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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."
One percent being worth $500 million.
Slashdot, fix the reply notifications... You won't get away with it...
Since he's selling his stock, he's also selling management of the company. Meaning different board members etc. Facebook may go in a different direction.
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?
"There are a dozen opinions on a matter until you know the truth. Then there is only one." - CS Lewis (paraprhase)
You don't make a better world by dissipating capital.
-jcr
The only title of honor that a tyrant can grant is "Enemy of the State."
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.
Or... you could pay Facebook's taxes with it.
"I don't know, therefore Aliens" Wafflebox1
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...
It must have been something you assimilated. . . .
He really has to do this. The company isn't growing anymore, and has not been growing for a while. All of the side projects and ostentatious giving is necessary to try to hype up this over-hyped stock. I'm sorry for FB fanboys, but this is the dark and honest truth.
From a human standpoint, his commitment is amazing, much like the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation has been and continues to be.
I say, best of luck trying to keep FB "profitable."
Kriston
I love how so many people posting here are so cynical.
Personally I don't see why his motivations are hard to believe at all as they would be pretty much the same if I was in his shoes. No one on this planet needs to own more than a few million dollars, forget about billions.
Basically the only reason I'd want to have the burden of billions of dollars is to use them to try to make the world a better place.
or you could remit that money to the government instead which is governed by the people.
Or he could realize he has already amassed enough money to do meaningful change, unlike the rest of society that needs to pool their money into the government to amass wealth of a similar scale. Now that he has this wealth, I feel there are two "best" options based on where his motivations lie:
1) He doesn't care about helping people: Start a charity to funnel money into and avoid as much taxes as possible.
2) He does care about helping people: Start a charity to do enact meaningful change in a much more efficient manner than giving it to the government.
In both scenarios, giving his money to a charity that he and/or people he trusts have control over is the best play.
-- All that is necessary for the triumph of evil is that good men do nothing. -- Edmund Burke
curing disease when in the usa you may have to go to lockup to find a doctor that will see you as soon it will be very hard to find one that will take meadcade as that will be the best you can get with your mc job after an H1B takes you job.
Or how about he gets clean drinking water to Haiti?
putting the 'B' in LGBTQ+
Like when he recieved his award
I think the question you ought to be asking yourself is how to make a free product less expensive.
I think people like Bill Gates and Warren Buffet give away their money to charities that buy products from the companies they own (such as Monsanto, Microsoft, drug companies, etc.) which pay them dividends and probably make them richer than before while making them look good at the same time. I think Zuckerberg is doing the same. For example, make investments in Internet infrastructure to get a billion or two more people on the Internet^H^H^H^H^H^H^H^H Facebook, and profit from the ad revenue.
Um, no.
Well, YES, but no. Certainly, the misuse of charitable organizations is a thing, and a thing with a lot of tax advantages.
But you don't give away $44 billion dollars to charity as a way to hide an investment in your own company.
And you don't know anything about Warren Buffet, at all, if you believe this. He's a good guy. There isn't a trick to it, he just happens to be really good at allocating capital. He doesn't need to go searching for loopholes--he already thinks his taxes are too low.
By the time he's dead, what will 99% of his stock be worth? I'm guessing very, very, little. Yeah, right now it is still worth a lot, but that is because it is massively overvalued. It will eventually fade from popularity just like MySpace did and AOL did before that. I'd be more impressed if he said he was going to give away $44.5 billion.
Damn_registrars has no butt-hole. Damn_registrars has no use for a butt-hole.
Giving the money to non-profits is largely going to be a waste. Zuckerberg would do much better to pick another big commercial project and focus on that: space travel, asteroid mining, human cloning, nanotech, whatever.
If you wanted to be charitable you could have [...], or you could remit that money to the government instead which is governed by the people.
Just to be clear, you are suggesting that money given to the government will go towards the needs of the people. That's what you're saying... yes?
Hypothetically speaking, a $1 million mutual fund well-invested can return roughly 7% over a long period and require 0.5% in management fees. Assuming 2.5% inflation, that amount would provide $50,000 per annum in perpetuity.
If you disagree with the numbers you can use other numbers, but the central point is the same.
$45 billion could be set up as a fund that supports 45,000 people in perpetuity.
Hypothetically, he could set up a system of "mini" Nobel prize awards given to people who do interesting research. For comparison, that's about the number of PhD candidates in the US.
We keep hearing about how little post graduate researchers are paid, how they can't have a family or any kind of life on their research stipends.
Instead of giving big lumps of money for particular areas of research, he could set up foundation grants that support *individuals* who have potentially interesting research ideas.
Just a thought. In any event, I don't think Mark reads slashdot anyway.
How much more progress could we make if we dedicated half of that money to research on batteries, nuclear power, solar power, space travel, stronger materials, or room temperature super conductivity?
At least half of it should go to the sciences imo.
Why OpalCalc is the best Windows calc
> 1) He doesn't care about helping people: Start a charity to funnel money into and avoid as much taxes as possible.
This is his stock. He's already paying 40% income tax plus 15% double FICA on his -salary- either way. The stock income is long term capital gains, taxed at 15%. Which means that for every $100 he gives away, he saves $15 on his taxes.
So let's do the math. He could either:
Gross gain: $45 billion
Tax: $7 billion
Net he keeps: $38 billion
Or:
Gross gain: $45 billion
Give away: $44.8 billion
Net he keeps: $200 million
Would you rather have $38 billion, or $200 million?
Giving away a million dollars in order to not pay the 150,000 tax on it would be STUPID! You don't give away lots of money in order to avoid paying a much smaller amount in taxes.
If every life matters how would you pick? You could do nothing and then 1 person would die, or you could employ your sidearm and then 1 person would still die.
Which death would be better for your friend? I'm sure they would argue for the criminal's death over their own. Which one would be better for you? I would guess you would pick the criminal too. For society as a whole which death would be better? How many more people would be hurt or killed by the criminal if you don't act? How many positive things would society loose by your friend's death?
Shoot the criminal, save your friend. The world will be better for it.
Giving the money to non-profits is largely going to be a waste. Zuckerberg would do much better to pick another big commercial project and focus on that: space travel, asteroid mining, human cloning, nanotech, whatever.
It's a fine idea, but it's missing a key ingredient: the drive and capability of the person spearheading the project.
Mark is not well known as an innovator, a leader, or even a creator.
I'm not saying that this is bad in any way, or that this is some sort of deficit in his character, I'm just saying that he's *probably* not the right person to pull off a big commercial project. Compare with Elon Musk, Steve Jobs, or Richard Branson.
And it's *highly* unlikely that he can find the right person to run such a venture, assuming that Mark would fund it.
And that assumes that Mark is even *interested* in running a big commercial venture. He might just want to settle down, and not devote the rest of his life to some aspiring goal.
Picking and piloting a commercial venture is one way to change the world, but I just don't see Mark as that sort of person.
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.
If the Zuckerbergs give their money to organizations that help people directly, then good. But I wonder if they plan to give part of their money to lobbying organizations, including organizations that push for more immigration. From their letter to our daughter:
Can we build inclusive and welcoming communities?
Can we nurture peaceful and understanding relationships between people of all nations?
Can we truly empower everyone -- women, children, underrepresented minorities, immigrants and the unconnected?
Maybe they mean just that and nothing more, but maybe they're preparing to push for freer immigration into the US.
If he is truly giving this money back to a foundation, which is tax exempt and accountable only to itself, is it more about charity or about power and influence. If you wanted to be charitable you could have actually made your product less expensive, or you could remit that money to the government instead which is governed by the people. Instead what he is doing is creating an alternative power structure, much in the same way that the vatican is a power structure, meant to allow his power and influence last a "100 years".
"...remit that money to the government instead which is governed by the people." I am sorry, are you talking about governments on Mars?
Name a super-rich left-winger who has NOT made such a "selfless" pledge to keep his money as long as he lives, and then make sure HIS preferences continue to be shoved down the throats of the population thereafter by allocating it all to the do-gooder entities he has chosen.
The general public is supposed to say "awwwww, what a wonderful, generous guy! now I feel waaaaayyyy better giving him all the details of my life and the lives of my friends and family so he can get even richer!" without noticing that this is only the standard modern deviation from the old standard tycoon-model.
The old tycoon model was:
1. Get super rich
2. Either leave it to your family, or spend it all on yourself and leave your family little
The improved Carnegie model was:
1. Get super rich
2. Realize the public hates the super rich, so buy-back some good PR by spending some building public libraries, hospitals, etc in cities and even small towns all across the country that directly benefit the public in real ways
3. Either leave it to your family, or spend it all on yourself and leave your family little
The new Gates/Soros/Buffet/Zuckerberg model:
1. Get super rich
2. Realize the public hates the super rich, so buy-back some good PR by saying you'll give it all away to charities some day
3. Setup organizations to manipulate all the parts of society you want to tinker with but don't have the time to, and give them madison-ave-generated poll-tested good sounding names, no matter how despicable their goals actually will be (see: George Soros)
4. Arrange for some of your money to go to your organizations, and some to go to the similar orgs your gazillionaire buddies have similarly erected. Don't worry about the amounts, or when the money will transfer, the public will have already moved on to the latest Kardashian "wardrobe malfunction" pictures and they still feel good about you from your announcement
5. Resume your usual activities confident that your will have a lasting effect manipulating generations of people not yet born, long after you are dead; Those future people deserve to have their votes and preferences overridden by a long-dead jerk
6. Either leave what's left (99.9%) it to your family (remember: by not ACTUALLY giving it away when you announced, you were able to make tons more with the money during all those years you remained alive and used it), or spend it all on yourself and leave your family little
$38M, since it's honest money not obtained by cheating while the other $162M is blood money. Besides, it's not as if one wouldn't end up receiving the $162M some other way.
You don't get to play the Almighty just because you're the 21st Century version of a robber baron.
Twitter supports and protects racists - by smearing their critics with the "Hate Speech" label.
Not in Africa. Africa is a country that has one resource in abundance that we lack: Affordable Manpower.
We used to have a Bill of Rights. Now, with the rights gone, all we have left is the bill.
Unless there's some push to remove the avenue of using "charity" as a cover, there's a 99% certainty that it's just tax cheating.
Twitter supports and protects racists - by smearing their critics with the "Hate Speech" label.
"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."
In a call centre.
I wouldn't consider handing over my privacy "free".
In neither definition of free.
We used to have a Bill of Rights. Now, with the rights gone, all we have left is the bill.
But that kind of money should easily buy a few local politicians. I mean, if it buys whole senators, how hard could it be?
We used to have a Bill of Rights. Now, with the rights gone, all we have left is the bill.
Instead of creating charities against diseases, inequality and whatnot, as they all do, maybe one of these billionaires should finally invest into the stuff that will actually save humanity as a whole. Such as large-scale investment in renewable energy and other means of dealing with climate change. Or a Space Elevator to finally start opening the solar system for humanity.
Estimated cost of a Space Elevator: 20 billion $. Zuckerberg alone could build two of them.
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.
If you wanted to be charitable you could have actually made your product less expensive
That's certainly a legitimate criticism of, say, Bill Gates. His money came from a lot of individuals (as well as corporations) who might have different priorities for their charitable donations - quite why one man gets to aggregate their money and give it away as he chooses is a bit of a moral puzzle.
In the case of Facebook, perhaps they should be paying their users for the exploitation of their personal data and allowing them to do with that money as they see fit. If I were looking for a suitable candidate to prioritise the alleviation of different human needs, I doubt that I'd start in Silicon Valley.
The correlation is probably the reverse of the one stated. With prosperity comes consumption of services, like internet access.
You say nigger, I say opportunity.
Africa has a lot of potential. It's like China, all it takes for Africa to take over is stability. But as long as we keep it destabilized we can continue gobbling up its raw materials and not be worried about them turning into the next China or India.
We used to have a Bill of Rights. Now, with the rights gone, all we have left is the bill.
That's the real purpose. You know how conservatives alway say to get rid of the estate tax because the really rich can just avoid it but farmers and small business people get screwed? Well here is your example. Hundreds of billions that won't be taxed.
I love Jesus, except for his foreign policy.
In fact, it seems it isn't a charity at all:
"Zuckerberg and his wife Priscilla Chan have set up the Chan Zuckerberg Initiative, a limited liability company - not a charity or charitable trust. Legal filings show that the Chan Zuckerberg Initiative is owned and controlled by Zuckerberg.
A spokesperson has confirmed to Buzzfeed that as a company, the Initiative can spend its money on whatever it wants - including private, profit-generating investment."
http://www.independent.co.uk/n...
blindly antisocialist = antisocial
That means that he will be stripped of his honors from being in the Three Comma club. No more cars with doors that open "like this" or "like this".
Or does he have worth anywhere else?
Nouvelles de jeux et technologies en français. TC
Since he's selling his stock, he's also selling management of the company.
He may not be selling his stock. He can donate the stock directly to his foundation, and take the tax write-off, without selling it. Then he can name himself and Priscilla as trustees of the foundation. So he can give away his stock, but still retain full voting rights and control of Facebook.
This is also speculation. But this falls in line with what Bill Gates and the other super-techno-rich are doing or are planning to do. Philanthropy is a different beast from your typical street corner charity. If I donate to a charity, I basically don't have any control over how the money is spent, whether it goes to feed the poor, save the turtles, or arm Al-Qaeda. Of course, I can refuse to donate in the future the minute I learn about the charity's shenanigans. On the other hand, something like the Gates Foundation could target specific projects and by the implicit or explicit threat of withholding future funding steer them in the direction it wants.
So while Zuckerberg might give away his Facebook shares, he could conceivably buy moral, if not actual control of some non-profit organizations whose broad goals happen to align with his vision of a better future. It would be highly cynical to compare this to a corporate stock swap, but the effect could be the same.
Sure, he will give it all to a "foundation" that he and his progeny can live off of tax free in perpetuity just like Bill Gates while employing an army of public relations teams to amplify the tiny percentage of the wealth spent on others to huge levels.
This is a win win for Z. He gets credit today for "giving it all away" without actually giving it all away today.
1381. 1793. 1917.
There is a difference between giving away your wealth and using your wealth to manipulate. Zuckerberg says that his goal is, “advancing human potential and promoting equality,” That's sounds suspitiously like manipulation, not almsgiving. It's just another way to use wealth to project, and even build, power. It might be a kindler and gentler way of doing it, but that's what it is.
At any rate, the Zuckerbergs are very vague so far about what, precisely, they plan to do, so I suppose there is a chance that they will prove me wrong.
Proverbs 21:19
Everyone gives away 100% of their possessions "in their lifetime."
Um, the whole island is populated by people with dark skin. DR is pretty poor in comparison to what people in the US are used to, but yeah, they live pretty well there. I personally cannot give an answer to why it is so much worse in Haiti compared to DR, but it isn't the number of people with dark skin.
When I was in the DR last Christmas/New Years, I took one of my kids out 4 wheeling, and as part of that excursion, they took us to a Haitian refugee village. It was suggested we bring candy for the Haitian children, so my son had a big bag of candy that was stored in my back pack for these kids. Before we got to the village, we stopped at an intersection with a road. While there, some (possibly) Haitian kids were around asking for the candy, so I started giving them some. One of the kids snuck up on my son, ripped the bag away from him and ran off with it. I just personally hope that that kid shared it with his fellow children, but somehow I doubt it.
This story might highlight nothing at all, but it did enlighten me a little bit. In the future, I will be more careful about holding the bag myself to prevent theft.
APK likes to ask for responses to the same things over and over. Maybe he just likes the responses?
Every life saved matters? I would argue that is not true. If you had to choose shooting a criminal or letting the criminal kill your friend which would you do?
Both lives still matter. That doesn't mean you can't choose one over the other when placed in a situation where it's impossible to save both, but obviously saving them both would be the best outcome. In this situation if you wanted to save both lives you'd have to start much earlier, and prevent the first person from turning to crime. By the time you're forced to choose between them that opportunity has already been lost. However, it is possible to look ahead and take actions that will prevent others from turning to crime, and perhaps prevent similar situations from arising in the future.
"The state is that great fiction by which everyone tries to live at the expense of everyone else." - Bastiat
Did punctuation get outsourced too, or are you just demonstrating why you can't get a job that isn't at a fast food joint?
FYI, $38 billion is MORE than $162 million. You seem a bit confused on that point.
I'll give $300 million for https://www.change.org/p/indep...
Casteism
Put him in prison now $15,000+ a year goes up in smoke to incarcerate him. Society looses.
Let him out and he goes back to crime what number of people are killed or harmed in the future? Society looses
Put three 9mm center mass and cut our loses. Society is out $.75 and no one else is harmed in the future, no innocent children are created by the criminal only to be victims of the criminals failed life choices and future criminal themselves. Sounds like the best deal to society for me.