1d ago

Bill Gates vows to give away 99 per cent of his fortune by 2045

www.watoday.com.au

246 comments

Why wait, just do it already.
Individuals hoarding wealth is bad for society.
- Because he wants to benefit personally from his wealth and be seen as a good person.
  And the idiots will keep eating it up
  
  I mean, 99% of his wealth gone still leaves him with over a billion dollars. Might be more of a logistics and planning issue.
  
  This is correct.
  He's gone in depth about this a number of times, where he talks about the complexity of using philanthropic money effectively. For example, is a dollar better spent educating poor children, or building wells in rural communities? Providing bed nets for malaria, or treatments for tuberculosis? And then once you decide on the cause you will put your money into, how do you ensure the money goes where you wanted it to go, rather than being syphoned off by bureaucrats, reallocated to spurious pet projects, or lining the pockets of some local warlord? And once your money has gone to the cause, how do you measure its impact to ensure it was money well spent? Do people actually use the well? Does it provide clean water? Does it work reliably? Did rates of malaria actually go down, or are people too lazy to use the bed nets? Etc.
  These things are complicated and take time to figure out. Hence why all the "donate it now" comments are ridiculous.
- Do you have a comprehensive plan on how to immediately spend 200Bn USD evenly and fairly only to the most impoverished people on earth in such a way that maximises longterm benefit more than spreading it out over 20 years?
  Also, if you sell off 200Bn USD worth of stocks in a day then you're not going to make 200Bn USD off the sales.
  
  Yes, as a UBI. The average person is so poor that "means testing" it is just a waste of time and money. Poverty is very expensive - a high "interest rate" - so $1 donated today will have a drastically higher impact than $1 in 20 years, even adjusting for inflation.
  Also, Gates' wealth is now diversified enough that slippage would be minimal. And doing it suddenly without notice prevents speculators selling ahead of him and then buying back afterwards, which would essentially siphon off the wealth.
  
  Dude, even just planning and organizing a UBI takes time and effort.
  It would start with a billionaire requesting people’s personal data (because he couldn’t publically admit to having it through dark sources) and who wants to do that?
  He also couldn’t afford a UBI in every nation on the planet; right now his help is focused on countries with far worse standards of living than the USA.
  
  you seem to be all over the thread defending gates. Do you really think this is how a good willed person helps people? by preventing vaccine patents, and using impoverished kids for testing.
  He's creating pathway to funnel his money where he wants it, his own family, with least criticism, and defended by short sighted stringent followers like you.
  
  You think preventing vaccine patents was the bad outcome? I don't even know how to begin with that, I don't feel any need to defend if that's your stance.

246 comments