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Bill Gates: Internet Will Not Save the World
quantr points out an interview with Bill Gates in which he talks about setting priorities for making a difference in the world. Quoting:
"The internet is not going to save the world, says the Microsoft co-founder, whatever Mark Zuckerberg and Silicon Valley's tech billionaires believe. But eradicating disease just might. Bill Gates describes himself as a technocrat. But he does not believe that technology will save the world. Or, to be more precise, he does not believe it can solve a tangle of entrenched and interrelated problems that afflict humanity's most vulnerable: the spread of diseases in the developing world and the poverty, lack of opportunity and despair they engender. 'I certainly love the IT thing,' he says. 'But when we want to improve lives, you've got to deal with more basic things like child survival, child nutrition.' These days, it seems that every West Coast billionaire has a vision for how technology can make the world a better place. A central part of this new consensus is that the internet is an inevitable force for social and economic improvement; that connectivity is a social good in itself. It was a view that recently led Mark Zuckerberg to outline a plan for getting the world's unconnected 5 billion people online, an effort the Facebook boss called 'one of the greatest challenges of our generation.' But asked whether giving the planet an internet connection is more important than finding a vaccination for malaria, the co-founder of Microsoft and world's second-richest man does not hide his irritation: 'As a priority? It's a joke.'"
Years ago, when I was a zoology major in university, I spent some time working on a study of elephant migration paths in Africa.
It was an eye opening experience. I was staggered by the sheer poverty, the lack of access to safe drinking water and food, the high rates of preventable illness, and the high rate of child deaths. I remember a woman living in Uganda who made "biscuits" for children made with washed dirt simply so they could get something into their stomachs that would reduce the hunger pains and not kill them. I don't give to USA charities since then. I give all my charity dollars to people who are doing outstanding work in areas of disease and poverty.
I have no idea what people struggling to find food would do with the internet. Would it enrich their lives? I don't see how. Would it save them from disease? Would it allow their children greater likelyhood to see their fifth birthday?
Bill Gates has the right idea. I just wish other very rich people had as much sense and willingness to spend their money to help people.
They guy is right.
They grammar is wrong
Well, it's more complicated than that. But his perspective seems to be one applying a humanistic vision in conjunction with empiricism. The fact that it's an unusual approach to charity is what's really baffling.
too many people on the planet ... Gates is way off on this one. ... Who completely overlooked the internet when he ran Microsoft.
Unsurprising, coming from Gates
Eradicating disease sounds like a noble pursuit and indeed Nobel prizes have been awarded for efforts there. However the problem with success is that disease is one of natures ways of keeping populations in check. The other natural method of keeping populations in check is predators and we humans have pretty much eliminated most of our natural predators. Were one of the very rare species that dies from old age, a luxury not available to most of the animal kingdom.
Overpopulation is a serious problem in parts of the world and it's only getting far worse. Not only does overpopulation lead to problems like a shortage of food it also leads to increase in pollution of all kinds. It also further strains social services as more and more people need services such as medical care. The net result would be an inevitable surplus of humans a substantial risk of not being able to take care of them.
Unless we can pair getting rid of diseases with far better birth control all were going to do is create a perfect dystopian future.
One Kickstarter campaign could feed a whole village for 30 years.
I'm not saying Gates is necessarily wrong, but it is awfully convenient that the most important issue for the world just happens to be the one his charity is involved in.
I question whether you can even know what will "save the world". Look at risks to human civilization. What is the impact of malaria on the population versus say, an asteroid crashing into our planet? The latter is more catastrophic to the survival of our species than the former, but the probability of occurrence is much lower.
What if the Internet becomes instrumental to the identification of an asteroid threat with sufficient time to mitigate its effects? Will the Internet have 'saved the world'?
Again, I'm not saying that curing disease isn't important, and I applaud Mr. Gates' efforts even if I may question his motives. But I don't think he can possibly know what will and will not "save the world".
This is nothing new. Bill Gates has been totting around this idea for a few months at least. Don't believe me? See this reliable and heavily acredited news article: http://slashdot.org/story/13/08/08/1622238/bill-gates-promotes-vaccine-projects-swipes-at-google
Hey, look at me! My opinion is valid because I found a website that says the same thing.
Of course ... 5 billion more facebook accounts, more product for Facebook to sell to advertisers.
The old give it to me first so I can redistribute it to whom I see fit..... and most of us blame governments for doing this. Capitalists do the same thing.
Eliminate unbridled global capitalism and you have a chance at saving the world. MCDonalds is crap nutrition but their food distribution system is fantastic. Eliminate the need for McDs profits and use the food distribution for humanity... you might get somewhere.
I would venture to say that the creation of Linux (and other open source software) has done more to benefit humanity that Windows (or OSX).
The free flow of information—that is, the Great Discussion—is already helping people identify and eliminate the stupidity in their own respective cultures/socities.
Cryptographic technologies are allowing countercultures and new ideas to blossom in protected environments, and decentralize the control of resources, thereby allowing society to evolve more effectively by variation and selection.
The Internet will save the world. The Internet is already saving the world.
Not to they black guys, they be speaking ebonics, so you best axe them before you say ignant and intolerant thangs about the way they language be.
FTFY
He didn't just find himself running a disease charity, so therefore he's claiming that's what's important. He chose to set up a charity for what he felt was the most important problem. You can say he's wrong if you want, sure - but saying it's "convenient" is really silly; you're getting the causality chain completely backwards.
Let's not stir that bag of worms...
Giving people treatment to diseases is great, but it's a short term solution. What happens in 10 years, if you're not around to give them treatment?
People in underdeveloped countries need to be able to self-sustain themselves. Even if they can't develop a treatment themselves, they should be able to economically support importing it. Education is what's needed for all of this, and the internet is the best tool for education.
So, we need both short term (giving them the treatment they need) and long term (giving them the tools they need to advance).
The Internet King? I wonder if he could provide faster nudity.
Bill Gates is right. Zuckerberg's plan is a joke and the Internet isn't all that important for solving the world's problems. Unfortunately, Gates isn't helping much either, due to his fake philanthropy that often does more harm than good.
The Gates Foundation has an endowment of $30 Billion making it the largest philanthropic organization in the world. But one third of that money is invested in companies whose practices run counter to the foundation’s supposed charitable goals and social mission.
In Africa, the Foundation has invested more than $400 million dollars in oil companies responsible for pollution that many blame for respiratory problems and other afflictions among the local population.
The Gates Foundation also has investments in sixty-nine of the worst polluting companies in the US and Canada.. It holds investments in pharmaceutical companies whose drugs cost far beyond what most patients around the world can afford and the Foundation often lobbies on behalf of those companies for "Intellectual Property" protections that make obtaining low cost medicines more difficult.
Other companies in the Foundation’s portfolio have been accused of forcing thousands of people to lose their homes, supporting child labor and defrauding and neglecting patients in need of medical care.
I want a link to that statement. I knew the second that heavy protocol came out that it would not survive.
Access to fishing instructions is not access to the means to create tackle or access to a body of water where fish exist to be caught.
This needn't be an either/or proposition -- give people basic sustenance and the means to raise their own lot as time goes on. But without that basic sustenance, you have no foundation on which to build anything, and all the building materials and instructions you provide will go to waste.
Well, it's more complicated than that. But his perspective seems to be one applying a humanistic vision in conjunction with empiricism. The fact that it's an unusual approach to charity is what's really baffling.
Baffling indeed.
Yes, having the people educated is one thing that needs to happen. But it is one of many components.
In order to give them Internet access they must also have power and communications systems. They must be literate or all the words are meaningless.
If the people are dying of malnutrition then yes, additional education about farming techniques and food safety can help. If people are dying from sanitation problems then yes, additional education can help. But it is just a single thing on the long list of things that need to happen to transform a society.
Sure they can give the rural slash-and-burn farmers an Internet-enabled computer with satellite modems and solar power chargers. It is nice to teach a farming community that for generations has practice slash-and-burn techniques that they should read about alternatives, but that by itself will not solve anything. Give them computers and Internet access and all you will have is a community who still practices the same techniques, with the change that they now can watch cat videos and play Angry Birds. The technology by itself won't transform them.
It takes a lot of pieces working together. It is true that giving computers to children can help benefit the community as shown through "Hole in the Wall" and other experiments but that little bit of education is only one facet, there are hundreds of other facets that need to be addressed. Providing a little bit of education is useful, but does not help much against problems of rampant disease, abuse, family planning, nor does it provide the tools and technology needed to implement what is taught. Teaching the community "this is what refrigeration can do for you" doesn't help if they cannot get electricity. Teaching the community "these are health issues that chlorinated water can treat" doesn't help when the village is struggling just to get enough muddy water so everyone can subsist.
There is much work to do. If one group wants to help by adding educational tools, that is certainly one useful thing. But Gates is right that there is a very broad spectrum of changes needed to bring regions out of poverty, and Internet access alone is not enough.
//TODO: Think of witty sig statement
The Internet is a tool, subject to the human will and policies.
"eradicating disease" is instead long, constant process that requires multiple tools, innovation and people.
It also already has an objective (saving people's lifes).
So, we are comparing a mere object with no specific objective to a long, evolving process with a specific goals...
Color me unimpressed.
But even "eradicating disease" per se doesn't save the world, first because "the world" is not "the people", and because having the cure doesn't mean that you are willing to distribute it freely or at accessible costs.
So, to sum it up... the right policies will save the world?
"I was gratified to be able to answer promptly, and I did. I said I didn't know." -- Mark Twain
Wow, that's a real dick thing to assume. If you're kidding, you should probably say so.
I don't respond to AC's.
Mark Zuckerberg's and the like don't give a shit personally about the other people who don't have internet connection and the reasons they are not online. They just want them online for revenue. Get them online, make advertising dollars from them, let them figure out how to survive life.
Find a job you love, and never work a day in your life.
Wow. You ARE a dick. You're whining about contractors working at Microsoft and Windows 8? This is a discussion about helping people with or without Internet access, not your own personal bitch-fest.
I don't respond to AC's.
People might care more about contraception when their children aren't dying of hunger before age 5.
Everything is better with chainsaws.
Why did he re-orient Microsoft towards the Internet starting in the mid 90s?
And as a result of this kind of thinking Gates and other capitalists employ you get this:
"As long as most citizens believe in the ideas that justify global capitalism, the private and state institutions that serve our corporate masters are unassailable. When these ideas are shattered, the institutions that buttress the ruling class deflate and collapse. The battle of ideas is percolating below the surface." Chris Hedges
And percolating they are. :)
That the internet was just a fad, and not a priority for Microsoft?
Or at least something to that effect?
I think it was in his book.
If I were God, wouldn't I protect my churches from acts of me?
It doesn't matter that the contractors harmed aren't poor third-world people. You don't get to excuse mistreating your workers just because your profit from the mistreatment goes to help people who are worse off than the workers you mistreated.
Contractors aren't mistreated in any way. They don't get company health insurance. Big deal. They're generally paid much more than "permanent" employees. Regardless, if you can't cut it for whatever reason, then find another line of work. There's no comparison between a IT contractor for MS and a kid starving to death in some shithole in Africa, and anybody delusional enough to think so needs a swift kick in the ass.
I don't respond to AC's.
When I was a kid I did Unicef collection every Haloween. We got an orange cardboard coin box at school, and collected donations to it along with our trick-or-treat. Unicef used these funds to build water wells for people in Africa who had only access to contaminated surface water.
A decade or two later, we found that many of these wells accessed aquifers that were contaminated by arsenic. And that thus we kids had funded the wholesale poisoning of people in Africa, and that a lot of them had arsenic-induced cancers that were killing them.
OK, we would not make that mistake again, and today we have access to better water testing. But it caused me to lose my faith that we really do know how to help poor people in the third world, no matter how well-intentioned we are.
And we had better not go around curing disease withoput also promoting birth control. Despite what the churches say, and the local dislikes and prejudices. Or we'll just be condemning more people to starve.
Bruce Perens.
The important part is that when we send food and supplies, part of the supplies should be education tech. Its going to take a very long time to raise the floor in Africa, but tech modestly and intelligently applied will make incredibly widespread progress.
Good-bye
Ok, give me a trophy. Call me a really negative idiot or whatever. But seriously folks over population is an urgent and overwhelming issue. If you want a healthier world, a more employable population, less diseases, wars and poverty then the last thing you want to do is save lives. Saving lives is only valuable when you have firm control over birth rates. For those with very short memories the population bomb is real, it is here now, and it is eating us alive. If you think thing suck now wait until another twenty years passes and the world population doubles again.
The trap is that although science is wonderful it is down right ignorant to assume that breakthrough after breakthrough can prevent a total collapse of our system and a a day of reckoning unlike any cluster of horrors we have ever faced before. And it is coming rather quickly.
...saving the world from Humanity?
Waaaaa?
Sounds like *you've* never been involved in senior business decisions for a multimillion dollar company.
Mod me down, my New Earth Global Warmingist friends!
Why can't we have both?
In the long long run, nothing will save the world. I'm rather hoping technology will allow us to colonize other worlds so we don't go down with it.
Build them out of what? Using what tools?
The other anonymous coward most likely refers to survival tricks that start out simplistic using sticks, stones and cloth.
And where do these survival tricks using primitive materials come from? They often come from the indigenous people of the region. For example the technique of filtering water through sand, plant materials, charcoal, etc is thousands of years old. These people don't necessarily need the internet to explain such things, a tribal elder of the region explaining how his grandfather used to purify water, what different plants were used for, etc may do a far better job. Well, at least for the people living in rural areas. For those in urban areas the techniques using primitive materials may not scale up.
Energy use fundamentally underlies all economic activity, and this is primarily a technological issue. The general ignorance regarding this relationship and what it implies about how we produce energy can theoretically be addressed by the Internet as it is an issue of consciousness.
Gail Tverberg's excellent article on the matter should be carefully considered: http://oilprice.com/Finance/the-Economy/Why-Rising-Energy-Costs-are-Responsible-for-Widespread-Economic-Recession.html
The globe consumes on the order of 17 terawatts, primarily in some form of fossil fuel. Average use per person is around 2 kW, while the United States average is around 10 kW. As increasing energy use is a primary method of reducing poverty, we need to consider raising global per capita use. In order to address both the economy and the climate, all fossil fuel consumption must be eliminated while dramatically lowering the cost of that energy production. Meaningfully lowering the cost of energy requires minimizing land and material use, so energy density is of great significance. The only reasonable candidate for accomplishing this is nuclear power, but as current technology is no where near suitable for this task, so we must look to new technologies. Currently the most promising approach involves something called the molten salt reactor, which has precious little public support despite its potential for addressing both cost and liability. If we are going to responsibly manage the great risk that all of humanity faces, this situation must radically change.
To have some idea of the scale of the challenge that faces us, aiming for 50 terawatts of production by 2050 will merely raise per capita consumption to 5 kW. Today, it is unimaginable that this will be achieved as current efforts are focused on increasing efficiency to mitigate rising costs. This will not solve our problem or help us avert the risk of catastrophe- it only buys us a little time. With the right technological approach, this goal looks within reach, but this will require substantial public support in terms of mindshare and $billions, perhaps 10s of $billions. Current renewable approaches figure in the range of 100s of $trillions and is not remotely feasible for addressing poverty, climate, or any of the other myriad of problems we face including disease.
This truly is an issue of consciousness, and hopefully the Internet will serve its purpose in helping us confront our widespread superstitions and general fear so that we may focus our efforts towards policies that will make a difference. Our intelligence is being challenged and our future is at stake. What will we make of this? Are we going to be content with a hellish existence, or will we rise from this mess with a coordinated effort to address fundamental problems with this experiment at civilization?
The gates foundation has one "business" goal - invest it's money and spend the profit on charitable works. If they spend the capital the charitable foundation ceases to exist. Also if you think board decisions of for-profit companies are made solely on the basis of the profit to be had, then I must assume you are projecting your own morals onto others.
As for Gates, I'm almost exactly the same age as he is, I distinctly recall him saying on multiple occasions over the last 30yrs that he would give the bulk of his money to charity when he hit 55. Gates charity work and his efforts to get other billionaires to join him is has almost single-handedly rescued the traditional concept of US philanthropy from the "greed is good" generation.
Thing is you don't have that kind of money, which is odd given your obsession with it?
And did you exchange a walk on part in the war for a lead role in a cage? - Pink Floyd.
A decade or two later, we found that many of these wells accessed aquifers that were contaminated by arsenic. And that thus we kids had funded the wholesale poisoning of people in Africa, and that a lot of them had arsenic-induced cancers that were killing them.
Are you sure you're not mixing up two different stories here? Although trace amounts of Arsenic are common in aquifers that contact certain kinds of alluvial sediments, only a few areas have experienced really high concentrations. In particular, this has happened with shallow tube wells in India and Bangladesh. These types of wells were extremely cheap, and were drilled in the millions starting around the 1970's with UNICEF assistance; I am unaware of any similar large-scale occurrence of contamination in Africa.
On looking at the morbidity and mortality modeling from the WHO link, I wouldn't automatically label it an complete tragedy right away, either. The amount of Cancer and other diseases from arsenic contamination (chronic ingestion, the concentration is not the kind required for acute poisoning) is definitely non-trivial. However, following the implementation of the tube wells, infant mortality dropped by something like half (keeping in mind this that the high starting point of mortality means half of a fairly big number), with substantial reductions in prevalence of waterborne diseases. It is entirely possible that the number of lives (and maybe person-years of life) saved by the wells could outnumber those that were lost.
Actually, I strongly suspect that the person-years of life saved could be greatly more than the number lost, but I can't directly substantiate the possibility with numbers, except to say there is evidence that recent anti-arsenic campaigns have resulted in increases in infant mortality, due to avoidance or loss of well water leading to greater use of microbially contaminated water supplies.
Obviously, it would be great to have both clean water with no arsenic at all. Possible with deeper but more expensive wells that have been gradually replacing the older wells (it sounds like other strategies like filtration and rain-water storage have sustainability problems when implemented out in the field), but I doubt UNICEF or similar charitable organizations can get the money they need these days to replace them all at a sweep.
Reality is Bill Gates is wrong yet again. Getting everyone connected to the internet, in point of fact, will save the world. Right now run by psychopathic capitalism we are on a path to self destruction by greed and mass consumerism, we are wasting our resources and converting that waste into pollution at an insane rate by allowing the psychopathically insane to run the system.
The internet is giving the majority a voice and is exposing the insane minority who currently run the system for who they really are. The more independent real voices there are on the internet, sharing information globally all hooked up with auto translation services. The sooner we see that deep down we all share the same problem, that we have all allowed the most unfit amongst us to gain control of our core social structures and, the sooner it will change.
The 1% are slowly but surely killing our world and us along with it. When the 99% have full voice on the internet globally and can share in their common values, so we will save our world and future generations. The change in the last decade has been immense, the change in the next decade will be even greater. The internet is saving the world because it give us, the majority, a shared global voice we have never had before, FACT.
Chaos - everything, everywhere, everywhen
There are a lot of ugly minds today who are telling the whole world how they actually think, and then projecting it onto Bill.
And did you exchange a walk on part in the war for a lead role in a cage? - Pink Floyd.
I went to that Kiva site after seeing ads all over Hulu and was, frankly, quite appalled at the usury rates that the local loan sharks are charging when lending the money you donate.
I like the idea of making it a loan rather than a hand-out, but they should be charging normal interest rates, or even no interest. They don't need to cover the risk cost because there isn't any - that's the whole point of donating money, you expect to lose it.
Can you be Even More Awesome?!
Not only that, with Zuckerberg it is business disguised as altruism. The reason he really wants people online is because he wants their eyeballs on a Facebook feed.
Think of Gates however you want, but I personally think he deserves a huge amount of credit for doing real charity work.
There is much work to do. If one group wants to help by adding educational tools, that is certainly one useful thing. But Gates is right that there is a very broad spectrum of changes needed to bring regions out of poverty, and Internet access alone is not enough.
And, of course, there's the aspect of all this that everyone seems to overlook -- connectivity is not education. It may make it easier to get educated if it's used in conjunction with an education program, but in and of itself the internet is a piss-poor educational tool. The sheer volume of misinformation, minutiae, gossip, and punditry dwarfs the sorts of knowledge that are actually useful, much less the subset of that knowledge that would be useful to someone in the developing world.
Those of us who use the internet as a reference tool are used to that unreliability, and we can afford it. If the information on how to make cheese that we found on some website turns out to be wrong, then we shrug and toss the results in the garbage disposal. Folks living on the edge of subsistence don't have the luxury of experimentation.
I was never a fan of Gates while he was running Microsoft, and I've always thought his methods were on the shady side at best, but the efforts of the Gates Foundation to tackle real problems, particularly unpopular, ignored, and solvable problems, have to be respected. Gates may have been a lousy coder and no real techie, but maybe that's a good thing.
I think you've hit the nail on the head here. Until there is a high quality source of information for these people, the internet will not provide them what they need or want. Perhaps the solution is to let them build it, though. Provide the infrastructure, wiki style, and let them teach each other. Other experts from developed nations could provide additional input.
To be fair, at the time he was right about encryption. Now there are other forms that do not depend on factorization, though - namely elliptic curve cryptography.
Disclaimer: This is not my area of expertise. I would not be too surprised to find out that elliptic curve cryptography existed in 1995. I am, nonetheless, fairly confident that there were no readily available implementations for non cryptographers.
The point is, he said that the problem was to factor large prime numbers. Prime numbers. The factorization of every prime number is 1 and the number...
In conclusion, Gates is a sloppy proofreader at best, and a complete idiot at worst.
Autocorrect?
Your ignoring the scale of suffering caused by disease in places like Africa and just how staggering an impact it is happening.
Take a place like Swaziland. 1/4 of the population has HIV, is too poor for triple cocktail treatment and are thus dying. 110,000 children are orphaned as a result. On top of that, 58% of the population requires treatment for pneumonia each year, and nearly 60% requiring rehydration for diarea (And we're not talking having a sore gut from a cold, but conditions that are often fatal).
Will education help them? Well swaziland has around 90% literacy rate, and an exceptionally good school enrollment rate which is comparable with even western countries. Something is failing here that *isnt* education.
The last major war Swaziland was involved in was nearly a century ago, and its monarchy is widely held to be benevolant and not particularly corrupt or malicious. Its economy however is , like many post-colonial countries, a bit of a basket case and income disparity is utterly terrible, with a fabulously rich ruling class and the majority of its population surviving on about $1.50 a day. Despite being well educated, simple education alone appears not to be fixing this.
The simple fact is a massive chunk of the productive workforce is incapacitated and dying placing enormous economic pressures on those who do work, and this causes terrible poverty, compounded of course by the terrible inequality that was foisted on the country from its legacy as a british colony.
Bracketing aside the troubling questions of wealth distribution, it is clear that swaziland is doomed without a very serious improvement in health care. HIV does not have to be a death sentence anymore when treated by modern anti-virals. We can't cure it yet, but we can make it something that doesn't kill. A westerner in a UHC country (to ensure poverty doesnt remove access to medicine) with HIV can live as long as someone without HIV as long as they continue to take the required medicines and lives a generally healthy lifestyle. Malaria is a disease that stalks the poor (when was the last time you heard of a malaria outbreak in europe, australia or the united states?) and can be trivially contained if the money is spent as it should. The remaining conditions can be contained and cured with simple antibiotics and ensuring clean water and hygenic waste disposal.
There is no reason Swasiland should be any poorer than a european country. But like many african countries, its problems revolve around universal access to healthcare, wealth disparity and equitable access to clean water and waste disposal. Education, and by this I mean the internet too, does not factor here. Whats the point of reading about the fabulous lives of the westerners whilst dying of AIDS, malaria and diahrea.
Excuse the Unicode crap in my posts. That's an apostrophe, and slashdot is busted.
so you best axe them
*aks
Or when the fathers have to support all their bastards.
The internet can save the world, and is doing so right now.
Consider the widespread awakening of people, organizations and communities to the details and orchestrations of world government.
The psycho paths who have deliberately destroyed countless civilizations in the past, no longer can destroy in complete secrecy.
If we lose this civilization, it will be because most people want it too happen.
The destruction of obsolescence of such concepts of freedom, liberty and personal virtue is every where in the news: from bankers stealing whole countries savings and pensions like they did in Greece, to the criminal scientists endorsing crap science in the name of making trillions in carbon credits in the whole scheme of man made global warming and other such nonsense.
The internet will save the world and if it does not, it will be because everyone sees the injustice being done and decided not to do anything about it.
If that happens I say good riddens to the human race. It was evil to begin with, and when it died it got rid of a lot of evil in the world to make for a better place.
-Hack
Got Geometrodynamics? Awe, too hard to figure out? Too bad.
Your wrong is grammar.
I'm not saying Gates is necessarily wrong, but it is awfully convenient that the most important issue for the world just happens to be the one his charity is involved in.
What a moronic statement, it isn't convenient at all. He picked what he thought was the most important issue facing the world and created his charity around addressing that, how the fuck is that "convenient".
The Earth is overpopulated. That's the fundamental problem we all face. Eradicating disease is a worthy aim, but will only make this underlying problem worse. I'm not suggesting we shouldn't eradicate disease, but it must be coupled with real action on overpopulation. Even thinking about the problem would be a start.
"They guy is right."
That guy has been wrong with every prediction about the internet in the last 20 years.
Reminds me of the time this guy was in the street signing people up regular donations to a scheme which helped drug and alcohol addicts. He was really enthused, "yeah this scheme is great, it really helps people, it is really successful."
I ask, oh ok, so let's see, a meaningful change would stick for at least two years, so do you guys follow up with people and see if they are still doing well after two years?
"Oh people really move around a lot and you know we can't track them. But this scheme is really good, it really works, people get better."
Ok you can't track some of them, but what about the others, do you check after two years?
"No, but it really works, it is really effective."
At this point his colleague gets interested and calls her manager who says, no, they don't have that data.
So how do you know it works?
"But it really works, it really works well."
There's no room in business for humor. No good business person makes a decision without calculating their potential profit and loss (or risk/benefit, if you prefer those terms). If you don't understand it, I'd hazard to guess that you've never been involved in senior business decisions for a multimillion dollar company.
Actually, that's what I do every day. You, on the other hand, have no idea what you're talking about.
On a more related note, he's running a charity designed to give money away, you moron. There is no profit/loss decision to be made.
I don't respond to AC's.
Agreed. Handing out vaccines isn't going to structurally improve lives and ol' Bill isn't going to get on the Free Software bandwagon. But maybe he's just trying to purchase a place in heaven.
"I'm not much interested in interoperability. I want substitutability. I want to be able to throw your software out."
I'm not disputing your comments. However, what gives me second thoughts about the efforts of the Gates foundation is that they don't try to promote self-sufficiency in the target areas they're supposedly trying to help. For example, instead of simply trying to donate medicine why don't they try to set up labs that will manufacture the medicine within the country that needs it. It seems that even in his charity work Bill Gates has adopted the mindset of a proprietary software vendor, where even if a product is given away free, you're not given too much of a control over how it is to be used.
"You don't have to be Internet connected to be a Microsoft customer."
GFL with that, Windows 8 requires an email address before it completes the install.
all your grammar is belong to us
Has Bill really thought out his quest to it's logical conclusion? It's great if we can save lives and cure malaria, but then what? Who's going to feed these millions/billions of mouths? Aren't we just going to save them from disease only to have them die from starvation?
To really alleviate global poverty, every https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Third_world nation Currency should be pegged to https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Opec Oil for 4 years.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Triffin_dilemma
Casteism
A great idea bot if we care about childen suffering ve also need to make contraception easily available. If a man fathers 13 kids of which he cannot properly take care of,feed, a vaccine Malaria is of much help.
Translation: What I am doing is right, and whateveryone else is doing is wrong.
I'd say he's slightly biased. I guess this is payback for people not liking him, or his products, or his predatory practices
Trust me, I have. The lowest profit company where I made company wide business decisions was $2M/yr. The highest, over $100M/yr.
Serious? Seriousness is well above my pay grade.
No, but he's trying to put the good PR spin on things.
How about this one to start.
http://www.latimes.com/news/la-na-gatesx07jan07,0,2533850.story#axzz2jXU69lfS
Basically, he does humanitarian work to the locals, but is a large stake holder in the factories that are making the locals sick. Because he's "helping" them, he's the good guy. Because he's only a large stake holder in the factory, he's not the bad guy. He brings in more money from the factory than he puts out to help the locals.
Profit/Loss. If you bring in $100M, and you pay out $20M, and look like the good guy, you're doing it right, as it's still an $80M profit. Since you're dumping the $20M in to "help" the people, the locals won't complain.
If he had more loss than profit, he would simply cut ties to both sides. It's not worth it.
Serious? Seriousness is well above my pay grade.
Really? You have a multimillion dollar corporation in 2 boutique pet stores? Your reported annual revenue is less than $500k/yr. After expenses, you're a multi-thousand dollar enterprise.
Serious? Seriousness is well above my pay grade.
Uh, no. The Gates Foundation does not invest and profit very much at all, and has no reason to do so. First, it gets new money every year from Bill as he slowly liquidates all his Microsoft stock, second it owns $2 billion of Berkshire Hathaway stock donated by Warren Buffet, and third, the charter of the Gates Foundation requires it to spend every last dime it controls and shut down 50 years after Bill or Melinda's death, whichever comes last.
Unlike many such organizations, Bill was determined that it not become a self-perpetuating monstrosity that does more for its CEO and board of directors than it does for needy people.
"There's no room in business for humor."
I disagree. John Cleese explains it best:
http://videosift.com/british/video/Why-laughing-during-something-serious-isnt-disrespectful
"Handing out vaccines isn't going to structurally improve lives"
Yes it will. From both an individual health and public health perspective it is a game changer with massive improvements in people's lives.
No no, JWSmythe. BinaryLarry was agreeing with you by suggesting that DogDude was ignorant of the motivatins of business & the true capitalistic reasoning behind their ostensibly lofty ambitions. I too must agree: Zuckerburg's mission is money, not humanitarianism. I don't mind businesslike behavior, but I resent excess, & I despise dishonesty.
If those people who are dying of malaria do not have protected property rights then you can shoot them up with whatever miracle cure you can conjure but it will not make a bit of difference in their miserable lives. Universally protected property rights will cure disease. Odd, but inescapably true. Bill Gates I guess takes this wonderful thing for granted--that someone has always protected his wealth for him, allowing him to concentrate on gathering more.When you can be secure in your property the wealth abounds and accumulates through society and those people con focus on other nice to have things like vaccinations. We are proof.
I object to power without constructive purpose. --Spock
Ok, so he replied to the wrong message. That happens. :)
Serious? Seriousness is well above my pay grade.