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'No Such Thing As a Free Gift' Casts a Critical Eye At Gates Foundation (theintercept.com)
theodp writes: The Intercept's Michael Massing takes a look at "How the Gates Foundation Reflects the Good and the Bad of 'Hacker Philanthropy." He writes, "Despite its impact, few book-length assessments of the foundation's work have appeared. Now Linsey McGoey, a sociologist at the University of Essex, is seeking to fill the gap. 'Just how efficient is Gates's philanthropic spending?' she asks in No Such Thing as a Free Gift. 'Are the billions he has spent on U.S. primary and secondary schools improving education outcomes? Are global health grants directed at the largest health killers? Is the Gates Foundation improving access to affordable medicines, or are patent rights taking priority over human rights?' As the title of her book suggests, McGoey answers all of these questions in the negative. The good the foundation has done, she believes, is far outweighed by the harm." Massing adds, "Bill and Melinda Gates answer to no electorate, board, or shareholders; they are accountable mainly to themselves. What's more, the many millions of dollars the foundation has bestowed on nonprofits and news organizations has led to a natural reluctance on their part to criticize it. There's even a name for it: the 'Bill Chill' effect."
Maybe they can do much more good without jumping through the bureaucratic hoops. It's their money. Why do they need to account to Linsey McGoey for the way they spend it?
"Bill and Melinda Gates answer to no electorate, board, or shareholders; they are accountable mainly to themselves."
What makes anyone think they have a right to an accounting?
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The government run school systems and aid agencies have to account for how the money is effecting them.
Also, Linsey McGoey is fully in her rights to critique how they spend it.
The same is true when it comes to the foundation’s work in public health. As McGoey briefly acknowledges, the foundation’s investment of more than $15 billion in this field “has done considerable good.” That seems an understatement. Thanks in part to the Gateses’ strong investment in vaccines for infectious diseases, deaths from measles in Africa have dropped by 90 percent since 2000. Over the last quarter century, tuberculosis mortality worldwide has fallen by 45 percent, while over the last dozen years the number of new malaria cases has dropped by 30 percent. And polio, which in 1988 was endemic in 125 countries, is today endemic in only two. The foundation has also played an important part in fighting the spread of HIV and helping those infected with the virus to lead productive lives. For this, Bill and Melinda Gates deserve much credit.
So far so good.
The question is, has this been the best use of their money? As McGoey notes, chronic diseases, as opposed to communicable ones, exact a staggering toll worldwide, yet the foundation has invested less than 4 percent of its funding in research on them, and the global health community has largely followed suit. “The failure to combat obesity, cancer and heart disease epidemics in poor nations,” she observes, “has been one of the most glaring mistakes of global development efforts in recent years.” An equally serious shortcoming has been the neglect of primary-care facilities in the developing world. The initial problems that the nations of West Africa faced in combating the Ebola outbreak stemmed in part from the weaknesses in their overall health systems. Interestingly, in late September, the Gates Foundation, together with WHO and the World Bank, announced a joint partnership aimed at improving access to primary care in poor and middle-income countries — a dramatic (if tacit) acknowledgement that the emphasis on fighting individual diseases has been too narrow.
The primary reason it makes sense to focus on infectious diseases is that once they are gone, they are completely gone. Obesity and other problems don't go away permanently. In contrast if we wipe out malaria or polio, we won't have to deal with it again.
Note also that every single one of the other major criticisms acknowledges that it is something that the Gates have changed already. For example, the article discusses how a number of the Foundation's early attempts at education reform didn't work well. But they changed what they were doing. So they are already using effective evaluations and metrics to decide things.
I find it deeply unfortunate that someone spent an entire book criticizing the Gates Foundation when there are far more clear cut wastes of money out there. The Make a Wish Foundation is an example. They spent 58 million dollars last year http://www.charitynavigator.org/index.cfm?bay=search.programs&orgid=4038#.VljSXnsyH3U and millions more came from businesses in parts of wishes to help a tiny number of dying children, whereas if that money was spent effectively on cancer research, there would be fewer children dying. Instead we have an entire book focusing on one of the most effective and efficient charities in on the planet which complains that they aren't efficient enough.
It always has strings attached.
Money provided for:
education - only Microsoft software used.
medical - buy only from specific companies or research is still owned by the companies...
As far as is visible, they are just an extension of Microsoft, but without taxes.
The government run school systems and aid agencies have to account for how the money is effecting them.
It seems the Gates Foundation didn't fund your school enough.
It always has strings attached.
Money provided for:
education - only Microsoft software used.
medical - buy only from specific companies or research is still owned by the companies...
As far as is visible, they are just an extension of Microsoft, but without taxes.
Medical: When working in 3rd world countries, those strings are absolutely necessary or the money just goes into mansions and swiss bank accounts.
If you save thousands of people from being killed or maimed by measles, polio, malaria, and other diseases in Africa, but you don't bow your head to the left's concerns over patents, then those people you helped don't matter. You must advance the cause. And the cause is about money, not about whether children are crippled by polio or die of measles.
And the experiments to improve education threaten to disrupt the cash flow from teachers' union dues. Stop those too.
The good the foundation has done, she believes, is far outweighed by the harm
The Gates foundation mainly spends money on education and healthcare. In healthcare, the Gates foundation has spent $15 billion on improving vaccines, etc. This (and money from other sources) has resulted in a reduction of deaths by measles in Africa by 90%. Polio, tuberculosis, and HIV have all been reduced, thanks in part to the Gates foundation.
So what's the problem? According to the author, "The failure to combat obesity, cancer and heart disease epidemics in poor nations,” she observes, “has been one of the most glaring mistakes of global development efforts in recent years." So maybe they could have allocated their resources better.
In education, the author is upset that the Gates foundation spent money on things that didn't work. For example, they spent billions to create small schools based on the idea that it would give students more personalized attention. Unfortunately, that didn't improve college acceptance rates, so Gates ended the program.
If the author thinks that "dropping/modifying a program when data indicates it doesn't work" is a bad thing, then I'm forced to disagree heartily with her. In fact, if the only thing accomplished by the Gates foundation is to get people to do that more often, then it will be a huge success as far as I'm concerned. And I'm no fan of Gates.
"First they came for the slanderers and i said nothing."
Wow, this book is a Slashdotter's wet dream. I haven't read it, but if they include conspiracy theories about how Bill is actually somehow making more money off his donations, there will be a whole lot of splooge expelled while reading this book.
First, it's his money, worst case he's putting it back in the economy to people who need it more. Second, no matter what course of philanthropic work you take there will be some way for someone to criticize it. It's similar to how conspiracy theories work. People ignore the _mountain_ of evidence for an event's explanation and instead nitpick on small details in a chaotic situation. "OMG the firefighter said something slightly off while sitting around in 9/11 chaos, it proves that it was a conspiracy!". Sorry, real life isn't all 1s and 0s.
Sounds like some idiot who thinks they could do so much more good with someone else's money cherry-picking a bunch of bitter gripes.
LOL dude you don't have a fucking clue how tax works do you? this article is really really bad, reads like a whine fest of "they aren't focusing on the areas we want them to therefore anything good they do is outweighed by not doing what we want". She is more than free to create and fund her our foundation and focus on the ills she believes haunts the world instead of bitching about others that are actually trying to help
"They are acting liberal but not liberal ENOUGH! They don't subscribe to precisely my kind of politics, so I need to hate on what they do."
People like the author piss me off. They aren't interested in any actual good, they are just interested in their agenda being pushed.
California is on the coast and they're rationing water...
“He’s not deformed, he’s just drunk!”