I think of this as sort of a cop out (on the part of all the people who do it). If you're good at business, then you can have a far bigger impact by creating businesses than by simply giving your money to some charity.
It's ultimately a socially lauded thing to do that divorces the donor from any ultimate responsibility for the amount of "greater good" done with the funds. I think they do it out of fear that they were a lucky, one-hit wonder... and out of low self-esteem or fear of the angry mob.
YC is a great example of a way to use wealth to make a real difference. PG uses his acumen to help a lot more people level up. This multiplies wealth. Spending it on charities simply redistributes it.
It makes me very pessimistic to see that the world's wealthiest people feel the need simply to pledge the money away, and no need to risk total failure by going out on a limb to do something bigger than whatever got them there.
What if Bill Gates tried some long shot idea and it flopped? What if Zuckerberg or Case did? That would take real courage. This pledge nonsense reminds me of the self-satisfied smirks people emit when publicly putting money into the collection basket in a church. Why isn't one of these rich guys going to bat for Wikileaks? (Probably because it feels a lot better to be praised all the time for being such a great person by all the sycophants trying to get you to write a check!)
It may seem that they are just giving it away to charity. But many of the donations that Bill Gates provides are making new waves in terms of research, development techniques and expanding microfinance.
They are not just pledging money away. These are serious investments that are evaluated in the same way a VC/Angel pick a startup. A colleague of mine tried to apply/pitch to the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation and the event (many people pitched) lasted six hours with two reviews and rigorous questioning. He was not successful, but he said it was a very thorough examination.^1
Bottom line: A portion of these pledges are more than putting money into collection baskets, it is putting it into the baskets of third world women who need an extra sewing machine to make ten more shirts so their kids can go to school and have food.
No, not a fair question. What does this even mean? If you really think you know anything at all about how Bill Gates should spend his time and money, feel free to go ahead and actually say what you think he should be spending it on, instead of mouthing platitudes about "bigger ideas" and "investing in himself."
I don't know how he should spend his time, nor do I claim to.
Personally, I'd like to see him start a company that would invent a mobile phone battery that lasts for a month and can power an RC aircraft to fly all the way around the world.
I also worry about the overall risklessness of what he's doing. He's pledged all of his money, so who can criticize it? For most people it's beyond reproach just because of the stated goals.
When Gates dropped out of Harvard he was doing something that a lot of people thought was stupid. That's how big ideas are. I'd like to see him doing something that might actually result in people mocking him for having lost his fortune on a bad idea.
The merit of an action is not determined by its risk of looking stupid. Not in either direction.
When doing something not-risky is bad, the reason is usually that it isn't ambitious enough: that you've avoided doing something that could have been better because you were afraid of failing. But the total eradication of malaria is not an unambitious, can't-possibly-fail undertaking: it's a huge task, it's not obvious that it can be done, and it would bring enormous benefit to the world. If it's immune to criticism, then as you suggest it's because it looks like a noble and generous thing to do. In other words, the lack of criticism isn't an indicator of lack of ambition, of aiming too low.
Personally, I'd like to see him start a company that would invent a mobile phone battery that lasts for a month and can power an RC aircraft to fly all the way around the world.
grandalf has a fair (if self-interested) point. He's not gonna contract malaria and neither am I. But I'd kinda like a phone battery that lasts a month.
I think such a battery would result in greater malaria eradication than direct efforts.
I might accept "greater good". There's no way I'll accept "greater malaria eradication".
The Gates Foundation is working on malaria eradication because it's one of those things where you really do get great returns by just attacking the problem head on. Batteries have nothing to do with malaria.
The other thing about super-batteries is that there's no shortage of sensible profit-chasing money pouring into it. If Sony, Samsung, Ford, Toyota, General Electric and Rolls Royce are all already pouring billions of dollars into it, there's not much point in Bill Gates throwing a couple of billion onto the pile. But apart from the Gates Foundation hardly anyone with deep pockets is targeting malaria.
The cotton gin eradicated lots of diseases. If you think that the battery I describe wouldn't have a similar impact on developing economies, you're experiencing a bit of an imagination failure.
I just used batteries as an example. The money being poured into batteries is commensurate with the overall value to society of creating them. This is not a market failure. The reason money isn't flowing to malaria prevention is because the structural problems that lead to the disease prevent the resulting human capital from having much of any economic value.
It seems like some of the responses here are missing the point. Sure, we get to play Angry Birds the whole way on a flight to Australia. But countless people in areas where electricity is still hard to come by suddenly gain the ability to use cell phones and computers, while only needing to charge them infrequently.
Given the impact of mobile devices we've seen in Africa so far, this sort of innovation would have a huge impact.
That said, I don't agree that Bill Gates is necessarily the best person to go solve this problem, nor that this would be an obviously more optimal area for him to invest in than those he's chosen so far.
>Personally, I'd like to see him start a company that would invent a mobile phone battery that lasts for a month and can power an RC aircraft to fly all the way around the world.
Wow, amazing. I'd hate to live in a world where you had a say.
Technology is going to advance just fine with or without Gates. We'll have eventually have batteries that last years or something that obsoletes them all together. Unless enough wealthy people get malaria it might never get cured without heroic efforts like what Gates is doing.
Amazing. Who cares about people dying, I want to be able to play Angry Birds non-stop when flying to Australia.
I disagree. I've heard Bill Gates speak and spoken with profs who worked with him; he is deeply informed on the health and edu issues he works on. If we can get smart, creative people tackling those, all the better. Some problems don't have a market solution.
Gates might be the exception, and I do admire his work on malaria. But I really do wonder if there isn't a bigger idea that he's cowering away from in his quest to simply give his fortune away.
The quest to give his fortune away and cowering from a bigger idea?
He is changing the way development works. He is better funded than almost anyone else with no obligation to any other stakeholders (namely governments and political entities that use aid as a political chip).
He gets the opportunity to, as a private individual, challenge the market failures of our time. Who else is going to fund research aimed at saving the world's poorest with little chance of ROI? He can basically act like China does with their foreign aid but without taking all their natural resources in exchange.
If you truly think there is some big idea he is cowering from, you may have the greatest imagination I know of.
It doesn't read like a quest to give his fortune away, it looks more like a quest to try and solve some of the most intractable problems of poverty that the world faces. His legacy is trying to make the world a better place for the people sitting at the very bottom who capitalism has forsaken.
I don't dispute that his work has helped many, many people. I also acknowledge that simply putting money toward some of those dire problems now will ease a great deal of suffering, which is wonderful.
But philanthropy is an old fashioned way to solve problems. I guess I have this hope that someone like Gates would see a solution that took a very unexpected path.
Bill Gates, as much as any other person you can probably name, got the entire developed world using personal computers. That was literally Microsoft's mission statement: a computer on every desk and in every home. You expect him to make a new business that'll outdo that? Trying to eradicate malaria in Africa isn't enough for you?
I think personal computers were going to spread anyway, Microsoft won the war for which OS they ran. Basically the spread of computers was going happen through natural market forces anyway, regardless of Microsoft.
Eradicating malaria is not something that is going to solve it's self, so it's a much bigger challenge.
You might have a point in just donating to a generic charity but Gates? I can't imagine anything he could possibly have done with that money that could have more impact than what he actually is doing. He's funding research that would never get done otherwise.
Capitalism may be good at what it does, but it isn't the answer to all problems.
I agree, and I think it's disappointing to see people pledge money so recklessly. And if it's not reckless, it's some sort of strange self-loathing that I don't understand. Just imagine what he could do by building an equally powerful company meant to fix just one problem...amazing things.
It's ultimately a socially lauded thing to do that divorces the donor from any ultimate responsibility for the amount of "greater good" done with the funds. I think they do it out of fear that they were a lucky, one-hit wonder... and out of low self-esteem or fear of the angry mob.
YC is a great example of a way to use wealth to make a real difference. PG uses his acumen to help a lot more people level up. This multiplies wealth. Spending it on charities simply redistributes it.
It makes me very pessimistic to see that the world's wealthiest people feel the need simply to pledge the money away, and no need to risk total failure by going out on a limb to do something bigger than whatever got them there.
What if Bill Gates tried some long shot idea and it flopped? What if Zuckerberg or Case did? That would take real courage. This pledge nonsense reminds me of the self-satisfied smirks people emit when publicly putting money into the collection basket in a church. Why isn't one of these rich guys going to bat for Wikileaks? (Probably because it feels a lot better to be praised all the time for being such a great person by all the sycophants trying to get you to write a check!)