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."

Comments

I'd be happy with the remaining 1%

[hcs_$reboot]

One percent being worth $500 million.

Re:I'd be happy with the remaining 1%

[Anonymous Coward]

He'd make a great favor on the human race by just shutting down facehook.

Re:I'd be happy with the remaining 1%

[Anonymous Coward]

Damned if you do, damned if you don't, eh?

I'm all for pointing out the evils done by people, but it's a bit sad to always focus on the bad things when there are also good things, on occasion.

Would it, according to you, be better if they did not do this?

Re:I'd be happy with the remaining 1%

[smallfries]

God you are so right. What a bastard! I wish he would keep all of that money instead of giving it away. That would totally make the world a better place.

On the Importance of the Internet

[ThosLives]

"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."

Interesting, but I've never heard such a claim before. That also sounds like correlation but perhaps not causation. And is the person who is lifted out of poverty and/or the job created one of those 10 people who gained internet access? What type of job is created? How is someone lifted form poverty? How soon after getting internet access? Maybe it's "eventually" due to education?

Re:On the Importance of the Internet

[praxis]

That is a very good answer to the question. The more general answer is "information" and "education" in all areas of life. The correlation between education and status growth is well studied and I'm surprised the question even had to be asked.

how he could really make the world a better place

[Anonymous Coward]

0. Sell 5% of FB stock. Hold profits for step 3.

1. Destroy the data-mined profiles of people's lives that Facebook builds.

2. Shut down Facebook.

3. Use remainder of his fortune to fund a distributed, censorship-resistant, surveillance-resistant, easy to use social network not beholden to or run by data brokers.

Re:The question people ought to be asking themselv

[fahrbot-bot]

If you wanted to be charitable you could have actually made your product less expensive, ...

(a) Facebook is free. (b) Its users *are* the product - already given freely.
Unless you mean Facebook could sell user information and content to advertisers for less...

Re:"give away 99% of that stock"

[vovin]

Yeah .. so the government can fund critical programs. Like war on terror, war on drugs, and medicare and social security.
Talk about pissing money down a rat hole.

What else would he do with the money?

[larryjoe]

There's some truth to the premise of the movie "Brewster's Millions". After a certain point, spending money is not easy to do. If Zuckerberg is keeping half a billion to support his family, the other $45 billion won't make any difference to him. He can still live more extravagantly than most other multi-millionaires.

By giving away what is basically his surplus, he gains positive publicity and maybe a bit of personal satisfaction. That's probably worth more to him than keeping the money in the bank. It wouldn't even affect his Forbes ranking since he has already said that he will still effectively control the donated Facebook stock.

But I don't begrudge him his notion of philanthropy anymore than I begrudge the NBA stars their philanthropic foundations. They all get their publicity, tax benefits, etc. It's their money, so they get to decide what to do with it. The one criticism that I have is that I don't think much of Zuckerberg's priorities. Curing a widespread third-world disease like malaria a la Bill Gates is an impactful thing. Increasing internet access is not even a first-world problem and will do not much for people who worry about basic necessities. The one philanthropist that I really admire is Andrew Carnegie, who used his gifts to build over 2500 libraries in the world, many of which are still operating after a hundred years.

Foundations are the biggest scam in the world.

[areusche]

This always cracks me up how wage slaves erm people continually fall for this.

Foundations are the biggest tax dodge ever. In fact, since Zuck is opening up a foundation he can "donate" his shares to an organization he wholly controls who can then sell that stock capital gains tax free. The best part is he can use that f*ck all amount as a tax write off on his future earnings as well.

Then with whatever the obscene amount of money he can pay some small group of people to manage it. His daughter when she comes of age can then become a "director" or some other BS title and get paid $350,000 or more for the privilege of doing so. His family can then live off of this foundations free cash from being properly managed for the remainder of time. It's how the Rochefellers and Rothchilds continue their wealth without doing any real work.

He's smart to be doing this now before the next big dip in the market which should be coming soon enough.