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 always laugh when I see this

[Archangel Michael]

Or, you can be a good little liberal and give the homeless bum a $100 bill for the Holidays and then read three days later that he's dead, died of acute alcohol poisoning. Because that is how liberalism works. It gives without consideration of the results because it is all about intentions, not the results. You feel good because at least you "tried".

The problem is, one cannot say the homeless bum is dysfunctional alcoholic not worthy of giving $100 bucks to, because he'll just drink himself to death, because that is just "heartless" And you certainly cannot round them up and put them into state run facilities and actually try to help them, against their will, because well that is just "heartless" institutionalization.

In fact the only thing a liberal is allowed to do is continue to enable the dysfunction, but in smaller doses of cash, and get warm fuzzy feelings that you're "helping" the poor and downtrodden homeless bum by getting his next fix of booze. Just not enough booze to kill him,

REAL people realize that you can only help people who want to help themselves. And no amount of generosity and/or government programs is going to help those that refuse to change the things that make them parasites of society. So we keep our eyes open for those rare few people that are just "stuck" and help them, quietly and without the fanfare of politicians announcing the next great program or philanthropic dogooders and their endowments named after themselves.

Mat 6:2 Therefore when thou doest [thine] alms, do not sound a trumpet before thee, as the hypocrites do in the synagogues and in the streets, that they may have glory of men. Verily I say unto you, They have their reward.

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

[careysub]

A foundation allows him to know the donation is spent the way he intends it rather than how some other "charitable" organization deems fit.

Right - the wealth is transferred to a privately held entity that runs in perpetuity according to the choices of its founder. Note that the poster above puts scare quotes around "charitable" when it is not a billionaire's own private charity. I guess only billionaires know what is best for the common good?

You should aware that due in large part to the U.S. having the lowest taxes on the incomes of the rich in the industrialized world essentially all of the economic growth of the last 30 years has flowed exclusively into their pockets, causing the income inequality in the U.S. to rise to the highest in the industrialized world by a large margin.* Only third world plutocracies match us in this (and some do better). Wealth concentration at the top is now about equal to the age of the 19th century Robber Barons.

So what are the super-rich doing to give back? They are locking this enormous wealth permanently into tax-sheltered foundations that act according to the desires of the founder. This means that an increasingly large share of the national wealth, remains under the control of a tiny group of private individuals whose decisions control the behavior of the economy, even when most of the profits are devoted to public-spirited activities (some are retained to grow the foundation further). And it means that the control will either pass to their dynasty, or else to simply be in the control of the dead hand -- fulfilling the wishes/whims of individual long after they pass from the scene. Even with the best public spirited intentions in the world this a serious problem for a healthy society. For one thing it destroys the dynamism of an adaptable growth-oriented economy.

In the lot so long run -- this process is well along its course already -- the economy will be largely controlled by a tiny group of private individuals. The economy will be largely owned in fact either by them directly or by the foundation they control.

This is called plutocracy - it is the death of the democracy and the Republic.

* The standard metric for this is called GINI. See: this chart for the history. It was 0.395 in 1974, already the highest in the industrialized world, to 0.466 in 2001, and has risen further throughout the past decade.

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

[Locutus]

causes like providing "free" Microsoft software for schools and libraries with restrictions that the schools and libraries can't use open source software. I'm with the parent on this one because they mentioned Bill Gates and his foundation is a front for addicting children to Microsoft software. IMO

LoB