Facebook's Zuckerberg To Give Away Half His Cash

Stoobalou writes "Facebook co-founders Mark Zuckerberg and Dustin Moskovitz are among the latest batch of 17 billionaires who have promised to give away at least half of their fortunes, after signing up to a philanthropic campaign led by Microsoft founder Bill Gates 3.0 and celebrity investor Warren Buffett. By signing up to The Giving Pledge, the mega-rich make a vague promise — sorry, 'moral commitment' — to give away more than half of their fortune at some point during their lifetime."

Comments

Re:I Take Issue with the Phrase "Give Away"

[recoiledsnake]

They put the money into a foundation that then invests the large amounts of money into the American economy and sometimes businesses or areas of development that they hold an interest in. Once the return is netted at the end of the year, then this is what is "given away" in the strictest sense of the words

The objective is to make money for the charity, so more money can be given out. It does not matter to the foundation if that's an American business or not, just that it has to be profitable. If African companies are not profitable then the foundation will simply squander the money away.

If you don't think that the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation is American-centric and nationalistic in its investments, why don't you read his warning letter about China developing alternative energy [slashdot.org].

What has that go to do with the foundation? It's not even mentioned there. Dare a person have different goals and objectives in his life? I think you're letting bias cloud your judgment. Just throwing the money at a problem does not solve it. Signing a check of a trillion dollars to the African government will just make the situation worse. A foundation is far better.

How is what the foundation doing largely detrimental?

Re:How Much Did They Lose in the Market Crash?

[ScentCone]

Just like the stock market is going to last forever?

It has so far. Those interested in long-term do-gooding in a particular niche think in longer terms. Changes in education, for example, are cultural issues. That takes generations, not one fiscal year, or the few years spanning some cyclical fluctuation in the value of equities. Over time, a halfway rationally managed pile of equities always has and always will grow in value. If all of the assets in a well balanced portfolio completely cease to exist, you can rest assured that there are far, far bigger problems than splitting hairs over whether it was smarter to buy a big pile of mosquito netting once, or setting up a foundation chartered to buy them regularly and forever.

The stock market is a gamble. Any thoughts otherwise are true bullshit.

Sure, if you only think in the very short term. And you think that, what ... handing all of your resources over, in one lump, as cash, to a particular charity for use right then and there ... that's not a gamble? We've seen many large funds get hoovered up by corrupt recipients over the years. Better for there to be oversight, guided by the principles of those that set up the foundations. And if they are students of a couple hundred years of history, they'll know that reasonably well balanced long-term investments grow, often very, very substantially. No multi-billion-dollar foundation is going to put all of its stock in a company in Venezuela that could at any moment by rendered worthless by Hugo Chavez in one of his weekly fits of nationalization, or tie up all of the funds in real-estate on one coast of one continent.