A Critical Examination of Bill Gates' Philanthropic Record 370
sam_handelman writes "The common perception among Slashdotters is that while Bill Gates may cause us some professional difficulties, he makes up for it with an exemplary philanthropic record. His philanthropic efforts may turn out to be not as altruistic as one may think. Edweek, not ordinarily an unfriendly venue for Gates, is running a series of blog post/investigative journalism pieces into what the Gates' foundation is doing, and how it is not always well received by stakeholders."
Not Me (Score:5, Interesting)
The common perception among Slashdotters is that while Bill Gates may cause us some professional difficulties, he makes up for it with an exemplary philanthropic record.
Not me. I've voiced my concerns [slashdot.org] that are not so warmly received.
The short of it is that I think what Gates is doing is great but I don't understand why they buy research facilities in America and not Africa [mlive.com] or why all the drug companies that get to sell their cures to Africa are all American [indiatimes.com]. I mean without stability, roads and other infrastructure, Africa is going to constantly need someone else to fix their problems. And the money from the B&G Foundation stays in America invested in American companies that pays out to American companies that provide "cures" for Africa. It will perpetually work that way.
Imagine aliens landed on Earth, took an assessment of us and were saddened to see war, pollution, poverty, etc. So they say they're going to help us and they buy 10 long range matter transmitters from another alien race and give them to Earth. But if we ask them on how to make the transmitters ourselves they just laugh and say "Please, you're still searching for subatomic particles. Plus, you're just going to use them for war if you can make them. And on top of that, you would have to pay sums you cannot fathom to the alien race who invented these machines. When these break, we'll get you some new ones." Meanwhile they're receiving accolades from the galactic senate and Earth remains full of war, pollution, poverty, etc.
It's a horrible truth but the one thing Africa has a lot of is humans. Life is cheap there. If you want to reverse that, you need to introduce stability and then farming and then commerce. There are huge areas where crime, corruption and warlords make it impossible to raise crops. Curing malaria is important but it isn't going to stop that from being the hungriest place on Earth. And it's not going to raise the value of human life there. Gates' idea to fix that is to pair up with Monsanto (surprise another American company with tons of IP). Right. I wonder if they'll patent the seeds they breed that grow well in regions of Africa?
Just like thinking up a new microfinancing system can win you a Nobel Prize [wri.org], ideas on how to make areas secure and stable will go much further for farming in Africa than importing Monsanto seed with terminator genes.
saving as many human lives possible (Score:4, Interesting)
Eh, nice try. Consider ``saving as many human lives possible'' being pretty much the only goal, and all starts to fall into place. It's not about making folks happy, or not leveraging, it's about getting the most saved lives for your moneh, using whatever means [if it means using your moneh to get more moneh, good, if it means using your politics to get others to go along with you, good, etc.].
Heck, it's one of the few non-profits that does things by the numbers. Look around, see what you can do with your $$$ that saves the most lives: identify stuff like malaria, and HIV,... which one kills most folks? malaria. So HIV gets no attention, at least not while other things are much bigger killers.
Re:All charity ends (Score:4, Interesting)
Mr.Gates resources are actually pretty close to not limited. He could easily set enough aside for the foundation that only the interest would ever have to be spent.
No matter how you run it though there is no need to use it as a tool to make people spend more money.
Comment removed (Score:5, Interesting)
What a sham (Score:2, Interesting)
FTFA:
"chemical giant Monsanto has partnered with the Gates Foundation, which works to suppress local seed exchanges and environmentally sustainable agricultural practices"
"Gates Foundation has increasingly shifted its funding to promote market domination by its British corporate education services partner, Pearson Education."
"owns a profit-generating portfolio of stocks which would seem to work against the Foundation's declared missions, such as the Latin American Coca-Cola FEMSA distributorship and five multinational oil giants operating in Nigeria. "
Once a crook, always a crook I guess. Fuck you Bill.
Re:Not a strong case (Score:3, Interesting)
You're an anonymous coward. I say you work for the Gates Foundation.
And suddenly you discredited everything you just said.
I never thought BG made up for any of his evil (Score:3, Interesting)
Even if his charities were genuine (which they are only to a very limited degree, as anybody really looking could see early on), how massive counter-innovative work, his arrogance and incompetence pushed on countless people (I will never, ever, understand how Office users put up with this much pain) is staggering. One lifetime is not enough to make up for so much evil, even if he tried really hard. BG is scum did incredible damage without any redeeming qualities in his professional work.
Re:What's the point of this article? (Score:4, Interesting)
No, the point is to show that a leopard doesn't change its spots. Gates is still the abusive business man, even when he switches sectors from IT to philantropy. This isn't even news, many reports like this have been appearing for many years now. But they are rarely reported in any mainstream press. Gates is doing an excellent job controlling his public image these days (don't for a second think that someone of his wealth does not employ a small PR staff).
Basically, the gist is that he uses the foundation money to buy exclusively from companies that he is a shareholder of. Since the foundation is so huge, and he has convinced many others to contribute, so that in many areas his foundation enjoys a monopoly - oh, look, that word again - he can control some of the markets involved, and he does it. And not necessarily to the advantage of the poor and sick.