Dark Cloud Over Good Works of Gates Foundation 325
theodp writes "Justice Eta, a Nigerian infant, has an ink spot on his tiny thumb to show he was immunized against polio and measles thanks to the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation. But Justice still faces respiratory trouble, which locals call 'the cough' and blame on fumes and soot spewing from 300-foot flames at a nearby oil plant owned by Itallian energy giant Eni, whose investors include the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation. Part one of an L.A. Times investigation reports that the world's largest philanthropy pours money into investments that are hurting many of the people its grants aim to help. With the exception of tobacco companies, the foundation's asset managers do not avoid investments in firms whose activities conflict with the mission to do good."
The Price of Industry & Economics (Score:5, Insightful)
You still see the Gates Foundation doing good things [sundayvision.co.ug] but why is it that so many foundations of insurmountable wealth are somehow ignorant of the economic problems they persist for those they try to help?
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How about the taxes that company pay to the local government? Isn't that wealth returning to the local community, even if in an indirect way?
Beside, suppose that company
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At one point or another, the people who lived there were completely self sufficient. The question you want to ask is whether living poor in an industrialized nation is better than the life of an iron-age villager.
Yes, and at one time all the inhabitants of Manhattan island were completely self-sufficient as well. One thing you might notcie about the world is that situations change.
Tell me, is it ignorance or racism that makes you think all Nigerians are iron-age savages pulled from their blissful hunter-gatherer lifestyle to toil in the white man's factories?
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Re:The Price of Industry & Economics (Score:5, Informative)
Also, I'd love to see you provide a modern example of people being dislocated from their farm-land in order to build an oil field (or any other kind of business), and then having no option but to work for that company. For some reason I get the distinct impression that you're just talking out of your ass.
Ok, let's try the Ijaw in the Niger Delta of Nigeria. Those who live, have lived, there for generations, have had their land taken from them and given to multinational oil companies. In return they've had oil and chemical spills as well as constant gas flares. AllAfrica [allafrica.com] has a number of articles on the Nigeria oil delta [allafrica.com] and what those living there have to live through.
FalconRe: (Score:2)
Right, and when it (or any charity, for that matter) runs out of money...?
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Re:The Price of Industry & Economics (Score:5, Insightful)
Actually, firms like that do hire (and train) a lot of locals; I know this is the case in Nigeria.
The main gist of the article seems to be "The Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation invests in oil companies, pharmaceutical companies, etc., and those are all the font of evil..." and relying on the modern American's quasi-religious belief that this is the case to make their point. It has enough anecdotes to make it appear as if it's proved its point, but the plural of anecdote is not data.
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Essentially, the Foundation's mission isn't allowed to influence its investment strategy & this setup is set to be formalized even further.
The LA Times (and others) want this to change so that the investments support or at a minimum, do not detract from, the Foundation's goals.
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Why not? The Foundation is a Federally Recognized NFP charity, which gives it some tax benefits on the belief that it will do good with its money. A foundation can do FAR more good by moral investing than outright giving.
If Gates & Co. wanted to ruthlessly make money via investment, they should have set up a holding company and pledged a dollar amount to the founda
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That is a dubious assertion, because usually you can't invest against something, and if your investment dollars don't fund a highly profitable venture, somebody else's will. Perhaps you can do no harm by avoiding "evil" investments (who's definition of evil do you use, anyway), but you can rarely do additional good by not investing.
Not entirely true... (Score:2)
That's not entirely true. Microsoft has been doing it for a very long time. They do it every time the give huge price breaks to companies and governments who wave a Linux conversion at them. They also have traditionally done it when they helped out with the piracy of Windows. I can't remember if it was Ballamer or Gates that said it, but one of them made the comment about massive piracy in Asia, that they would be able to use that to turn them into legitimate custo
Re:The Price of Industry & Economics (Score:5, Funny)
Re:The Price of Industry & Economics (Score:5, Funny)
Re:The Price of Industry & Economics (Score:5, Insightful)
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Re:The Price of Industry & Economics (Score:5, Funny)
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The reason most often given for these industries' evilness is "obscene profits". But their solution in every case is a stifling regulation that drives out smaller companies, leading to ever grea
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Re:The Costs of Charity (Score:5, Insightful)
Parent post used the phrase "having good intentions", which triggered these thoughts.
BG is driving his new Hummer along a back road in the mountains, just for the pleasure of it. The only other traffic is a 1954 Chevy pickup truck driven slowly by a migrant worker with his wife and two kids crammed in the cab beside him and all their worldly possessions neatly bundled up under a tarp in the back. BG falls in behind them as they go into some tight curves, planning on passing when the road straightens out again. But a tire of the pickup blows out with a bang, the pickup swings wildly from side to side, and ends up in the ditch.
BG performs the duties of care expected of all drivers who come upon an accident. He stops and determines that everyone is okay. The pickup is wedged in the rocky ditch but safely off the road; it doesn't pose a hazard. He offers to call for assistance on his cell phone.
Then, with the best of intentions, he offers to use the winch on his brand new Hummer to pull the pickup out of the ditch, and the family is most grateful for that. After the truck is back on the pavement, he helps as best he can with changing the flat (without getting grease on his fine new clothes). The family beam in gratitude and drive off toward the railroad crossing a few hundred yards down the hill. He watches them go as he wipes the dust off the winch cable (so it will again be all bright and sparklely when he winds it back onto its spool).
The railroad warning lights come on; the pickup's brake lights come on; but the pickup doesn't slow down. It rolls right into the side of the second engine of the freight train, and is immediately spun around to slam broadside into the next car, and then is tumbled like a cartwheel across the road. The tarp rips open and pieces of simple chairs and a table, neat packages of clothes and torn bedding, fly everywhere. The roof pops off the cab, and migrant worker body parts sail through the air.
This is most unfortunate. But there is no one blame here. Since BG is a "software engineer" and an entrepreneur, there is no reason to expect him to know that the brakelines should have been inspected after a vehicle is winched out of a ditch. If not for his action, the family would still be alive, but he did act with good intentions. He is blameless in the matter of their deaths.
Now what if this was the case instead:
BG is concerned with the plight of migrant workers who have to travel the difficult mountain roads. He decides that instead of getting that fun Hummer, he would buy a brand new tow truck so that he could help these poor people who are constantly getting stranded on life's back roads. If the same scenario played out while he was driving his tow truck, he would be culpable for the deaths of the migrant family.
When he bought the tow truck, he also bought into the expectation that he would have the same concerns for safety and the same basic knowledge expected of a tow truck operator. Therefore he should have known to inspect the underside of the pickup after winching it out of the ditch; he should have recognized the distinctive odor of leaking brake fluid; and in any event he should certainly have taken the basic precaution of pumping the brake pedal a few times before letting the pickup drive off. If he did not know to do those things, he would be negligent in the duty of care expected of the position he had chosen to put himself in, and he would be facing charges of negligent manslaughter or wrongful death.
When you intentionally spend your money to offer free assistance, you take on a higher duty of care wrt the consequences of all your associated actions. You are expected to have done your studies so that you can deliver what you are offering with the same degree of safety as the minimum expected of others who do the same work. That means more than knowing how to safely operate the tow truck winch; it means knowing how to evaluate your work so that you are not creating a greater crisis down the road.
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Maybe so, but law approaches it a bit more logically than you have. In law, your tow truck driver might be held liable for damaging the vehicle that he was towing, sure. But he's not going to be held liable for crushing other vehicles while working his second job at the scrap-yard.
Or, if we can throw away the idiotic analogies for a second, you're not arguing that Bill Gates' charity should be
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Uhm. Yeah. It's called the foreign exchange market [wikipedia.org]. It's not quite magic, but it allows currencies to be traded for one another. Money is just like any other commodity, it can be sent and received across any geographic boundary without trade restrictions.
I was expecting (Score:5, Insightful)
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Or the Foundation could spend a few extra million bucks to clean up the smokestacks. But that would require being a charity, which investment firms aren't.
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The Foundation does not own those smokestacks.
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True, but in many cases the foundation does own controlling interest in the companies that do own the smokestacks.
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Charities own little kids with cancer?
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Stephen Gates (Score:2, Funny)
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(hint [colbertnation.com])
Look at your own 401K (Score:5, Insightful)
you may well find that most of them have big oil, or questionable companies like Microsoft or Walmart.
It is very difficult, on inspection to make good picks that really fit your morals.
But this is the key problem. When you look at stocks or funds you look at the profit to you, and often do not see or ignore the negative things that you may be contributing to.
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why stop at the 401K?
where did you think your bank, your HMO, your employer, your church invests its money? probably not always, perhaps not ever, in companies that meet your own standards of purity.
Re:Look at your own 401K (Score:5, Informative)
Bob
Re:Look at your own 401K (Score:4, Informative)
When you look at stocks or funds you look at the profit to you, and often do not see or ignore the negative things that you may be contributing to.
There's an entire class of funds that solves this problem. It's called SRI: socially responsible investing [wikipedia.org]. Funds in this category avoid companies involved in military weapons, gambling, tobacco, etc., and they invest more heavily in companies with good track records in dealing with the environment, fair treatment of employees, and so on. Because these funds are focused more on morals than on profit, they typically don't have returns as high as other funds, but that's a small price to pay for being a socially responsible investor.
If you're interested, start by checking out Domini [domini.com] and Pax World [paxworld.com]; they're two of the largest and oldest SRI funds.
WTF? (Score:3, Insightful)
As to the guy above who thinks charities should be losing money not making it, that is just idiotic.
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The Gates Found
Re:WTF? (Score:4, Insightful)
Then don't.
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They are
Besides, most of Gates' wealth is in Microsoft stock, not cash. I read somewhere that every year he applies to the SEC for per
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Corporations offer their share/stock-holders something other business owners like proprietorships and partnerships don't get, limited liability. If you want limited liability you should pay for it.
An interesting point. Sometimes I have a hard time justifying the limited liability at all.
Originally limited liability was an important instrument for trade. Corporations and limited liability was started by the Dutch in the Netherlands. The Dutch were big shippers and traders, however ships sank or were
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That's not what I said. I dislike having my money taken from me illegally and used by someone so he can clear his name of illegal business practices used to take my money.
The fact that Gates is hiding behind charity to do this is the pathetic part.
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Oh yeah, providing jobs and industry is terrible! (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:Oh yeah, providing jobs and industry is terribl (Score:5, Funny)
Polio vaccines should be transported to Africa without the "evil" fossil fuels, via sailing ships, or perhaps tethered to a migratory bird -- like a swallow.
Re:Oh yeah, providing jobs and industry is terribl (Score:3, Insightful)
Always Doing good... (Score:2)
I mean; its lead by the wealthiest man in the world, who grew up in America. What do you expect his position to be?
Tough Call (Score:3, Insightful)
Now let's take a look at our options.
1) Accept help from someone funding somthing that is making it tough to breathe.
2) Eat shit and die.
Libertarians; this situation is different. (Score:5, Informative)
The Niger delta is in serious trouble; the environmental contamination there is beyond anything you would believe. My company had been contracted by one of the large oil companies there to investigate cleanup of some of their contaminated sites. They gave us some project specs.
The sites were huge. Gigantic. The scale of the project was larger than anything we had ever considered, and we work on some pretty large projects. Our existing cleanup efforts include some of the largest contaminated sites in the U.S. and Europe. We went to the delta to do some investigating and preliminary tests, and were shocked with what we found. On average, each contaminated site was 10x larger than the specs we were provided.
The environmental "mess" there is huge, and terribly depressing. It's a beautiful region, but you cannot imagine the scale of the contamination. It would take decades upon decades of pouring billions of dollars into remediation to bring the delta region near the environmental standards of the U.S. or Europe, neither of which are particularly high.
Furthermore, in terms of economics; these giant oil companies are ugly, monopolistic ventures with high levels of foreign and domestic (Nigerian) government involvement. They do things no "sane" company would do.
Don't respond with the usual, "These people wouldn't be better off with no jobs" bullshit. These companies have literally destroyed the region, annihilating the local agriculture and local industry. Not through competition, but through force; the region is so polluted that nothing but a resource extraction company can survive there. As far as I'm concerned, this represents use of force; which should be prohibited under capitalist frameworks.
It's really sad what is going on over there.
Connection between philanthropy and IP (Score:5, Interesting)
Most health professionals working in HIV/AIDS in third world countries regularly state that the only way to really tackle the AIDS epidemic is for drug companies to allow generic drugs to be made and given to people in third world countries, while allowing the expensive, patented, proprietary medications to continue to be sold in first world countries.
Of course, Merck et al haven't been too eager to open that intellectual property floodgate, and they've either said "No" outright, or volunteered to donate a small percentage of drugs (much less than addressing the epidemic would require).
Any other multinational corporation with substantial patents and IP concerns must wonder be aware that reducing the patent protection from big pharma could eventually affect them as well.
So, when Bill Gates donates large amounts of money to buy patented medications, he's equally protecting the sanctity of human life and the sanctity of international IP laws. Convenient way to look great, do good things, all while protect his own interests.
Sometimes "good" is the enemy of "best" and rich & powerful people using their money to buy drugs at ridiculous prices allows them to avoid pressuring our world governments to level the playing field a little for the poorest of the poorest.
Killing Africans for Profit and PR (Score:3, Interesting)
Killing Africans For Profit and PR [informatio...house.info]
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The way to stop the AIDS epidemic is to stop all those poor Africans from constantly fucking everything that moves without ever using a condom. Yeah. Medicine is fine but it's reactionary, and doesn't STOP the spread, it only helps those already CAUGHT by the spread. A more cautious culture about sex, that includes a lot of condoms, would STOP the spread. And then you'd have less people to treat.
If i were bill gates... (Score:2, Insightful)
I'm no fan of bill gates, But this bashing he constantly recieves is petty and infantile.
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And you would take a massive tax hit because of it. Bill gives money because he gets to claim the deductions. If he was -really- concerned about making the world a better place he would stop trying to import human sewage, radioactive medical waste untreated blood into American landfills (the company involved, Republic Services Inc NYSE:RSG has received non-trivial investments from Bill).
Umm... Giving away 30 billion dollars when you make a few hundred million in that year on investments isnt' a good tax dodge. If your accantant tries this I'd maybe try to change accountants.
Gates isnt all of the problem (Score:2, Insightful)
Did it ever occur to anyone that having a 'job' is the same as being a serf? Did it ever occur to anyone that a man with 10 acres and some basic tools doesnt need a job at all? There
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An inconvenient fact reparitionists tend to overlook is that the majority of slaves sold to North America from Africa were captured by warring Afr
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Take the situation in the article as example. The children were being vaccinated against polio, a disease that has claimed lives throughout human history. WIthout someone working a modern job at a medicine company to manufacture the vaccine, or the needle to inject it, or operating the plane to fly the vaccine to the region or the truck to drive it to the village, etc., how would these chi
Oh, come on, what's new?! (Score:4, Funny)
So in other words, Gates is operating from Mount Doom in Mordor...
Come on, tell us something new here!
Comment removed (Score:4, Insightful)
Best way to help poor countries (Score:2)
Seriously?! (Score:2, Insightful)
M$ (Score:3, Insightful)
Retrain or fire the asset managers (Score:3, Insightful)
People have been fired for lesser offenses. The Foundation needs to remind those managers who they work for, and inform them that their actions are not aligning with the goals of the Foundation...
No evil here (at least not intentionally). No, rather, this is more of the usual, more-mundane story that comes out of any sufficiently-large organization: the institution has a set of strategic priorities, but the upper management that make the strategic decisions (Bill and Melinda Gates, the management directly beneath them, etc.) aren't managing the lower management who manage the operational aspects (e.g. the asset managers who invest the Foundation's money).
It's just the usual story of incompetent management... Read Dilbert if you require further explanation.
I do wonder what Warren Buffet thinks though, now that he -- the America's 2nd-richest person -- has decided to pour 85% of his entire net worth into the Foundation over a period of several years, on the basis that it does good work and is managed well...
but the good PR and photo ops are priceless (Score:4, Insightful)
LoB
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Re:WTF (Score:4, Insightful)
No, they are bitched about because they actively contribute to the problems. Plenty of charities do good without doing the kind of harm that is described here, either because they manage any investments consistently with their charitable mission rather than largely independently of it, or because they simply operate on their current donations and don't have large investment portfolios in the first place.
Re:WTF (Score:4, Insightful)
Arm chair geniuses here underestimate the complexities involved in this matter. Maybe the soul of Bill Gates is as black as the soot from that oil refinery but maybe just maybe there are so many more factors involved. It may well be possible that the link between their money and the oil refinery goes though several layers thus obscuring visibility on what really is invested in. There will alway be some jealous pisshead to dig up obscure links that were not intended.
How is THAT insightful?? (Score:4, Insightful)
When the oil runs out, then what?
They'll be unemployed again, that's what. Plus, on top of that, they'll have more diseases than they had before, and the land will be even more useless because of pollution, too.
Let us recap the supporting facts, shall we?
Trading in your health for a job never works out for the better in the end.
Corporations don't engage in charitable acts for anyone's good. They do this to avoid paying taxes.
Again, how can that parent post be insightful, in light of the glaringly obvious and contradictory facts?
Re:WTF (Score:5, Insightful)
Now try again, but first buy a few hundred thousand shares of the company, and instead of complaining to the local gas station, complain to the company and use your shares to help influence the behavior and movement of the company. It won't be a quick change, but some change is better than no change.
Someone is going to profit off of investing in that power plant. Would you rather it be a non-profit who is helping people, or a filthy rich investment banker? Do you think that investment banker would try to alter the company or raise issues with a polluting plant? Aside from a few philanthropist investors, most are blood-sucking fiends (and even active philanthropists are fiends).
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Glad to see that ye old "do a flamboyant good deed to hide countless misdeeds" still pulls the wool over the eyes of the sheeple.
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No Shit Sherlock - Gates might be good, but he isn't a fucking superhero.
C'mon, guys, is it really THAT hard to see that this guy is just trolling? His post needs to be moderated appropriately.
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http://www.commondreams.org/views/071900-105.htm [commondreams.org]
As is typical in our current economy, the abundance of natural resources typically translates into the abuse and impoverishment of the people who live near the resources.
Back on topic, if you had read the original article it
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Re:The foundation is a karma-buying scam (Score:5, Insightful)
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The main purpose is to vaccinate Microsoft against bad press. The Buffett docation announcement was made on a stadium draped in Microsoft logos.
And so cheap! only 40 billion dollars. What kind of an advertising campaign could you have organised for only 150 dollars for every man, woman and child in the US. And how in character for Buffet to donate his personal fortune for Microsoft's PR department's benefit. Thankyou for sharing your wisdom EmbeddedJanitor.
There's been a vaccine for TB for 50+ years and still many people die of TB every day.
And there's been a vaccine for Smallpox too - and that still exists in more than twenty laboratories globally. Of course you're right - because something is difficult means it shouldn't be tr
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Yeah, can't they be like the rest of us who are consistently only good and never do anything with direct or indirect effects that are mixed or outright bad?
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Re:Bill Gates (Score:5, Insightful)
Bill Gates and Warren Buffet have given away their life savings to causes that are undeniably wonderful. Every day their money saves thousands of lives. You sit at home and rant at Slashdot. It reminds me of a William Shatner tune (if that isn't a contradiction in terms)
(slightly edited for context)
I find posts like yours profoundly depressing. You hold the Gates foundation to an impossible standard, far beyond what you would hold the MacArthur foundation, or your favourite charity or yourself. In doing so, you attempt to rob the Gates of any credit for their good works and in doing so, you reduce a major motivation for doing good works. Have you thought through the end result if we all demonzized philanthropists? Do you have any idea how important robber-baron philanthropy has been over the last few centuries?
Reading the Gates Foundation website, it would appear that all is hunky-dory.
Can you point me to a charity or foundation website that does not promote their work as hunky-dory? If they thought that they had problems, don't you think that they would spend more effort fixing them rather than updating their website to list them?
Yet their guiding principles leave a lot to be desired. For example, "philanthropy" is only part of their aim, and they report only those parts of their operation that *are philanthopic.
No, you completely misunderstand. Their goal is entirely philanthropic. Their guiding principles merely state the FACT that philanthropy is necessarily limited in its results. Therefore it is not an alternative to economic development. Give a man a fish, teach a man to fish, etc.
they report only those parts of their operation that *are philanthopic.
Oh really? Do you have evidence that either their annual report or their website misstates how they spend their money?
What have they got to hide?
Please take off your fucking tin-foil hat. What are they hiding? You are acting as if you know of something evil they are doing secretly but not reporting. Go ahead, please tell us what their nefarious other activities are.
Even ENRON gave a better account of their operations than this.
Enron (note the capitalization) needs to be added to Godwin's law.
FWIW. I don't particularly mind investment in big multinationals - my morals aren't that high-minded and occasionally they do good - but don't multinationals receive enough Gubmint aid already? The long list includes Aribus, British Aerospace, ELF, Boeing etc etc etc etc. Each sit at the tax-trough day-in-day-out. The only reason for the Gates Foundation to invest in these big companies *is* profit.
Yes, the reason that the Gates foundation invests in big companies is in order to maximize the profit available for their philanthropic work. Given this fact, why do you mention the fact that "Aribus" gets government money. What does it have to do with the price of tea in China? When you select your own investments are you biased against companies that have got government contracts, customers, loans or bail-outs? Do your mutual funds exclude such organizations?
Currently, it looks like to me that the Foundation is their to make the Gates and Buffet look good. Nothing more.
I'm sorry, I'm boiling over. You're acting like a total asshole.
First, nothing in your post substantiates the claim you make at the end. Don't you think that there are easier ways to buy positive press than to give away your life savings?
Second, Warren Buffet was already widely loved and praised. Giving away his life savings barely moves the needle of his reputation. As far as Bill Gates: I think that if he gave a flying fuck what people like you think of him then he would have
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Dude this is evil inc, they're making huge profits from investments in socially irresponsible corps while maintaining a good public image through their donations(and keeping uncle sam out of their pockets.)
"They" are not making any money. The foundation is making money. That money is then used to either invest more or do all those happy and good things that it does. Bill Gates doesn't get any money from the foundation. In fact, Bill Gates GIVES money to the foundation. The foundation makes him POORER.
Re:Bill Gates (Score:5, Insightful)
Did you buy any gasoline recently? Had anything delivered by truck? Bought anything in plastic packaging? Used any electricity in the last, oh, 2 minutes?
Get off your high horse.
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Get off your high horse.
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Any good charity towards these people must be done in such a way as to minimize governmental robbery. Simply giving away a big amount of mon
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Gates is spending billions to fight malaria. Is that not a worthwhile endeavor? How about you go out and build a $30 billion fortune and then you can direct how it's spent.
Re:Something I've been saying all along (Score:5, Interesting)
ALL multinational industriess are 'questionable. Every single one. It is near impossible to invest on a large scale without bumping against these corps.
Bill Gates could, if he were REALLY concerned with good works, spend 100 million dollars (That's like a $100 to you and me) and feed them all.
Wrong. Cutting a check for $100M will NOT do it. VArious countries have tried that all over Africa. The result? Food left rotting on the dock, because the local chump in charge of the trucks isn't getting his cut.
Simply sending $100M to Somalia/Ethiopia/Chad does nothing except for make a few warlords richer.
How many people are dying because of no health care?
And that is one of the main things the Foundation is trying to address. Fixing some of the less popularized, but still debilitating/deadly illnesses and diseases.
The investment arm and the charitable arm are two distinct entities within the Foundation. The investment arm gathers as much money as possible, and the charitable arm spreads it around where it will (supposedly) do the most good. Neither side has influence over the other.
You think it's easy? Get hired on their board and change the way they do business.
Re:Something I've been saying all along (Score:5, Insightful)
Um, nice piece of completely unfounded conjecture. Also, it doesn't make logical sense even from a circumstantial point of view. The billionaires are investing in their foundations to "make money?" You do realize that they can't get it back out, right? The foundation makes money, true...which is good, as it allows it to spend way, way more money fixing problems. Assuming a fairly normal rate of return, the foundation should be able to spend its entire (current) endowment over the next 7 years and yet still have the same amount of money at the end of that time...meaning it can keep doing it. And this idea that Gates should just be sending us all a $100 check? Are you brain dead? First, since he is clearly more interested in third-world disease and poverty than he is with the home-grown (and comparatively less miserable) variety, we'd be talking about a few billion checks, not a couple hundred million. Which means the foundation's endowment would only be like $20 per recipient. But even if it was a hundred...you think everybody having a small bit of cash (which won't last) would be better than curing HIV, malaria, and tuberculosis, and working on better ways to get clean water and food to the third world? That's dumb as hell; the value of the foundation is having such a big pile of cash in one place where it can be spent in really big chunks on research and large-scale health projects. The benefit of these initiatives to the people they serve are many, many times greater than the per-capita amount spent to pursue them.
You seem to think that the foundation doesn't do anything important. This suggests you simply haven't made any attempt to find out what they are about. Add to this your complete lack of logic and your unfounded conclusions, and it comes off sounding really ignorant.
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First, since he is clearly more interested in third-world disease and poverty than he is with the home-grown (and comparatively less miserable) variety, we'd be talking about a few billion checks, not a couple hundred million. Which means the foundation's endowment would only be like $20 per recipient. But even if it was a hundred...you think everybody having a small bit of cash (which won't last) would be better than curing HIV, malaria, and tuberculosis, and working on better ways to get clean water and food to the third world? That's dumb as hell; the value of the foundation is having such a big pile of cash in one place where it can be spent in really big chunks on research and large-scale health projects. The benefit of these initiatives to the people they serve are many, many times greater than the per-capita amount spent to pursue them.
Another issue is inflation. If someone likes gates gave everyone in a poor country $100 USD and in some magical way they all recived it without some party stealing large portions of it. All it would do is temporarily inflate all prices. It would fix nothing. Giving specific good or funding programs that give low resale value goods (like immunization. Whats the resale/black market for that like?) is better then givign money directly or attempting to dsitribute common trade goods.
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Capitalist hardball is the American national sport, not baseball, always has been.
Hatred of the entrepreneur may drive some needed reforms, but is notoriously confined and short-lived in the states.
One reason for this, of course, is that the American entrepreneurial capitalist is one of
Re: (Score:2)
American: Edison
Edison is to the late 19th early 20th as Gates is to the late 20th early 21st.
So... I guess if I were to stretch the comparison, I'd pick Torvalds as the European... but it's stretching pretty far and thin by then.
Re:Oil Plant? (Score:4, Insightful)
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I also challenge your view that you are some kind of superhero because you donate a bigger percentage of your income than Gates does (and YOU don't donate a bigger percentage FYI). It's not the thought that counts, it's th
Re:Tax Write off (Score:5, Informative)
The Gates foundation has an endowment of over $30 Billion dollars(granted Bill only donated a small amount of that, most of it was from Warren Buffet).
Bill Gates also doesn't make anywhere near $40 billion a year. His net worth is $53 billion, but his salary is less than a million. Of course he still probably makes a few billion per year just off interest and investments, but that's a whole other topic.
According to Forbes Bill gave away about $30 billion just in the period from 2000-2004, the Gates foundation is just a small part of that. So he gave away $30 billion, and has a net worth of $53 billion, that means he's given away more than 1/3rd of his total net worth. Sure that doesn't put him in the poor house, but there is absolutely no reason to minimize what he has done.
So please don't make up crap saying 'but it's only 1/20,000th of his money' when that is clearly BS, and 5 seconds of looking up the numbers, which are fairly publicly available, would show that's not the case.
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http://www.nytimes.com/2006/06/26/business/26buff
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Just some? I didn't get on the list through any special qualifications/certifications I attained, don't know about you.
Looking at this another way (Score:3, Interesting)
If the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation made a positive decision to invest in ENI, it could have been that the company is (apart from pumping oil & gas) spending lots of its own money looking at alternative energy sources.
Many Oil companies spend significant amounts of money looking at Alternative sources of Energy and also, cleaning up the environment around their plants.
Now Nigeria is a difficult place to do business at the best of times. You have heavily armed rebels out to kidnap and hold for ran
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court, try defending your client in the way you suggest:
"My client should be praised and rewarded
for his deads. Although he admits robbing
the bank, it was done in a more humane way."
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The article complains that Gates spends only 2% of his net worth - US$ 6 Billions - directly on the Gates foundation.
And then claims that "the game" is given away by an investment by the foundation of US$ 200 Million.
What's that, 0.66% of his net worth? 3% of the foundation? Aggregated over different drug companies?
Heck, I hope those 200 million pay off to catch up to the 6 billions.
They must have a better ROI than the similar investments almost every 401K