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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.
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
The fail-fast and fail-often approach could be criticized when applied to human beings.
The only criticism I could reasonably see is that the children were harmed when the school was shut down too quickly. This doesn't seem to be the case, though....the students seem to have been transferred back to larger schools.
Does the book recommend the fail fast approach?
It should.
"First they came for the slanderers and i said nothing."
You're calling him an idiot and you didn't even notice the club?
Nova
Looks like you lied. I'm the guy that fact checks liberals when they claim something that is black/white and can be without spin. Nearly 100% rate at proving them liars.
"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.
They're surrounded by water and they still ration fish. Wow, what efficiency!
California is on the coast and they're rationing water...
“He’s not deformed, he’s just drunk!”
What a crock. Everyone has their own reasons for doing whatever they do. Some people do good things to please another person, some do them because they believe in an afterlife, some do them for their own egos, some do them to look good. Who the fuck cares what the motivation is? Important things are being done, and people's lives are better for it.
Then there are people like the author, and you, who try to build up their own pitiful egos by tearing down others. The only difference in the two approaches is that the philanthropist actually accomplishes something positive for others, and you don't.
Last week I was at a post production studio in Mumbai. The editor was working on an Indian Hindi TV series - MAIN KUCH BHI KAR SAKTHI HOON (I Can Do Anything.) https://www.youtube.com/user/mkbksh
The show is set in rural India, follows the usual Hindi or Indian cinema/television melodramatic hyperventilating style. Here is the beef...rather than inane plots on good versus evil, bad mother in laws and familiar Indian TV soap tropes, this show had female protagonists who were bucking the system and bringing out change in the society.
The familiar style they used made sure a majority of the audience will feel comfortable.
Gates Foundation was one of the Producers. This is thinking out of the box...you need a bit of 'good old propaganda' to support you when you go to rural communities to change their perception on unhealthy practices.
Tat Tvam Asi
I realize you're being facetious, but I still want to remind people that the Golden State produces a ridiculous percentage of the country's produce that is not corn or wheat. That's where most of the water goes, even during severe droughts. http://www.slate.com/articles/...
The Daddy casts sleep on the Baby. The Baby resists!
For all his "geek" status, Bill Gates (with his foundation) failed elementary statistics. He succumbed to the law of small numbers and idiotically pushed for smaller schools for a long period spending a lot of time, money and energy convincing policy makers that the small schools will make students better.
They thought so only because frequently among the best performing schools were small schools. Idiots didn't notice that among the worst performers were ALSO small schools - small samples just lend themselves to a higher variability.
Read details here - http://marginalrevolution.com/...
If a lot of money is spent by non-accountable idiot organizations , it is not only not good for society but actively harmful.
Bingo Dictionary - Pragmatist, n. A myopic idealist.
Also, Linsey McGoey is fully in her rights to critique how they spend it.
Sure, but keep in mind that she has a much bigger incentive to be negative, than to be positive. Far more people will buy her book if she says philanthropy is harmful, since then the readers can feel smug and superior about doing nothing.
Gates foundation has saved millions of lives
You should keep reminding yourself that Gates obtained vast amounts of that money crookedly - I would say the vast majority of it. He and his company found themselves in a position of being able to exploit a monolpoly, and continue with dirty tricks to the preent day.
So his wealth did not materialise from thin air (or in a differnt analogy, got dug up from hiding in the ground like oil or coal). Most of his wealth came by illicit transfer from other people. How do you know that those other people would not have made better use of their money? I have given money to charities, but they have been charities of my choosing, not Gates'. By your logic, it would be fine if someone robbed banks as long as they dropped some in the charity box on the way out the door.
Medical: When working in 3rd world countries, those strings are absolutely necessary or the money just goes into mansions and swiss bank accounts.
It's actually much worse. If you don't play the Big Pharma Strong IP game, you can't get help from the Gates Foundation. And if you do, and then you have an outbreak of something expensive to cure in your country, you have two choices. You can make the medication yourself, and eventually end up with the world bank owning your country. Or you can pay whatever the market demands for the medication, and you can end up with the world bank owning your country.
"You're right," Fisheye says. "I should have set it on 'whip' or 'chop.'"