsoft money.

Maybe I wanted to spend my money on a different, worthwhile cause?

Maybe I feel the Gates foundation is completely incompetent, and I'd like to spend that money on the same cause in a more effective way?

Doing some good with the money you stole from people doesn't make up for the stealing.

Re:Redistributing the wealth

[troll -1]

Most it came from an illegal monopoly

Re:Redistributing the wealth

[i_should_be_working]

Well, I never said he's giving cold hard cash to poor kids in other countries did I? And I appreciate your point, but geez, it's just a saying and it's still applies. No matter what manipulations the wealth goes through, the fact is he's still giving it away.

Re:Redistributing the wealth

[Surt]

I'm pretty sure that's because in the Robin Hood stories, the rich are evil miscreants who work hard to ensure the poor suffer.

I personally tend not to think of myself that way, and do my best not to act that way.

Re:Redistributing the wealth

[LaughingCoder]

Speaking of redistributing wealth ... tell that to the government as well.

The government has a monopoly position that makes it literally impossible to earn, invest or buy *anything* without giving the government money.

Maybe I wanted to spend my money on a different, worthwhile cause?

Maybe I feel the government is completely incompetent and I'd like to spend that money on the same cause in a more effective way?

Doing some good with the money you stole from people doesn't make up for the stealing.

Re:Redistributing the wealth

[i_should_be_working]

Willingly is way off. He had a monopoly position in operating systems that made it literally impossible to buy computer equipment without giving Microsoft money.

Did someone force you to buy a computer? No, you willingly departed with your money in exchange for a computer. Despite the way we behave around here computers are still, in fact, not a necessity of life.

Re:Redistributing the wealth

[ScentCone]

No matter what manipulations the wealth goes through, the fact is he's still giving it away.

But that's exactly my point: he's not. In every sense that matters, he's investing it. Which is a far, far better thing than giving it away. He has a vested interest in a thriving market economy peopled by healthy, educated, productive (not dead or dying of hideous diseases) folks, and he's spending the money towards that end. As we've seen over and over again, simply giving it away not only doesn't really help, it usually makes matters worse.

Re:Redistributing the wealth

[whoever57]

Did someone force you to buy a computer? No, you willingly departed with your money in exchange for a computer. Despite the way we behave around here computers are still, in fact, not a necessity of life.

For many (or perhpas now, most) businesses, computers are necessary for life.

Besides which, your argument is ridiculous: just because something is not absolutely necessary to live does not mean that it is not a monopoly that people effectively have to buy. For example: gasolene is not a necessity of life, yet how many people in the US could get buy without buying it? Let's go a bit further: are clothes a necessity of life? Probably not in summer for large parts of the USA.

Re:Redistributing the wealth

[A.K.A_Magnet]

If Gates had just profited from the wealthy (ie Western and Japanese) people it would be OK. But he also sold his overpriced low-quality OS to poor people and thus exploited the Third World. Robin Hood wouldn't have done so. If Bill Gates had used Windows and all his bad-quality software to take money from us rich people and then give back to fight AIDS and help the Third World, I may say "why not"? I'm a Free Software fanatic but that would have redeemed Gates' soul. The problem is, Gates continues to sell features-stripped Windows versions to Indian people, etc. Now it shouldn't ever be forgotten that Bill Gates created his empire this way (and that he broke the law numerous times and has no ethics).

Re:Redistributing the wealth

[NineNine]

He had a monopoly position in operating systems that made it literally impossible to buy computer equipment without giving Microsoft money.

You're slandering one of the greatest philanthropists of our generation with an outright lie.

Fuck you.

Re:Redistributing the wealth

[i_should_be_working]

I'm not arguing that it's wasn't a monopoly. Just that it's not stealing. No one forcefully separated you from your money. End of conversation.

Re:Redistributing the wealth

[i_should_be_working]

Ok, I agree. Although I doubt he'll live to see the day when those aids orphans are buying Windows products.

Re:Redistributing the wealth

[Profane MuthaFucka]

Bullcrap. I would have done it for you. I wouldn't have even charged an outrageous amount. I'd have picked up some commonly available parts - cases, power supplies, motherboards, chips, and assembled them for you. A modest markup to show some profit for myself would have been all I required. And I would have sold you the bare machine if you so desired, with no Microsoft software at all. I'd have even installed the Linux distribution of your choice.

Why didn't you give me a call?

Re:Redistributing the wealth

[t-twisted]

Despite the way we behave around here computers are still, in fact, not a necessity of life.

Neither is your car.

Or electricity. Man existed without it before, we just didn't live in such large numbers in less-than-temperate climates.

Or money.. because I'm sure your bank carefully places the money (cash, right?) that you deposit into your own little safety deposit box with a key, and you can only withdraw from that same box. Must be a very big bank.

T.

Re:Redistributing the wealth

[afedaken]

Ummm... Exactly what sort of self respecting geek isn't willing or capable of either rolling his own machine, or locating a local OEM willing to sell one sans MS software?

I mean, sure, the "MS-Tax" argument holds some water for the average big-box store consumer, but for a slashdotter?!?

Re:Redistributing the wealth

[jez9999]

If I give away 80% of my (modest) wealth, does that make me as 'great' a philanthropist?

Re:Redistributing the wealth

[NineNine]

I would say so, yes.

Re:Redistributing the wealth

[QuietLagoon]

It's literally taking (willingly) from the rich and giving to the poor.

While I like that the Gates' are giving away large sums of moeny to those less fortunate, we need to keep in mind that the money came from stock price appreciation caused by Microsoft's illegal business practices.

The money was not willingly given by the rich, it was stolen via monopoly-based software pricing.

Re:Redistributing the wealth

[jrsjrsjrs]

I applaud Bill Gates' move. The Foundation will do it's good and then burnout, instead of wasting money on a perpetuity of lawyers, foundation reports and calls for proposals. Regarding the government taking a cut -- civilization has a price: taxes. Would you prefer blissful anarchy? It's our societal (and governmental) stability which makes accumulation of wealth possible at all.

Re:Redistributing the wealth

[that this is not und]

He had a monopoly position in operating systems that made it literally impossible to buy computer equipment without giving Microsoft money.

Not hardly. You can still buy a Sun server or workstation. You can still buy an Apple workstation (or server, kinda).

You can buy scads of different IBM servers.

All of the above can be completely Microsoft free.

Now, if you want to maintain that *you* couldn't buy computer equipment, because all you understand is MS-DOS derivatives....

Re:Redistributing the wealth

[whoever57]

So, running an illegal monopoly is OK, but getting money by other illegal methods is not? That's a distinction without a difference. Where do you draw the line? Is fraud OK, or do weapons have to be involved for you to condemn it?

Re:Redistributing the wealth

[ninjamonkey]

But that's exactly my point: he's not. In every sense that matters, he's investing it.


Worst-case scenario: Gates is vaccinating destitute children so that they can grow to become the cheap workforce the West needs.

Best-case scenario: out of a genuine concern for human life, Gates is vaccinating destitute children so that they can grow and live happy, productive lives.

Even in the worst possible case that I can come up with, what he's doing will improve the lives of human beings.

Honestly, I think you're projecting a lot of Microsoft monopoly hate unnecessarily here.

Re:Redistributing the wealth

[Marcos Eliziario]

Most windows installs in third world countries are pirated anyway, and Third world countries sales are a rather tiny number in Microsoft's books. I am from a third world country, I was born poor, and let me tell you that while nowadays my programs are mostly for Unix systems or java based, I wouldn't be a middle-class guy today if it weren't for Microsoft.
Compared to the alternatives, IBM PCs with MS-DOS were arguably the first systems affordable and useful enough for small business. Because of that, I had the chance to have access to a computer when I was a teenager working in a small electronics shop and because of that I had the chance of becoming a programmer that I would not have otherwise.
I was poor enough to starve, but my mother could not pay me an expensive education, I had to learn english with books in a public library(so grammar nazis, take it easy with me!), and I would never be able to enter a college and become a computer professional (there are public universities in Brasil, but they are on the big cities, and I was from a small town that had only private colleges, that I could never afford to enter). MS-DOS PCs, on the other side, were the paradise for the self-taught man as they were popular and there was a lot of books about it that you could buy cheaply or borrow.
As a matter of fact, I paid my higher education while making small programs and fixing PCs. I doubt I would have this chance in a world of VAXen or UNIX microcomputers that were way too expensive for small business. So, while Microsoft has done a lot of damage for his competitors, it's not true that they hadn't done some good also. Actually, I would say that Bill Gates gave me a profession, although it was Linus that made it fun ;-)

Re:Redistributing the wealth

[ChrisMaple]

"Doing some good with the money you stole from people doesn't make up for the stealing."

With regard to government, since to have civilization we must have some government, the proper principle is that the damage that can be prevented by using the stolen money must be worse than the damage that is stealing the money. Murder is worse than theft, and murder can be discouraged in a cost-effective manner by paying police with tax money. Dropping a gum wrapper on the sidewalk is not worse than theft, and paying a policeman to agressively patrol against minor littering is not cost-effective.

Re:Redistributing the wealth

[Digz]

You can.. That's why charitable donations are tax deductible..

Re:Redistributing the wealth

[drsmithy]

Willingly is way off. He had a monopoly position in operating systems that made it literally impossible to buy computer equipment without giving Microsoft money.

False. There has never been any point in time when it has been impossible to buy computers without Windows.

Re:Redistributing the wealth

[Lemmy Caution]

As morally/ethically noble and worthy, yes. As historically/politically/effectively great, no. I see "greatness" as a matter of quantity more than quality, really: I like the little brook that runs near my house a lot more than I like the Mississippi, but I would call the Mississippi, and not that little brook, a "great" river.

Re:Redistributing the wealth

[mabinogi]

There is nothing illegal about having a monopoly.
Microsoft are not an illegal monopoly.

They were ruled as being a monopoly, which was important for the anti trust case, because if they weren't ruled as being a monopoly then there was no case to answer under anti trust laws.

They were convicted for the actions they took in maintaining and extending that monopoly.

Too many people on slashdot seem to have confused the finding of facts in that case where the judge found that Microsoft was in fact a monopoly for the purposes of the case, and the outcome where they were convicted for anti-trust violations. The violation wasn't that they were a monopoly.

Re:Redistributing the wealth

[Profane MuthaFucka]

I've got another account. Maybe he would rather buy a computer from that guy?

Re:Redistributing the wealth

[1u3hr]

As a matter of fact, I paid my higher education while making small programs and fixing PCs. I doubt I would have this chance in a world of VAXen or UNIX microcomputers that were way too expensive for small business. So, while Microsoft has done a lot of damage for his competitors, it's not true that they hadn't done some good also.

Without Bill Gates, there would have been just as many PCs and work for you. They wouldn't have been running MSDOS and Windows, maybe something similar like CP/M , GEM; or possibly Apple would have gone more mainstream. In any case, thank Intel, IBM, AMD and Motorola, not Microsoft, for your job.

It's not that MS software is completly crap, but that it has smothered any competition.

Re:Redistributing the wealth

[elgatozorbas]

Willingly is way off. He had a monopoly position in operating systems that made it literally impossible to buy computer equipment without giving Microsoft money. Maybe I wanted to spend my money on a different, worthwhile cause?

If I understand well you complain about the charitable cause a businessman donated his private money to??? What you got for your money was Windows or whatever product you bought. That's where the deal ends. Besides, he never forced you to buy his products.

If you want to give (the rest of) your money to other charitable causes, go ahead, but don't come whining here.

Re:Redistributing the wealth

[Marcos Eliziario]

Maybe. maybe not. maybe other companies would enter in symbiotic relationship with IBM and the PC clone market would not florish as it did. Maybe the excess competition would mean that there would be a lot of different operating systems and the market would never have scale.
What made computers feasible for the masses of small business out there was the clone market and the fact that there was a single platform. I am not telling that this is the ideal for today, but in the beggining of the PC market it helped a lot. Things simply went faster, if you were a compiler writer, you'd need to write your compiler only for MS-DOS. If you were a small business owner, it was easy to find employees that knew how to operate the operating system you were using, because pratically everyone that was able to use a computer, was able to use a DOS based computer. It helped make the PC a good value proposition for small business. Of course Microsoft was able to have a premium because of their monopolistic position, and when they became too abusive, Linux had it's chance. Now I work as Chief Software Architect for a major brazilian retail chain, and I am in the middle of a project to convert all POS in our stores (more than 100 stores, with an average of 15 POS per store) to Linux. It proves that Microsoft monopoly is not that damaging.
Microsoft does good things indeed, C# 3.0 is a great language, and I am liking more the evolution of C# than I like the way Java evolves. They have some good work with the Software Factories projects and so on.
Franly, it's time we recognize that Microsoft deserves some respect.

Re:Redistributing the wealth

[Surt]

Actually, he did force me to buy his products by leveraging his monopoly position to make contracts such that if a vendor of x86 hardware wanted to sell any windows boxes, they had to sell all windows boxes. So for me to purchase an x86 box, there was no way to avoid paying him for windows, though I didn't need it or want it.

Re:Redistributing the wealth

[Surt]

There were many years where buying >100 x86 boxes without a MS operating system was impossible. There was no vendor who wasn't stuck in a MS contract who could satisfy such an order.
Note that I was committed to x86, but didn't need the MS.

Re:Redistributing the wealth

[Surt]

I'm talking about purchasing as a business, in a context where you don't want to roll your own manufacturing capability, and need 100 new x86 boxes tomorrow.

Do you want to hire all those assemblers? No, it doesn't make sense for your business.

No self respecting businessman is that dumb.

Re:Redistributing the wealth

[Surt]

You're slandering one of the greatest philanthropists of our generation with an outright lie.

It's not slandering when it's truth:
http://cyber.law.harvard.edu/msdoj/

Apple made operating systems for non-x86 hardware.

Today I would gladly accept that this is no longer true. That doesn't change that it was true.

Re:Redistributing the wealth

[Surt]

Others have already corrected you, but I'll just chime in: I willingly parted with my money to buy a computer. But not an MS operating system. I had no choice about that part.

Re:Redistributing the wealth

[Surt]

It's actually not false, but I should have been more specific. I needed x86 boxes, and I needed them in numbers that meant only a small number of companies ('the major vendors') could meet my needs, and every one of them had contracts with MS that prohibited selling boxes sans MS OS licenses.

Re:Redistributing the wealth

[Surt]

Were you advertising in any of the major magazines? Were you capable of delivering, in a timely manner, more than a hundred boxes in a week's time frame, and guaranteeing maintenance on those kinds of numbers over years? There are only a small number of companies who could do that, and they all had highly restricted contracts with MS.

Re:Redistributing the wealth

[Profane MuthaFucka]

I had a little ad in the back of Hustler, which is a major magazine. It said "Blow Jobs and White Boxes".

Re:Redistributing the wealth

[Surt]

:-)
Now that was a great answer.
And touche, I read that magazine. For the articles of course.

Re:Redistributing the wealth

[naasking]

With regard to government, since to have civilization we must have some government,

Unfounded assumption. See "The Machinery of Freedom" by David Friedman for a possible societal structure that requires no centralized government.

Sandro

Re:Redistributing the wealth

[that this is not und]

You were running IBM's PC-DOS? OS/2? What else would 'tie' you to x86?

Re:Redistributing the wealth

[Duds]

Willingly is way off. He had a monopoly position in operating systems that made it literally impossible to buy computer equipment without giving Microsoft money

This simply isn't true and has never been true.

Re:Redistributing the wealth

[Surt]

I clarified what I meant in other followups. If you wanted to buy from a reliable vendor, and needed to buy more than ~100 x86 boxes/week, there was no vendor you could choose who did not require you to buy an MS license with every box.

And for smaller purchasers, it was at least very difficult to buy a box without an MS license, and you couldn't buy a box from any of the top 20 vendors.

Re:Stupid

[Anonymous Coward]

Maybe they want to help the most people the can right now rather than making them wait a few decades?

I actually agree with that decision...

[jejones]

The vast majority of funds and foundations that have long survived their founders have gone in ideological directions that would outrage said founders; if Gates has set a time limit on his foundation, I certainly can't argue with it.

Re:I actually agree with that decision...

[1u3hr]

The vast majority of funds and foundations that have long survived their founders have gone in ideological directions that would outrage said founders

Exactly. And the Gates foundation will be no different. If anyone believes in 50 years or whenever the the Gates foundation, with of the order of $100 billion dollars, will just quietly dissolve, they're insane. Those in charge of it will find a way to perpetuate it, probably just changing the name and shuffling people around.

Charities should go away after a while

[Anonymous Coward]

I applaud this decision. I think that businesses and charities should all have a life span. Too often they become bloated with bureaucracy and weighted down with useless traditions. They think only of prolonging their own existence, above all other things.

I am gaining respect for Mr. Gates with his handling of this charity. For a decade I outspent him in charity giving as a percentage of my income and worth. It is great to see him come around and finally give back to the world what the world was so gracious to give to him.

Re:Charities should go away after a while

[Jekler]

Mr. Gates has proven Machiavelli correct. As time marches forward, critics of Microsoft and Bill Gates are changing their tune; what Mr. Gates ultimately does with his wealth is more important than where it came from or how he got started building the wealth. Anti-trust violations, corporate bullying, it's acceptable so long as you later form a charity.

Re:Charities should go away after a while

[Anonymous Coward]

Somehow bundling IE with Windows doesn't seem as morally objectionable as employing child slaves to make shoes or something like that. Most people wouldn't find MS's offenses objectionable at all, that's a small minority here on Slashdot. Do you think breaking one law is the same as breaking any law? I see Bill Gates as a middle class college dropout who worked his ass off and is now going to help a lot of people. What can you say for yourself? What can I say for myself?

Re:Charities should go away after a while

[metlin]

Anti-trust violations, corporate bullying, it's acceptable so long as you later form a charity.

It is the degree of committing something wrong.

You see, if I commit a traffic violation and if I save a man's life, does it really matter?

Now Microsoft's business practices aren't particularly wonderful, but if at the end of the day, if it could help save millions of lives and help improve the quality of life for people across the world, then I honestly don't give a damn.

Secondly, Bill Gates != Microsoft -- the latter is a corporation, and all corporations always have one motto - improve share holder value by working on the bottomline. Microsoft is no exception, and if a part of that profit is being used to help the *really* needy, then so be it.

The way I see it is that all the whining about business practices is for the rich (i.e. a society that has enough money to afford computers and expensive software) and Bill using this money to help the poor. Of course, since _you_ are the rich being ripped off, you don't quite see it that way.

Bill is a geek who was shrewd enough to hack the system to make money out of it, and he is giving it to the poor. More power to him.

I'd rather have someone like him than someone like, say, Larry Ellison or Sam Walton.

I mean, look at Larry Ellison's charity track record -- there is nothing stopping Bill from doing the exact same thing. But instead, he is using it for not just *some* good, but a lot of good.

Re:Charities should go away after a while

[Jekler]

Somehow employing child slaves doesn't seem as morally objectionable as raping babies or something like that. There are even people who wouldn't find raping babies objectionable at all, even though that's a small minority. Do you think breaking one law is the same as breaking any law? I see the baby raper as a middle class college dropout, but at least he gives money to charity. What can you say for yourself? What can I say for myself?

Re:Charities should go away after a while

[metlin]

Wow, what a troll.

Well, is speeding over the speed limit comparable to killing a man?

Sure, you break the law in both cases but the conditions and consequences are different.

Bill is breaking the traffic rules but saving people's lives -- while he's definitely breaking the law, I'd rather have him break the speed limit and help save people's lives than not.

Get some perspective, people. Perspective.

Life is bigger than software, and I cannot believe that folks are comparing antitrust violations and business practices with raping and killnig babies. Sheesh.

Re:Charities should go away after a while

[Jekler]

The point is, there's always "something worse". You can't say that someone's actions aren't reprehensible just because you can think of something more reprehensible. It has nothing to do with the relative comparison.

Re:Charities should go away after a while

[Jekler]

No speeding is not comparable to killing a man. But actions don't become better just because there's something worse.

If someone steals $10,000 from you, and you find out some time later he's started his own business, living quite well in a Florida condo, and he's running an animal shelter, do you tell him what a great guy he is?

Re:Charities should go away after a while

[metlin]

If I have used his services in anyway, then I have no right to complain. The folks that complain have used Microsoft's services in some way. Expensive? Yes. Forced, even? Perhaps (although this is a fine line).

The guy hasn't stolen money for you - you paid that money because you wanted something in return (i.e. an Operating System, an Office application or whatever). Oh, he might have been sly and cunning in making you use that software, but you always had the choice to walk away. Is it unethical? Most definitely.

But comparable to murder and rape? Hell, no.

Secondly, Microsoft is a corporation with the bottom line as its objective and Bill is but a part of the corporation. The actions of the corporation do not equal the actions of Bill, and vice versa.

I'd rather have a hundred Microsofts with a Bill at the helm helping the poor than a hundred Larry Ellisons.

Re:Charities should go away after a while

[goldenpanda]

It has a lot to do with the relative comparison. Since we, and you, live with much worse things in the world, "anti-competitive software practices" perhaps doesn't deserve all the moral outrage you give to it. Morality is absolutely relative. If you view moral enforcement as a limited resource in society, we are obliged to distribute it proportional to its need. By giving disproportionate mindshare to "software monopolists are bad", we'd be ignoring murder, starvation, slavery and rape, and that would be wrong.

Re:Charities should go away after a while

[nsupathy]

Thats true. Imagine Ellison in place of Gates. Not even 1 cent would have gone for charity without force of course.

Re:Charities should go away after a while

[Jekler]

"...Bill Gates != Microsoft..."

Bill Gates was the head of the company. The company acted at his direction. For all intents and purposes, he is the same as the company. You can't say "The car ran the guy over, the driver didn't."

You're right, nothing stops Bill Gates from acting like Larry Ellison, but morality is not a profit margin. You don't just tally up the good and bad and see if someone comes out in the black. If I walk around punching people, when someone wants me to be accountable I can't just break out a calculator and say "Look, according to my balance sheet I've only punched 39 people, but I donated food to 57 people so I'm good to go. Thanks for checking in with me though."

Re:Stupid

[b0s0z0ku]

Why not setup a trust that just spends the interest on the earnings.

Or fund projects that might be profitable as well as beneficial in the long term, but that no other corporation wants to fund because the profits might only show a century later.

-b.

Re:Stupid

[Mateo_LeFou]

Something tell me that the guys who run multibillion dollar foundation might've thought of that. My guess is that the principle could do more good in the hands of organizations (especially, IMO, OLPC ;) than sitting in a bank. That is: even more good that the interest the bank pays on it.

Re:Stupid

[maxume]

They tend to invest in doing things that will persist for generations; educating one person can change the lives of all of their descendants and so forth, and by spending it near their lives, they make sure that the spending is relevant to what they care about and that no leaches come in and live off the trust.

Let's see...

[ScentCone]

Bill is evil for having that much money!
Money is evil for existing!
He was evil for hording it!
He's evil for spending it, no matter he spends it on!
He's evil if he doesn't spend it fast enough!
He's evil unless he spends it exactly on the things that the most people here who say he's evil can agree that he should spend it on! And even then, he's still evil!
Children with AIDS shouldn't want to live longer if it means saying they don't care about Windows 98's browser implementation issues!

Really, why do articles like this even make it here? Bill and Melissa's charitable foundation - which puts all others to shame - is nothing more than a blank canvas on which to paint your already-existing opinion of the man. We might as well put up an article about what brand of corn chips he prefers, since it would result in exactly the same conversation.

Re:Let's see...

[volsung]

Brilliant.... I've been trying to figure out how to phrase this general idea, and you nailed it.

Re:Let's see...

[ksalter]

I agree also, though you must admit that at least the "bill as borg" image was not used on the front page.

Re:Let's see...

[ScentCone]

Considering how rabidly defensive your post is

Er, no. In fact, if I actually went to any trouble to scrape up the Kill Bill comments that usually come up when discussing him or his wealth or how he's giving it away, the actual quotes would be far more rabid than my hypothetical ones. The rabid reaction, which I'm looking to shame (for once!) into just chilling out, comes like clockwork from his critics here. Everyone here knows it, and anyone choosing from a thousand daily contributions here to post that particular articles knows it and knows that the flamefest is good for page views and advertising revenue. You know it, too.

Re:Let's see...

[volsung]

Oh, upon rereading, I realized that I was agreeing with something more general than most people are seeing. I don't have much of an opinion about Bill Gates, perhaps due to oversaturation generated by reading several-too-many Slashdot threads on the guy. I was more applauding someone putting words to my suspicion as to why threads on topics like these usually degenerate into pointlessness.

Let me generalize the original poster's statement: Facts and events are just a blank canvas upon which we paint our pre-existing opinions. Once you grasp the basics of the subject being discussed, most comments you read will teach you more about the person posting them than the topic itself.

Once stated that way, it seems painfully obvious. Nevertheless, I often forget it while idly sifting through posts, looking for something interesting, and getting annoyed with ridiculous comments that twist an innocuous statement into "proof" of some talking point. I should just accept it as a natural and normal product of our psychology. :)

(I leave it as an exercise to the reader to recursively apply the principle to this post as well.)

Re:Let's see...

[ScentCone]

(I leave it as an exercise to the reader to recursively apply the principle to this post as well.)

Ah hah! A challenge! But first, let me talk about the idealogy that leads you to your comment...

But seriously, you're right, and thanks for getting my larger point. It's especially true when in comes to more polarizing topics like Bill.

Re:Let's see...

[LordEd]

He eats corn chips? Evil!!!!!

Re:Let's see...

[peterpi]

I agree. I read as far as this comment, and I know I don't have to read further.

Re:Let's see...

[Raenex]

I've seen plenty of reasonable comments discussing the pros and cons of a charitable foundation with a built-in expire time (an interesting and newsworth idea). In fact, yours was the first comment I ran across that was modded up and was a one-sided, emotional attack. If anybody is projecting, it's you.

Fair play

[Timesprout]

For all the crap he gets here, its never been about the money with Bill. He lives in relative modesty for his income and has always maintained that his kids would only inherit a small portion of his wealth with the bulk to be used for charitable causes.

Re:Fair play

[mephistophyles]

I agree that it's never really been about the money with him, and kudos to him for that, but to say he lives in relative modesty (my beef is with the word relative) is going a tad far. He has put a large portion of his assets into his fund, but that doesn't mean he doesn't have any for himself, and who could blame him, it's HIS money afterall. However, happening upon an edition of MTV's cribs with Mr. Gates' home on it, I doubt that could be called modest compared to most people's homes. Just type in 'Bill Gates home' in google and you'll see what I mean. All this has nothing to do with how he spends his money, I personally believe he should invest more in something more along the lines of sustainable energy like nuclear fusion as opposed to HIV/AIDS, because this way he funds an advancement of science, which benefits mankind in the long run. But hey, that's me and I have no say in where the money goes, so what does it really matter, just wanted to point out that Mr. Gates lives pretty luxuriously, as well he may, he did earn the money (one way or other).

Re:Fair play

[DarkSarin]

I think the point is that he could live much more extravagantly than he does. He could have built a house the size of the Biltmore Estate, and done some really crazy stuff, but he didn't. Yes, his house is expensive and more than most of use will ever come close to--but that doesn't mean it's even in the running for the nicest house on the planet.

Re:Fair play

[Anonymous Coward]

" to say he lives in relative modesty (my beef is with the word relative) is going a tad far."

Bill Gates
_____

Approximate net worth: $46 billion
Cost of home: $97 million

His home is about 1/470th of his net worth.

Jennifer Lopez
_____

Approximate net worth: $255 million
Cost of her Miami home, now sold: $11 to $14 million, depending on who you listen to. Let's take $11 million to make her look less ridiculous.

Her home was 1/23rd of her net worth.

This is why people say Gates lives modestly relative to his worth. If he'd spent like J. Lo, his home would have cost 2 billion. I don't know what you'd build with that. A marble pyramid?

Re:Fair play

[pherthyl]

You say he gets a lot of flak, but I don't really see it. Most of the (not modded into oblivion) comments I see praise him as being a shrewd businessman. Microsoft gets a lot of flak, but that is completely different. He's not even in charge there anymore.

As for relative modesty and relative generosity, Warren Buffet still has him beat. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Warren_Buffet

Re:Fair play

[value_added]

For all the crap he gets here, its never been about the money with Bill. He lives in relative modesty for his income and has always maintained that his kids would only inherit a small portion of his wealth with the bulk to be used for charitable causes.

Sigh. More crap.

Why would you assume it has to be about money? Most all of the old time mob dons lived in modest circumstances. Come to think of it, many of the newer ones do as well. Child abusers generally love kids, and they also like living in nice neighbourhoods. John Wayne Gacy enjoyed his meals, rapists can enjoy sex, and there's many a loving father and mother out there that regularly beat their kids.

As for Bill, I don't consider it a stretch for anyone to conclude that for him, it's always been about control. The money is secondary, but serves validate his position. And what's in his will for the kids is of little bearing. Personally, I think it's A Good Thing that he contributes to worthy causes and engages in philanthropy (what the hell else is he going to do with all the cash and the free time he now has on his hands), but it's fair game to offer criticism with respect to his past and present actions. Put another way, I still think he should go fuck himself.

So now that we're clear that something not being about money can still be A Bad Thing, I'm left wondering about the financial aspects of the decision. The "puts a lot of money back into circulation that otherwise would just be sitting there earning income" summary sounds a bit simplistic, given that lots of foundations started by other monopolists are around and kicking, contributing to the general benefit of society. If they all spent their money at once, who's left to fund anything?

Re:Fair play

[Anonymous Coward]

Me
_____

Approximate net worth: $100 Thousand
Cost of home: $200 Thousand

My home is about double of my net worth.

Horrible comparison. The less money you earn the greater percentage of income that goes towards your primary residence.

Re:Fair play

[VJ42]

You're only talking about the house we know about, he does have a $2bn Home as well; It's a secret lair under a volcano, or maybe his own Island...

Well, I'd build at least on of those things if I had $46bn ;)

Re:Fair play

[t-twisted]

My approx net worth: $500,000
Cost of my home: $380,000

My home is 75% of my net worth! That's right! I spend it all on the house! I've got a gold front door with a 4-story foyer and I breed real gnomes, none of that statue crap, who do nothing but stand out in the garden!

I can't furnish it.. and my refrigerator is bare.. but I got DA BLING! I spend more of my income on housing than even Bill Gates, that's how FAT my life is!

Can't get any more ridiculous than me!

T.

Re:Fair play

[mephistophyles]

I see your point, and I agree, but I was just trying to point out that when someone says 'relatively modest', it could be interpreted as he lives in a two bedroom apartment somewhere, and that that doesn't exactly come close to reality. I was just trying to clarify the comment. But Biltmore Estate is pretty neat, it has some nifty features, such as personal climate control depending on where you are in the house.

Re:Fair play

[GoofyBoy]

>You say he gets a lot of flak, but I don't really see it. Most of the (not modded into oblivion) comments I see praise him as being a shrewd businessman.

In what bizzaro, reverse universe do you read slashdot?

Re:Fair play

[inKubus]

Yeah, as the president and CEO, he could have a few minutes alone with the gold software precompile and put whatever he wanted into it, and no one there could stop him.

Re:Fair play

[kestasjk]

Having read Hard Drive, one of his more popular autobiographies (which I didn't detect any bias in whatsoever), I got the impression that Bill Gates' parents, and his girlfriend at the time whose name I forget, pushed him to start spending his money charitably. I'll see if I can locate the passage..

I can't, maybe someone else knows where it is. Even if it's true this doesn't mean Gates isn't a very generous person of course (ruthless and generous perhaps).

Re:Fair play

[1u3hr]

Bill. He lives in relative modesty for his income and has always maintained that his kids would only inherit a small portion of his wealth with the bulk to be used for charitable causes.

Bill Gates home is worth in excess of $125 million. Modest by Saudi Royal standards, perhaps. As for what he leaves his children, that's just talk and yu can believe it if you want. At a minimum they'll still be richer than 99.999% of humanity.

Re:Fair play

[DarkSarin]

Fair enough.

I also suppose that while I'm living in the area (roughly--I'm in SC), I should visit the Biltmore Estate.

Re:Fair play

[pherthyl]

Find me a modded up (4 or 5) post that bashes Bill Gates then.

Re:Fair play

[GoofyBoy]

Here you go;

http://slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=206952&thresho ld=4&commentsort=3&mode=thread&cid=16875264

And may I remind you about the Gates-As-Borg icon here.
http://images.slashdot.org/topics/topicms.gif

Bill Gates Assassinated By African Assassin

[b0s0z0ku]

Suspect says: we want our money now! (Dateline Redmond, WA January 2007)

-b.

Re:Stupid

[daeg]

That's not the goal, though, of the foundation. The goal is to invest, but not invest in traditional stock markets. They are investing in human lives and the betterment of mankind as a whole, which is a much stronger investment, where the returns do keep on giving for generations even after the actual money runs dry.

Also, as the foundation proves that it is working, more and more high-power donations will probably pour in, albeit not as large as Gates'. The plan is based on their current funding level and their expected contributions from the Gates family.

Why.

[OrangeStar]

This move makes perfect sense. Many people will argue that they should save and spread the money out, spending the interest. But this idea is going to spend the money on infastructure, research, food, whatever. The interest will be the results of the action. It doesn't make sense to save for the future when there are problems to be solved today.

What I think Bill Should Do

[ThomasFlip]

Is build renewable energy infrastructure. With 50+ billion, you could put a huge dent on fossil fuel burning, help curb global warming, and even make some money. Yeah I think aids and the rest is bad, but there won't be any aids to treat around equitorial regions if nobody is living there anymore! 50+ billion builds a lot of solar/nuclear/wind/tidal power.

Re:What I think Bill Should Do

[Sinbios]

Yes, he should improve the lives of people already relative well off by spending millions on issues only rich people worry about, while people in third world countries die of common diseases that can be cured with $0.2's worth of medicine.

Re:What I think Bill Should Do

[Boreras]

By helping investing greener energy, the bad energy will get cheaper, resulting in cheaper energy for those third-world countries, but that isn't the point. It's about when those third world countries finally get richer, by increasing health, and those who have AIDS will be capable of buying medicine on their own, there is a good solution for long-term energy, and not a world that doesn't have enough energy to provide all, which will result in the rich getting richer, and the poor getting poorer. It will help those people long-term, but yeah, it will also help us, or we will all be running Sun extra-cheap-on-energy computers! That's what I think at least.

Re:What I think Bill Should Do

[maxume]

Cheap energy costs about $1000/KW (yeah, yeah, $1/W, but the quotes are all in KW) to install, so $50 billion translates into about 50 GW of power, a huge number no doubt. To put it in perspective, the most recent estimate a bit of googling spits out for yearly, worldwide energy consumption is 338 exajoules, which about 11000 Gigawatt-Years. That's a really huge number.

Given that $50 billion represents about 2 days worth of economic activity in the US alone, it isn't real important what they do with this particular $50 billion, especially in relation to a task as monumental as providing energy for a global civilization.

Re:What I think Bill Should Do

[sakusha]

Is build renewable energy infrastructure.

Funny you should mention that. He's doing just the opposite. Gates just bought 10% of PNM Resources, a gas and electric utility in Arizona. They don't do renewable energy.

Gates also owns major portions of Home Depot, Canadian National Railway Co, Republic Services (a garbage hauling company), several TV networks, Four Seasons Hotels, Berkshire Hathaway, and several Big Pharmaceutical companies. This is not the profile of an enlightened investor. These are the investments any Robber Baron would make to diversify his holdings.

Keep your eye on Cascade Investments LLC, that's Gates' personal holding company. He's still building his personal fortune, leveraging his monopoly into more areas.

Re:What I think Bill Should Do

[maeka]

With 50+ billion, you could put a huge dent on fossil fuel burning

A ~7% tax on imported oil would raise equal amounts of money every year in the United States while having the added benefit of reducing consumption today.

Re:What I think Bill Should Do

[BasilBrush]

If green issues were his thing, he could have doe something pretty big about CO2 a long time ago for virtually no cost. He could have made the energy saving sleep options in Windows either default or even mandatory. Think of all those tons of CO2 produced by PCs around the world being on but unused for 2/3rds of the day plus weekends.

Good, but why buy Newspapers Today?

[twitter]

It's great to see them want to spend ALL of their money on charity and that they will liquidate their assets to do so. A cynical person might say that any large pile of money will attract people more interested in themselves than the charity's mission. Making the organization spend them money will insure the money goes to the immediate purpose.

Given such intents, it's strange to see the foundation money spent buying independent newspapers. The Contra Costa Times and the San Jose Mercury News don't seem to have much to do with AIDS.

Re:Good, but why buy Newspapers Today?

[spectecjr]

Given such intents, it's strange to see the foundation money spent buying independent newspapers. The Contra Costa Times and the San Jose Mercury News don't seem to have much to do with AIDS.

Although I have no idea why they're doing it, if I had a foundation, I might buy a few independent newspapers so that we at least have a couple of independent companies left to provide the news. They're all getting bought up by Tribune media, Rupert Murdoch and Knight-Ridder.

Re:Good, but why buy Newspapers Today?

[twitter]

if I had a foundation, I might buy a few independent newspapers so that we at least have a couple of independent companies left to provide the news.

If you buy them, they are no longer independent.

If you were Bill Gates, you would already own a lot of media outlets.

Re:Good, but why buy Newspapers Today?

[GoofyBoy]

Newspapers, and old media, are considered a contraian value play.

http://www.marketwatch.com/news/story/story.aspx?s iteid=mktw&guid=%7BA2499749-E385-4B70-B7D2-31C1D10 8C2A1%7D

Re:Stupid

[BoomerSooner]

If the goal is to help people wouldn't it make sense to help them in perpetuity instead of just for the next 50 years?

People will probably need more help going forward, not less. It doesn't concern me. Just my thoughts on the subject.

Save 100 lives today, or one a year for 100 years?

[MDMurphy]

If you could save 100 lives today, wouldn't that be better than saving 1 a year for 100 years? While it's not sure that spending all the money now gets you 100x the benefit, holding back money for the sake of keeping the foundation going isn't necessarily increasing the benefit.

A lot depends on what your target charities are. If you're funding protection for farmers who have bad seasons, then spending it all now isn't going to prevent future bad seasons and will only provide a temporary relief. If your target is a cure or immunization for AIDS then achieving that goal as quickly as possible with the funds available would warrant not holding back.

Putting the benefit you hope to achieve first, above the life of the foundation, seems to be more true to the goals of a foundation.

Re:Stupid

[Surt]

People will probably need more help going forward, not less.

Unless of course, they fix things permanently, now. Then people can need no help going forward. So instead of requiring people to live in mildly improved misery forever, they can do away with the misery altogether.

Idiotic Foundations

[Baldrson]

Any rich guy who leaves his money in a foundation rather than in escrow for a set of objective prize awards, such as the X-Prize, has no recognition of the failed history of foundations.

Hell, the folks at the Ford Foundation are proud of the fact that they call Henry Ford "the grave spinner".

Indeed, the Gates Foundation is probably already failing to get the results they should because their failure to use objective criteria for prize awards creates a systemic malincentive: rewarding proposal writing rather than getting real results.

Re:Idiotic Foundations

[Helios1182]

I'm not sure if this is a troll or not. His foundation does get results, and requires them in order to continue receiving funds. Gates is a shrewd businessman, he isn't wasting his wealth. If people want the money the have to prove they can use it effectively.

Re:Stupid

[PCM2]

If the goal is to help people wouldn't it make sense to help them in perpetuity instead of just for the next 50 years?

If they invest money toward finding cures for diseases, they are helping people in perpetuity.

Re:Never forget.

[bheer]

Yeah, because we all know Bill's money is stained with ill-gotten gains from drugs, gun-running or carcinogenic products. Not. Sometimes you *can* carry a metaphor too far, but all I see it stained by is the egos of several Silicon Valley types who couldn't compete with hard-edged marketing. Frankly, I think the Silicon Valley types will survive the humiliation.

Comment removed

[account_deleted]

Comment removed based on user account deletion

Re:Stupid

[Anonymous Coward]

I think you're missing the point. They're not just giving the money away. The foundation is investing in results. By committing to ultimately spend all funds, a sense of urgency is created--you can't just say "we'll get to that later." You have to achieve results before that money is spent.

Re:Stupid

[Anonymous Coward]

They tend to invest in doing things that will persist for generations

Like Creationist education?

(Also: why does this get modded down to Troll or Flamebait almost instantly, whenever I post it? Is it unreasonable to question where some of the Gates/Buffett largesse is going, considering how much Gates rambles on about the importance of science education to future US competitiveness?)

responsible spending?

[amigabill]

Can that amount of money be spent responsibly in that amount of time? I hope it all gets used for research and the good stuff, not fluffed on new carpeting for the lab offices because there isn't enough useful equipment or scientists to spend it on...

I've got a vote for you now...

[Thaidog]

That must have hurt.

Mwaha

[teknokracy]

So wait.... we have to kill Bill and Melinda to speed up the process??

Repent! Repent!

[flyingfsck]

and sin no more!

Bad new for you Bill, there is no heaven.

Re:Stupid

[BoomerSooner]

Lol, that's likely. Call me up when there is no need for contributions to charities.

Re:Stupid

[maxume]

Because a few tens of thousands of dollars misdirected slightly(by the think center even) is a strange thing to worry about in the face of tens(err, hundreds) of millions of dollars well spent. If the grants to the Discovery Foundation did any damage in 2006, the other activities of the Gates foundation made up for it by sometime around 12:05 on January the 1st.

Thanks for the pointer by the way, I used to have an open mind about Manjoo, now I know he is a worthless hack.

Re:Stupid

[flyingfsck]

Doesn't matter - if you take a fair chunk of money and invest it at a good rate of return, compounded annually, it will eventually be worth nothing. Don't believe me? So how much is a Spanish (the origin of the Dollar sign) worth today? Not to mention Lira, Drachma and a whole zoo of now defunct currencies.

Wrong

[flyingfsck]

Most of their money came from governments. Government departments spend fantastic amounts of money on software - hundreds of millions per year, per state. Now guess where that money comes from.

Re:Save 100 lives today, or one a year for 100 yea

[DrKyle]

They aren't out to save people, they're out to save humanity. If they can do it sooner, rather than later, isn't that better for everybody?

Re:Stupid

[BoomerSooner]

That's assuming there are no new diseases. How likely is that?

Re:Stupid

[LindseyJ]

Is it unreasonable to question where some of the Gates/Buffett largesse is going, considering how much Gates rambles on about the importance of science education to future US competitiveness?

Yes. Almost as unreasonable as preferring one theory about the beginning of time over another.

Re:Stupid

[Atlantis-Rising]

To be spent on transportation analysis projects, not creationist research.

Re:Stupid

[Steppman2]

Quite frankly, it's his money...and since he's decided to give it to charity he should be able to decide what charities to give it to. Technically speaking he could just burn it all to keep his house warm, or buy millions of hookers. Even if he had spent a billion dollars on Christian education that still isn't anywhere near what he gives to everything else. I think respect should be given where it's due, as much as I don't like Microsoft, Bill Gates is giving a lot of money that he earned willingly to help those less fortunate. Thanks Bill, keep it up.

Re:Stupid

[DenDude]

Like Creationist education? From TF(Salon)A

The Gates Foundation responds that it hasn't abandoned science to back intelligent design. Greg Shaw, Pacific Northwest director, explains that the grant to Discovery underwrites the institute's "Cascadia Project," which strictly focuses on transportation in the Northwest. So it looks like the funding is not going to "Creationist Education", but to a project to improve transportation in the Northwest, although it's the same group.

Re:Stupid

[LindseyJ]

That is never going to happen, ever. There are always going to be underprivileged, 'miserable' people. Our entire social structure is built upon that basic assumption, so that the rest of us can live our lives in a better state than they while standing on their shoulders, and those above us can do the same.

Don't like it? You can always try and start your own society where that basic principal doesn't hold true, though history is against those sorts of societies lasting terribly long (or being terribly effective). Failing that, you could kill yourself, or go live by yourself on a desert island someplace. That's the only other way you won't have to deal with it.

Re:Stupid

[maxume]

I *read* the article(emphasis implies 'comprehension'). Most of that money was spent on other projects. Specifically, the Cascadia project. That they gave money to a center that does some good things and some bad things doesn't bother me all that much, especially since they gave money to a good thing.

Great

[Anonymous Coward]

Let's have some more illegal monopolies then! It's good for the world!

Wise Move:Foundations Often Violate Founder Intent

[Nova Express]

This is a wise move on the part of Gates. Time and time again we've seen foundations who violate the intent of the founders, being captured by the bureaucrates running the foundation, who then channel the foundations way from the donor's intent and toward that of the (usually liberal) causes currently fashionable among foundation-running elites. The Ford Foundation and the McArthur Foundation, among many others, have fallen victim to this. A particularly egregious recent example, of course, was funds from The Gloria Wise Boys & Girls club being illegally diverted from charity and into propping up the now-bankrupt liberal radio network Air America.

By stipulating that all fund be distributed in a set period of time, Gates avoids this problem.

Re:Stupid

[desNotes]

You make an excellent point! If I had millions and billions to invest in non-profit causes, investing in one project while another is so against my core beliefs would be a non-starter for me. Questions like how much of the money is going for 'administration' supporting all projects? How much to the board members who support ID/Creationism receive?

This is not a free speech issue, they can speak of their beliefs all the want but it doesn't take away my right to disagree.

Debate?

[Brandybuck]

Debate? What debate? You mean to tell me that there are people out there debating whether or not philanthropy is a good thing?

The mind boggles...

Re:Stupid

[sholden]

Yes because the work done in the fight against, say smallpox, is of no use to you at all since there are other diseases. I guess we should just introduce the virus back into the wild since all those other diseases mean there's no benefit to the current generation from the work to eradicate it.

Re:Stupid

[eck011219]

I think foundations go stale after a while, and perhaps that's why they're doing this. If you allow a foundation to exist perpetually, it has to spend a certain about of effort worrying about how to best invest its money to keep going. Why not set an end date (or, to use one of the more annoying recently made-up terms, allow it to "sunset") and just let it burn bright and hot for a prescribed period of time? Say what you will about Microsoft, but Bill Gates has some truly fantastic ideas about money. The quote about his kids (something along the lines of, "I will leave them enough that they can do anything, but not so much that they can do nothing"), some of the things he's doing with the foundation itself (including this now), and so on, lead me to believe that he's really giving this a lot of thought himself (instead of attaching his name for tax purposes to a foundation that is then run by professional Foundation People).

Could also be that he feels like his legacy should last only a prescribed period of time -- why hold future generations to your ideals? It could be that he trusts future generations to figure out money and what's important for themselves. Or not -- just an errant thought.

I have long been a defender of Bill Gates on his philanthropy -- most of my friends (the Linux geeks in particular, but everyone) seem to think he's not giving enough of his fortune. But if you give it all now, it won't be there later to give more. Could be that ten years from now, the most pressing need in the world will be to rebuild the educational system in the Middle East (after the U.S. bombs the bananas out of the Muslim nations). Or maybe AIDS research will need just a billion dollars more. Or Parkinson's. Or something as bad as AIDS that we don't know about yet. Or whatever. But if he had gone ahead and spent all of it on Africa, he couldn't be effective later.

This, when coupled with the 50-year idea, may well create a nice middle-ground response where they can give generously now but will still have enough scratch to give to something they can't anticipate right now. And if you can budget for how long your finite foundation will last, maybe you can give more every year until it burns out instead of constantly worrying about reinvesting. Wouldn't it be great if a foundation had more people employed to spend money on need than to raise it?

The man's foundation is giving 1.75 BILLION dollars a year (an amount larger than the GDP of a lot of countries, if my almanac is accurate). They've committed to double that in the next three years. I see no reason to nitpick about how he does it. AIDS treatment, education, community development, and a lot of it in Africa, where more people are forgotten every day than are born around the rest of the world. If someone wants to get more aggressive and pony up more money for African nations than Bill Gates, go for it -- none of the other few people who can seem to be doing it, though.*

And on that note, good for Warren Buffett -- attaching his fortune to another of equal size increases its power exponentially.

* What's Wal-Mart giving? I don't know -- I'm actually asking. But I bet it's less than $3.5 billion.

Let's hear your alternative.

[jpellino]

OK, I'll call.
To paraphrase David Kearns, no more prizes for rants, prizes only for solutions.
How would you solve the problem you perceive?
No time machines involved.

Re:Let's hear your alternative.

[Surt]

MS and Bill Gates could offer all the money they still have based on the exploitation of their OS monopoly back to the consumers they hurt. Problem solved.

What a fantastic and sensationalist headline.

[Zorque]

Of course they're going to spend all their money eventually, because eventually (after their deaths, like the story says), Bill will stop being able to make big bucks for the charity. Unless they slow down their spending, of course, but from the sound of the article they have no intention of doing that. And why would they? "We have less money, so let's give less away." That hardly sounds like something a charity would say.

Next on /.: "World is going to end!"
Yeah, eventually.

Re:What a fantastic and sensationalist headline.

[Valar]

You shouldn't talk about things you know nothing about. How charitable foundations/trusts typically work is that they take a huge wad of cash and invest it. This investment makes a rate of return (essentially interest). The foundation then spends the interest. This allows foundations to exist essentially in perpetuity (witness Ford and Rockefeller). The disadvantage is that since the revenue generated by the investment is much smaller than the amount of the generating assets, the foundation can't spend as much as if it just straightforwardly spent all of its assets. This is Bill's strategy-- he wants to make a big impact sooner rather than later, at the cost of not being able to do a little bit each year forever.

Never going to happen

[dangitman]

The Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation has said it will spend all its assets within 50 years of both of them dying.

Bill Gates is a cyborg, and he will assimilate Melinda. How can you kill that which has no life? This is just a clever ruse to make people think he is a mortal human.

Technological Investment

[SonicSpike]

Personally, if it were me, I would invest my wealth in technology. Technology and innovation usually pays back to society an order of magnitude, or more, over time. Look at the money invested by the likes of Edison and Westinghouse and Bell over the turn of the last century. Also look at the return dollar for dollar spent on things like the Apollo program.

The only humanitarian type of place I would spend my money however might be on meritorious/aptitude scholarships. I don't believe on giving anyone anything without some sort of effort/meet-me-part-way on their end, as that tends to enable poor choices and unproductive behavior. It's the old fish vs teach to fish quip.

ATTENTION ADMINS

[Anonymous Coward]

Would you please prevent the person who modded the parent Troll from getting mod points again? There are some other earnest posts in this story's discussion which were also unfairly modded Troll or Flamebait, and I suspect it was the same person.

Re:Stupid

[rhakka]

Way to take it literally.

The point is, with a concentrated effort GREAT gains can be made. With a diffuse effort, small, longer term gains could be made.

Think of money as energy. Low-level energy isn't all that useful. Concentrated bursts of energy are much more useful.

I'm not saying this plan is right or wrong, but there is definitely a debate to be had. I never questioned the wisdom of perpetual interest being the best route before, but I can see the point here; it's about more than money. You can reap dividends in human terms, by focusing on something and stomping on it hard now.

To illustrate the point, what if Bill took his money and split it among a very large number of poor people? If he invested, and divided up the interest, it would be nearly a nearly useless gesture. But the raw cash could give bigger checks that could actually be of use to the poor people, who could use that money to "leg up" out of poverty. Again, just to illustrate the point, not that he should actually go out and do that.

Re:Phew!

[VJ42]

So my inherited family fortune originally built on slavery and then bootlegging is finally respectable now! Thank a god!

Oh wait, it's always been respectable, hasn't it. Sounds like an average member of the British aristocracy, except until recently they also got an inherited seat in the legislature (The house of Lords). They no longer get an automatic peerage, but they still have their wealth

That's the thing about wealth in America: nobody cares how you got it just so long as you got it. As I explained above, it's not just that way in the over there States, it's the same all over the world, from here in the UK, to corrupt officials in third world governments.

Something we don't know here?

[geobeck]

Hmm... the summary says that the foundation will spend all of its money within 50 years of Bill and Melinda dying. The headline says the foundation will spend all of its money within 50 years.

Does someone know something that Bill and Melinda don't?

Re:Something we don't know here?

[winomonkey]

Actually, FTFA, the money will be spent within 50 years of the death of the last trustee. Even if Bill and Melinda die tomorrow, the third trustee (who happens to be in his mid-seventies) will have to die before the clock starts ticking on the Gates' Foundation's Self-Destruct mechanism. However, given the delays in shipping Vista, we might manage to milk a couple hundred of years from the foundation before it explodes.

Money vs Wealth.

[camperdave]

Well, Spanish dollars go for $150+ on eBay. Not bad for a coin that used to be just a dollar. Ancient Drachma are also worth many times what they were in the past. However, that is irrelevant. When money is invested, it isn't stored as coinage anymore. It is stored as precious metals, real estate, and other assets. When these are cashed out, they are cashed out in the currency of the day.

Damn

[alexjohnc3]

I was hoping Bill Gates would spend a lot of his money in research for increasing longevity. I guess he's planning on dying at an average age then...

Re:Stupid

[Simon80]

Excepting the 50000 a year going to the salary of the guy who runs the entire think tank, including the ID crap.. It's only 50000 compared to hundreds of millions, but it angers me nonetheless, in the same way that people spending a measly hundred bucks or two on Windows drives me nuts.

Stealing?

[Poromenos1]

Doing some good with the money you stole from people doesn't make up for the stealing.

Last time I checked, MS hadn't taken from me any money that I didn't want to give them.

Re:Stealing?

[Surt]

That's great for you. It's not true for a lot of people.

Re:And those Google guys

[MLease]

How do you know they're not contributing anonymously? Some people believe that doing so is more noble than trumpeting their benevolence to the world.

-Mike

Pro-competition?

[benhocking]

I know it might be crazy considering the word "Gates" here, but perhaps he's thinking that with an organization doling out > $1 billion a year, other would-be philanthropists might actually be less inclined to start new foundations? Perhaps there's an understanding that part of the reason behind some people's philanthropy is the need to be the "biggest" donor.

On one hand, having this foundation in perpetuity might create a very high bar that would only push such "competition" even higher. On the other hand, it might be seen as such an impossibly high bar that it ends up stifling "competition".

Won't happen

[acordes]

I don't think this will happen. Running a large foundation like this can be a very lucrative business. Whoever is running it after the Gateses die has a very large monetary incentive to never let the money run dry. Why give away all the money when you know it will force you to find another job?

Re:Won't happen

[Copid]

I think that in this case, the answer to that is because it would be against the law to do otherwise. I'm pretty certain that the foundation will have it built into the charter, and I'm also pretty sure that the charter will offer no way of changing that provision without an executive order from Bill himself.

The future is great but...

[SuperStretchy]

People seem to be forgetting that the Gates Foundation has already given away over $13B- which does not include the personal contributions he's made.

His business practice might have been shady at some points (as per the anti-Microsoft viewpoint of most /. readers it seems), but he, despite physical appearance, is not the character Gary Winston from "Antitrust".

fuck you - we're in it for the tax break

[danske url]

i haven't read all the comments, but i'm betting/ hoping that a good portion of them say "we're in it for the tax write off - and nothing more" in short regardless of the cause, we lent you the money, if you didn't get a result fuck you! you're not entitled to the tax break for as long as we are and no more. cheers bill, whatever problems you caused, we're really grateful you chipped in with your help.

Re:Wise Move:Foundations Often Violate Founder Int

[Fnkmaster]

Using the word "liberal" like a dirty word, and ranting about "foundation-running elites" and Air America makes you sound a bit crazy and detracts from an otherwise valid point.

You might want to seek counseling about that anger problem you have.

Re:Stupid

[lilfields]

I figure that's why Warren Buffet jumped on board, it seems that the Charity will be ran like a holdings company, which IMO is better than simply giving away assets to often irresponsible recipients. I love the idea of a more free market approach to charity, if you want to call it "free market".

Re:Increase access to technology?

[WED Fan]

No, the Gates foundation is about feeding (millions of) men for a day, not teaching them to fish.

Yeah, those schools, health centers, and teaching materials have nothing to do with teaching the poor of Africa.

Re:Stupid

[quizzicus]

Keep in mind that spending money now can create more money in the future. If you cure AIDS, you don't need to pay for medication anymore. If you build a highway, that's a permanent enhancement to an economy. And then, the economic benefit of universal good will (being optimistic) cannot be overestimated.

Re:Stupid

[GigG]

(Also: why does this get modded down to Troll or Flamebait almost instantly, whenever I post it? Is it unreasonable to question where some of the Gates/Buffett largesse is going, considering how much Gates rambles on about the importance of science education to future US competitiveness?)

It might help if you pointed to original source material instead of some damn blog.

Re:Stupid

[Yvanhoe]

Because some ethic things to do have no way to return profits, because with 3.5 Billions one time, you may have enough funds to give away medicine to erradicate entirely a disease NOW with a good degree of certitude while trying to create a virtuous cycle or a very long term project is something we just don't manage to do.

Maybe Bill doesn't want to give an economy theory or model a chance, maybe he just want results that he knows will happen by just spending huge amounts of cash. So far, the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation has had good results.

Re:Stupid

[jpop32]

Not to mention Lira, Drachma and a whole zoo of now defunct currencies.

Not such a good examples, I'd say. 1Euro gets you exactly 340.750 Greek Drachma. Or 1936.27 Italian Lira. And the rate will not change that soon. Or ever.

Look it up: http://www.euro.ecb.int/en/section/conversion.html

Robin Hood

[mpcooke3]

Yes, I find the whole thing quite interesting.

Let's say I burgle one house, sell the stuff and use the money to save 3 dieing african children.
How many houses would i have to burgle to become a saint?

Bill Gates != Microsoft

[slapys]

It is important here to draw a distinction between the behavior of Bill Gates and the Microsoft corporation. For all intents and purposes, the two are severed. Steve Ballmer is the figurehead of Microsoft now; he has elected to take responsibility for the direction of the corporation, and we should hold him to that responsibility. At this point, Bill Gates is just a wealthy man, and a wealthy man giving a percentage of his money to charitable causes is not unprecedented.

My point is that I do not believe that Mr. Gates' contribution absolves Microsoft of its unethical business practices, at least since Gates passed executive control of the company to Steve Ballmer. I applaud Bill Gates' contribution, let me make myself clear. It does not, however, give the company an indefinite license to stifle innovation in the software market. While giving to humanitarian causes is a noble gesture, software is important, and will become remain so in the near future.

For example, consider the field of bioinformatics - the application of the computing sciences and biology to solve complex problems in medicine and related fields. It is possible that innovation in software could produce a cure for AIDS, or cancer, or anything else, just as much as a charitable foundation can. In fact, some of Gates' money could be going to fund research in some of these areas. If the Microsoft corporation continues to vigorously fight to maintain its monopoly and forestall non-Microsoft innovation, then Bill Gates and Microsoft are indeed fighting for opposite causes.

The X Prize is a foundation

[GoofyBoy]

>Any rich guy who leaves his money in a foundation rather than in escrow for a set of objective prize awards, such as the X-Prize,

The X Prize is a foundation.
http://www.xprizecup.com/go.php?sub=go_xprize_foun dation

>has no recognition of the failed history of foundations.

PBS, as one example, is heavily funded by foundations. No "prizes" here. Do you consider PBS part of a long history of failure?

Re:The X Prize is a foundation

[Baldrson]

Yes, PBS is a case in point. PBS is properly called Propaganda Broadcasting Service.

Re:Stupid

[Hijacked Public]

Only if convicted, and its Bill gates we're discussing here, so that isn't likely.

Everybody is missing the point

[Marcos Eliziario]

I think that Bill's desire is to avoid Gates foundation turning into a bureauchratic entity that spends more energy on its continuity than on its proposed goals. Bill has seen what almost unlimited money and power can do, for good, and for bad, and don't want to make his foundation a monster to haunt the future. Look at Ford Foundation and Rockfeller Foundation: they mostly fund projects that have more to do with the political views of the administrators than with their original goals. Surelly, if Henry Ford was able to see some of the projects funded by Ford Foundation today, I am pretty sure he would get very, very upset. Not that those projects are wrong or not, but they surely aren't aligned with the original founder goals.

Gary Kildall.

[trudyscousin]

I'm really certain he'd agree with that. If he were still alive, that is.

The Gatesfather III

[paniq]

Keep going Bill, and the Gates family will be legitimate one day!

Gates is a smart man

[Susceptor]

he understand the nature of bureaucracy better then anyone. he knows that if his foundation continues to exist indefinitely, it will only stagnate and become just another institution. Putting a time limit on when the money can be spent will allow for a sense of urgency that such organizations need, and it will likely give people who need that help the most bang for their buck since a lot more money can be used to do bigger projects.

Curious?

[Theiving GNerd]

He is giving to charities and such, does this not merit tax deductions later on in the process at which time he will get back XX% of his money?

Re:Wise Move:Foundations Often Violate Founder Int

[daigu]

Beautiful. You cite Capital Research to back you up. It's an organization "whose stated mission is to do 'opposition research' exposing the funding sources behind consumer, health and environmental groups." I too need to read more Capital Research because of those terrible liberal causes like watching out for consumers and addressing public health issues - like poisons in the environment - are way out of hand. Thank you for bringing this very important research to our attention, my good sir!

I also like your sense of fair play and objectivity in selecting Michelle Malkin. I much prefer her 2005 perspective rather than this article from 2006 from the liberal spin machine. While we are talking about her ground-breaking research, we should also point out her other important ideas such as her book documenting the important need to bring back Japanese-style internment camps for Arab Americans - which is also coincidentaly based on the cutting-edge research of another person doing important work exposing the myth of the so-called "holocaust".

I can only applaud the efforts of the Slashdot moderators to make sure that your comments get pushed right to the top. No one should be compelled to go through another day without an awareness of these two fascinating, unbiased sources of good information. As a good conservative, I am finally starting to feel like Slashdot is like a second home.

Re:Stupid

[ChrisMaple]

After a while, foundations diverge from the principles of their founders, the Ford Foundation being a prime example. Limiting the life of the foundation seems like the most effective way of preventing this from happening.

Re:And those Google guys

[MLease]

Where? Tax returns? The IRS won't disclose them. The funds appear, but there are many anonymous donors who give money to many charitable institutions, and it would take some serious effort to track down the sources. Who would do that, and what would be the point of doing so? -Mike

Bullshit

[Baldrson]

Read the Gates Foundation page on what they're doing about sub Sahara African malaria and then read Plague Time by Paul Ewald describing precisely why none of the approaches used by the Gates Foundation can be really effective against a sexually reproducing, horizontally transmitted pathogen like malaria -- and describing the approach that actually works -- which of course the Gates Foundation can't pursue because none of the grant writers are serious about really stopping the scourge of malaria.

It is convenient you left off Pacific Ethanol

[everphilski]

Cascade Investments, LLC, Invests in Pacific Ethanol.

Re:It is convenient you left off Pacific Ethanol

[sakusha]

I hadn't heard of that one, but I checked it out and PE is literally a drop in the bucket, compared to Gates massive holdings in conventional energy from gas, coal, and nuclear. The PE investment is $84 million, nobody quite knows the full extent of his other energy deals but I read estimates of over $750 million just in this year alone.

Re:It is convenient you left off Pacific Ethanol

[sakusha]

Mr. Troll:

Ethanol is a liquid. $84Million of ethanol is a literal drop in the bucket of Gates' massive holdings of oil and LNG (liquified natural gas).

Re:It is convenient you left off Pacific Ethanol

[everphilski]

Their total equity funding is $184M. That would make Gates a major player...

http://biz.yahoo.com/prnews/061127/nym218.html?.v= 49

$3.5B a year? I wish they'd spend $200M on fusion

[XNormal]

That's $200M one time sum, not even $200M a year.

If what Robert Bussard says is right, that's the investment required for a conclusive proof of concept of his electrostatic confinement fusion reactor. After that there won't be any shortage of commercial investment.

Imagine a reactor converting boron-11 and hydrogen directly to electricity with no radioactive waste. Too good to be true, you say? What if there's a 10% chance be is right? 1%? Even in this case the investment would have an average social ROI far exceeding most of what the Gates foundation is doing.

I'd have thought the 50 years

[goldcd]

would be to ensure the foundation doesn't carry on forever, supporting professional trustees and dribbling the interest out bit by bit.
There are many problems this money can solve now, as Gates seems to realize. Also, if you are embarking on a campaign to erradicate certain diseases, you only need to do it once. In face it's not that you only need to do it once, it's if you did try to do it a bit by bit, you'd never succeed.

Re:Wise Move:Foundations Often Violate Founder Int

[BasilBrush]

It's probably not even a valid point, given that he's referring to right wing propagandist sites to make it. This guy is your typical Bill O'Reilly watcher and Rush Limbaugh listener.

Wow.

[bottlerocket]

That has got to be the most cynical post I've ever seen on Slashdot.

Re:Wow.

[ScentCone]

That has got to be the most cynical post I've ever seen on Slashdot.

Nope! I'm calling it like I see it. I'm in favor of what he's doing. Who could argue with spending a foundation's money in a way that encourages the underpinnings of a healthy populace and economy? Don't treat the symptoms, treat the problems. The third world has had its symptoms treated for decades, with essentially no improvement. The Gates Foundation is working on the underlying problems. I happily support them. Now, if that's cynical, we have to have a discussion about semantics.

Wait.. rubbish

[Sapphon]

Sorry, just read your post again: you ARE implying that aggreagte consumption (i.e. what a household spends in a year) be taxed.

That's just totally impractical. How are you going to track that? Businesses have an incentive to report their employees pay, b/c that's an expense for them. Households aren't going to tell you how much they spend, because by understating the amount they get taxed less. Shops can't report it, unless you require ID for every - EVERY - purchase. You can forget about trackable electronic payments: cash will be king, again, for the same reasons that, if you want avoid income nowadays, you do everything with cash.

Pie in the sky idea mate, sorry.

Re:Wait.. rubbish

[h2_plus_O]

That's just totally impractical. How are you going to track that? Businesses have an incentive to report their employees pay, b/c that's an expense for them. Households aren't going to tell you how much they spend, because by understating the amount they get taxed less. Shops can't report it, unless you require ID for every - EVERY - purchase. You can forget about trackable electronic payments: cash will be king, again, for the same reasons that, if you want avoid income nowadays, you do everything with cash.

You're making it more complicated and impractical than it needs to be. It's not as if the only way to do taxes is the way income taxes are done- by tallying up and tracking everything you do and paying later. You don't have to track consumption and pay the bill later, you would pay consumption tax at the point of sale and that (along with a standard rebate) could be your whole relationship to a taxing authority. There's no need to track income if it's not taxable, and there's no need for your employer to track expenses if they're not used to deduct from their income. ...and there's no need for the state to track you personally, to know about your income, or really anything you do if that's not the basis for tax revenue. The only thing that makes *that* necessary is the desire to tax the same behavior differently in different people, based on what they earn or own. THAT is what makes a tax system invasive, complicated, and totally impractical. Not that that has stopped us. Note that in the US, the cost to comply with the tax code is estimated to be near 29% of the revenue it generates.

Re:Wait.. rubbish

[Sapphon]

You don't have to track consumption and pay the bill later, you would pay consumption tax at the point of sale and that (along with a standard rebate) could be your whole relationship to a taxing authority.

Interesting... so, like of paying income tax throughout the year and then claiming back expenses to get a tax return, you would pay consumption tax on everything througout the year, but then - rather than proving your consumption level - you are simply given a rebate equal to what has been decided is the level of income that is tax free.

Problems: unless all items of consumption are taxed at the same rate, the rebate will favour households that consume lower-taxed goods (get same rebate, but have paid less tax).
What about households that consume less than this rebate amount? That's essentially untargeted welfare, isn't it?
And business? Do they still get to claim employee pay as an expense? Factor inputs are, after all, that which a company is 'consuming'?
I think the model needs to be complex, to be fair/just/equitable.

I reckon there's probably just as many problems with the 'consumption tax' model as there are with the 'income tax' model - the international aspects, my god! Everyone'll be earning in the US and consuming in Canada - and the effort required to implement it would be better spent fixing the model we (a global 'we') have.

Re:Wait.. rubbish

[h2_plus_O]

You're still trying to make it more complex than necessary.

rather than proving your consumption level - you are simply given a rebate equal to what has been decided is the level of income that is tax free

substitute 'consumption' where you said 'income' and you've got it. Peg the rebate level to, say... poverty-level consumption, or poverty-level-index plus $10, or whatever the right tax-free consumption threshold you see fit.

unless all items of consumption are taxed at the same rate, the rebate will favour households that consume lower-taxed goods (get same rebate, but have paid less tax).

2 points:
1) I'd strongly discourage tiering of tax rates, purely for reasons of simplicity. A single flat rate on retail goods would work. Leaving used goods and b-2-b transactions un-taxed would promote efficiency and favor the used goods market, as well as avoid the impossibility of enforcing the tax when you or I try to sell our used video cards.
2) How is that a problem? No, this is the point- by taxing behavior, rather than particulars about what one earns, we reward value-based judgment, which is good for the economy.

What about households that consume less than this rebate amount? That's essentially untargeted welfare, isn't it?

Not untargeted at all- it simply targets behavior, rather than some other factor (for example, income or belt size). This creates the potential for anonymous taxation, and vastly reducing complexity. Consumption correlates much more closely to ability to pay (wealth) than does income, and does not require extensive record-keeping.
If someone making $500k/yr wants to live at the poverty line and avoid consumption taxes, they'll put their money in the bank or in the market where it'll be used to grow the economy, spurring further economic activity- and in doing so they'll free up not only their own capital, but also the resources they would have consumed. Any way you look at it, it's a win-win if the tax system favors capital formation, savings, and investment over consumption.

And business? Do they still get to claim employee pay as an expense? Factor inputs are, after all, that which a company is 'consuming'?

If you tax business, you just create a cascading tax, which is bad for business and raises no 'new' revenue. In a sense, business doesn't pay taxes, it passes the charge along to 3 possible places:
1) To revenue, in the form of higher prices or lower profits,
2) to labor, in the form of lower pay for employees, foregone training or fewer employees, and/or
3) to capital, in the form of foregone investment in infrastructure, equipment, inventory, etc.
It's estimated that between 22 and 29% of the price of anything you purchase that was made in the U.S. is what it cost your whole supply chain to comply with and pay their taxes. You already pay corporate income tax, it's just cascaded in to the prices of goods you buy.
For this reason, a single-tiered tax at the end point of retail sales makes sense. Let the tax be expressed as tax, not as a rolled-in-to-the-unit-cost inflation in price.

I reckon there's probably just as many problems with the 'consumption tax' model as there are with the 'income tax' model - the international aspects, my god! Everyone'll be earning in the US and consuming in Canada - and the effort required to implement it would be better spent fixing the model we (a global 'we') have

There will undoubtedly be problems to solve, but none of the ones you've presented are nearly as bad or as numerous as the ones we have today. Consume in Canada? Fine. ...but if you bring your Canadian-bought car back to the US you'll pay the consumption tax in the form of an excise. Just like you do today already. I think you're drastically underestimating how bad our current tax system is.
Consumption taxation is efficient, handled by software built in to cash registers, transparent, easy to understand, far less intrusive than income taxation, and is easy to audit with 4th grade math. Infrastructure for it is already in place.

Party! Party! Party!

[Ethelred Unraed]

I predict the money will be spent on one mother of a blowout.

Then all of Bill's misdeeds will be forgiven many times over. :-)

Cheers,

Ethelred

Waste

[Mark_MF-WN]

Well, if I and my homeless-insane clientele consider the aforementioned anthrax to be useful, wouldn't that make me productive? Anthrax is definitely useful for rendering large amounts of land uninhabitable for centuries at a time. I could also spend my time producing pet rocks, or something equally inane. The point is more that productivity is in the eye of the beholder. I would call alternative underground artists productive -- there are definitely lots of people who wouldn't. I would also call producing SUVs counterproductive, since any labour spent producing an SUV could have been better spent producing two conventional automobiles that cost less and are superior in every meaningful way.

OK...

[jpellino]

1. How do you decide who was "hurt"?

2. How do you find them?

3. What do you do about the dead ones?

4. How much will all of the above cost?

5. What do you tell the people who will now die of common diseases who would have been saved by that money?

Nothing's as simple as it seems.

Re:OK...

[Surt]

1. How do you decide who was "hurt"?
Anyone who bought a computer with an MS OS in a given timeframe.

2. How do you find them?
You allow them to come forward to reclaim their money.

3. What do you do about the dead ones?
The utterly common legal process: it goes to their descendants if any.

4. How much will all of the above cost?
How much does allowing crime and graft to go unremedied cost?

5. What do you tell the people who will now die of common diseases who would have been saved by that money?
What do you tell the people who will die of starvation because that money got spent on diseases instead of food distribution work?

Nothing's as simple as it seems.
Indeed. Think about it.

Re:OK...

[jpellino]

1. How do you decide who was "hurt"?
Anyone who bought a computer with an MS OS in a given timeframe.

How much do they deserve?
How much more did MS make than they should have?
Would you include recompence for lost revenues to other OS producers?

2. How do you find them?
You allow them to come forward to reclaim their money.

Based on the rebate or class action settlement model, that's a 50% solution at best.

3. What do you do about the dead ones?
The utterly common legal process: it goes to their descendants if any.

Again, enormous holes in that process. Look at all the unclaimed money in state coffers that people already had control of.

4. How much will all of the above cost?
How much does allowing crime and graft to go unremedied cost?

You didn't answer.

5. What do you tell the people who will now die of common diseases who would have been saved by that money?
What do you tell the people who will die of starvation because that money got spent on diseases instead of food distribution work?

Again, no answer.

But given that implied choice, you're saving 1 of 2 groups of lives if you pick either medicine or food.
You're suggesting rebates for MS users vs. saving any of those lives.

It's very smart to plan to zero out the foundation

[JoeBackward]

It's very smart to plan to zero out the foundation in a fixed amount of time.

Big perpetual foundations attract lots of greedy types. After the demise of the people who established the foundation, it becomes easier for it to lose its way and start focusing on self-perpetuation.

This announcement by the Gates foundation (which by the way includes the Buffett fortune) shows real unselfishness.

Ends justify the means.

[jotaeleemeese]

How wonderful that is.

We knew that, thanks.

[jotaeleemeese]

It has always being about power. And we do know what too much power can do to people....