Ninety. Nine. Percent.
I've had the opportunity to rub shoulders with a few billionaires over the past few weeks, and it's remarkable how differently they think about money than the people who don't have it. Sure, they may buy a nice car (or jet), but after a certain level the only thing you can do with that kind of money is plug it back into something meaningful.
Hats off to Zuck and the other people who try to turn their success into something even greater than, well, their success.
You are thinking about it the wrong way. You don't spend $45B on stuff for yourself. You spend $45B on changing the way governments and populations live work and how power is balanced.
When Bud Fox asked Gordon Gekko "How much is enough" Gekko knew immediately that Fox wasn't in the same league. Money isn't about stuff, it's about power and influence.
At the Cleveland church he went to, significant portions of his time spent there was to write checks to parishioners.
I'd say it takes roughly the same amount of effort to spend money as it does to make it. You still need an organization, you still need to make really hard decisions day in and day out. It seems that there's something fundamental about philanthropy that doesn't scale.
Personally, I think the work a person does to earn that kind of money, assuming of course it's from legitimate commercial activity, is plenty enough, one shouldn't feel morally compelled to donate it back. But like you said, what else are you going to do with it? Doesn't make a lot of sense anymore to leave billions to heirs.
Yah, I don't necessarily disagree with their mindset. I've crossed a lot of spectrums, including chilling and rubbing shoulders with the rich to scraping by. I definitely do agree with a lot of the lofty 'moon shots' and some of these people have achieved remarkable things not just for themselves, but for society as well.
But, with Zuck, I just don't know. Gates got rich off operating systems and crushing opponents at all costs (a success story for capitalism). Zuck, from advertising and selling 'your' data. It's admirable that he's giving 99% away, but, I just don't get a warm fuzzy feeling about it.
Time will tell and I hope it turns out good.
So, yes, you can do a lot worse (to your society) with $$billions.
(Sorry for the rant. Please carry on.)
Leave it to your children so you can perpetuate hereditary wealth on a grand scale. Because your great-great-great-great-great-great-great grandchildren should never have to work, right?
Having said that, the first thing I thought of was the tax implications. If the shares were to eventually be sold (but not donated), the State of California alone would earn roughly 6 billion dollars in tax revenue. And the Federal Government another 13 - 15 billion. Assuming a lot of variables that could push the value up or down, of course, and the fact that they would be unlikely to sell the majority of their shares any time soon. My understanding is that by donating the appreciated stock to a charity, under current laws, there is zero tax due. I wonder if there's a state financial forecaster or analyst in Sacramento having a bad day today.
There is a saying "you can name the price if I can name the terms". Zuckerberg saying this and when he actually does this are two different things. (Per my other comment). I am not saying that he won't (how would I know?) but this is a promise that is based on a future event that, given the age of both parents, could easily be 50 or 60 years in the future. And of course exactly nothing will happen if he changes his mind (he isn't going to issue a press release on that) and nobody has any access to his finances anyway. So he is free to say anything he wants for any reason and that of course could change. That said it's his money and he can do what he wants with it. And there is no reason to even announce this if not playing some PR angle.
Edit: And to my point I just got a WSJ Technology Alert email with the headline "FACEBOOK'S MARK ZUCKERBERG IS GIVING AWAY 99% OF HIS SHARES" and then further down in a paragraph "over the course of their lives".
Here is the world's smallest fiddle...
And either way, the charitable organizations deserve to be supported and will do good for society, and they get to pick how it is used. Which doesn't seem like a bad thing, when the Federal government can barely agree on any budget at all.
As someone doing research at a top university, I am constantly annoyed by short term vision and optimizing for publication number at all costs. This system is broken.
Alfred Sanger got 2 Nobel Prizes, and he spent a lot of time without publishing before each. Clearly something impossible to do these days.
Good intentions in philanthropy are a dime a dozen, actual results are less common.
I'm curious how they plan to liquidate that shares as it will have quite some effect on the dynamics of Fb and on this:
I will continue to serve as Facebook's CEO for many, many years to comeAlso, you can get loans at very low rates by putting shares into collateral. This is how Larry Ellison funds much of his endeavors.
Anyway though, it's still a lot. And I hope they follow what other billionaires have been doing; not just throwing it at charities, but putting it into research and even funding entirely new projects.
Funding startups and research labs that have no economic goal or an economic return to shareholders is something that is very needed. I see much of the funding coming from this.
Are you referring to The Giving Pledge [1]? Both Mark and Priscilla have signed it [2]:
"We salute the Giving Pledge movement, and are proud to be part of its declaration that those who have been fortunate should give back at least half of their wealth during their lifetimes."
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Giving_Pledge
[2] http://givingpledge.org/pdf/pledge-letters/Zuckerberg_Letter...
You might be interested in reading about Chuck Feeney (the founder of Duty Free Stores), who was the original guy advocating for such hands-on charitable work.
Four hundred. And fifty. Million.
I get the desire to solve the world's ills, of society's shortcomings, of essentially fixing the thousands of years of evolutionary programming to craft a utopia. What sane person would sit down and say "You know, when I die, I want to leave the world a chaotic fireball of pain and suffering" in all seriousness? Maybe I'm significantly jaded, but I hope I'm not the only one who finds such a letter a little bit narcissitic, brought to you by the originator of one of the most narcissitic platforms of the modern era, and hosted on that very platform, naturally.
>Our generation grew up in classrooms where we all learned the same things at the same pace regardless of our interests or needs.
This isn't true at all. "Our" generation grew up with having to work to acquire knowledge. To spend time in the library. To sit down and read. To think. It took time, effort, opportunity, and personal investment - so much of which is no longer a priority now.
>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.
Citation needed. Like, really.
Most everyday Joes might not have the means to change the world but it is certain that when turn into billionaire, they rarely pledge the quasi-totality of their fortune to improve the well being of others.
If this is narcissistic, just let it be and be appreciate that for once, a great deal of money will be put to good use. The world is full of Koch Brothers, Saudi princes and European heirs to prove that most billionaires are more concerned about evading taxes rather than giving back.
Whatever personal faults the man has, I'd argue this kind of philanthropy more than makes up for it.
This is the problem in expressing your thoughts and feelings with words. The readers would extrapolate the words over all sort of things, rather than the essence to which those words were spoken. Its as if the speaker and his rational is subordinate to the various interpretations of those words.
The essence here is that a family here feels obligated to provide a better world for their newborn child. They are using all the means at their disposal for this. And the best part is that instead of keeping it to themselves, they proclaim it the world so that others can even judge on their promises. That is an admiring, inspiring and a courageous thing to do.
My opinion on philanthropy is that if you're not doing it anonymously then you're doing it more for yourself than for the cause. It becomes just another status symbol (I'm more good than you because look at that news headline of how much I donated).
>brought to you by the originator of one of the most narcissitic platforms of the modern era, and hosted on that very platform, naturally.
Facebook is only as narcissistic as its user, it is as much about taking part in other peoples activities, by commenting/sharing as it is about personal propaganda.
>"Our" generation grew up with having to work to acquire knowledge. To spend time in the library. To sit down and read.
You are ignoring difference in quality of library, value of teachers and external stimuli in learning.
Maybe you need to think more broadly.
Not every school had a library. Not every child had the ability to spend substantial amounts of time in the library. And there definitely wasn't the breadth and depth of content we have today especially if you were more advanced in your learning. I grew up in the 1980's and was very interested in learning more about computing. Guess what. 1-2 books. And I was in an pretty affluent, middle class school. It wasn't until I got access to Compuserve that my knowledge grew.
> Citation needed. Like, really.
Zuckberg was quoting a study from Deloitte:
http://www2.deloitte.com/uk/en/pages/technology-media-and-te...
In some ways "how can any two people actually have the power to fix so many problems" is somewhat defeated by the fact that these two people have 45 billion dollars and not to mention plenty of influence.
There are plenty of people/companies that seem to be working very hard to do make inequality worse so it's nice to hear a powerful figure say that are somewhere from neutral to positive.
Joke: in the late 80s, Stasi employed nearly 1 person for 50 people in East Germany. They just say they can do that 5 times better with internet, not impressive in 30 years of technical progress. Give us more!
Bill Gates tried 5 or so years ago to solve the problem with education with his tax shelter non-profit: https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/answer-sheet/wp/2014/06/...
Test scores showed that everything he did had no effect on the scores or grades of the student. Each school he built had Internet access the latest in technology, special trained teachers, smaller classes, personalized learning, etc.
If you ask me the technology can be distracting, I only say so because my son is failing chemistry because he doesn't study enough because he is distracted by Youtube videos and video games.
When I was his age I was using a calculator and my father said it was a crutch that I wouldn't be able to do math in my head, and he was correct on that. I could only do math on paper because that was the way they taught us. I have to use a calculator to do math, and the technology distracted me from learning how to do math in my head.
It's hard to look at this sort of statement, especially when it's posted on Facebook. The source of 'Like this posts to do XYZ' or '#KonyIsABadGuy'. But really, the ideals that they strive for seem to build on those that have formed the foundation of our very society. The equality and advancement of mankind. In many ways, this seems no different than what Jefferson or Franklin had in mind.
I say bravo, and am looking forward to the benefits of giga-scale philanthropy.
What are honors classes? What are remedial classes?
To paraphrase some guy on Twitter, Zuckerberg's letter is like a control in the way it measures the baseline meanness of the internet.
That would be you, 6stringmerc.
If you can't respond positively to this announcement, you really should step back and do some serious self-examination.
That particular number is… shall we say “often” used by Facebook’s PR? (Another way of expressing that comes to mind, but I'm not sure how to spell 'jackhammer').
The source is presumably the numbers in there: http://www2.deloitte.com/content/dam/Deloitte/uk/Documents/t... matched with the corresponding internet adoption in those countries at the same time. The parallel is discutable, expressly so.
Full disclosure: I tried and wasn’t able to match those numbers myself (with internal ressources, when I was working for Fb); I would strongly encourage anyone curious to go through the methodology notes: there are many things that deserves to be discussed around equality, literacy, institutional change. Basically, things that are looked at independently by the Oxford Internet Institute (OII) and the Society for Institutional & Organizational Economics (SIOE, formerly ISNIE). Neither institution have been involved in that estimation as far as I can tell — and they would have tremendous impact on the nuanced understanding of those forces once they do.
I believe that Facebook can have a dramatic impact on emerging markets, especially with their advertising platform; I know personally who works on measuring that, and I know it is too early to have a proper macroeconomic estimation — but the impact should be very encouraging: there are many places where you cannot grow your business easily.
In the meantime, I would take that argument as: Mark Zuckerberg wants Facebook, Internet.org and internet access in general to lift people out of poverty and into jobs. That means that arguments that argue against his efforts that involve negative effects less than a tenth of “being about to feed their family” will seem quaint to him. Measuring all impacts into orders of magnitude like that can seem a heartless exercice to many, but should not feel foreign to a regular reader of HackerNews.
On the other hand, this also means that efforts that connect internet technology with finding or creating jobs should have MZ’s undying support (modulo a possible ad fee).
What I believe is more interesting are things like: Does Internet favour local commerce or international transactions? (Unclear) Are devices and platform used for business similar to those used for personal transaction? (Apparently, yes.) Will West Africa still be ruled by Mama Benz's, even with widespread adoption the smartphone? (Three forces cannot be stopped in this universe: Death, taxes and Mama Benz's dressing up on Sunday. Samsung better adapt.)
I'm of two minds about this. This is an excellent piece of writing and is extremely persuasive and accomplishes all of it's intended goals. This is very effective writing and may change someone's opinion from emotional calls. It's very human, easy to understand and people flock to it.
However; we have seen the constant and repeated abuse of using this style of writing. Advertisements are the most prominent and politics the most dystopian. It's also very easy to convince people that certain things are facts when that may be disputed or outright wrong.
So there's a weird question to come out of this: how accurate and cited do we really need our emotional appeals to be? Given the effectiveness of the writing, citations seem completely unnecessary. Given the context (letter to child; although I'm fairly certain it was orignially intended for a broader audience this is what they claim) you would assume it has no need to be entirely factual, but that context is changed now that it's become a public letter. A public piece of writing should ethically cite or have some backing for any statistics they claim (in my opinion). Although overall hacker news' culture would probably say that if you make a decision, it should probably be based on real data.
Personally, I think it's a piece of writing meant for a wide audience which in my opinion means they should cite any claims they make in this case. It's easy to mistake it for something else entirely because of how it's written, which is why it appears to get a pass.
Would the outcome be better or worse if we had, say, a 99% tax bracket at >$N million, and let the public decide the best way to deploy that funding via the ballot box? Would that process better align with the values of a democratic society? Or would we just get more corporate welfare, bombers and aircraft carriers?
I'm not ragging on philanthropy--it's awesome that some of these billionaires understand the meaning of "enough" and choose to give away their fortunes to worthy causes. But is it best for society to leave it to a few lucky 'elite' to judge what is and isn't a worthy cause?
The main reason for the failure of the donation to create positive change was that the community wasn't engaged at all in the reform process. The first time Newark students and parents heard about the donation and the accompanying "reforms" were when Zuckerberg announced them on Oprah.
I completely agree with your sentiment, and wish philanthropy wasn't seen as an unmitigated good thing.
We need the 99% tax because we had it before, and at that time, the public was more engaged. It will take time, but people can learn civic skills.
Or would we just get more corporate welfare, bombers and aircraft carriers?
Traditionally the state has been a form of wealth redistribution, because while it may not be a true democracy, citizens still vote, and could potentially vote to have the majority of the wealth redistributed equally amongst themselves.
But instead we have a power struggle between those with the means to sway others and the idealists. While I'm sure the idealists will probably never attain their utopia, if they don't continue to share their dream we'll end up living someone else's self-serving one.
Billionaires will spend their money in more efficient and productive ways than our government spends tax dollars. You may disagree with a rich individual's vision of the future, but he will be vastly more likely to effect his vision than our elected officials.
But they'll spend less of it on the public good.
The government may be less efficient (also, citation needed there, as I don't buy that at face value), but even if it is it has access to WAY more funds.
Sure, we have some nice billionaires like Zuckerberg and Gates who give their money away, but if you required all the billionaires to give up some money, you'd have a much larger pool to work with. So efficiency isn't the only part of this argument. There is also volume.
If we had that and still had charitable deductions, I suspect more public goods would be funded by charity rather than public decision-making then is now the case, since the marginal cost of charity giving would be much lower.
Even with a 99% tax on Zucker's fortune, it would still be diverting money from countries around the globe towards the US, in other words the already rich and destroying condition favorable to human life USA would get richer by making the poor poorer.
In a world with no countries, it would make sense. In the current world it would be another way for the USA to abuse and exploit the rest of the world.
> the answer to the variety of problems that plague Chicago's South Side, New Orleans, or any number of troubled communities?
No one (government, private sector, etc.) has the answer to those problems. Those are really really hard problems that require the cooperation of non-profits, local governments, religious institutions, families, etc. I don't think they're expecting to be a silver bullet.
1. He can afford really good advisers. Democratically elected can be good. But they might be good at campaigning and only get selected because of party status.
2. He can afford to monitor charities closely. And enforce legal action if they fuck around. When you invest several millions, you probably take care that they reach the destination. If you just pay little taxes that go everywhere and you also have day job, much slimmer chance.
3. These individuals could fund projects that in the future give back to whole humanity. But such projects aren't always popular with the public in the start.
edit: "its his money" doesn't explain why he would be more able to judge how to donate money, or effect positive change than someone else. i understand he is allowed to spend it how ever he chooses. the point i'm trying to make is that someone is not inherently more likely to know the right thing to do than someone else just because they have more money.
Then again, the US is more likely to spend trillions on wars abroad without those really improving their own country, so on that note, it's probably better for a philanthropist to invest the money in a charity with a singular goal, such as education or research.
Each model has its strengths, weaknesses, and problems it is most suited to, just like public vs. private industry.
Firstly, the donation is stock not cash, so the value of this foundation will be directly linked to the value of Facebook shares.
Secondly, it has been stated that one of the things this foundation will do is "participate in policy debates". If the headline was "Mark Zuckerberg to put $45 billion is stock behind lobbying effort to establish Internet.org as a monopoly in developing countries", that wouldn't sound quite so positive, would it?
> Firstly, the donation is stock not cash, so the value of this foundation will be directly linked to the value of Facebook shares.
So? The vast majority of his wealth is in Facebook shares. That doesn't change the fact that he's giving away the vast majority of it. You think he should have sold it all now, destroyed its value, and donated a much smaller pot?
> it has been stated that one of the things this foundation will do is "participate in policy debates".
One of many things. Not to mention he has never attempted to make Internet.org anything close to a monopoly.
That your reaction to an incredibly charitable act is such pure cynicism is absolutely disgusting. There are plenty of billionaires who hoard their money or perpetuate hereditary fortunes, and those who don't should be commended.
Do you even know what Internet.org is? They're providing free access to a subset of the internet that Facebook controls, while forcing people to pay if they want to access the internet as a whole. The entire reason Internet.org exists is to create a Facebook monopoly on data access in developing countries.
Your entire comment is naive.
In particular, regarding your statement "he has never attempted to make Internet.org anything close to a monopoly", it surely looks like that's the end game here - see https://www.techinasia.com/talk/facebooks-internetorg-evil/ (discussed on HN here: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10568525)
Also the cause you listed is just one of many that he is gifting to so you're missing the forest for the trees. To help overcome this, list all of the good causes he mentioned (personalized learning, curing disease etc), then list the ones that you don't like. I bet the list of good causes will be far longer than the list of ones you don't like.
Mr. Zuckerberg and his wife, Dr. Priscilla Chan, said they were forming a new organization, the Chan Zuckerberg Initiative, to manage the money, through an unusual limited liability corporate structure. [...] By using a limited liability company instead of a nonprofit corporation or foundation, the Zuckerberg family will be able to go beyond making philanthropic grants. They will invest in companies, lobby for legislation and seek to influence public policy debates, which nonprofits are restricted from doing under tax laws. A spokeswoman for the family said that any profits from the investments would be plowed back into the Chan Zuckerberg Initiative for future projects.
So what if the donation is stock?
Since when does
> We must participate in policy and advocacy to shape debates. Many institutions are unwilling to do this, but progress must be supported by movements to be sustainable.
mean "lobbying effort to establish Internet.org as a monopoly in developing countries"?
If having a child has made him rethink his views (which would be normal) then that's great. Too bad he didn't have a child before and started this initiative few years ago!
What part of "curing diseases" sounds greedy, egomaniac, or bad in any sense? I hope he joins Gates, Thiel, Parker, Diamandis, Page, Kurzweil, and many others on their quest to eradicate diseases from the face of earth. And I hope he funds Aubrey De Grey like Thiel is doing...
It's a hugely net positive thing he is doing no question.
People just don't talk about it anymore, so he's all good now.
But there's obviously something shady about his dealings: http://newsjunkiepost.com/2013/06/07/bill-gates-big-pharma-b...
What's not a solved problem is our disappearing fisheries[1], rhinos going extinct all over the place[2], farmland desertification[3], tropical deforestation[4], ocean acidification[5]... From my back of the envelope math, it seems that longer lives and a larger population will exacerbate our environmental and resource issues.
I'd like to see billionaires purchase large tracks of land simply for preservation. Cleaning up industrial waste from rivers. Foot the salaries of anti-poaching efforts. Get clean fusion energy production up and running. That sort of thing. Perhaps we should get our planet's shit together before tackling immortality?
[1] http://www.washingtonpost.com/posteverything/wp/2014/06/03/t...
[2] http://www.cnn.com/2015/04/16/africa/kenya-northern-white-rh...
[3] http://www.bbc.com/news/world-africa-34790661
[4] http://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2015/oct/30/indones...
[5] http://fm.kuac.org/post/increasing-ocean-acidity-threatens-m...
It sounds like they are doing exactly what you request.
In other words you get billion dollars but realize it is all for naught as you will be worm food in 100 years.
So some go full Kurzweill, some find/found religion, some do a bit of everything.
This problem is not unique to billionaires but they can attempt to roll a bigger rock up the mountain.
I think you have an OK point and the more intelligent rich people like Elon Musk are the ones furthering your agenda. Bill and Zuck were always too conventional to think big like this. Their conventionality was part of their success--they are both too uncreative to come up with something new but instead they know how to steal the ideas of others and make a more competitive business out of them.
Maybe I'm just getting old.
You want to be generous? Great, do it!
Telling us in a letter to your daughter as a hook to attract eyeballs is kind of weird and exploitative.
Update: I also thought I should say that this is no big deal, he has some different ideas about what's ok and what's not and I see that every day, I'm not mr perfect either.
I guess the reason it's interesting in this case is because he is head of facebook and entrusted with a lot of people's personal information. If his judgment is different to mine then I don't feel comfortable entrusting him with my social life.
On the other hand, you have the Leonardo Di Caprios of the world who are very philanthropic and try to make the world a better place without open letters like this.
I personally am not offended by Mark's approach (and I'm not a fan of Zuck). I'd rather see someone express benevolent intentions than just about any other alternative (including silence, or prejudice/hostility/etc that seems so common today).
May be I'm too cynical as I see that there was a conscious effort to post more updates. Recently I see another shift following the Internet.org initiative.
To that note, very few people I know actually use Facebook notes compared to other blogging platforms.
They talk about facebook, donations, improving the world, their beliefs, etc. but very little on how to be a better person or how to enjoy life. Maybe I'm projecting, but what would you want to find in your pillow after moving in for your first day of college?
I hope they wrote their daughter a real letter. One directed to her and not something that will be tweeted by hundreds of news organizations.
"Your mother and I don't yet have the words to describe the hope you give us for the future... Our hopes for your generation focus on two ideas: advancing human potential and promoting equality... We can do this work only because we have a strong global community behind us. Building Facebook has created resources to improve the world for the next generation. Every member of the Facebook community is playing a part in this work... Love, Mom and Dad"
Philanthropy aside, doen's this "letter" read like a scene from the Silicon Valley TV show?
Thats a bit unfair. Scientists have been painfully working to advance the field of medicine for centuries.
[1]http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2641521/?page=1
Evidence-based medicine (what else would it be based on?) is actually a thing and an uncomfortably recent one at that.
Can't we just say, "Dude we are happy for you, and thanks for the money."
And what happened to the rule about not saying stuff you wouldn't say to a person's face. Would you be calling Mark a narcissist to his face? Keep it civil people.
I definitely would. I'd call him a cunt too. He is one, and in my country you call a cat a cat. None of that tippy toeing around you english people do, Zuck is a horrible person as the last ten years has shown everyone, Facebook is a despicable company with despicable ethics.
This letter is vomit inducing, and the comment section is rich people stroking each other for "helping the world" after being major actors in destroying it, fuck them all too.
1. It's a drop in the bucket compared to what governments spend on a regular basis trying to solve these problems. (Bill Gates has said as much.)
2. Private charity by the billionaire class is not a scalable solution. Historically most social advancement has happened through popular organization and government programs, not charity.
Silicon Valley itself is a product of government spending. The Internet and thus Facebook wouldn't exist without billions of taxpayer investment in early stage high risk research and procurement via DARPA and other government agencies. That continues today (just a couple examples: Siri and autonomous vehicles).
If we are serious about accomplishing social change and "long term investments over 25, 50 or even 100 years," the answers lie in greater government investment in these areas. Just like Silicon Valley. And that means all Silicon Valley companies should be paying back to the government just as they would an early stage investor. Not as a "noble choice" but as an obligation. (Currently they get the core tech pretty much for free.) That would drum up an order of magnitude more funding for much-needed social projects.
I'd like to hear more Silicon Valley CEOs talk about that.
I wish he had spoken more about luck and balance. This is something that Bill & Melinda Gates, as well as Warren Buffet do very well. Understanding luck and balance is the key to empathy, which is also a phrase that is missing from this letter.
I also wish he had not marketed this press release as a letter to his daughter. Perhaps he has another, private letter that is actually more relevant and personal, but if I were Max, I probably wouldn't be thrilled to read this 20 years down the road.
But I'm sure he had a reason to release this letter as he did, and that he thought for a long, hard time before penning these words. Best of luck to the new father, mother, and daughter.
When people talk about equality, I'm not sure if they mean equal opportunity or equity or utopia (knowing that utopia depends on a slave class). Maybe it means something else.
The reality is that humanity has empathy and greed (noting they are not opposites). I can not imagine that I will ever see every person equally.
http://www.salon.com/2013/04/12/10_tax_dodges_that_help_the_...
read point 4.
It's a shame people rarely protest the sytematic issues, preferring to attack people or specific groups of people (often the wealthy or left vs right) - which are positions that generate adversarial responses rather than rational counter-arguments: http://lesswrong.com/lw/gw/politics_is_the_mindkiller/
The surest way to minimize abuse/loopholes while being supported by rational a-political benefits:
Flat tax + basic income.
Eliminating millions of hours of wasted time due to beaurocracy (and while treating each social class with consistent dignity). These arguments are more likely to be persuasive to politicians - both left and right. This is a lesson I believe the general public missed after the whole Occupy movement failed to result in much political change. The problem with the obsessive focus on "the 1%" was that it generated an us vs them response, further entrenching positions on both sides and further distancing already strained policial/social group relationships.
For example: the simplification of taxes would very likely increasing the speed at which people file taxes and therefore signficantly increasing the speed that tax revenue could be collected annually, while reducing the amount of time they spend chasing down people who fail to do taxes. <- These are the types of a-political positive benefits I hope will eventually get attention one day to make the previously mentioned policies less of a pipe dream.
I'm thinking about starting to use facebook again, left it a few years ago.
"Please log in to continue."
Seriously? One might think they would prioritize raising awareness over increasing Facebook userbase.
He will rival Bill Gates in the magnitude of philanthropic contributions.
And in other news Facebook Notes is challenging Medium as the default one-column publishing tool.
Note as well, that of all the immaterial goods that have the potential to create immense value to people and humanity, education and health are the ones strongly highlighted. Global equality is there, but to a critic this too will be seen as another factor in building and supporting an ever-growing, and long-living, consumerist middle class.
There is very little said about freedom, democracy, privacy, justice or self-determination. Even if this reading is unfair, cynical or simply too demanding of what this text and announcement is. Not to mention detracting from what is otherwise a highly admirable act.
[0] http://www.gatesfoundation.org/Who-We-Are/General-Informatio...
Off-topic: can Facebook please go ahead and literally kill the blogging industry by giving the ability for everyone to use these updated Notes section? As is, the majority of the referrer on the Internet is Facebook. They might as well get the blogs out of the way.
Source: http://www.forbes.com/sites/kerryadolan/2015/03/02/inside-th...
You guys are so full of yourselves.
Given stock is the best way to motivate executives, when the guy on top is giving all of it away you know where the stock price is going.
We will give 99% of our Facebook shares -- currently about $45 billion -- during our lives to advance this mission. We know this is a small contribution compared to all the resources and talents of those already working on these issues. But we want to do what we can, working alongside many others."
In spite of the enormity of the announcement, to tie it up as "A letter to our daughter" is deeply crass and makes me feel queasy.
Providing cheap, reliable internet to underserved areas of the planet seems like an achievable goal. Much of the technology is present, and so this goal can be attacked now given available funding. The technology should improve further and become cheaper in the near horizon. Go for it Zuck. Make a dent.
"Curing disease", however, or "learning and experiencing 100x more than we do today" - these trite and nebulous platitudes seem line lines stolen from HBO's Silicon Valley script. "Eradicating polio" is a concrete, well-scoped, measurable, and realistic goal (regardless of whether its is the best apportioning of resources). "Curing disease" is not. Does someone who's married to a doctor really believe that all disease is eradicable in the next 100 years? Must we resort to impossible moonshots and unqualified invocations like "Make the world a better place!"? Something like "colonize space!" is not a helpful goal; "build a habitation on Mars which produces enough food, water, and O2 to sustain 5 people for a year" begins to be.
This pedestrian rallying cry is a chaotic amalgam of cliches. I hope Zuckerberg puts more thought, organization, and direction into how he will invest his billions for the betterment of posterity.
* Addressing a public press release to your private child's name
* Naming the initiative with your family's name
* Calling for "change now" as if the world isn't already working very hard every day towards progress
* Looks like a move out of a strategic playbook some advisers gave for "how to be President someday"
* Looks like they're marketing themselves as the royal family, like Facebook is the new kingdom
* Looks like that smug thing that's hip today where people compete to be most charitable
* Reminds me of the Melinda and Bill Gates thing, and the Google medical research thing
Part of this is the perspective of engineers who believe everything is solvable if you just build something to do it. If it isn't built yet, it must be because we're not working hard and fast enough. That if someone has billions of dollars, and are just willing to fund an initiative, they can take credit for curing all disease.
Part of it is the fear that's faced by people who felt invincible when they become old, or have a newborn infant. When you can purchase anything, the new difficulties are things like bacteria, viruses, and entropy. When you are a god in the eyes of the society and economy, yet a worm in the eyes of biology and ecology, there's no longer a clear path towards how to solve your daily concerns. If you're poor and need food, there's simple steps you can follow to acquire what you need. But when you're wealthy, what do you do to get well from illness, to escape the pains of aging?
These people, and much of the digital society today, need perspective and psychological understanding beyond what they have. But you won't see an initiative for that.
Here the SEC filling: http://www.sec.gov/Archives/edgar/data/1326801/0001326801150...
Part of me thinks that Zuck means people without family or otherwise ties to wealth and influence. But another part of me thinks that he means those that aren't connected to the internet. If it's the latter, this is quite the bold statement. The implication would be that people without access to the internet are structurally disadvantaged. Which in a lot of ways are true. The internet enables anybody to acquire knowledge, skills, and relationships with an ease that is otherwise impossible. Thankfully, this bucket has a fairly clear solution path.
once you reach such an inflection point of wealth, you must find an alternative means of increasing your social capital. there are two common ways: one is to demonstrate your evolutionary fitness in a field completely unrelated to how you amassed your wealth: many rich get into movie production, novel writing or other creative endeavor. These usually fail.
another alternative, the safer alternative, is to expend your remaining time and resources advancing social causes (running for an elected office certainly falls under this category). this is the simplest way for an adult, untrained in anything other than their primary business, to increase their social capital.
it's not a coincidence that zuck is still willing $450mm to his offspring--more than enough to hit that inflection point. he knows that any additional dollar beyond that inflection point provides marginal social value to his offspring.
You consolidate this kind of wealth into the proper channels to influence public opinion and thus a much greater sum (measured in trillions) over a greater time to get the real change you believe in.
It's a good gesture but a losing strategy. But it's his money to do as he pleases so, cheers Zuck.
If that works, then this will singlehandedly be the highest-ROI "evangelism" anyone has ever done. Unlikely, though.
http://www.sec.gov/Archives/edgar/data/1326801/0001326801150...
What an amazing donation! But not for the foreseeable future. I don't care how multiplicative his voting shares are. If there is no plans to sell them in the foreseeable future, this is a pledge spread out across a generation, decades, while real problems are affecting us every year. Every year where he just capped himself at 1 billion dollars in donations.
Why are you applauding this?
One of the biggest problems facing kids in the west is digital addiction. Society as a whole is still collectively in denial here as adults gain from it, from parents who get some peace while the kids play with the iPad to game developers pushing out endless FarmVille clones attempting to get kids hooked enough to convince their parents to approve some in-app payments.
The problem is already there - just need to look at the amount of Ritalin being subscribed - http://www.theguardian.com/society/2012/may/06/ritalin-adhd-...
Perhaps that's not as fancy as investments in health, education or the environment but at least it seems very doable and could solve one problem (excellent means for human communication) for good.
I for one find it all skeptical - I don't see how his ideas would align with facebook goals as a company
Realistically, we can't all avoid being garbage collectors or street sweepers, can we? Or will automation really replace all unsavoury jobs with high-paying professions?
Yes you can, Mark: Stop requiring people to use real names. And stop caving in requests from authoritarian governments that want to do their dirty work for them.
Oh well, I guess I don't have to like him to appreciate that kind of cash going into worthy causes.
But we all give away wealth when we die. To someone or another.
The pledge is not necessarily one of generosity other than looking past one's family. Which is something, but less impressive along the generosity dimension than giving away more earlier (while that money has a very real opportunity cost to you).
That said, if I had billions of dollars, I'd be investing in my own research and not giving it away. But that's just me.
Also, there is a huge difference between pledging to donate during our lifetime and "donating". Anyone can make that pledge and then decide a comfortable schedule.
How many billions of hours are spent daily on Facebook? His fortune is won on the backs of those poor fools.
It ain't gonna happen, but shutting down Facebook now would be a greater philanthropic act. (Yea and obviously OtherFacebook would come online.)
When a choice is between doing the right thing loudly, and doing the right thing quietly, the amount of noise you make is the inverse of the size of your dick.
~_^
They think they can just throw money at a problem and it will eventually go away given enough time.
They think people in communities will give up their bigotry against certain groups without a fight. They think everyone in the future will adopt the same worldview that they have. They think that they can solve poverty by giving everyone an Internet connection on the planet and most people who are poor are illiterate and can't read and write.
Like I said a lot of promises.
Some problems can't be solved with money, it takes innovation, it takes a new way of thinking, it takes doing things in a way nobody thought of yet.
Students who are poor and have family problems have emotional and psychological problems that hinder their learning. No matter how much money you spend on their school, as Gates has learned, their test scores don't go up. https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/answer-sheet/wp/2014/06/...
This effort by the Gates Foundation proves that building better schools does not give the students a better education.
You see they made the mistake of throwing money at a problem in order to solve it. Five years later and a disappointment in what they had created.
Parents of the students get by with low paying jobs, because there is a wealth inequality in our nation. It leads to poverty, family issues, emotional and psychological problems none of which building new schools could address. All of which factor into having a hard time learning and getting better test scores.
Why is there a wealth inequality and people have to settle for low paying jobs?
Technology has automated most of the good paying jobs so they can be done with computers for free. Microsoft and Facebook for example earn money from technology that does work for others for free and earns money. Websites can operate 24/7 and replace people who take phone calls or work at a desk to fill out forms.
Also we used to have factory jobs until we shipped those jobs to China because the labor cost less over there.
Getting a good education is only possible if you have a good enough credit rating to get a student loan, if your family is poor and struggles and misses paying bills, you will have a bad credit rating and not be able to get a student loan for college. Not getting good enough grades will lead to a lack of scholarships and other things.
People who can't get a college education face a life of hardship working low paying jobs just to get by. Not everyone can become a computer programmer after being a dropout, and then join a startup. Some have to work retail jobs in the service industry and 2 or 3 of those jobs. Not having time to raise their children properly. Not able to help with homework because they work overtime to get enough money to pay the bills.
These factors have not been addressed in the future plans for fixing our education system.
Sure you can learn a lot on the Internet and even use it to earn money, but most people just use it for entertainment value and communication. So there are distractions to learning on the Internet. But what happens when the freelance market suddenly gets 3 billion more lower wage contractors in it all competing for the limited amount of contracts?
I wish I knew how to solve these problems, but I learned from experience that you can't just throw money at them and solve them.
You need the government to help out with some sort of basic income program to lift people out of poverty as good paying jobs are scarce because of automation or AI advances. I expect that to get worse in the future.
You need better mental health clinics to address the emotional and psychological problems associated with poverty for the students to be able to learn better. You need to find money for tutors to help them with homework when their parents cannot. You need to teach poor students stress management and test anxiety management so that they can o better in tests and learn better study habits and score higher.
I've found at least with my son, that the Internet is a distraction for him. Time he could have spent studying for tests, he instead watches Youtube videos and plays video games. I've tried to help him as best as I can, but now he is failing chemistry as a junior in high school but passing his other classes because they are not as hard.
We are one of those poor families because I ended up on disability in 2003 and don't earn as much as I used to as a programmer. There is only so much I can help my son, he makes decisions for himself, but I cannot force him to study more or do better on his tests. I feel as if I didn't go on disability we'd be better off and I'd be able to hire a chemistry tutor for him to get his grades up. I forgot as I took chemistry in 1985, and it was so long ago. It is harder to raise a child than you think, esp if you are on a limited income. The school he goes to is a good one with good teachers and modern equipment and they use iPads for ebooks and learning, but it is not enough and still students struggle with their classes.
No matter what you do there will still be problems as no system is perfect, and students will still get low mtest grades no matter how good a personalized system you develop. The Dewey System was developed for personalized learning and it failed. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_Dewey
Most of what they are trying to do has already been tried and failed. It is like trying to go against human nature and change the way human beings behave so they can learn better. But human beings cannot be reprogrammed like robots, and almost all of these theories go with the case that human beings can be reprogrammed like robots to create a better community for better learning.
It is like trying to solve a social problem using technology thinking, you need to think in terms of society and the way people work, which is not the same way technology works. You need to lead social reforms in communities in a way that makes sense to everybody and not just people on a certain political spectrum that leaves out all others. You will face a resistance to change, as many won't want to change. People will come up with conspiracy theories over the changes, etc.
It is a good start to build a different system of education and try to make new communities for education for everyone, but money alone won't solve it, you need the cooperation of everyone in the community to change the way their human nature works and give up on the old ways of doing things. Some won't want to give up on the old ways.
In other words, I'm getting in on this philanthropy thing at a much younger age than Bill Gates.
PS: stress and toxicity quite often are the real causes whereby the few diseases Mark mentioned is a consequence.