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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."
Call me old fashion but when you "give something away." You let it go. You don't set up a foundation and put the money in that foundation and then parcel out small percentages yearly as your foundation invests it back into businesses and countries that you have an interest in. I've bitched about this before (I'm aware that the couple hundred I've donated in my life does not measure up to tens of billions) but I think it should be clarified. A lot of these billionaires do not give the money away. 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. They treat researchers and poor starving nations like children. It has its benefits but I see it as largely detrimental. I understand that in doing this the foundation can continue to give indefinitely (until the American stock market dumps) but what I don't understand is that potential that the money has could be equally useful to the target medicines and poor that are supposed to be helped. 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. To quote Kenny Powers: "Sure, I've been called a xenophobe, but the truth is, I'm not. I honestly just feel that America is the best country and the other countries aren't as good. That used to be called patriotism."
Here's my prediction for Zuck's money: He's going to pledge a trillion dollars it to something like stopping malaria in Africa. It's going to go into a foundation. The foundation will make money yearly by investing in indexes and mutual funds spread across American (not African) companies managed by some genius living comfortably far from any malaria parasite. At the end of each year, they're going to have ~5.5% to give away. They have American medical research companies apply for research grants. They arrange to have malaria medicine created and licensed from American companies shipped to Africa. They can't give that money to governments like the Democratic Republic of the Congo because government corruption will wick away much of that. And they might buy small arms and attack their neighbors with them. They get treated like children and they stay children. At the end of that year, America prevails economically with a sound infrastructure while the DRC remains malaria infested, corrupted and without any sort of infrastructure to provide clean potable water, sewage treatment or electricity to large areas of populace.
So I have to kind of wonder if they're "giving money away" or if they're putting money into an engine that just persists existing problems while helping the American economy? Because people have been donating vast extensive sums of money to stop malaria historically and where are we at in that fight?
Don't get me wrong, I'm happy that something is happening but I really question when I read "give away" in the news articles when a better term might be "endowed" or just call it what it often is, "an investment in America resulting in good will."
My work here is dung.
Believe it when you see it.
American Third Position
Finally, a real choice!
I can certainly respect this. It's true altruism, quite unlike when government takes money by force and redistributes it. This is 100% voluntary, and therefore much more impressive and worthy of respect than any government program.
The thing is AFAIK he is now estimated to have a fortune of about 6 billion dollars, and I expect he expects it to grow. Giving away 3 billion dollars still lets him live like a king and earn him public "karma". Anyone except the stupidest/most evil people around would do the same.
For anyone else who was wondering about the "Bill Gates 3.0" part, the Bill we know and love/hate is William Henry Gates III. In case you were going to confuse him for the other Bill Gates'.
Like anything related to Microsoft, I guess you need to get to at least version 3 before you have something useful. *ducks*
I am officially gone from
'cause conservatives like to laud this kind of thing as a sign that their take on capitalism works. But why should us lower classes have to go begging to some rich guy just to get what they need? Random generosity & hoping for the best isn't a good way to stabilize human society.
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Or maybe he's trying to atone for some things.
They now stand outside of his door with their hands out waiting expectantly.
Let me ask if you have donated like 5$ this year, Mother Theresa. My feeling is that you haven't, just like the majority of critics here...
I take my children to see Madonna(..), but I never for once ever thought I was in the same business.Chris Rea.
if you think he's a douche because he has more money than you, then he's only half a douche (and you're class warfare crybaby)
If you think he's a douche for other reasons, he's still a douche.
Do you even lift?
These aren't the 'roids you're looking for.
Bill always claimed he was going to give away most of his fortune at age 55, I didn't believe it until I saw him do it. Kudo's to him for his generosity, for keeping his word, and for showing others that mega-philanthropy brings it's own rewards.
And did you exchange a walk on part in the war for a lead role in a cage? - Pink Floyd.
TFTI, I was ready to wait for Bill Gates 3.1
An old man walked up a shore littered with thousands of starfish, beached and dying after a storm.
A boy was picking them up and flinging them back into the ocean. "Why do you bother?" the old man scoffed. "You can't save them all. You're not even saving enough to make a difference."
The boy stoped thinking about what he had said.
The boy went off to college, learned about buisness and learned how to make useful things.
The boy went off and founded his own company with some of his friends and made and incredible amount of money because the boy was very bright and had a tallent for buisness.
Years later as the old man, now positively ancient, walked along the beach spending his days discouraging children from helping starfish the boy, now a man roared past him in a giant automatic beach combing and starfish catapulting machine which he had designed and built with his massive fortune as part of a fleet of vehicles to comb the worlds seashores spewing starfish back into the ocean.
As he passed the young man gave the decrepit old sod the finger and screamed
"Can't save them all can I?"
Funny how most of these rich, aging guys suddenly want to buy their way into Heaven.
I want to delete my account but Slashdot doesn't allow it.
Kudo's to him for his generosity, for keeping his word, and for showing others that mega-philanthropy brings it's own rewards.
"kudos" (a Greek transliteration) is a mass noun like "praise". Putting an apostrophe in it would be like prai'se.
We need a "+1 -- nice sig" moderation.
Buffett is no kindly grandfather type... the Berkshire Hathaway Reinsurance Group has reaped BILLIONS in just
the last several years via policies that ensured insane increases in homeowner insurance policy...
Huh?
There is no customer of Berkshire Hathaway that is forced to purchase a policy from them. If you are unhappy that they raised your rates, go buy a policy elsewhere!
You capitalize BILLIONS as if this is an issue because it's a big number. Berkshire Hathaway is a huge organization, with annual revenues of roughly $112 Billion, from willing customers who choose to buy from this company. As a shareholder, I would be disappointed if they didn't reap BILLIONS.
dont' forget the fun part - will these giveaways go to anything of actual value for society, or donations towards their own private charities?
either way makes them sound like saints when they're not even compromising on anything, along with a comedy tax break (an entire years worth of profits) that lets them recoup the money rather quickly.
Facebook hasn't gone public. Facebook hasn't been sold.
Facebook could collapse tomorrow, and he wouldn't have more than whatever he has saved of his yearly salary recently...
I'd love to know how Zuckerberg thinks he's rich right now.
Another non-functioning site was "uncertainty.microsoft.com."
The purpose of that site was not known.
Just like the stock market is going to last forever?
... 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.
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
Don't disappoint your bird dog. Go to the range.
Bill always claimed he was going to give away most of his fortune at age 55, I didn't believe it until I saw him do it.
You still haven't seen him do it. The Gates Foundation makes for-profit investments in evil, and in order to get immunizations you have to provide strong IP protection to big pharma. If you think Bill Gates is a good guy, you have been fooled. Enjoy your Kool-Aid!
"You're right," Fisheye says. "I should have set it on 'whip' or 'chop.'"
This is the original story... An old man walked up a shore littered with thousands of starfish, beached and dying after a storm. A young man was picking them up and flinging them back into the ocean. "Why do you bother?" the old man scoffed. "You're not saving enough to make a difference." The young man picked up another starfish and sent it spinning back to the water. "Made a difference to that one," he said.
a man roared past him in a giant automatic beach combing and starfish catapulting machine which he had designed and built with his massive fortune as part of a fleet of vehicles to comb the worlds seashores spewing starfish back into the ocean
Ah yes, no matter how many times I hear it, the ancient fable of the giant starfish-catapulting machine is still a heartwarming classic.
Matthew @ Bytemark Hosting
Without the starfish on the beach the delicate coastal ecosystem was altered; shore birds that used to feed on the starfish, and feed them to their young went hungry and left. Without the shorebirds the insect population increased and drove everyone from the beach. And I don't want to tell you what the giant automatic beach combing and starfish catapulting machine did to the buried sea turtle eggs.
Tough call.
Gates could have quietly given away his fortune, while everyone called him a greedy S.O.B., and followed the advice of the Biblical quote. Instead, he announced that he was giving it away, and encouraged others to give it away. And many have agreed to, and the world should be a better place because of the public give-away and challenge of Gates.
I know several multi-millionaires who have decided to quietly commit to giving up half, because of this Billionaire Challenge. I'm sure there are many. So Gates' challenge has actually achieved more on earth than had he quietly donated.
Each billionaire that signs up calls more attention to the challenge, and probably causes a few more multi-millionaires to sign up.
Talk about looking a gift horse in the mouth.
Your couple hundred dollars of investment can be handled the way you describe. To extend the period of time in which a large donation has effect, there has to be some sort of structure. If that's a lawyer handing out million dollar checks every year for a thousand years, then great. He can just sit on a big ole pile of cash in his storage room and hope there's never a fire...
In reality though, the "gamble" you are griping about is the structure that ensures the longevity of the fund. The objective isn't to improve American as an economic power, though that may be a result, the objective is to provide solutions to the entire world. I'm certain we'd (Americans) love to buy Nike's from Congo rather than China. I'm pretty sure we like Nigerian oil. Africa has a lot to offer, but the process of setting up infrastructure in a place where basic health concerns are so great is not an easy one. Charities have been trying to solve that problem for decades now. The primary issue that most note? Not enough funding... Now Gates/Buffett have tried to make a near-inexhaustible source from which this funding can come. If you are having a hard time with the way they handle the money, make a billion dollars, contribute half, then tell them what you think. 'Til then, shut up with the pedantry and nitpicking.
America is all about speed. Hot, nasty, badass speed. -Eleanor Roosevelt, 1936
I think the point was that being a negative person who only pokes holes in what others are trying to accomplish serves no purpose, while being optimistic means that, even if you can't achieve what you want right now, you can still work hard and do so later.
God invented whiskey so the Irish would not rule the world.
It's a really neat idea. 'We're philanthropists,' says the foundation's representative, 'we'd like to give you drugs - entirely free - that will save tens of thousands of lives in your country.' Pretty much the offer you can't refuse, for any politician - no one wants to be the one that turned down an offer to save that many lives. 'There's just one small thing you have to do for us,' says the foundation. 'Well, not really for us - we'd love to avoid this - but unfortunately the drug companies won't let us have the drugs unless you sign this IP treaty with the USA. It's to protect their investment, you understand.'
Well, that's fine - just one treaty, and it can't be that bad. Until you realise that it means that you are now not allowed to produce cheap generic versions of the drugs locally (or import them) - after the donation runs out, you have to keep buying the US versions that are several times the price. So, after a few years, it's probably going to cost more lives than not taking the money originally, but that's okay, you're a politician, you're not going to be accountable.
Oh, and as a bonus, it protects US IP-based companies (in which, coincidentally, the investors in the B&MGF have a lot of other investments) from foreign competition, by preventing another country from bootstrapping an industrial economy in the same way that the US, China, and so on, did.
Still, it would be hard to be a philanthropist if you ran out of poor people - they're just making sure that they can keep helping people for the foreseeable future.
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It's slightly less heartwarming when you consider that the starfish-catapulting machine is built out of dead starfish and consumes them as fuel.
You make it sounds like if everybody invested money, everybody would be 10x richer? Where do you think all this extra money comes from, trees?
Maybe the problem is "investing" really doesn't create as many jobs as you think it does, but instead moves money around between other "investors", and only a tiny tiny amount of that goes to VC loans and things which theoretically would create jobs.
If you "invested" $1M in Exxon stock, how many jobs do you think you're creating? 1? 2? 100? 1000? Let me try another number, zero.
I know of only one sure way to create more jobs. Hire more people. This investing crap is just moving the money around in a big circle jerk with the people at the top. You have to be naive if you believe any significant portion of that money invested "trickles down" to the working class.
Modern copyright is theft of culture from everyone and it retards the progress of the useful arts and sciences.
I am pretty sure that Bill Gates is either way older than 55, or a clone. The summary referred to Bill Gates as Bill Gates 3.0
Maybe it is like Windows and Bill Gates 3.11 for Workgroups will be super awesome and help a bunch of people, but then Bill Gates Millenium will trick people into thinking he is awesome, and punch them in the back of the head whenever he gets the chance.
The world is how you make it
I don't agree. The damage done by Facebook to privacy, or by Microsoft to the computing world, is smaller than, say, the damage done to someone by stabbing them--but it's being done over and over and over and over, billions of times. One act of greed isn't as bad as one stabbing, but the damage adds up--is a billion acts of greed worse than one stabbing? If you're going to put any reasonable cost at all on the damage these people did, they end up being worse than normal criminals simply because although they're not doing things which are as bad, they make up for it in volume.
And thanks to the increased starfish numbers they were able to easily feed on toxic waste left on the bottom by unscrupulous mobsters, grew into 10 story tall starkillers, and promptly attacked Tokyo, which thanks to Godzilla being well fed and fat on monster island after being labeled an endangered species Japan was utterly destroyed robbing the world of strange big eyed cartoons and used panty machines.
As for TFA it reminds me of an old bit I saw "If I have 100 million and you take half I won't be bothered 1 bit, if I have 10,000 and you want half I may have to kill you". While it is nice these uber rich want to blow some of their cash on whatever they consider charity, the simple fact is they could blow money on hookers and blow every day while wiping their asses with hundred dollar bills and the interest alone will make sure they come out ahead. If they really wanted to help out the country that allowed them to make their fortunes maybe they should push for a tax hike on the top 1% and for closing all the loopholes like the "double dutch" that allows them to dodge what little taxes they are supposed to pay? I know Google bounces money all over the place to keep from paying taxes on it, and MSFT has more tax havens than the mob. Maybe paying their fair share might be better than playing Daddy Warbucks?
ACs don't waste your time replying, your posts are never seen by me.
Cause the banks are really doing some hard-core investing right now.
If you have $2B and give away half, you are still a billionaire.
Agreed. A person's generosity is measured not by how much they give away, but how much they spend on themselves.
The multi-billionaire who has a private jet and personal masseuse while giving millions to charity is less generous than the poor family that live in a shack but still manage to give a few hundred dollars a year to help the homeless.
a man roared past him in a giant automatic beach combing and starfish catapulting machine which he had designed and built with his massive fortune as part of a fleet of vehicles to comb the worlds seashores spewing starfish back into the ocean
Ah yes, no matter how many times I hear it, the ancient fable of the giant starfish-catapulting machine is still a heartwarming classic.
Or at least it was until starfish population grew out of control, ate everything else in the ocean, and cause the biosphere to implode from the starfish imbalance.