Slashdot Mirror
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."
You still see the Gates Foundation doing good things but why is it that so many foundations of insurmountable wealth are somehow ignorant of the economic problems they persist for those they try to help?
My work here is dung.
I was expecting something about windows, but this is a valid "conflict of interest" I would contend. Maybe the foundation wouldn't get such a good rate of return going with "safer" companies, but it would help people in the long run. But then again, if these companies are providing employment, closing them down could be bad for the workers in the country. A bad double edged sword to have.
Umm. Bit different from being bitched at for not fixing all problems, and being bitched at for inadequately fixing problems caused by you.
-- perl -e'print pack"H*","6e656d6f406d38792e6f7267"'
If you look closely at all of the funds that you can choose from,
you may well find that most of them have big oil, or questionable companies like Microsoft or Walmart.
It is very difficult, on inspection to make good picks that really fit your morals.
But this is the key problem. 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.
Oh my god, how shortsighted. Investing in INDUSTRY in these countries IS A GOOD THING. These people need jobs. These countries need to be integrated in the Global Market. People need to quit criticizing investments in the third world. Investing in the third world IS philantropy, and Bill Gates is the biggest Philanthropist of the 21st century at this point. Shortsightedness... aargh!
Yeah, can't they be like the rest of us who are consistently only good and never do anything with direct or indirect effects that are mixed or outright bad?
Kent M Pitman
Philosopher, Technologist, Writer
This looks like another "lets connect the dots" piece. Perhaps it will draw attention to the problem and a definitive study can be done and a cleanup will follow. Pieces like this inevitably come off looking like their saying the Gate Foundation would be better off not existing at all. Always with the negative vibes. Hey, I'm not a Gate fan and certainly not a Windows flag-waver, but the Gates Foundation to me is the only positive thing I can see Bill doing. I'm all for it.
As to the guy above who thinks charities should be losing money not making it, that is just idiotic.
Once an asshole, always an asshole.
Did you buy any gasoline recently? Had anything delivered by truck? Bought anything in plastic packaging? Used any electricity in the last, oh, 2 minutes?
Get off your high horse.
The US never had any jobs or industries, and we did just fine!
Comment of the year
No, they are bitched about because they actively contribute to the problems. Plenty of charities do good without doing the kind of harm that is described here, either because they manage any investments consistently with their charitable mission rather than largely independently of it, or because they simply operate on their current donations and don't have large investment portfolios in the first place.
davecb5620@gmail.com
Do you have any evidence of this? Organizations like the Gates foundation have to publicly document where their money is and where it is going. And it isn't going back into the pockets of the Gates family; on the contrary the Gates family is pushing more of their money into it and have declared an intention of donating virtually all of their wealth into the foundation, and not pass it on to their children.
For all the bluster of charitable works, Bill Gates could personally solve many of the problems in the U.S.A. or the world with a personal check. Obviously, not all of them, but a lot of them. Anywhere people are starving, Bill Gates could, if he were REALLY concerned with good works, spend 100 million dollars (That's like a $100 to you and me) and feed them all.You obviously don't know much about economics; you simply cannot spend 100 million dollars and have hunger go away. Feeding the starving people of Niger is not just a question of calling up Domino's pizza and sending a big order to Niamey.
How many cities and towns need schools? How many people are dying because of no health care? How much real suffering is there that he could fix?Not as much as you apparently believe. The population of the USA is 300 million, and Gates' net worth is $25 billion. If he just distributed his wealth evenly to every citizen of the USA, that would only be about $80 per person. In the grand scheme of things, that isn't that much money.
Philanthropy is difficult - thats why you have groups like the United Way that waste millions of dollars on "administration".
Bill Gates does not make $40 billion per year. He "only" has a net worth of around $50 billion. Around $29 billion of that will go to his charitable foundation, and the rest to other charities upon his death. Your $40 billion income / $2 million donation per year figures are way off scale.
I also challenge your view that you are some kind of superhero because you donate a bigger percentage of your income than Gates does (and YOU don't donate a bigger percentage FYI). It's not the thought that counts, it's the results. Bill Gates has donated more money than you will ever see in your lifetime. Your donation, while commendable, is nothing more than a pittance. The fact that you donate some large portion of your middle class income does not magically make more ill people well. It may make you feel better about yourself however.
Um, nice piece of completely unfounded conjecture. Also, it doesn't make logical sense even from a circumstantial point of view. The billionaires are investing in their foundations to "make money?" You do realize that they can't get it back out, right? The foundation makes money, true...which is good, as it allows it to spend way, way more money fixing problems. Assuming a fairly normal rate of return, the foundation should be able to spend its entire (current) endowment over the next 7 years and yet still have the same amount of money at the end of that time...meaning it can keep doing it. And this idea that Gates should just be sending us all a $100 check? Are you brain dead? First, since he is clearly more interested in third-world disease and poverty than he is with the home-grown (and comparatively less miserable) variety, we'd be talking about a few billion checks, not a couple hundred million. Which means the foundation's endowment would only be like $20 per recipient. But even if it was a hundred...you think everybody having a small bit of cash (which won't last) would be better than curing HIV, malaria, and tuberculosis, and working on better ways to get clean water and food to the third world? That's dumb as hell; the value of the foundation is having such a big pile of cash in one place where it can be spent in really big chunks on research and large-scale health projects. The benefit of these initiatives to the people they serve are many, many times greater than the per-capita amount spent to pursue them.
You seem to think that the foundation doesn't do anything important. This suggests you simply haven't made any attempt to find out what they are about. Add to this your complete lack of logic and your unfounded conclusions, and it comes off sounding really ignorant.
Given a choice between free speech and free beer, most people will take the beer.
Capitalist hardball is the American national sport, not baseball, always has been.
Hatred of the entrepreneur may drive some needed reforms, but is notoriously confined and short-lived in the states.
One reason for this, of course, is that the American entrepreneurial capitalist is one of the most civil and responsible examples of the breed, any European with a sense of history will understand this perfectly.
The vast majority of mutual funds that are turning any kind of above-inflation profit these days invest in companies that are harmful to people. The form the harm they take MIGHT be pollution, or it may also be through monopolization, sweat shop labor, or what have you. This has been a problem for me personally for quite some time...If I ever want to retire I simply MUST invest in funds that can turn a profit, but the winners all wind up winning through exploitation.
There is also the matter of getting a job that pays. Again, most of the companies that will hire me themselves invest in evil funds, if not also directly engaging in some kind of evil activity.
Is this a natural consequence of capitalism? Is it a natural consequence of human nature? Is it the very sort of problem that our advanced technologies were supposed to solve? I really don't know. But the more I study my options for securing my own interests, the more I discover that I must hurt others to get what I want.
Now let's take a look at our options.
1) Accept help from someone funding somthing that is making it tough to breathe.
2) Eat shit and die.
Wanna fight ? Bend over, stick your head up your ass, and fight for air.
... I would pull all funding for everything, Stick my middle finger up and say "fuck the lot of ya".
I'm no fan of bill gates, But this bashing he constantly recieves is petty and infantile.
God Be Gone
Reading the Gates Foundation website, it would appear that all is hunky-dory. Lots of feel-good stories about funding various feel-good projects. It does read as if the Gates have turned over a new leaf. Yet their guiding principles leave a lot to be desired. For example, "philanthropy" is only part of their aim, and they report only those parts of their operation that *are philanthopic. Could it be that reporting "oh we invest in " would tarnish their fledgling's reputation? If the two aims did not conflict, why not report their operations in toto? Why not adopt a legal framework for their operations which would go some way to clarifying their operations? What have they got to hide? Even ENRON gave a better account of their operations than this. So now, when I read articles like this, it leaves a bad taste in my mouth. It smacks of being under-hand. Bill Gates - and I believe it is he who sets the tenor of the foundation - is, in my eyes, trying to have his cake and eat it. That's the crux of the problem.
FWIW. I don't particularly mind investment in big multinationals - my morals aren't that high-minded and occasionally they do good - but don't multinationals receive enough Gubmint aid already? The long list includes Aribus, British Aerospace, ELF, Boeing etc etc etc etc. Each sit at the tax-trough day-in-day-out. The only reason for the Gates Foundation to invest in these big companies *is* profit. Now their "guiding principles" don't preclude this but, really, they - and no one else - shouldn't be surprised if others look askance at the grand total of their operations. Currently, it looks like to me that the Foundation is their to make the Gates and Buffet look good. Nothing more.
Patriotism is a virtue of the vicious
Has it occurred to anyone that just maybe they invested in a plant that was about to close thus putting everyone out of a job? Fat good it does to keep the air clean while not to being able to eat. Or do you suggest that not only to we solve their health problem but at the same time introduce a brand new industry all on the same day? After all if god can do it in 7 days so can we right? What do you suggest, have them all sit around and knit woolen scarves for us? Oh no then kids have to help that would be child labor.
Arm chair geniuses here underestimate the complexities involved in this matter. Maybe the soul of Bill Gates is as black as the soot from that oil refinery but maybe just maybe there are so many more factors involved. It may well be possible that the link between their money and the oil refinery goes though several layers thus obscuring visibility on what really is invested in. There will alway be some jealous pisshead to dig up obscure links that were not intended.
No Shit Sherlock - Gates might be good, but he isn't a fucking superhero.
C'mon, guys, is it really THAT hard to see that this guy is just trolling? His post needs to be moderated appropriately.
Did it ever occur to anyone that having a 'job' is the same as being a serf? Did it ever occur to anyone that a man with 10 acres and some basic tools doesnt need a job at all? There is a lot of land in Africa, but an individual family cant get it and therefore has to work as a WAGE-SLAVE for people like the obnoxious Gates. Before all the white men came to Africa to steal its resources, the people survived. Now, magically, they need the very assholes who steal and stole all their stuff. Sad state of affairs. As for gates - he's just an ugly symptom of global capitalism and unawareness. Gates is a guy who follows the party line - he is INCAPABLE of change. His foundation is a self-aggrandising company that thinks that crumbs from the big table can feed all us little people. And you thought he was a good guy? Now thats funny.
Comment removed based on user account deletion
Yeah.. no.
The way to stop the AIDS epidemic is to stop all those poor Africans from constantly fucking everything that moves without ever using a condom. Yeah. Medicine is fine but it's reactionary, and doesn't STOP the spread, it only helps those already CAUGHT by the spread. A more cautious culture about sex, that includes a lot of condoms, would STOP the spread. And then you'd have less people to treat.
... still waiting for this free-as-in-beer free beer I keep hearing about.
I'd love to see what Bill Gates could do that slashdotters wouldn't rip into him for. He's separating himself from his brainchild to spend more time with his family and devote more time to giving away his fortune for a good cause. The rest of the world can see how this is a good thing. Anybody reading this remember when Warren Buffet made the largest donation in history? Remember where it went? I guess he must just be ignorant to donate such a large sum to such an evil foundation, or perhaps he's also just as evil.
Humor me here and try to separate your feelings for Microsoft from your opinions of Bill Gates. It might help to ask yourself what you would do if you had more money than you could possibly spend. What tops your list? Vacation for the rest of your life? All kinds of cool new toys? Hot cars? Your own tropical island? Where does trying to solve some of the world's problems rank on your list?
Seriously folks...what could Bill Gates do that wouldn't result in some negative article or negative feedback under the Borg picture?
Oh, come off it. Bill Gates donated tens of billions of dollars of his OWN money so that the company he started could get a little positive PR? Even if we ignore the fact that it's Bill's money and not Microsoft's, the company would have to sell an extra copy of XP to everyone in THE WORLD for this to be a positive return on their investment.
As a non-investor, it's very hard to change the practices of outside companies. Try it: go up to your local gas station and start yelling at them that the oil and gasoline runoff from their parking lot is killing local wildlife. You won't get far.
Now try again, but first buy a few hundred thousand shares of the company, and instead of complaining to the local gas station, complain to the company and use your shares to help influence the behavior and movement of the company. It won't be a quick change, but some change is better than no change.
Someone is going to profit off of investing in that power plant. Would you rather it be a non-profit who is helping people, or a filthy rich investment banker? Do you think that investment banker would try to alter the company or raise issues with a polluting plant? Aside from a few philanthropist investors, most are blood-sucking fiends (and even active philanthropists are fiends).
Bill Gates and Warren Buffet have given away their life savings to causes that are undeniably wonderful. Every day their money saves thousands of lives. You sit at home and rant at Slashdot. It reminds me of a William Shatner tune (if that isn't a contradiction in terms)
(slightly edited for context)
I find posts like yours profoundly depressing. You hold the Gates foundation to an impossible standard, far beyond what you would hold the MacArthur foundation, or your favourite charity or yourself. In doing so, you attempt to rob the Gates of any credit for their good works and in doing so, you reduce a major motivation for doing good works. Have you thought through the end result if we all demonzized philanthropists? Do you have any idea how important robber-baron philanthropy has been over the last few centuries?
Reading the Gates Foundation website, it would appear that all is hunky-dory.
Can you point me to a charity or foundation website that does not promote their work as hunky-dory? If they thought that they had problems, don't you think that they would spend more effort fixing them rather than updating their website to list them?
Yet their guiding principles leave a lot to be desired. For example, "philanthropy" is only part of their aim, and they report only those parts of their operation that *are philanthopic.
No, you completely misunderstand. Their goal is entirely philanthropic. Their guiding principles merely state the FACT that philanthropy is necessarily limited in its results. Therefore it is not an alternative to economic development. Give a man a fish, teach a man to fish, etc.
they report only those parts of their operation that *are philanthopic.
Oh really? Do you have evidence that either their annual report or their website misstates how they spend their money?
What have they got to hide?
Please take off your fucking tin-foil hat. What are they hiding? You are acting as if you know of something evil they are doing secretly but not reporting. Go ahead, please tell us what their nefarious other activities are.
Even ENRON gave a better account of their operations than this.
Enron (note the capitalization) needs to be added to Godwin's law.
FWIW. I don't particularly mind investment in big multinationals - my morals aren't that high-minded and occasionally they do good - but don't multinationals receive enough Gubmint aid already? The long list includes Aribus, British Aerospace, ELF, Boeing etc etc etc etc. Each sit at the tax-trough day-in-day-out. The only reason for the Gates Foundation to invest in these big companies *is* profit.
Yes, the reason that the Gates foundation invests in big companies is in order to maximize the profit available for their philanthropic work. Given this fact, why do you mention the fact that "Aribus" gets government money. What does it have to do with the price of tea in China? When you select your own investments are you biased against companies that have got government contracts, customers, loans or bail-outs? Do your mutual funds exclude such organizations?
Currently, it looks like to me that the Foundation is their to make the Gates and Buffet look good. Nothing more.
I'm sorry, I'm boiling over. You're acting like a total asshole.
First, nothing in your post substantiates the claim you make at the end. Don't you think that there are easier ways to buy positive press than to give away your life savings?
Second, Warren Buffet was already widely loved and praised. Giving away his life savings barely moves the needle of his reputation. As far as Bill Gates: I think that if he gave a flying fuck what people like you think of him then he would have
And so cheap! only 40 billion dollars. What kind of an advertising campaign could you have organised for only 150 dollars for every man, woman and child in the US. And how in character for Buffet to donate his personal fortune for Microsoft's PR department's benefit. Thankyou for sharing your wisdom EmbeddedJanitor.
There's been a vaccine for TB for 50+ years and still many people die of TB every day.And there's been a vaccine for Smallpox too - and that still exists in more than twenty laboratories globally. Of course you're right - because something is difficult means it shouldn't be tried, and rich people who donate all of their wealth should have their motives dissected atom by atom - why are they trying to help poor people? What do they hope to gain by "giving something away"? Why don't they stay at home and comment on Slashdot?
Parent post used the phrase "having good intentions", which triggered these thoughts.
BG is driving his new Hummer along a back road in the mountains, just for the pleasure of it. The only other traffic is a 1954 Chevy pickup truck driven slowly by a migrant worker with his wife and two kids crammed in the cab beside him and all their worldly possessions neatly bundled up under a tarp in the back. BG falls in behind them as they go into some tight curves, planning on passing when the road straightens out again. But a tire of the pickup blows out with a bang, the pickup swings wildly from side to side, and ends up in the ditch.
BG performs the duties of care expected of all drivers who come upon an accident. He stops and determines that everyone is okay. The pickup is wedged in the rocky ditch but safely off the road; it doesn't pose a hazard. He offers to call for assistance on his cell phone.
Then, with the best of intentions, he offers to use the winch on his brand new Hummer to pull the pickup out of the ditch, and the family is most grateful for that. After the truck is back on the pavement, he helps as best he can with changing the flat (without getting grease on his fine new clothes). The family beam in gratitude and drive off toward the railroad crossing a few hundred yards down the hill. He watches them go as he wipes the dust off the winch cable (so it will again be all bright and sparklely when he winds it back onto its spool).
The railroad warning lights come on; the pickup's brake lights come on; but the pickup doesn't slow down. It rolls right into the side of the second engine of the freight train, and is immediately spun around to slam broadside into the next car, and then is tumbled like a cartwheel across the road. The tarp rips open and pieces of simple chairs and a table, neat packages of clothes and torn bedding, fly everywhere. The roof pops off the cab, and migrant worker body parts sail through the air.
This is most unfortunate. But there is no one blame here. Since BG is a "software engineer" and an entrepreneur, there is no reason to expect him to know that the brakelines should have been inspected after a vehicle is winched out of a ditch. If not for his action, the family would still be alive, but he did act with good intentions. He is blameless in the matter of their deaths.
Now what if this was the case instead:
BG is concerned with the plight of migrant workers who have to travel the difficult mountain roads. He decides that instead of getting that fun Hummer, he would buy a brand new tow truck so that he could help these poor people who are constantly getting stranded on life's back roads. If the same scenario played out while he was driving his tow truck, he would be culpable for the deaths of the migrant family.
When he bought the tow truck, he also bought into the expectation that he would have the same concerns for safety and the same basic knowledge expected of a tow truck operator. Therefore he should have known to inspect the underside of the pickup after winching it out of the ditch; he should have recognized the distinctive odor of leaking brake fluid; and in any event he should certainly have taken the basic precaution of pumping the brake pedal a few times before letting the pickup drive off. If he did not know to do those things, he would be negligent in the duty of care expected of the position he had chosen to put himself in, and he would be facing charges of negligent manslaughter or wrongful death.
When you intentionally spend your money to offer free assistance, you take on a higher duty of care wrt the consequences of all your associated actions. You are expected to have done your studies so that you can deliver what you are offering with the same degree of safety as the minimum expected of others who do the same work. That means more than knowing how to safely operate the tow truck winch; it means knowing how to evaluate your work so that you are not creating a greater crisis down the road.
The $ in MS in the subject line just makes it more classy. nice.
The war with islam is a war on the beast
The war on terror is a war for peace
So the asset managers are incompetent and don't know what the goals of the customer they work for are. The asset managers aren't serving their customer (the Foundation) in a manner consistent with their objectives.
People have been fired for lesser offenses. The Foundation needs to remind those managers who they work for, and inform them that their actions are not aligning with the goals of the Foundation...
No evil here (at least not intentionally). No, rather, this is more of the usual, more-mundane story that comes out of any sufficiently-large organization: the institution has a set of strategic priorities, but the upper management that make the strategic decisions (Bill and Melinda Gates, the management directly beneath them, etc.) aren't managing the lower management who manage the operational aspects (e.g. the asset managers who invest the Foundation's money).
It's just the usual story of incompetent management... Read Dilbert if you require further explanation.
I do wonder what Warren Buffet thinks though, now that he -- the America's 2nd-richest person -- has decided to pour 85% of his entire net worth into the Foundation over a period of several years, on the basis that it does good work and is managed well...
Is Capitalism Good for the Poor?
Do you think Bill Gates is really thinking social responsibility when picking his investments? Look how he's run Microsoft for a clue to THAT question. He's looking for profits and ROI and it's doubtful he directs his investment managers to be concerned with social consequences of his investments. IMO.
LoB
"Anyone who stands out in the middle of a road looks like roadkill to me." --Linus
When the oil runs out, then what?
They'll be unemployed again, that's what. Plus, on top of that, they'll have more diseases than they had before, and the land will be even more useless because of pollution, too.
Let us recap the supporting facts, shall we?
Trading in your health for a job never works out for the better in the end.
Corporations don't engage in charitable acts for anyone's good. They do this to avoid paying taxes.
Again, how can that parent post be insightful, in light of the glaringly obvious and contradictory facts?
--- Grow a pair, liberals... stop letting the Republicans bully you!
Or, if we can throw away the idiotic analogies for a second, you're not arguing that Bill Gates' charity should be held responsible because they were negligent and accidentally injected some kid with the wrong kind of liquid - you're saying that the charity should be held responsible for something a totally different company is doing. That's pretty damn illogical, and it certainly doesn't have any basis in law.
Not by any law I've ever heard of, and certainly not by any moral requirements. If they wish to do charitable work, good on 'em. If a bank robber decides to give away half of the money he stole, great! Let's be realistic here - if it's a choice between stopping the charitable work, or stopping their other practises, which do you think they'll chose? Your idealism is nice and all, but that's not the way the world works, my friend.
.. but for professional and business ethical reasons. Although the story does expose a very sorry state of affairs, I really don't see what this Bill-bashing article is doing on Slashdot.
It's exactly this type of "news" that makes Slashdot lose all its credibility when criticizing Windows, Microsoft, Gates or Ballmer.