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Dark Cloud Over Good Works of Gates Foundation
theodp writes "Justice Eta, a Nigerian infant, has an ink spot on his tiny thumb to show he was immunized against polio and measles thanks to the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation. But Justice still faces respiratory trouble, which locals call 'the cough' and blame on fumes and soot spewing from 300-foot flames at a nearby oil plant owned by Itallian energy giant Eni, whose investors include the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation. Part one of an L.A. Times investigation reports that the world's largest philanthropy pours money into investments that are hurting many of the people its grants aim to help. With the exception of tobacco companies, the foundation's asset managers do not avoid investments in firms whose activities conflict with the mission to do good."
On the other hand, Eni isn't likely to comply with "enviromental limitations" if it doesn't have the investors to finance a transition to more enviromental friendly ways of production.
-V
There's a problem. If he simply signed a $100 million check to help some starving people in, let's say, an African country, the local government would say: "Nice! Please hand us the check and we'll take care of the details!". Then the money would simply disappear. This, by the way, also happens each and every time the rich countries forgive loans made to poor countries.
Any good charity towards these people must be done in such a way as to minimize governmental robbery. Simply giving away a big amount of money is the worst way to accomplish any goal whatsoever.
Conservatism: (n.) love of the existing evils. Liberalism: (n.) desire to substitute new evils for the existing ones.
We've tried cutting checks for hundreds of millions to fight hunger. It all ends up in the pockets of warlords and terrorists. Today hunger is a political problem, not an economic one.
Gates is spending billions to fight malaria. Is that not a worthwhile endeavor? How about you go out and build a $30 billion fortune and then you can direct how it's spent.
That's why I use the The Co-operative Bank
Bob
Listen to my latest album here
BS.
The Gates foundation has an endowment of over $30 Billion dollars(granted Bill only donated a small amount of that, most of it was from Warren Buffet).
Bill Gates also doesn't make anywhere near $40 billion a year. His net worth is $53 billion, but his salary is less than a million. Of course he still probably makes a few billion per year just off interest and investments, but that's a whole other topic.
According to Forbes Bill gave away about $30 billion just in the period from 2000-2004, the Gates foundation is just a small part of that. So he gave away $30 billion, and has a net worth of $53 billion, that means he's given away more than 1/3rd of his total net worth. Sure that doesn't put him in the poor house, but there is absolutely no reason to minimize what he has done.
So please don't make up crap saying 'but it's only 1/20,000th of his money' when that is clearly BS, and 5 seconds of looking up the numbers, which are fairly publicly available, would show that's not the case.
Shit adds up at the bottom...
For those that are not familiar with Nigeria, this is not a standard case of industry versus activist.
The Niger delta is in serious trouble; the environmental contamination there is beyond anything you would believe. My company had been contracted by one of the large oil companies there to investigate cleanup of some of their contaminated sites. They gave us some project specs.
The sites were huge. Gigantic. The scale of the project was larger than anything we had ever considered, and we work on some pretty large projects. Our existing cleanup efforts include some of the largest contaminated sites in the U.S. and Europe. We went to the delta to do some investigating and preliminary tests, and were shocked with what we found. On average, each contaminated site was 10x larger than the specs we were provided.
The environmental "mess" there is huge, and terribly depressing. It's a beautiful region, but you cannot imagine the scale of the contamination. It would take decades upon decades of pouring billions of dollars into remediation to bring the delta region near the environmental standards of the U.S. or Europe, neither of which are particularly high.
Furthermore, in terms of economics; these giant oil companies are ugly, monopolistic ventures with high levels of foreign and domestic (Nigerian) government involvement. They do things no "sane" company would do.
Don't respond with the usual, "These people wouldn't be better off with no jobs" bullshit. These companies have literally destroyed the region, annihilating the local agriculture and local industry. Not through competition, but through force; the region is so polluted that nothing but a resource extraction company can survive there. As far as I'm concerned, this represents use of force; which should be prohibited under capitalist frameworks.
It's really sad what is going on over there.
The main gist of the article as I read it, is that The LA Times (and others) dissapprove of the "firewall" between the Gates' Foundation investments & charitable giving.
Essentially, the Foundation's mission isn't allowed to influence its investment strategy & this setup is set to be formalized even further.
The LA Times (and others) want this to change so that the investments support or at a minimum, do not detract from, the Foundation's goals.
[Fuck Beta]
o0t!
http://www.commondreams.org/views/071900-105.htm
As is typical in our current economy, the abundance of natural resources typically translates into the abuse and impoverishment of the people who live near the resources.
Back on topic, if you had read the original article it goes into great detail on how the Gates Foundation annually gives away 5% of its value towards certain causes, only to directly counter those causes with the investments it makes with the remaining 95%. This isn't Gates hating, this is the Gates Foundation being hypocritical.
I went to the city because I wished to live without deliberation.
Nearly the entire current endowment is from contributions that Gates has made. Buffett has made commitments, but not actually transfered the money. See:
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http://www.nytimes.com/2006/06/26/business/26buff
Nerd rage is the funniest rage.
When you look at stocks or funds you look at the profit to you, and often do not see or ignore the negative things that you may be contributing to.
There's an entire class of funds that solves this problem. It's called SRI: socially responsible investing. Funds in this category avoid companies involved in military weapons, gambling, tobacco, etc., and they invest more heavily in companies with good track records in dealing with the environment, fair treatment of employees, and so on. Because these funds are focused more on morals than on profit, they typically don't have returns as high as other funds, but that's a small price to pay for being a socially responsible investor.
If you're interested, start by checking out Domini and Pax World; they're two of the largest and oldest SRI funds.
You have a romanticized view of African history. I don't know what motive you have for pinning the ills of the world on whites and on capitalism, but a cursory examination of reality will show that Africa and Africans had their own share of self-made problems prior to white people even existing, much less being able to read, build armies, or colonize other lands.
An inconvenient fact reparitionists tend to overlook is that the majority of slaves sold to North America from Africa were captured by warring African tribes or Eurasian Moslems, and sold willingly to white buyers. Where did this money go? Not to other whites or colonists.
Despite this inherently evil start, now the majority of African Americans in this country lead a better life than their distant relatives in Africa. Pick any standard of measure you like-- i think the generality still holds.
My opinions are my own, and do not necessarily represent those of my employer.
Well, in the instance of oil companies, many of their plants are in poor regions and have very bad environmental records. The article talks about how one plant in South Africa has had dozens of spills or leaks in the last decade or so. These companies have the technology to clean up the plants (they use it in other locations), but since the locals are poor and the government regulations are lax, they going on poisoning the population. If you making tons of profit, you can definitely afford to clean up your act. (Note: I don't think making profit is inherently evil, which is why I don't support extra taxes on energy companies, but I also don't support their huge subsidies for exploration and drilling).
Also, I'd love to see you provide a modern example of people being dislocated from their farm-land in order to build an oil field (or any other kind of business), and then having no option but to work for that company. For some reason I get the distinct impression that you're just talking out of your ass.
Ok, let's try the Ijaw in the Niger Delta of Nigeria. Those who live, have lived, there for generations, have had their land taken from them and given to multinational oil companies. In return they've had oil and chemical spills as well as constant gas flares. AllAfrica has a number of articles on the Nigeria oil delta and what those living there have to live through.
FalconShould there be a Law?