'No Such Thing As a Free Gift' Casts a Critical Eye At Gates Foundation (theintercept.com) 156
theodp writes: The Intercept's Michael Massing takes a look at "How the Gates Foundation Reflects the Good and the Bad of 'Hacker Philanthropy." He writes, "Despite its impact, few book-length assessments of the foundation's work have appeared. Now Linsey McGoey, a sociologist at the University of Essex, is seeking to fill the gap. 'Just how efficient is Gates's philanthropic spending?' she asks in No Such Thing as a Free Gift. 'Are the billions he has spent on U.S. primary and secondary schools improving education outcomes? Are global health grants directed at the largest health killers? Is the Gates Foundation improving access to affordable medicines, or are patent rights taking priority over human rights?' As the title of her book suggests, McGoey answers all of these questions in the negative. The good the foundation has done, she believes, is far outweighed by the harm." Massing adds, "Bill and Melinda Gates answer to no electorate, board, or shareholders; they are accountable mainly to themselves. What's more, the many millions of dollars the foundation has bestowed on nonprofits and news organizations has led to a natural reluctance on their part to criticize it. There's even a name for it: the 'Bill Chill' effect."
She's right. (Score:1)
Bill should have just kept all the lucre. Then there would be nothing to criticize.
Re:She's Wrong. (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:She's Wrong. (Score:5, Insightful)
The government run school systems and aid agencies have to account for how the money is effecting them.
Also, Linsey McGoey is fully in her rights to critique how they spend it.
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The government run school systems and aid agencies have to account for how the money is effecting them.
It seems the Gates Foundation didn't fund your school enough.
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Also, Linsey McGoey is fully in her rights to critique how they spend it.
Sure, but keep in mind that she has a much bigger incentive to be negative, than to be positive. Far more people will buy her book if she says philanthropy is harmful, since then the readers can feel smug and superior about doing nothing.
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Exactly. "Bill and Melinda Gates answer to no electorate, board, or shareholders; they are accountable mainly to themselves." first she has to establish that this is a problem and why. Possibly she did and the reviewer missed that, but it doesn't seem that way.
Hey Linsey McGoey: Sad day for you!
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Yup, and they totally earned it fairly and squarely.
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You're an idiot, and probably a cormanust too.
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Re:Oh really? (Score:4, Insightful)
California is on the coast and they're rationing water...
Re: Oh really? (Score:5, Informative)
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Well, if we didn't have California, you and I both know what would be done, because we already 'done' it more than 180 years ago. A shortage is nothing more than an argument over the price. We don't do desalination because they say it's too expensive, I don't believe it is, but I have no way to force the issue. I remember the drought of '77. Now, almost 40 years later, the only thing being shown to the world is a perfect example of bad, corrupt management. Still, everybody bickers over price, and nothing ge
Re: She's right. (Score:2, Funny)
You're calling him an idiot and you didn't even notice the club?
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Oh yes, I recall Bill and Melinda Gates sneaking up behind me, clubbing me on the back of the head...
Because we all know that's the only way there is to steal money...
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Oh yes, I recall Bill and Melinda Gates sneaking up behind me, clubbing me on the back of the head, and stealing my money...oh, wait, they didn't do that.
Yes they did. Throughout the 1990s, Microsoft used monopolistic practices to compel almost anyone buying a computer to pay a tax to Microsoft, whether you wanted their software or not. They made large political donations to keep this scam going in spite of court rulings that it was illegal. I believe that Bill's foundation is a huge force for good in the world, but let's not sugar coat the scummy business practices that made it possible.
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Ah, yes. The usual No you don't understand, he only did it to get rich! argument.
It's a Criminal Organisation (Score:1, Troll)
Re:It's a Criminal Organisation (Score:4, Insightful)
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What a crock. Everyone has their own reasons for doing whatever they do. Some people do good things to please another person, some do them because they believe in an afterlife, some do them for their own egos, some do them to look good. Who the fuck cares what the motivation is? Important things are being done, and people's lives are better for it.
Then there are people like the author, and you, who try to build up their own pitiful egos by tearing down others. The only difference in the two approaches i
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Philanthropy, as in the case of Carnegie, is all about ego, power and influence and nothing to do with helping anyone. It is corrupt
No, that is not the meaning of corrupt. First, ego, power, and influence are perfectly valid reasons for charity. You should be happy that there is a society where greed and ambition can lead to charitable acts.
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When you become one of the class of people who don't need a job, you'll find that with zero income from wages means that $5 tax cut puts you into negative tax country.
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No, it doesn't. Charitable giving is a deduction, not a credit. Deductions reduce your total, not earned, income.
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If your deductions mean that you owe negative taxes, it means that you owe zero taxes. I wouldn't be surprised if Bill Gates income taxes are close to zero as I doubt that he has any earnings, just capital gains with a lot of write-offs. Shit, I've ran a small business where the tax burden was basically negative (from investing savings and having very little profit) at first. Of course I didn't get the negative back but at least where I am there is income averaging, though not for wage earners.
If you're a b
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Property tax on house and car. Now that I'm retired, property tax is my single biggest budget item, followed closely by heating a house in New Hampshire. Together, they account for about 40% of my yearly expenditures.
Giving money, no. But there are plenty of scams for giving physical things and claiming a value far in excess of actual cost, resulting in a reduction of income tax
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When you grow up and get a job and pay tax you will realise that you don't get taxed on what you own, you get taxed on what you earn....
No fucking idea how that works for the rich, have you you anonymous retard?
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Gates foundation has saved millions of lives
You should keep reminding yourself that Gates obtained vast amounts of that money crookedly - I would say the vast majority of it. He and his company found themselves in a position of being able to exploit a monolpoly, and continue with dirty tricks to the preent day.
So his wealth did not materialise from thin air (or in a differnt analogy, got dug up from hiding in the ground like oil or coal). Most of his wealth came by illicit transfer from other people. How do you know that those other people wo
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yes her complaints are fact, they are not doing what she wants. Thank fuck for that, people like her always believe they can do better but instead of actually doing better they whine about others that are actually making an effort.
You do realize that Bill Gates essentially stole his fortune, right? The DoJ found that Microsoft had illegally abused its monopoly position in pretty much every way we have a name for. Then Ashcroft (under Bush) announced that even though we had already spent all the money and done all the work to figure that out, there would be no penalties. Shortly thereafter, Gates turned his ill-gotten gains into a foundation, and now we're arguing about whether he's helping or hurting more people, which is what we've [latimes.com]
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You sound like a fucking idiot. There is no possible way you can grunt childishly at the math here and claim that Gates wouldn't have a _lot_ more money if he just invested his wealth instead of running this charity.
The last I looked sunshine Bill Gates became the richest man in the world again - by not doing anything and giving all his money away! Incredible.
You're pretty much a fucking stupid pig, and your outlook on life is risible. Get off the conspiracy theories you fucking dipshit.
I see the Gates Foundation astroturfers are out on day release?
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The last I looked sunshine Bill Gates became the richest man in the world again
So? If he wasn't giving money away, he would be even richer. Philanthropy can be deducted from your taxable income, reducing your total tax bill, but you can only save a fraction of what you give. It is not a net win.
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The last I looked sunshine Bill Gates became the richest man in the world again
So? If he wasn't giving money away, he would be even richer.
I don't think any of you really grasp how staggeringly wealthy he is in any case. It really does not matter to Gates whether he gives billions to charity or not, gets tax deductions or not, invests it or not.
For example he has a salary (in 2014) from Microsoft of $32,000 per day, more than many people in developed nations earn in a year. But that is negligible compared with other incomes. From 2013-2014 his investments increased by $15 billion - about $40 million per day, more than the income of some
It's their money... (Score:4, Insightful)
"Bill and Melinda Gates answer to no electorate, board, or shareholders; they are accountable mainly to themselves."
What makes anyone think they have a right to an accounting?
Re:It's their money... (Score:5, Interesting)
If the foundation is actually doing harm, rather than good, then people should know this and raise a fuss about it so that the directors hear it, if nothing else.
Charity can be complex, as it turns out. Authentic efforts at providing aid can have unintended consequences. One poignant example is giving free food to communities that are on the edge of starvation. The side effect is that, people eat the free food and spend their pennies on something other than food, which instantly bankrupts the local farmers. It takes quite a long time before the farmers can set up shop again, so now where there was a barely-sufficient food supply, there is no food supply at all, and the dependence on charity is even greater.
The most effective charity efforts are ones that increase the community's ability to self-sustain. This means increasing their general level of economic activity. Microcredit has a very good track-record at doing this, but is commonly (and incorrectly) criticized as a means of making money off poor people, and of burdening them with financial debt in addition to their other woes. When done right, micro credit has neither of these effects, and much better long-term benefits than just giving away free food.
Surprisingly, giving away free money has actually been shown to promote healthier, more self-sustaining economies. People think "those poor people will just spend it on booze" which might make sense in a first world country where "the poor" are the mentally-diseased bums that can never and will never hold a job. In reality, when free money is given to members of poor communities, they treat it like gold and use it very wisely.
My two cents.
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If the foundation is actually doing harm, rather than good,
They're doing both. The question is which they're doing more.
then people should know this and raise a fuss about it so that the directors hear it, if nothing else.
They already know.
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Your poor grammar makes it difficult to understand what you're trying to say.
A mind more certainly can be ill. Brain tumors and parasites, bad body chemistry, can all negatively affect brain function. Brain function encompasses nearly all of what we consider to be "mind".
As just one example, depression is frequently a positive-feedback system -- unhappiness leading to inactivity and bad dietary choices and the generation of bodily chemicals that further deepen unhappiness. Correcting body chemistry may brea
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"despite their flair for disruption, these philanthropists are no more interested in radical change than their more conservative predecessors. They don’t lobby for the redistribution of wealth; instead, they see poverty and inequality as an engineering problem, and the solution is their own brain power, not a tithe.”
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So the problem is that they're not communists?
Are we supposed to be shocked that the reason a rich guy is giving away money is not because he thinks someone should have taken it away?
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Kind of like the blind men holding on to different parts of the elephant, and each describing it drastically differently. We all see different problems in the world because we have different viewpoints.
For myself, I think the problem of inequality is impossible to solve, and I would not even attempt it. I am willing to fight against poverty, and I do put re
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A favorite target of the 'inequity' crowd seems to be Walmart. And why not, after all their average employee makes about $15K/year, while the CEO makes $26M. Until you do math, that is. There are 2.2M employees. Paying the CEO the same as everyone else, assuming you could find someone to do the job, would result in an extra $10 PER YEAR for each employee. Man, that is sure going to make their lives better.
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That is the theory, anyway.
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A favorite target of the 'inequity' crowd seems to be Walmart.
Yes, that makes sense; they don't pay a living wage, and their existence destroys [small] businesses which do, at least to a larger percentage of their workforce.
And why not, after all their average employee makes about $15K/year, while the CEO makes $26M. Until you do math, that is. There are 2.2M employees. Paying the CEO the same as everyone else, assuming you could find someone to do the job, would result in an extra $10 PER YEAR for each employee.
There's lots of other places that you could squeeze money out of Wal-Mart besides just the CEO's salary. You've actually overestimated [salary.com] his pay for 2015, at least according to the official filings.
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How much money do you spend on shit you don't actually need? Maybe you should give that to somebody who earns less than you.
I do, through taxes. Part of the problem is that a lot of very highly paid CEOs do not pay a proportionate amount of tax.
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I think there must be some kind of grouping fallacy here. Just because you can divide a big number by a big number and get a small number, doesn't mean that it isn't a big number. You can make anything small that way. I could steal 6 billion dollars from somewhere. But no, I'm hardly stealing since it's less than $1 per person. Through your ridiculous classification scheme, you have created a class of one person (the CEO) and another class of 2.2M people and treated them as coherent entities.
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Cool, so if I do the Superman... III and Office Space thing and steal one cent from everyone in America each day, no one cares right? I mean, it'd make me really really happy, and if no one else cares, it's a utiliarianly justified action.
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Gates [and other billionaires got their wealth because they] owned something that they made, and the wealth they have is due to the value of what they owned.
But DOS and Windows were not worth what we paid. We paid Microsoft because we were forced to. I have bought PC's with Windows installed, and some of my money went to MS, even though it was of no value to me whatsoever - being that I was going to install OS/2 (at the time) or Linux. Even people who did want Windows were being massively overcharged because of MS's monopoly - MS had thottled its rivals until recently.
And there is no way to prevent creating value outside of a state-controlled economy like communism.
But the PC scene until relatively recently was exactly like a state-controlled economy - wi
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Ahh yes (Score:4, Insightful)
"They are acting liberal but not liberal ENOUGH! They don't subscribe to precisely my kind of politics, so I need to hate on what they do."
People like the author piss me off. They aren't interested in any actual good, they are just interested in their agenda being pushed.
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"They are acting liberal but not liberal ENOUGH! They don't subscribe to precisely my kind of politics, so I need to hate on what they do."
No, the argument is that they are acting conservatively. Conservatives will tell you all day that there's nothing liberal about charity, and arguably there's reason to agree; you can participate in charity due to enlightened self-interest. Gates has decided that he wants to live in a world with less infectious diseases, and sure I'm on his side in that. But the way he spends the money to "fix" the problem is a band-aid. The problems are caused by poverty, and if you don't fix that problem then there will ju
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Always people sitting around doing fuck all, criticising others. "Personally, if I'd earned billions of dollars and was going to spend it on other people, I'd do it this way".
FUCK OFF! Nobody cares!
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What makes anyone think they have a right to an accounting?
I'd say anyone who pays taxes in a jurisdiction which grants the foundation tax-exempt status would have a reasonable claim to a right to an accounting.
Re:It's their money... (Score:5, Informative)
What makes anyone think they have a right to an accounting?
Tax laws. As a tax exempt organization, they have to release their 990 at a minimum. Here you go: http://www.gatesfoundation.org... [gatesfoundation.org] People who donate should expect more information, but the Gates foundation does not solicit donations. Since no one has addressed McGooey's concerns on Gates' spending on public health:
As McGoey briefly acknowledges, the foundation’s investment of more than $15 billion in this field “has done considerable good.” That seems an understatement. Thanks in part to the Gateses’ strong investment in vaccines for infectious diseases, deaths from measles in Africa have dropped by 90 percent since 2000. Over the last quarter century, tuberculosis mortality worldwide has fallen by 45 percent, while over the last dozen years the number of new malaria cases has dropped by 30 percent. And polio, which in 1988 was endemic in 125 countries, is today endemic in only two. The foundation has also played an important part in fighting the spread of HIV and helping those infected with the virus to lead productive lives. For this, Bill and Melinda Gates deserve much credit.
The question is, has this been the best use of their money? As McGoey notes, chronic diseases, as opposed to communicable ones, exact a staggering toll worldwide, yet the foundation has invested less than 4 percent of its funding in research on them, and the global health community has largely followed suit. “The failure to combat obesity, cancer and heart disease epidemics in poor nations,” she observes, “has been one of the most glaring mistakes of global development efforts in recent years.”
So she agrees they have spent their money very effectively, but criticize them for not trying to fix problems in third world countries that have proven to be intractable in first world countries.
Hokeydokey.
The Gates Foundation hasn't cured cancer, heart disease, or the obesity epidemic, therefore it is ineffective. Then she criticizes them for not creating primary care infrastructure in third world countries. Until recently, that is, when they started spending money on creating primary care infrastructure.
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And if B&M Gates is poor, try the United Way and the piles of other charitable organiz
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To be fair, if their stated aim is to cure cancer, heart disease, or the obesity epidemic, they have obviously been ineffective. It is alright to criticize how someone is trying to achieve something, as long as they propose an alternative way.
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What makes anyone think they have a right to an accounting?
Because people get removed from their jobs and don't get funding if there is any criticism?
Book misses major points (Score:5, Insightful)
The same is true when it comes to the foundation’s work in public health. As McGoey briefly acknowledges, the foundation’s investment of more than $15 billion in this field “has done considerable good.” That seems an understatement. Thanks in part to the Gateses’ strong investment in vaccines for infectious diseases, deaths from measles in Africa have dropped by 90 percent since 2000. Over the last quarter century, tuberculosis mortality worldwide has fallen by 45 percent, while over the last dozen years the number of new malaria cases has dropped by 30 percent. And polio, which in 1988 was endemic in 125 countries, is today endemic in only two. The foundation has also played an important part in fighting the spread of HIV and helping those infected with the virus to lead productive lives. For this, Bill and Melinda Gates deserve much credit.
So far so good.
The question is, has this been the best use of their money? As McGoey notes, chronic diseases, as opposed to communicable ones, exact a staggering toll worldwide, yet the foundation has invested less than 4 percent of its funding in research on them, and the global health community has largely followed suit. “The failure to combat obesity, cancer and heart disease epidemics in poor nations,” she observes, “has been one of the most glaring mistakes of global development efforts in recent years.” An equally serious shortcoming has been the neglect of primary-care facilities in the developing world. The initial problems that the nations of West Africa faced in combating the Ebola outbreak stemmed in part from the weaknesses in their overall health systems. Interestingly, in late September, the Gates Foundation, together with WHO and the World Bank, announced a joint partnership aimed at improving access to primary care in poor and middle-income countries — a dramatic (if tacit) acknowledgement that the emphasis on fighting individual diseases has been too narrow.
The primary reason it makes sense to focus on infectious diseases is that once they are gone, they are completely gone. Obesity and other problems don't go away permanently. In contrast if we wipe out malaria or polio, we won't have to deal with it again.
Note also that every single one of the other major criticisms acknowledges that it is something that the Gates have changed already. For example, the article discusses how a number of the Foundation's early attempts at education reform didn't work well. But they changed what they were doing. So they are already using effective evaluations and metrics to decide things.
I find it deeply unfortunate that someone spent an entire book criticizing the Gates Foundation when there are far more clear cut wastes of money out there. The Make a Wish Foundation is an example. They spent 58 million dollars last year http://www.charitynavigator.org/index.cfm?bay=search.programs&orgid=4038#.VljSXnsyH3U [charitynavigator.org] and millions more came from businesses in parts of wishes to help a tiny number of dying children, whereas if that money was spent effectively on cancer research, there would be fewer children dying. Instead we have an entire book focusing on one of the most effective and efficient charities in on the planet which complains that they aren't efficient enough.
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Thanks for posting this. It reaffirms my initial thought that this was risible criticism. If anything, the quoted text makes me realize I was too kind and it's not just silly it's actually maliciously stupid.
So because the Gates spent billions saving actual lives that can be counted and measured they are wrong because instead they should invest money in things that already receive a lot of funding and have been studied for _decades_ like obesity, cancer, etc...
...because... that way at the end of the day th
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Microsoft have done their bit against obesity.
When we switched to Win 95 (from mainframes & dumb terminals) the constant BSODs used to get me so annoyed I had to go for a walk round the car park to calm down.
I lost 6 kilos in the first month.
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I don't think she sufficiently covered the HOW which is the problem.
They don't fund a charter school and see how the students there do.
They fund political campaigns to move money FROM the existing system TO their system.
When their system does not support their projections, they leave it. BUT THEY DO NOT PAY TO HAVE THE LAW REVERSED.
So the end result is a worse public school system.
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The question is, has this been the best use of their money?
McGoey's complaint is that the Gates Foundation (1) isn't optimizing it's donations and (2) isn't taking a boil-the-ocean approach. Let's take a look at the alternatives: (1) The foundation spends lots of time and money deciding on the optimal solution before it gives any money away, and (2) tries to solve all the problems everywhere at the same time. No matter what approach Gates takes he gets criticized by McGooey. Sounds to me like it's easy to be a critic and that no good deed goes unpunished.
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Thanks in part to the Gateses’ strong investment in vaccines for infectious diseases, deaths from measles in Africa have dropped by 90 percent since 2000.
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I agree with most of what you said, but think you unfairly slammed Make A Wish. $58M is about 1% of what the NIH alone spends on cancer research every year. Is an extra 1% really going to make that big of a difference? People and businesses who donate to Make A Wish know they are not funding research, they think they are making some poor dying kid happy for a little while. What is wrong with that? And if you are going to criticize how people choose to spend their money, there are FAR bigger targets. Fo
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I agree that the total cost from MAW is relatively small. I'm not sure your metric is necessarily the bestf one looks not at all cancer funding but cancer research in children, one gets a much larger fraction. About 5% of all funding is for children's cancer (http://www.stbaldricks.org/filling-the-funding-gap/ [stbaldricks.org] says 4%) so this would be about 20% of funding for children's cancer. That may not be the best metric, because much cancer research applies to cancers at a broad age range, so I think I'd agree that
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To say nothing of the spillover effects of granting wishes. The most common wish is apparently for a clubhouse of some kind, which of course ebenefits other children. Then you have great productions (like BatKid day) that make all of a city or the whole country feel good. And then there are teh "meeting celebrity" type wishes, which seem good for the celebrities as well as the child.
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Agreed.
And I want to pile on with my rant.
Regarding infectious disease vs chronic diseases.
This is largely a case of truly innocent vs people who are causing their own problems.
As for chronic diseases, "obesity, cancer and heart disease epidemics in poor nations", umm, poor nations rates of those are less than affluent nations.
Is Gates supposed to drop helping the truly innocent and poor people and instead focus on diseases of the affluent?
Obesity isn't a disease. It is a life-style choice and the causes an
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It depends on how you get rid of obesity. Through diet and exercise at an individual level, sure. But if it's through some form of microbiological change, then maybe.
The problem is that nothing they give is free... (Score:5, Insightful)
It always has strings attached.
Money provided for:
education - only Microsoft software used.
medical - buy only from specific companies or research is still owned by the companies...
As far as is visible, they are just an extension of Microsoft, but without taxes.
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Medical: When working in 3rd world countries, those strings are absolutely necessary or the money just goes into mansions and swiss bank accounts.
It's actually much worse. If you don't play the Big Pharma Strong IP game, you can't get help from the Gates Foundation. And if you do, and then you have an outbreak of something expensive to cure in your country, you have two choices. You can make the medication yourself, and eventually end up with the world bank owning your country. Or you can pay whatever the market demands for the medication, and you can end up with the world bank owning your country.
Very Good Read (Score:1)
Shorter version (Score:5, Insightful)
If you save thousands of people from being killed or maimed by measles, polio, malaria, and other diseases in Africa, but you don't bow your head to the left's concerns over patents, then those people you helped don't matter. You must advance the cause. And the cause is about money, not about whether children are crippled by polio or die of measles.
And the experiments to improve education threaten to disrupt the cash flow from teachers' union dues. Stop those too.
Books thesis (Score:5, Insightful)
The good the foundation has done, she believes, is far outweighed by the harm
The Gates foundation mainly spends money on education and healthcare. In healthcare, the Gates foundation has spent $15 billion on improving vaccines, etc. This (and money from other sources) has resulted in a reduction of deaths by measles in Africa by 90%. Polio, tuberculosis, and HIV have all been reduced, thanks in part to the Gates foundation.
So what's the problem? According to the author, "The failure to combat obesity, cancer and heart disease epidemics in poor nations,” she observes, “has been one of the most glaring mistakes of global development efforts in recent years." So maybe they could have allocated their resources better.
In education, the author is upset that the Gates foundation spent money on things that didn't work. For example, they spent billions to create small schools based on the idea that it would give students more personalized attention. Unfortunately, that didn't improve college acceptance rates, so Gates ended the program.
If the author thinks that "dropping/modifying a program when data indicates it doesn't work" is a bad thing, then I'm forced to disagree heartily with her. In fact, if the only thing accomplished by the Gates foundation is to get people to do that more often, then it will be a huge success as far as I'm concerned. And I'm no fan of Gates.
Re:Books thesis (Score:4, Insightful)
Well, having worked in both the non-profit sector and in public health, I think the criticisms of the Gates Foundation's public health efforts are malarkey. It's basically an opportunity cost argument and by that standard virtually every charitable foundation is wanting. Why are you spending money on the ballet when there are kids who can't read? Why are you spending money on literacy education when there are kids who don't have enough to eat etc. The problems of the world are endlessly varied and complex, and you can't ask much more of anyone than that they pick a spot and take a whack.
That said, the idea that spending money on infectious diseases is wasteful is particularly inane. Sure, in some places obesity may result in more premature deaths than malaria, but the fact is nobody really knows how to effectively fight an "obesity epidemic", whereas malaria is clearly eradicable -- and once it's gone, it's gone forever, because P. falciparum has no natural host other than humans. The same goes for communicable diseases for which we have vaccines; we know how to fight those cost effectively, even eradicate them in many cases. The missing piece of the puzzle is money.
Now criticism of the foundation's education efforts is a lot more warranted. Just like everybody thinks they're qualified to design a website because they have opinions about which sites they like and don't like, everyone thinks they're qualified to redesign the educational system because they went to school. The difference is that Gates has the money to make his bad ideas materialize. It may be hacker philanthropy, but most attempts at "hacks" result in kluges.
So overall it's a mixed bag. While you do have to give props to Gates for being "the man in the arena", sometimes, unlike in Teddy Roosevelt's famous speech, the man in the arena's failings don't fall exclusively on himself. So while philanthropy is admirable in itself, where the philanthropist's activities impinge on areas of public policy like education his actions should be held up to scrutiny like anyone else's.
Everything is 'Possibly Harmful' (Score:1)
To a critic who hasn't done even 0.0000001% as much good as the Gates Foundation.
Teddy Roosevelt had something to say about people who stand around sniping at people who, you know, are doing something and making an effort.
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The fail-fast and fail-often approach could be criticized when applied to human beings.
The only criticism I could reasonably see is that the children were harmed when the school was shut down too quickly. This doesn't seem to be the case, though....the students seem to have been transferred back to larger schools.
Does the book recommend the fail fast approach?
It should.
Easily digestible. (Score:2, Insightful)
Wow, this book is a Slashdotter's wet dream. I haven't read it, but if they include conspiracy theories about how Bill is actually somehow making more money off his donations, there will be a whole lot of splooge expelled while reading this book.
First, it's his money, worst case he's putting it back in the economy to people who need it more. Second, no matter what course of philanthropic work you take there will be some way for someone to criticize it. It's similar to how conspiracy theories work. People i
David Koch and NPR (Score:1)
Nova never does anything on global warming. He got what he paid for.
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Nova [pbs.org]
Looks like you lied. I'm the guy that fact checks liberals when they claim something that is black/white and can be without spin. Nearly 100% rate at proving them liars.
Not nearly as catchy, even if it's a 'gift' (Score:2)
Hmm...NSTAAFG...nope, stil prefer TNSTAAFL, it's just easier to say...and I like food :)
Executive Summary (Score:1)
Kickstart Me (Score:2)
for a modest lump sum of $20,000,000 USD or Euro
I will not say anything bad about Windows on the Internet for the rest of my life.
Let's flip this around (Score:1)
What if the KochBros started funding Quiverfull private schools?
Should we be concerned, make popcorn, or wait until it ever happens?
Luddite crap (Score:2)
I'm not a Micrisoft fan, but "Hooking the poor on malaria drugs"? Yeah, like Jonas Salk hooked us on polio vaccine.
Gates Foundation and Indian Television (Score:5, Interesting)
The show is set in rural India, follows the usual Hindi or Indian cinema/television melodramatic hyperventilating style. Here is the beef...rather than inane plots on good versus evil, bad mother in laws and familiar Indian TV soap tropes, this show had female protagonists who were bucking the system and bringing out change in the society.
The familiar style they used made sure a majority of the audience will feel comfortable.
Gates Foundation was one of the Producers. This is thinking out of the box...you need a bit of 'good old propaganda' to support you when you go to rural communities to change their perception on unhealthy practices.
Bill Gates failed elementary statistics (Score:4, Interesting)
For all his "geek" status, Bill Gates (with his foundation) failed elementary statistics. He succumbed to the law of small numbers and idiotically pushed for smaller schools for a long period spending a lot of time, money and energy convincing policy makers that the small schools will make students better.
They thought so only because frequently among the best performing schools were small schools. Idiots didn't notice that among the worst performers were ALSO small schools - small samples just lend themselves to a higher variability.
Read details here - http://marginalrevolution.com/... [marginalrevolution.com]
If a lot of money is spent by non-accountable idiot organizations , it is not only not good for society but actively harmful.
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For all his "geek" status, Bill Gates (with his foundation) failed elementary statistics. He succumbed to the law of small numbers and idiotically pushed for smaller schools for a long period spending a lot of time, money and energy convincing policy makers that the small schools will make students better.
...
If a lot of money is spent by non-accountable idiot organizations , it is not only not good for society but actively harmful.
While this did happen, what's your alternative? We could "do nothing," and simply live with the current system, where things don't get better.
Or, I suppose we could depend on an "accountable" organization. Like what? Government is the most common answer.
Yes, government is "accountable" to voters in a way that a private foundation is not. On the other hand, this "accountability" has very specific effects that can also be problematic, such as:
- Government is often conservative from a policy perspect
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You ask what's my alternative and then address 2 straw men? Bill gates has no business being in education. Being able to influence policy makers just because one has money is idiotic.
1. Others could have made the same mistake but Bill Gates did.
2. He was being listened to because he has money, not because he has any clue about education.
3. If any other person were listened to, it would have been because he had brains or political power. They would have stake in education system if nothing else. If brains,
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I don't see why you wouldn't want unified decision making on, e.g. the optimal size of a classroom. There's some right answer. More reach leads to more statistical power to a answer questions in a more correct/realistic way. More reach means the right answer can be distributed to all the interested parties once its complete.
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For all his "geek" status, Bill Gates (with his foundation) failed elementary statistics. He succumbed to the law of small numbers and idiotically pushed for smaller schools for a long period spending a lot of time, money and energy convincing policy makers that the small schools will make students better.
They thought so only because frequently among the best performing schools were small schools. Idiots didn't notice that among the worst performers were ALSO small schools - small samples just lend themselves to a higher variability.
And you are assuming that all "small schools" are the same, and that you can't identify what makes a good small school different from a poor small school.
It seems self evident to me that if you take one small school, give it lots of money to build facilities and purchase equipment, hire the best teachers, engage the parents strongly and so on, it will be totally different from the same sized school that is poorly funded, run by incompetents and taught by morons.
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Why do you think I assume that all small schools are the same?
The sentence "small samples just lend themselves to a higher variability" from my post means the opposite. It means small schools are more different from each other than large schools are different from each other.
Common Core (Score:2)
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If you don't know how to multiply two two digit numbers together, you're not going to be aware of the philosophy of maths involved.
Holy crap people!!! (Score:2)
Two people with insane amounts of money and accountable to no one decide to spend their money trying to solve problems by taking a new approach. Their approach spans from
- Trial and error with greater agility than a government or classic foundation can achieve
- Brute force of attacking illnesses on a gigantic scale hoping to eradicate them and maybe then focus on helping people live healthier following being able to simpl
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I haven't really looked at the common core math section. What's so horrible about it?
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How much of a loss has she inflicted on the economy by her monopolistic practices?