Mark Zuckerberg Agrees to Give Away Fortune

http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052748703493504576007982500939482.html?mod=djemalertTECH

by jakarta • 16 years ago

239 193 16 years ago

online.wsj.com

markbao• 16 years ago

This is really great to hear. We need more of this.

I'd pledge if I had any hugely significant sum like the others in the pledge, but alas.

jessriedel2• 16 years ago

> I'd pledge if I had any hugely significant sum like the others in the pledge

Lives in the developing world can be saved for less than $1000/life (that is, something like $20 per disability-adjusted-life-year). You personally could save dozens--perhaps hundred--of human lives, which I consider to be hugely significant.

nhangen7• 16 years ago

but for how long?

te_platt• 16 years ago

There's no reason you couldn't start small. Find some cause you support or someone you know in greater need than yourself and contribute what you can. If you feel you can't do anything now you probably will always be able to find a reason you can't in the future.

SoftwareMaven• 16 years ago

The big question will be does Zuck's fortune liquify at anywhere near the level that it is now. :)

salemh• 16 years ago

Buffet's, Gate's and most of the other "big-dog's" hodling can't be liquidated for their Net Worth $ anyway. This story reminds me of Zuck turning down the near Billion $ acquisition offer from Yahoo! To him, its not about the wealth and I like that. Even if he never leaves a multi-billion $ fortune (which I think he will).

jrockway• 16 years ago

This makes it okay that he sells my list of friends to advertisers!

tomjen3• 16 years ago

Well, this will properly be nice for those who receive those founds, but I have to wonder why he did it. Why get a fortune just to give it away?

jakarta2• 16 years ago

I think that for some people, particularly billionaires, money is more about keeping score.

RK• 16 years ago

After a certain point, you obviously don't need any more money, but a lot of super rich people clearly can't help themselves in trying to accumulate more wealth.

manvsmachine2• 16 years ago

A commonly reiterated finding is that, while having more money can indeed contribute towards a happier life, it only does so to a point. According the the article, Zuckerberg's speculatively worth roughly $6B; if this proves accurate and he gives 90% of that away, he's still sitting on a small fortune. I'd hope that he is capable of figuring out how to make do with "only" $600M or so.

chrisaycock• 16 years ago

> Why get a fortune just to give it away?

Why climb Mount Everest just to come back down?

manvsmachine2• 16 years ago

Because if you don't, you'll be dead within the next day: http://godheadv.blogspot.com/2010/04/abandoned-on-everest.ht...

Your point still stands though.

afterburner2• 16 years ago

To shape the world.

DanielN• 16 years ago

I can't really fathom why anyone would care what his reasons are. He wants to give away several billion to improve education and eradicate disease and poverty, and beyond that reasons really shouldn't matter.

Carnegie's philosophy on wealth (mentioned in the article) is not a terrible philosophy to live your life by both in the realm of philanthropy and in most other aspects of life.

HiroshiSan• 16 years ago

You should read How To Get Rich by Felix Dennis. Here is an excerpt where he mentions giving money away: "So why do I not give it away? Because I worked too hard for it. Because I am tained by it. Because I am afraid to. All those reasons and more. Perhaps, if I am lucky enough to become old, I will accumulate something else: the courage to give it all away before I die. That would be a good thing, I think. ... "Giving money away when you are dead takes no guts. No courage. But to divest yourself of hundreds of millions of dollars, or the greater part of your fortune, before your death? That would be something to be proud of, don't you think? It even makes logical sense."

jiganti• 16 years ago

It's commendable for anyone to give away their money, but especially so when it's a guy in his mid-twenties.

RtodaAV3• 16 years ago

He doesn't have a billion dollars until the IPO. Good Luck Zuck.

DevX1014• 16 years ago

After someone asked Warren Buffet why he wanted to give away all of his fortune, he replied:

"I want to leave enough money to my children that they can do anything, but no so much that they will do nothing".

labuffer• 16 years ago

Lawrence: Well you don't need a million dollars to do nothing, man. Just take a look at my cousin, he's broke, don't do shit.

Luc• 16 years ago

It's a great idea when your children are young, but they are in their fifties now...

spatulon• 16 years ago

The British entrepreneur and investor Peter Jones also worried about that problem and decided to double any money his children earned for themselves.

hugh35• 16 years ago

I don't like that as an incentive. For a start, it keeps your children in your financial orbit for the rest of your life. Secondly, it communicates to your children that you don't expect them ever to make as much money as you did.

Whenever I wish I were super-wealthy, I try to remember that super wealth probably just creates all sorts of problems when raising children. If I ever do get super wealthy I'll plan to spend all but a few million dollars, secretly and out of sight of the children, before they reach the age of twelve, so that I don't have to worry about them growing up with the typical rich-kid problems.

petenixey4• 16 years ago

He's actually even more tactical than that. The multiple depended on the job his kids get. I think he said he'd quadruple a nurses salary but they wouldn't get anything at all if they became investment bankers.

j4pe• 16 years ago

There is no reason for Facebook to go public anytime in the near future. It will be more and more revenue positive as it refines its advertising model. Zuckerberg's contribution is therefore worth very little at the moment, outside of the tremendous commitment it implies for Mark. At some point, he will probably control huge amounts of wealth and it's bold of him to sign away most of the cash before he ever has control over it.

But wouldn't it be amusing if Facebook were to go the way of preceding social networks, and leave the "world's youngest billionaire" looking a little silly for pledging a fortune that never materialized?

afterburner2• 16 years ago

They'll probably let him off the hook if he doesn't end up a billionaire...

benatkin• 16 years ago

If Facebook does go the way of preceding social networks, it will happen in a very different way. They're a much more competent and diverse company than Friendster, MySpace, and Bebo were.

nhangen7• 16 years ago

With great wealth, comes great power, and with great power, comes the ability to change the world.

Though I loathe the way he's built Facebook, I trust someone like Zuck with several billion more than I trust someone without the ability to earn it. Who is going to be managing this money, and where is it going? Is this just a pledge, with no strings attached?

The article isn't very forthcoming, and neither is the website: givingpledge.org

I don't understand what's happened with Gates, and though I admire his sentiment, I think putting pressure on young entrepreneurs, who already have thousands of voices in their heads, is a wrong move.

Call me callous, but this whole thing seems insane. Mark can do more good with his money by building new technologies than this fund could do manage multiple billions of dollars. It's rare that money on that scale is managed well.

grandalf8• 16 years ago

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!)

nhangen7• 16 years ago

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.

grandalf8• 16 years ago

Well put.

reneighbor2• 16 years ago

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.

grandalf8• 16 years ago

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.

EJE• 16 years ago

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.

1 - I am sure not every donation is made this way

grandalf8• 16 years ago

I realize Gates does this and I think it's great.

I just wonder if Gates might have the ability to do far more if he just invested in himself.

philwelch3• 16 years ago

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?

rythie• 16 years ago

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.

loewenskind3• 16 years ago

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.

reneighbor2• 16 years ago

I like that it's about thinking how to give responsibly and effectively, pledging early in life so they can put their creativity to good use, as the article says. People who sign are trading ideas and logistical advice, it's like a book club for philanthropy.

keiferski• 16 years ago

It's certainly commendable to give away a vast fortune, and I don't want to take away from this honorable act in any way.

But I wonder why more ridiculously wealthy entrepreneurs don't, ya know, preneur? Especially in the nonprofit "make a difference space".

A billion dollars to charity is cool. You know what's really cool? A billion dollars towards a celebrity billionaire-spearheaded do-good project. (Or 1 million dollars each towards 1000 projects, etc.)

Maybe I'm missing something, and I'm certainly no billionaire, so I probably am. But if I were a billionaire, I'd be more interested in angel investing (in promising, impactful projects) and my bringing my own ideas to life.

But I digress. Bravo to the billionaires. Really, this is awesome.

webXL• 16 years ago

You can give it away while you're alive, or split it between your loved ones and the state when you die. I think it would be more fun giving it away to those most in need rather than enriching those who've already had a pretty good life... and your loved ones, too.

nhangen7• 16 years ago

perhaps, but if you teach and educate your children how they can duplicate your success, and give them a headstart with the fortune you've built, then you can do just as much, if not more, than the charity down the street.

Look, I'm not advocating against giving, but I don't think jumping into pledges is the smartest way to begin.

toephu• 16 years ago

zuckerberg doesn't even have $10mil cash, let alone billions. it's all on paper.

frisco• 16 years ago

This is false.

RtodaAV3• 16 years ago

Prove it.

nhangen7• 16 years ago

This is from the PDF on the giving pledge website:

"The pledge does not involve pooling money or supporting a particular set of causes or organizations. The pledge asks only that the individual give the majority of their wealth to philanthropic causes or charitable organizations either before or after their death."

Interesting way to do this. I still don't really understand the need for a pledge of this magnitude, but at least they aren't pooling the money or soliciting for specific causes.

That being said, I still think Zuck is far too young to make such a strong commitment.

rorymarinich• 16 years ago

> That being said, I still think Zuck is far too young to make such a strong commitment.

Do you really think so? Mark is a few years older than me, and I've already arrived at the decision that I'd do much the same as him if I ever had the same cash. He's bright, quite savvy regarding the public, and he's got a great inner stamina. I doubt he worries if he's capable of making money — maybe he'll never equal Facebook's success, in fact probably he won't, but I doubt if he started all over again today he'd fail to make himself a comfortable, cozy living.

It's not like he's being asked to live an ascetic lifestyle, though all stories I've read say that he's fairly minimal. He's just being asked to give away most of his money to help other people. In his case, "most of his wealth" still leaves him more than I've got at present.

nhangen7• 16 years ago

I'm just saying that when you're young, and you've had your head buried in work, hearing sage advice from mentors, advisors, and board members, it's possible that now isn't the best time to make that sort of decision. I'm not condemning it, and if it's what he wants to do, who am I to stop him, but something just doesn't feel right about it. That's just my .02

burgerbrain6• 16 years ago

I'd rather see more people following the lead of Elon Musk than Bill Gates. Instead of throwing money at problems that will always exist and producing no real value, Musk is creating high-tech jobs and advancing the state of humanity.

xiaoma• 16 years ago

I share neither your certainty that malaria will always exist, nor your belief that ending the epidemic would produce no real value. Along with HIV, it has crippled a continent and caused immeasurable suffering.

Elon Musk is doing great things. How many other potential Musks are there whose opportunities to do such things were cut short due to the very problems the Gates foundation addresses? Even just in his home country, South Africa, there have likely been a few.

klbarry• 16 years ago

Absolutely - in Hans Rosling's famous TED speech, he mentions how public health is the most important thing regarding a countries economic growth and well being.

smallhands• 16 years ago

i disagree with you elon musk is just creating toys for the rich.bill gates and likes are working on real problems . In some developing countries that l know you may not believe how hard it is to get a clean drinking water

mquander4• 16 years ago

It's certainly a testament to the power of perspective that you've dismissed a quarter of the planet living sick, hungry, and in poverty as "problems that will always exist", and decided that doing something about it produces no "real value."

lionhearted5• 16 years ago

> It's certainly a testament to the power of perspective that you've dismissed a quarter of the planet living sick, hungry, and in poverty as "problems that will always exist", and decided that doing something about it produces no "real value."

Can we spare the moral condemnations? Today's advances in the cutting edge of sciences become the life-saving and enhancing cheap commodities of the future, and being skeptical that poverty can ever be truly defeated isn't exactly a radical position.

That said, I agree with you more than the original poster, and I think philanthropy is fantastic. But let's spare the moral condemnations and shaming of someone who has an alternative point of view.

zohebv• 16 years ago

To his credit he does call himself burgerbrain :-)

burgerbrain6• 16 years ago

Poverty, hunger, and sickness will all continue to be a problem this side of singularity, practically by definition.

No amount of money thrown directly at the problem will ever put a halt to them, our only hope for salvation lies in continuing our pursuit of technology unhindered.

tzs• 16 years ago

So saving several million lives produced no real value?

jasonlotito• 16 years ago

Except Bill Gates isn't just throwing money at problems and producing no real value. You may not be seeing the benefits of his work directly, but he is making a real difference, and I'd be willing to bet, through his work, employing far more people who work to pull people up rather than merely advancing the advanced.

Edit: I'm not against people advancing the human race mind you (advancing the advanced). However, neither is Bill Gates merely handing out money. He's teaching men to fish, rather than simply giving them fillets.

Jun8• 16 years ago

AFAIK, Jobs has still not committed.

ladon86• 16 years ago

From his Playboy interview, aged 29:

Playboy: What does the money actually mean to you?

Jobs: I still don't understand it. It's a large responsibility to have more than you can spend in your lifetime--and I feel I have to spend it. If you die, you certainly don't want to leave a large amount to your children. It will just ruin their lives. And if you die without kids, it will all go to the Government. Almost everyone would think that he could invest the money back into humanity in a much more astute way than the Government could. The challenges are to figure out how to live with it and to reinvest it back into the world, which means either giving it away or using it to express your concerns or values.

Playboy: So what do you do?

Jobs: That's a part of my life that I like to keep private. When I have some time, I'm going to start a public foundation. I do some things privately now.

Playboy: You could spend all of your time disbursing your money.

Jobs: Oh, you have to. I'm convinced that to give away a dollar effectively is harder than to make a dollar.

Playboy: Could that be an excuse to put off doing something?

Jobs: No. There are some simple reasons for that. One is that in order to learn how to do something well, you have to fail sometimes. In order to fail, there has to be a measurement system. And that's the problem with most philanthropy--there's no measurement system. You give somebody some money to do something and most of the time you can really never measure whether you failed or succeeded in your judgment of that person or his ideas or their implementation. So if you can't succeed or fail, it's really hard to get better. Also, most of the time, the people who come to you with ideas don't provide the best ideas. You go seek the best ideas out, and that takes a lot of time.

Playboy: If you plan to use your visibility to create a model for people, why is this one of the areas you choose not to discuss?

Jobs: Because I haven't done anything much yet. In that area, actions should speak the loudest.

http://apps.ycombinator.com/item?id=1920287

mortenjorck• 16 years ago

Fascinating. Knowing Jobs' penchant for secrecy, the Steven P. Jobs Foundation could well exist today, only as a collection of charitable organizations under various names.

petenixey4• 16 years ago

I happen to have just watched a brilliant TED talk on the value of angel investment (not aid) in Africa. The talk underlined how it is capitalism rather than charity that creates wealth.

It would be wonderful to see some of SV's glitterati create more for-profit investment networks (bigger than Kiva, smaller than VC (...YC?)) in other hungry markets.

Kudos to Mark for committing to this. If he applies his product-brilliance to how he goes about it I'm sure he will do wonderful things.

(Alexis this has your name written all over it BTW ;)

pero• 16 years ago

Capitalism creating wealth in Africa? Cruel joke?

noonespecial• 16 years ago

Nope. Counter-intuitive truth.

ashutoshm• 16 years ago

"We are often told that the poor are grateful for charity. Some of them are, no doubt, but the best amongst the poor are never grateful. They are ungrateful, discontented, disobedient, and rebellious. They are quite right to be so. Charity they feel to be a ridiculously inadequate mode of partial restitution, or a sentimental dole, usually accompanied by some impertinent attempt on the part of the sentimentalist to tyrannise over their private lives. Why should they be grateful for the crumbs that fall from the rich man's table?" - Oscar Wilde

http://flag.blackened.net/revolt/hist_texts/wilde_soul.html

helium• 16 years ago

Do you have a link to the TED talk?

eagleal• 16 years ago

The most relevant I found http://www.ted.com/talks/lang/eng/euvin_naidoo_on_investing_...

Though I don't know if is about angel investing, the one OP watched.

petenixey4• 16 years ago

Sorry, I should have put it in in the first place: http://www.ted.com/talks/ngozi_okonjo_iweala_on_doing_busine...

jacoblyles2• 16 years ago

I will bet anyone that 20 years from now we will see that China's "greedy" investment in Africa has done more good than all the decades and $billions of "selfless" western aid, both public and private.

And I also will bet that privatized school systems will perform better than public school bureaucracies that receive hundred million dollar gifts.

The invisible hand is puckish like that.

bertil9• 16 years ago

I'll happily take that bet — but please check the local situation first.

You remember the Oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico, and its impact on local business? There has been the same disaster, continuously for decades, thanks to oil extractions by “greedy” Shell. Somali pirates? They were fighting illegal radioactive dumps that contaminated their food, that were more “lean and efficient” to leave there rather then properly process. When locals are up in arms, the local economy rarely benefit.

According to friends who worked for the UN or US Aid, there is far worst to come, thanks to Chinese company.

jokermatt999• 16 years ago

http://www.longbets.org/

Not that I'd go down as opposing, but it could also be a nice way to get this idea some attention/publicity.

(And make some money in 20 years :)

jhpriestley• 16 years ago

Hmm, could a free market approach to African development be what we were missing all along? If only we could come to some sort of consensus on that approach. We could call it the Washington consensus.

lionhearted5• 16 years ago

Fantastic.

I wonder if all these very public proclamations are going to shift people's attitude towards taxes? Most people think of the government as wasteful, inefficient, incompetent, and corrupt to more or less degrees, and I know I'd prefer to see money allocated by smart people like Gates, Buffet, Zuckerberg than by politicians who need to keep constituents happy and win votes.

I committed a while back to giving 10% of my income to charity henceforth, probably for my whole life. I know I've felt much better when I raised money for St. Jude's or Grand Ormond Street children's hospitals than when I wrote a check to the IRS to fund the latest special interest-fueled debacle.

There's a "the evil rich are against us" narrative in movies and stories a lot, but I wonder if the perception will start to change when all the good from these endeavors is realized. I think it's quite likely that smart people allocating resources intelligently will do 10x, 20x, 50x more good with the money than a politician possibly could.

DevX1014• 16 years ago

I don't like estate taxes. Governments are typically terrible financial stewards and bad examples of financial responsibility. Give the government one billion and it will find a way to spend two.

But I also don't like the idea of a permanent aristocratic class where generation after generation are born into opulence because your great grandfather created a great company.

The movement towards philanthropy is a great alternative as long there are clearly defined and applied metrics of success. Gates Foundation does a good job at this. If you claim you're going to change the world, but you can't prove it, you won't get funding again.

sshumaker• 16 years ago

I'd argue one of the points of estate taxes (which are heavily favored by Buffet, Gates, et. al) is to encourage you to will your fortunes to philanthropy - so it doesn't end up in the hands of the government.

bertil9• 16 years ago

> Governments are typically terrible financial stewards

Well, no: many governments are far more responsible than most individuals. That's not true in counties were everyone criticize the government as strongly as you do in the United States, but in countries where government positions are prestigious, the most talented people work there. As recently demonstrated, financial incentives are no where as efficient as job safety and support for creative tasks, this is why a system that promote civic dedication has tremendous impact.

sp332• 16 years ago

> But I also don't like the idea of a permanent aristocratic class where generation after generation are born into opulence because your great grandfather created a great company.

If you make a ridiculous amount of money, what's wrong with making sure that your family is financially secure for generations?

muhfuhkuh2• 16 years ago

Sometimes it takes the government (or someone funded by them) to come up with novel solutions for the maladies that have plagued humanity. Norman Borlaug for famine, Jonas Salk for Polio, the research into Avian influenza and H1N1 pandemics, space exploration, etc. have all been either spearheaded, guided or financially encouraged by government agencies.

These are areas which charities (and corporations, for that matter) have sometimes fallen short due to either lack of funding or the mission-critical nature of the moment. Either way, we must agree that it's tough to conclude that governments are completely incompetent and charities aren't, however apt the perception may be.

ramanujan3• 16 years ago

> Sometimes it takes the government

Hmmm. Not disagreeing that some things funded by government grants have been worthwhile, but almost every scientific discovery before the WW2 period was funded independently of the government -- including big ticket areas involving fundamental research like automobiles, railroads, and aviation.

ZeroGravitas• 16 years ago

You should start (or locate) a charity that dedicates itself to decreasing government waste and donate the money to them. You'd probably get more bang for your buck, even if it didn't focus purely on the humanitarian side of government.

lionhearted5• 16 years ago

> You should start (or locate) a charity that dedicates itself to decreasing government waste and donate the money to them. You'd probably get more bang for your buck, even if it didn't focus purely on the humanitarian side of government.

I think it's a good goal, but a bad use of charitable funds due to the fact that politics has some unfortunately strong zero sum elements about it. I don't categorize any primarily political organizations as charity, even if I agree with their aims.

philwelch3• 16 years ago

This is a strange question to me. I know there is probably some similarity in how governments and individuals allocate large amounts of money--for instance, federal spending to curtail HIV/AIDS in Africa compared to Gates' spending to curtail malaria--but the bulk of it doesn't overlap. Gates, Buffett, and Zuckerberg shouldn't hire my town's police force, and can't afford to hire my country's military or even maintain my country's highways.

As long as things like that need to be done, someone needs to pay taxes. And Warren Buffett would be the first to tell you he and his fellow billionaires should be the one paying the taxes.

dpatru2• 16 years ago

I don't see why the police, military, and highways need to be funded through government. To the extent that these services provide a benefit, there's no reason to think they couldn't be supplied in a free market.

stretchwithme7• 16 years ago

all the benefits delivered to mankind by the efforts of the innovators hasn't stopped the demonization of the rich. giving away what they've been paid to deliver those benefits probably won't either.

adambyrtek• 16 years ago

Probably because "rich" and "innovators" isn't really the same thing, and there was even less overlap in the past.

bertil9• 16 years ago

Rich are not demonized.

People who use their wealth to feel superior and annoy others, who are wealthy enough to set up tax-evasion scheme, who behave as if they can pay to be above the law are demonized.

Patient0• 16 years ago

Don't you mean "Great Ormond Street children's hospitals" ? You gave money to them but don't even remember their name properly?

lionhearted5• 16 years ago

> Don't you mean "Great Ormond Street children's hospitals" ?

Correct - I'm not a native Londoner and I've spent less than a year there across my life. I also organized two small charity events, and asked a friend of mine what the equivalent of St. Jude's is in London, and he said Great Ormond Street.

> You gave money to them but don't even remember their name properly?

Unnecessarily dickish comment. But yes, I swapped "Great" and "Grand" in my comment incorrectly, good catch there.

bertil9• 16 years ago

Although some isolated initiative are great (Zuckerberg's pledge to education is presumably very much needed) most private charities are more expensive to manage and often counter-productive. Government redistribution can have in well-run countries handling cost around 3-5%; too many charities are closer to 15%. Government handles essential concerns, permanent efforts, infrastructure investment, etc. while many private charities browse around, try something but have little follow-through after the first media coverage. Governments can have a more global view of things, that can help isolate massively more efficient efforts, even when they aren't popular, like prevention, half-way homes. A majority of public money is spend on things with little isolated, visible impact, but the marginal impact can be much higher. A lot of local leaders in Africa have criticized the B&M Gates Foundation for being too disruptive for the good of beneficiaries.

I won't diminish the impact of being associated to massively successful people, or simply having spectacularly talented people manage those funds, but please don't confuse the good feeling of being in control with actual marginal impact.

rfrey• 16 years ago

Government redistribution can have in well-run countries handling cost around 3-5%; too many charities are closer to 15%.

The charity costs include publicity and fundraising drives. To make apples-to-apples comparison you'd have to include the cost of the IRS infrastructure and the cost to society of the entire tax collection and avoidance machine.

Government handles essential concerns

That this is not self-evident is, well, self-evident. Much criticism of government spending is around governments focussing on whatever lobby yells loudest, while charities are market driven: i.e. they fill actual needs that someone sees in the community.

A lot of local leaders in Africa have criticized the B&M Gates Foundation for being too disruptive for the good of beneficiaries.

A lot of local leaders in Africa do considerably less well under a privately allocated distribution than they do from government aid.

nickpinkston5• 16 years ago

Agreed - who hear has found how generous other founders are of their time, connections, etc.? Ever try to get a favor from ever a local politician? If you do, you get far less for far more - in my experience...

Benjo3• 16 years ago

Not sure how this should shift people's attitudes towards taxes. Do we increase them to encourage charitable giving or decrease them so the rich have more to give?

At some level this type of thinking lets government off the hook. Philanthropy by the ultra rich is not a solution to government waste and won't solve the fundamental problems in the US government.

ohyes2• 16 years ago

Good for you giving away a significant portion of income.

Firstly,

"I know I'd prefer to see money allocated by smart people like Gates, Buffet, Zuckerberg than by politicians who need to keep constituents happy and win votes."

I feel like you are treating these conditions as being mutually exclusive, and they do not need to be. I want money allocated by intelligent people who need to keep constituents happy. And I want them to have smart constituents, so that they are actually held accountable making bad allocations. This is because I want a large number of problems to be taken care of expediently.

Secondly,

Rich != Smart.

I don't see how it is that being rich makes Gates, Buffet, Zuckerberg better at allocating resources. Sure, they have some business savvy, but there is a certain amount of luck involved as well (as with any statistical out-lier). This doesn't account for others who made their money through inheritance, and are dumb (really dumb).

The point is not that 'the evil rich are against us,' the point is that they benefit exponentially from government protections compared to a normal person and should provide funds accordingly. I don't see how any of these people would be able to hold onto (or even establish) their wealth without the protections (and utilities, and services) afforded by the government (and if they were, it would simply be some sort of Monarchy).

(ex. The rich don't just benefit from their own use of public roads, they benefit from their employees and customers use as well. How do the rich obtain intelligent, educated labor without required public education? How do they plan to hold onto wealth as they accumulate it without the enforcement of various property laws?)

Charity is good, don't give me wrong. But the rich are hardly victims of the government.

MikeCapone• 16 years ago

> The point is not that 'the evil rich are against us,' the point is that they benefit exponentially from government protections compared to a normal person and should provide funds accordingly.

I think most people would agree with this, but let's remember that taxes are pretty much always based on percentages, which mean that they do scale. 30% of a billion isn't the same as 30% of 50k.

I think this seems to be too often forgotten in the "the wealthy don't pay more taxes than me!" argument.

jimmyk• 16 years ago

>(ex. The rich don't just benefit from their own use of public roads, they benefit from their employees and customers use as well. How do the rich obtain intelligent, educated labor without required public education? How do they plan to hold onto wealth as they accumulate it without the enforcement of various property laws?)

I think this argument is flawed for a couple of reasons. One: that someone offers me something that benefits me does not and should not legally compel me to compensate them in return. Take open source software as an example. It has enabled many companies to make money, but they cannot be compelled to compensate the author. And yet that seems to be the argument. The government does things that benefit people, so they should be compelled to pay the government in return. Well, sorry, I appreciate what you've done but I didn't ask you to do it or make you do it so I'll donate to you if I feel like it, not if you feel like it.

Two: all of the benefits you've listed are individual things which individually cost money. Yes, the rich benefit from their employees being able to drive to work. But they pay their employees and their employees in turn pay taxes and fees on gas and other driving related things to pay for the roads. They benefit from an educated workforce and a police force, but those things are paid for through property taxes and other things. The system is made up of a variety of specific things. To lump them all together and say "You couldn't have accumulated your wealth without the system, so you owe the system a whole bunch of your wealth" seems to me to be somewhat dishonest. Sure, they benefit from the system, but specific parts of the system have costs, and I don't think the government's inability to figure out what those costs are and how to collect them justifies just taking a whole bunch of money from the people who look like they benefit from it and can afford it.

RtodaAV3• 16 years ago

I wouldn't.

narrator• 16 years ago

I think if Mark wanted to give back to the world he should do what Elon Musk is doing and start high risk businesses that can create widespread beneficial change in the world.

stretchwithme7• 16 years ago

by consuming government money making sports cars? Please, no, Mark.

tlrobinson• 16 years ago

Starting with sports cars seems like a good plan to me. Let the people who can afford to pay a premium help fund development of the technology which can then be used in cheaper cars for the masses.

A lot of automobile technology is developed in race cars like Formula 1 many years before making it's way into mainstream cars.

I can't comment on the government subsidies though.

brown9-2• 16 years ago

He's 26. Give him time.

petenixey4• 16 years ago

To be fair I think that's what he just did

quizbiz2• 16 years ago

How much liquid wealth does Mark actually have? Isn't the vast majority of it purely theoretical based on Facebook equity purchases?

beeeph3• 16 years ago

This is a public pledge on his part that he'll give away the majority of his wealth over time, not right this moment. At the moment, I'm not sure the guy owns much of anything besides Facebook stock. Last I read, he rents a little house and drives a paid-off Nissan coupe.

jaspero• 16 years ago

Simple living high thinking. I bet many people in his position would have already mortgaged a mansion and ultra-luxury car.

petercooper2• 16 years ago

It's a great system. We, too, can pledge to give away our theoretical billions.

patrickk• 16 years ago

Important paragraph in the article:

"Mr. Zuckerberg, who founded Facebook in his Harvard University dorm before dropping out of college and working on the business full time in California, is one of the world's youngest billionaires, worth an estimated $6.9 billion, according to Forbes. Yet since his wealth is from his ownership stake a company that has yet to list on the stock market, much of that wealth is theoretical at this point."

quizbiz2• 16 years ago

Right. So is there anyway to estimate his actual liquid wealth?

meric• 16 years ago

This is great; Rather than having government's and or NGO employees who pulls normal salary and aren't experienced in efficiently managing the spending of billions of dollars of development aid and end up harming the recipients, we are now getting the billionaires - people who excel at efficiently investing billions of dollars to reap billions more - to allocate these resources.

beeeph3• 16 years ago

Someone once said, "No man is rich enough to buy back his past." If you ask me, this just might do it for Zuck. Congrats Man! I hope you find yourself surprised by how many other young entrepreneurs follow suit. But seriously, do yourself a favor, quit renting your little college house and buy yourself a little home while interest rates are still low.

yason• 16 years ago

If I had billions I would certainly pay great attention to where I would put that money to work in order to create most goodness and wealth out of it. I would be wary of many charities as groups can get as confused from big money as individuals do.

scorpion032• 16 years ago

I wonder if you can buy real groceries using facebook stock, yet.

hugh35• 16 years ago

Well I'd be willing to give you a gallon of milk and a dozen eggs for, say, 0.1% of the company. So yes.

jacques_chester3• 16 years ago

BREAKING NEWS

Facebook valued at 12 billion gallons of milk in private exchanges

code_duck• 16 years ago

I find it odd how people such as Gates and Zuckerberg obsessively stomp down their competition through any means possible, and then turn around and grandiosely pledge to give away their gains.

loewenskind3• 16 years ago

Trying to balance the karma.

glhaynes• 16 years ago

Many consider it to be the job of the businessperson to do everything they can to help their business' success within the legal framework it exists in. As long as that legal framework is democratically constructed, I don't see any reason to think of that as immoral, so I don't really see any contradiction there.

minow12• 16 years ago

Would be better spent donating that money to research. Technology helps way more people than food stamps do.

ramanujan3• 16 years ago

There is at least one billionare who is thinking different:

http://www.mercurynews.com/business/ci_16792615

That's a story about the eight philanthropies Thiel is funding, which are much more oriented along the lines of "give a man the plans for a new fishing machine" than traditional philanthropy.

paulitex• 16 years ago

Hey Sergey, Larry, and Steve, heads up.

These guys all have around the same net worth as Zuck, but much more liquidity. Sergey "don't be evil" Brin's absence from the list is a particularly curious... Anyone know what his philanthropic track record is like? Is it mostly through Google.org?

pclark• 16 years ago

is not donating to charity evil now? man, thats escalated.

chopsueyar• 16 years ago

Yet since his wealth is from his ownership stake a company that has yet to list on the stock market, much of that wealth is theoretical at this point.

iterationx• 16 years ago

Stating that the global population was heading towards 9 billion, Gates said, “If we do a really great job on new vaccines, health care, reproductive health services (abortion), we could lower that by perhaps 10 or 15 per cent.”

Another billionaire signs up for Gate's depopulation agenda.

stretchwithme7• 16 years ago

After much cajoling, I have agreed to accept it.

Mark Zuckerberg Agrees to Give Away Fortune

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