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Zuckerberg To Give Away 99% of His Facebook Stock (bloomberg.com)
An anonymous reader writes: The Facebook stock currently held by Mark Zuckerberg and his wife Priscilla Chan is worth roughly $45 billion. Today, the couple posted a letter addressed to their newborn daughter outlining plans to give away 99% of that stock so their daughter can "live in a better world." They say, "Our initial areas of focus will be personalized learning, curing disease, connecting people and building strong communities." The letter also includes a long list of problems that need to be solved and situations that need to be improved: human health, learning, clean energy, equality, unhealthy childhoods, and more. They go out of their way to mention that many of these will not be solved quickly, and will need investments on a 100-year scale to be worthwhile. They're making internet access another major issue: "The internet is so important that for every 10 people who gain internet access, about one person is lifted out of poverty and about one new job is created."
but, Max and her siblings will still have a head start my children have only dreamed of.
Happiness in intelligent people is the rarest thing I know.
Ernest Hemingway
Or... you could pay Facebook's taxes with it.
"I don't know, therefore Aliens" Wafflebox1
According to this: "He will keep his majority stake in Facebook, and thus voting control, for the foreseeable future." I doubt there will be much change anytime soon.
How is someone lifted form poverty?
The biggest single reason is easy access to commodity prices. Farmers can see the market price for their crops, and avoid getting ripped off by middlemen. They can also make more informed choices about which crops to grow, which fertilizers to use, how to irrigate, and when to harvest. Once they have access to the Internet, many farmers in Africa soon stop growing low value subsistence crops like rice and maize, and switch to much higher value cash crops like mangoes and coffee, which are exported to Europe and the Middle East. Once they are growing crops that generate cashflow, they have access to credit, and can buy machinery, buy fertilizer, hire additional labor, and even buy out and consolidate neighboring farms.