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."
Foundations are tax shields (Score:4, Informative)
See subject: Anyone that's worked with foundations knows it. I had some dealings with companies that set things like that up for the extremely wealthy whilst I lived in NY City in 2003.
I.E.-> It's better to spend monies on foundations than face tax penalties that would otherwise ensue. You're probably not that much different, considering you probably have monies in IRA's, property, or business investments!
* So - Does this make "King Billy" (I call him that out of respect, NOT ridicule & I have for years) some 'evil guy'? No.
(He's just doing what he has to with HIS monies, and in the most sensible manner possible. Were you in his shoes, would YOU do anything differently with YOUR money? I doubt it.)
APK
P.S.=> Conversely, does it make him a 'saint'? No, of course not - he's just a guy managing his money, and he does a good job of that... I like his educational investments the most! apk
Re:Foundations are tax shields (Score:5, Insightful)
Re: (Score:3)
Using the many $billions you already have to make more $billions by escaping what little laws might restrain them, that results in harming the health and education (and therefore everything else) in the lives of many millions, perhaps billions, of people - mostly the planet's most vulnerable and already unhealthy/uneducated - that makes you an EVIL guy .
Which we already knew Gates is, having lived with him butchering our own IT industry for a couple of generations now.
He's just a guy managing his money by
Comment removed (Score:5, Interesting)
Re:Foundations are tax shields (Score:4, Insightful)
He's just doing what he has to with HIS monies
No, that's one of the main issues raised by the article. You should go read it-- it's quite interesting. Gates uses his foundation's leverage to direct other charitable funds into projects that support his personal world view. Instead of being chosen by their public merits, the projects are determined by the influence of Gates, and those projects get money from more than just the Gates foundation.
Re: (Score:3)
Or just maybe it's possible that pushing political/personal agendas under the guise of charity is bad in both cases.
When someone is donating just their own time or money, they should have a lot of freedom in how they spend it. When they start influencing other charities or governments, then it is not longer just their own time and money, and we need to be more critical of their actions.
Re: (Score:2, Insightful)
I have a hard time believing that it's entirely a scam. If you are going to buy a billion doses of vaccine, there is no "little pharma" or local sources equipped to deal with you. Big Pharma is the only choice, unless he wants to spend half the money building a factory and risk becoming Big Pharma himself.
I don't expect GSK to change their spots, and I'm not surprised that they're taking advantage of the situation, but at these scales the Gates Foundation has to deal with the giant - even when the g
Re:Foundations are tax shields (Score:5, Insightful)
African and Indian agricultural workers maintain that the Foundation's philanthropy is environmentally toxic [theecologist.org] , and undermines vital agricultural development that respects local conditions.
This one grabbed my eye, but the article is full of them; I checked the link, and there's no mention of the Melinda Gates Foundation..
Diana Ravich comments on the Gates Foundation's proposed education reforms:
I am also puzzled by the Gates Foundation’s persistent funding of groups that want to privatize public education. I am puzzled by their funding of “astroturf” groups of young teachers who insist that they don’t want any job protections, don’t want to be rewarded for their experience (of which they have little) or for any additional degrees, and certainly don’t want to be represented by a collective bargaining unit.
So she's a teacher who is suspicious of young teachers who don't want to be in unions, and want to be rewarded for performance instead of how long they have been teachers / how many degrees they have?
That's understandable for an elderly teacher with degrees, who is in a powerful union and has many job protections, but there's really no substance to the blog article other than "Gates doesn't know about education".
I also spotted some fear mongering about the initiative to start a "Green Revolution" in Africa (i.e. to bring its farming on par with other places in the word, to reproduce the massive productivity increase it brought in Asia). They talk about affecting the lifestyle of poor farmers, and the risk of genetic patents, but that's a bit narrow-sighted when you're just talking about bringing African agriculture up to standard.
They talk about his investments in blind trusts to sustain the fund, and the way the fund is used to try and lead the way for public money, as if those are bad things. They talk about the use of GlaxoSmithKline to deliver vaccines, reminding us that GSK was recently involved in some scandal, but ignore that drugs and vaccines are what GSK does, and obviously if you want to ramp up production of malaria vaccines you're going to need to involve big pharmaceutical companies.
The whole article seems a bit desperate really.. I'm not sure if it's just a laundry list of vague associations or if it's trying to make some point. Is it questioning Gates' motives? If it is it doesn't make it explicit, it just makes ambiguous jabs.
Shareholders don't like it? (Score:5, Funny)
A fair amount of Microsoft's money is going to wipe out malaria and polio and shitloads of other diseases, on people from nations who will grow up to use pirated software. No wonder the scumbag stakeholders are pissed.
Re:Shareholders don't like it? (Score:5, Informative)
A fair amount of Microsoft's money is going to wipe out malaria and polio and shitloads of other diseases, on people from nations who will grow up to use pirated software.
A lot of the Gates Foundation's spending on medicine has served a secondary purpose of bolstering drug patents - they won't spend money on drugs from local generic manufacturers in countries that do not heel to US drug patent laws.
No wonder the scumbag stakeholders are pissed.
You seem confused as to the meaning of "stakeholder" - it is not shareholder. It is a term that refers to everyone with an interest in an outcome, not just those with money at risk, but the people who's lives are at risk too - nominally the ones being "helped."
Re: (Score:2)
No, that's not what it says; in fact, that is the OPPOSITE of what it says.
STAKEHOLDERS (not Shareholders) is occupy-wallstreet-speak for the people who have some vested interest in the outcome - employees, customers, people in malaria-infested countries, doctors, etc.
Third world DOCTORS - the recipients of Bill's so-called generosity - are the ones complaining.
Re:Shareholders don't like it? (Score:5, Informative)
*Stake*holders. As in people with an interest in donations having the best possible impact.
From TFA: “Donor nations were shocked last month, when UNICEF disclosed that it has been forced to pay artificially elevated prices for vaccines under an arrangement called the Advance Market Commitment, which was brokered by Gates Foundation-dominated GAVI alliance, to greatly increase drug company profits. Stakeholders also worry that industry reports of particular vaccine's effectiveness might be skewed by marketing goals.”
Re: (Score:2)
Murderers provide lots of jobs too. Many jobs are worse than unemployment.
Not a strong case (Score:5, Insightful)
While it seems credible that some money comes back to Bill Gates, they aren't making a strong case that this would actually be his goal. AFAIK he's getting poorer (less rich) rather than richer now. Also, he would have very little incentive to get even more money other than to pump it back into the foundation. This article does not convince me that this isn't real charity and AFAIK many projects have also been very effective and helpful.
Re:Not a strong case (Score:5, Informative)
That part of the article, just one point in it, says that Gates is enriching himself at the expense of the people his charity serves. There are many other points about how his charity's work is counterproductive.
You're an anonymous coward. I say you work for the Gates Foundation.
Re: (Score:3, Interesting)
You're an anonymous coward. I say you work for the Gates Foundation.
And suddenly you discredited everything you just said.
Comment removed (Score:5, Insightful)
Re: (Score:3)
It isn't that simple. Did the charity work remove long-term local options to guarantee their dependence on external supply? If yes, then the charity did long-term damage that greatly offsets their present work.
a problem with large nonprofits in general (Score:4, Insightful)
Large nonprofit organizations get increasingly likely to be run in questionable ways. The most common failing, of course, is just the usual inefficiency and bureaucracy. But when you're moving around millions or billions of dollars, opportunities for personal interest and corruption are around many corners. As this article notes, nonprofit-corporate partnerships may benefit corporate shareholders, depending on how the partnership is structured (who fronts the money, who benefits, what long-term effects are generated, etc.). And even at levels below official big partnerships, there are always decisions being made: using a contractor here or there, adopting one technology or methodology over another one, etc. It's just really hard to move around billions of dollars without an array of consequences, sometimes intended and sometimes not (and sometimes intended by some people and not intended by others).
So basically... (Score:5, Insightful)
It sounds like Edweek is complaining that the Gates Foundation channels its money through private enterprises to achieve its goals instead of corrupt African dictatorships?
Why do people think they have a voice in how a private not-for-profit spends their money? The Gates Foundation does a lot of good. This seems like a lot of knocking down the guy on top.
Re:So basically... (Score:5, Informative)
In fact, no, that is not it either. Plenty of money is going to corrupt African dictatorships.
But money is being directed AWAY from public health infrastructure, and the people who are complaining about it (I know: too much to ask for you to read the article) are doctors and public health workers in the African countries.
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There is no public health infrastructure. It all goes to whatever minister of health in that country, which is basically ripe for corruption. Doing it for-profit leads to better accountability.
Re:So basically... (Score:5, Insightful)
Oh, please, that's just complete bullshit.
I'm assuming you didn't actually read the article? Perhaps you read the careful research in the primary source:
http://www.ghwatch.org/sites/www.ghwatch.org/files/D3_0.pdf [ghwatch.org]
Pharmaceutical companies make third world dictatorships look like Finland.
Re:So basically... (Score:5, Insightful)
You mean like BP oil spill levels of accountability?
Well, maybe you mean union carbide in Bhopal?
People are people, the only difference between private and public is that at some point you might be able to vote to impact the nature of a public policy.
Re:So basically... (Score:4, Insightful)
No, you're just blurting out whatever your ideology tells you, with no actual knowledge or experience of African healthcare, government or economy. Nor do you evidently care about African people, since you're more interested in standing against them out of ideology than just looking into it before defending the people being harmed.
Re:So basically... (Score:5, Insightful)
No, that's not what Edweek's writer is complaining about. They're complaining that Gates' foundation is doing quite a lot of harm for private benefit. It specifically points out how African doctors, not dictators, are watching patients die because Gates forces healthcare to work only on what benefits Gates, rather than any of the other medicine that could save lives. Gates sucks all the oxygen out of the room, and people literally die from it.
I don't see how you can miss the many examples the article points out. You really should either read it again, or explain what vested interest (financially or ideologically) you have that makes you unable to notice it.
What's the big deal? (Score:2, Insightful)
From what I read, instead of handing out money directly.. which just leads to corruption, he is leveraging it in a way that prevents the money from being abused. Free money never works when it comes to aid son.
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From what I read, instead of handing out money directly.. which just leads to corruption, he is leveraging it in a way that prevents the money from being abused.
That's what the government says when they collect our taxes. Then they go blow up (or otherwise subjugate) brown people with the majority of it so that certain rich people can get richer. Bill Gates stole billions from the industry, and is now managing that money making for-profit investments in things killing the same people he's vaccinating without paying taxes.
Re: (Score:2)
You read something different. The article is about how the way Gates hands out the money lets Gates abuse people, and leverages it far more than just his own money. You also don't know anything about the many charities that are free money that does good work.
Re:What's the big deal? (Score:5, Informative)
From what I read, instead of handing out money directly.. which just leads to corruption, he is leveraging it in a way that prevents the money from being abused. Free money never works when it comes to aid son.
Never say never, son.
A few years ago, Xanana Gusmao, the Prime Minister of Timor Leste was facing a crisis [imagicity.com]. As a result of the violence leading up to Timor's first free elections, almost 10% of the country (over 100,000 people) ended up in refugee camps. He asked the UN and other aid agencies for advice, and they came up with an 8 year plan at the end of which, the first houses would be built.
The PM immediately ordered cash payments to all internally displaced people to help them rebuild their homes. It was a partial answer, one that the government admitted would require significant further effort, but the move helped 60,000 people to begin rebuilding within a year.
The aid agencies went apeshit. They told him that the money would be wasted, stolen, spent on the wrong things, that there would be no way to measure the success, that they wouldn't be able to avoid fraud.... But Xanana insisted. Within two years, the camps were empty.
In retrospect, it's easy to see why: Nobody wants to live in a camp. The money each person received wasn't enough to build a house, but it was enough to get started. And that's all the encouragement people need.
William Easterly's Aid Watch [aidwatchers.com] blog also documents studies tracking how direct cash donations to displaced persons in sub-Saharan Africa were used. They found that less than 10% of the money was wasted or somehow misused. That's better than just about every other form of aid in terms of efficiency.
The moral of the story, therefore, is not that giving money is bad. The moral is that you need to give it to people with the reason and motivation to use it for the right things. I hate to break it to you, but the majority of multi-national corporations lack that motivation.
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.
Re:Not Me (Score:5, Insightful)
1. It would be crazy to try to solve disease by creating research facilities in Africa, when there isn't the infrastructure or educational standard to support to work. Cures will develop much faster in developed nations.
2. Ditto with American drug companies - which African ones are large and stable enough to handle the work?
3. You're describing aid programmes with your alien tech analogy, which are flawed for the reason you give. That's not how the Gates Foundation works. I can only speak to their agricultural development work, but it is not similar to an aid programme - they invest heavily in R&D geared towards specific high-impact goals. They are investing the money where they think it will have the highest impact per dollar spent.
4. I agree about the fundamental problems in Africa, but those aren't the remit of the foundation. They are about developing technological solutions, not about steering political and economic change, which is much less concrete and difficult to engineer. Frankly, whether or not you think it's the major problem, the tech is needed.
5. MONSANTO DO NOT USE TERMINATOR GENES. NOBODY DOES. It's crazy how many people have this idea, but there have never been seed with terminator genes on the market from any company. The technology *was* developed to an early stage by the USDA and a small agro company, who were later bought out by Monsanto. Monsanto made a public commitment to abandon the terminator technology when they acquired the company.
The simple fact is that the Green Revolution worked in Asia, it raised nearly 1.5 billion people out of frequent famine. Whether or not it created a perfect system, it got massive humanitarian results. It couldn't have happened if it didn't leverage existing infrastructure including plant breeding and seed companies, as well as agrochemical producers.. The same is true of Africa - if agricultural production is to be massively increased there within a reasonable timeframe, it needs to be done using the best infrastructure we have available, which includes having the world's major seed companies involved in seed production.
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
It would be crazy to try to solve disease by creating research facilities in Africa, when there isn't the infrastructure or educational standard to support to work. Cures will develop much faster in developed nations.
Not all of Africa is warlords and mud huts. Are you racist, or is this just typical ignorance?
Ditto with American drug companies - which African ones are large and stable enough to handle the work?
!American != African. Logic fail, kid.
I can only speak to their agricultural development work, but it is not similar to an aid programme - they invest heavily in R&D geared towards specific high-impact goals.
And draw human and logistic resources away from other goals that health care professionals are already working on.
I agree about the fundamental problems in Africa, but those aren't the remit of the foundation.
Right, if your goal is to spread the dominance of Big Pharma, you don't have to worry about whether people are dying faster than you can vaccinate them. You just give out a bunch of vaccinations, declare MISSION ACCOMPLISHED and move on.
MONSANTO DO NOT USE TERMINATOR GENES. NOBODY DOES
Yes, actually, this is one of
Re:Not Me (Score:4, Insightful)
Not all of Africa is warlords and mud huts. Are you racist, or is this just typical ignorance?
I never suggested it was. The quality of biological research in most African nations is so bad as to be meaningless when compared with developed countries. It makes no sense to try to tackle the biggest biological challenges of the century using the worst labs and worst educated researchers in the world. It's a sad fact, but a fact nonetheless. It's got nothing to do with race.
!American != African. Logic fail, kid.
I oversimplified in response to parent, but this was your logic fail. I never asserted that there was a binary choice between African and American, I just used the words used by the parent. The Gates Foundation does not only use American companies - GSK for example are a UK company.
And draw human and logistic resources away from other goals that health care professionals are already working on.
Firstly, the GF is trying, as every philanthropic organisation must, to prioritise the most important work. Of course that means some people will work on the more important problems, that's the whole point. They add funding and structure, the work gets done. Secondly, they are primarily *adding* resources to the (African) system, not diverting them.
Right, if your goal is to spread the dominance of Big Pharma, you don't have to worry about whether people are dying faster than you can vaccinate them. You just give out a bunch of vaccinations, declare MISSION ACCOMPLISHED and move on.
This is trollish. Perhaps you have not actually read the article or about what work the GF supports, but this isn't it.
Yes, actually, this is one of the world's great tragedies. The terminator genes can never do worse than decrease yields, and in exchange they would prevent other farmers' fields from being contaminated with Monsanto's IP, which would prevent Monsanto from stealing their land. In fact, we should have demanded that every GMO plant ANYWHERE IN THE WORLD be modified with Monsanto's terminator gene. The down side, bad seed practices. The up side? No accidentally saving seed and getting assraped by Monsanto.
I don't completely disagree. But what do you mean by 'bad seed practices'? Licensing their technology? I think you misunderstand how the world is being fed - it's by farmers who willingly buy licensed seed because it is more productive and generates higher yields and profits for them than other alternatives. If they want to cheat by breaking the license conditions, they face the legal consequences. Most don't, and they feed the world under that system.
Re: (Score:3)
Monsanto don't use terminator genes because of the public outcry about them. It is not profitable for Monsanto to chase license infringers and prosecute them - they will hardly ever recoup their costs in the legal settlements. It is necessary for them to police infringements because if they didn't, infringement would be come more widespread.
If you bother to look at the history of cases Monsanto has brought in the USA, only a small handful turned out to be accidental infringement. Most are people trying to c
Re:Not Me (Score:4, Informative)
But on the flip side, if it's purely a tax dodge, why does Gates invest so much of his personal time visiting poor parts of the world, and speaking publicly about the issues his foundation is attempting to deal with?
He'd have no reason to do this if it was a tax dodge, he could just keep to himself and let it do it's thing, but he doesn't, he gets actively involved.
Maybe they buy research facilities in the US and not Africa because their key focus is on solving the problems they've set as their priorities - like dealing with Malaria. Giving Africa the resources to deal with the problem isn't just a case of building a research centre there - you need a strong talent pool to go with it, which means also building up an education system in the region of the research centre that is on par with Western areas, and then further waiting until the required staff pass through that education system with the skills needed.
His foundation does fund educational initiatives also, but how does that help them deal with the problems in Africa right now? Funding better education and research centres on the continent is a long term investment - you can't just stick a research centre there and assume it to magically fill up with MIT and Cambridge quality grads - it takes time.
So what do you suggest as an alternative? set the groundwork and just wait 20 years until that groundwork has flourished to the point it can deal with the problem? or do both- which is precisely what they are doing. Using American talent now, to deal with immediate problems, whilst sowing the seeds for an Africa that can better help itself with these problems through it's funding and investment in education.
The fact is there are far better tax dodges around, ones that require far less personal effort and involvement if that was the only aim. It may well be that Gates uses his foundation to further the financial fortunes of friends and so forth as a side thing, I'm not denying that, but he clearly has a lot of actual personal interest in solving problems too, and that's far better than merely being a tax dodge, or simply hoarding fortunes for the sake of hoarding which just about every other billionaire does.
WTF? (Score:5, Insightful)
This is a bad hatchet-job.
For example, it demonizes the Gates Foundation for having some partnerships with Monsanto. Without discussing the details of the actual partnership, and the expected status quo, and the change the partnership creates.
It effectively creates a vast conspiracy of things the author doesn't like. And then blames them on the Gates foundation, because it does some things they don't like. Like their portfolio is in a double-blind trust that can own stock in evil corporations like coca-cola. Which is a fair criticism, buried in the middle of a paragraph halfway down the page. There is some content in here, but it's either buried or so biased that it is like listening to Noam Chomsky.
And it mentions leverage like it's a dirty word.
The quality of slashdot is really going downhill when this kind of thing makes it onto the page.
Re: (Score:3)
RIGHT NOW 2 billion people are alive because of the Green Revolution. Population continues to grow. There are only a few choices; deforest the planet or mass famine or improve agricultural technology.
Re: (Score:3)
Your logic is fallacious. If the crop yield is higher and more consistent, the farmers willingly enter into a contract because it benefits them. All businesses make contracts with their clients. How is it worse when Monsanto do it? It's a classic case of taking two steps forward.
Re:WTF? (Score:5, Insightful)
It was a hatchet job.maybe it just appears that way to those of us who read the summary here first. We were told to expect investigative journalism. We read a heavily biased opinion piece. Very little facts. I read the whole thing. There is no substance. I am not sure if you are being deliberately obtuse or have a similar axe to grind.
Where is the investigation? Where is the journalism? The author read some news articles and a couple of opinion pieces on-line and wrote an extremely slanted summary. Who did she talk to? What was uncovered?
The EdWeek readers want Bill to take a hit for supporting teacher testing. Why don't they stick to a topic that fits into their magazines core competency.
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.
Billionaire businessman favours businesses. Gasp. (Score:5, Insightful)
Doesn't he realise that he is just supposed to pump money into Africa and hope that amongst the missile launchers and the AK47s, someone manages to smuggle in some penicillin?
Are we supposed to be shocked that a man who made a huge fortune in the private sector, favours a private sector approach when he is trying to get shit done?
Re: (Score:2)
Language. (Score:3)
>Edweek, not ordinarily an unfriendly venue for Gates,
>not
>ordinarily
>unfriendly
Why. Why do you do this? Why give passive voice such a gigantic hug, kiss and grope up the skirt?
Do you mean ordinarily friendly, or usually friendly, or friendly with unfriendly articles being the exception? If so, say so. Remove extraneous logical operators and use active voice.
Your readers will thank you.
--
BMO
Re: (Score:2)
Readers who can't handle a double negative are not the desired audience for Slashdot. At least, I don't desire them around here. Too many of them already.
What's the point of this article? (Score:4, Insightful)
To prove the Bill & Melinda Foundation isn't perfectly run? To suggest it's a sinister organisation perhaps?
There's no love for billg here that's for sure but poo-pooing his attempts (however imperfect) at doing good in the world is just petty.
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.
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So let me get this right; he should stop doing anything humanitarian, saving & improving some of the most impoverished lives on the planet with his own money because Microsoft have a less than perfect business ethics record?
I'm glad to see you have your priorities straight.
Re: (Score:3)
He should first pay his taxes, then since probably giving back the money is to hard to manage at least start to work ethically.
And he is not doing anything humanitarian, he is pretending to do humanitarian things in order to make nice photo ops, and whitewash his political donations in emerging contries and leverage these donation into political clout that helps his investors.
He is running a corporation that is dealing in influence, not a charity.
The only lives he improves are his own and the ones of the em
Re:What's the point of this article? (Score:4, Informative)
It is not the world's most popular OS it is the one you "have" to use because of monopoly building tactics.
The Office suit might be the most popular, but even this is tainted by abusing the power on the OS market to illegally favor the application.
And that money would be better of being totally destroyed rather than in the hand of a guy who pretend to believe that monsanto is a friend of hungry people in emerging countries.
(just in case you are under the delusion that GMO are a misunderstood champion of the poor, learn from the fate of the 1000s of Indian farmers who commit suicide due to their working with monsanto, and think about how usefull "industrial agriculture" can be when it is imposed on a population where at least 40% of the population cannot do something more sophisticated than small traditional agriculture, it took the "emerged world" 60 years to move from around 50% to 2 or 3% of the population in the "fields", if you want to do the same i one generation you can just as "humanely" shoot the poor b***ds directly.)
And gates is not a roge philantropist but a 100% corporate america white collar criminal pushing a conservative agenda with some "democrat" colloring.
(well democrats are just somewhat less obviously right wing radicals than republicans...)
Re: (Score:3)
Well how would you caracterize what he did ? He took peoples money (in very large quantities) using illegal means (for wich in some case he even got a small "slap on the hand", like the EU fine microsoft will eventually have to pay sometimes (even if it looks large it is minimal in comparision to the dammage).
So I'm all in favor of growing up, but unless you believe that conning people should not be classified as stealing, you're wrong.
Re:What's the point of this article? (Score:5, Insightful)
No difference at all, right, the two are completely comparable. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Al_Capone#Saint_Valentine.27s_Day_Massacre [wikipedia.org]
You've pretty much demonstrated why I rarely bother even taking up this subject anymore. Simular thing with republicans when they start comparing democrats to nazis - it blows any chance of reasonable debate out of the water and there's just no point continuing.
To borrow a line from Bill Cosby (Score:3)
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charity != outsourced marketing or ? (Score:3)
http://www.deathhousebarber.com/images/jr-647-copy-2.jpg [deathhousebarber.com] (another fine example of philantropy, al capone's soup kitchen)
Gates is using his fundation to:
=> Remove cash from his taxable income
=> provide a cushy long term job & tax free playground for his descendent
=> invest in feel good actions to boost his cash cow's marketing drive.
Moreover if I steal your money, or con you out by putting you in a situation where I have a monopoly on something you need it's a crime.
The fact that I might or might not give it to somebody else does not make it less of a crime, particularly if I cannot claim to be some "robin hood" equalizer if I prefer to steal from the weak and uneducated.
What is surprising is not that his philanthropic record is criticized, but that there are people who are not raving maniacs or subnormal idiots who didn't realize this earlier.
In practice churches and philantropic activities should be subjected to a flat rate tax at the highest corporate taxation level.
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:All charity ends (Score:4, Insightful)
Where is the money supposed to come from, tooth fairies?
This is a story about how philanthropic Bill Gates is, so yeah, the money comes from him. That's the whole point of charity -- you give away portions of your wealth for a cause.
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And that is what I am talking about, if you build an entire business out of charity, you should make it profitable, you should be able to show that your management costs are very low and that the money that the charity is providing is mostly making it to the actual recipients of whatever the benefit is, and if you can show that, then you can run the charity as a business by hiring people and advertising the fact that you are a very efficient charity and those who want to donate to that cause should do it th
Re:All charity ends (Score:5, Insightful)
Well I know this won't be popular, but you shouldn't build a "business" out of a charity. You should, however, run your charity like a business to make sure it is efficient. If you make your charity a true business then it is no longer a charity...it's a business. I'm thinking not-for-profit or non-profit here, but I am not intelligent enough to understand the nuances.
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Re:All charity ends (Score:4, Informative)
Did you read the articles (duh, Slashdot, I know...) - the problem is the Foundation is campaigning on behalf of it's business partners to get the governments who they claim to be helping to establish policies that benefit Monsanto rather than their population. The end result is, Foundation spends x, corporate partners gain x*y. Bill Gats (personally) and Foundation then also gain from investment in corporate partner. This is not about charity at all, it is about disguising dodgy business practises as charity.
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Another post on the site asked rhetorically: Who elected them? Why do they get to influence government policy? The post was complaining about the Gates Foundation's effort to support school vouchers ( which I too support, as a step toward making education voluntary ), but I would also tend to agree that Bill Gates' or my voice should not be able to drown out Joe Shmoe's.
If corporate donations influence the policies of politicians, then they can influence the policies of charitable foundations. Not only t
Re:All charity ends (Score:5, Insightful)
Well I know this won't be popular, but you shouldn't build a "business" out of a charity. You should, however, run your charity like a business to make sure it is efficient. If you make your charity a true business then it is no longer a charity...it's a business. I'm thinking not-for-profit or non-profit here, but I am not intelligent enough to understand the nuances.
Well, I agree most with your last sentence. 8^)
I've worked for and with NGOs and non-profits large and small, from UN agencies to universities to the independent think tank where I am now. Let me assure you that the death-knell of any non-profit is to have it taken over by someone who claims it needs to run more like a business.
Profit-making and non-profit organisations are very different in their nature and -more importantly- their culture. They each have a million ways to fail, but here's the key: Non-profit organisations can and must measure success by something other than financial returns. This impacts every single aspect of its work. It sometimes means that you can (and should) spend more time on seemingly pointless details getting things just right. It sometimes means that you work on things that you know have a high chance of failure, but you take them on precisely because no profit-making outfit can't afford the risk.
The killer on both sides of the equation, though, is complacency and power. Allow either to become too apparent and the same sociopathic personalities begin to appear at the head of the organisation. And though they die in different ways, their death is a painful spectacle. Non-profits, especially those with guaranteed budgets, get over-run by careerist know-nothings who spend more time agonising over their per diems and life-saving meetings [blogspot.com.au] than actually thinking about what they're supposed to be achieving.
In profit-making ventures, the organisations get overrun by strategic thinking business-school types who spend more time plotting strategy and market position than actually running the fricking company.
Non-profits die like old oak trees: They rot from the inside; they remain standing for far longer than they should, providing shade for a few but hosting an increasing army of parasites.
Profit-making companies die by fire. They remain standing until the first lightning strike, then collapse in flames, sometimes taking half the countryside with them.
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I've worked in the non-profit world myself, and it's equally a death-knell not to be run like a business at all. For example no organization that fails to watch its cash flow can continue to operate. Believe me an irreversible negative cash flow is a financial fire, just as much in a non-profit as a for-profit. I've seen up front what happens to a non-profit that fails to attend to financial realities, and it is not pretty.
We used to sometimes say that the difference between for-profit and non-profit was
Re:All charity ends (Score:5, Insightful)
I think that when most people say a non-profit should be "run like a business", they really just mean that the organization should be setting concrete goals and objectively measuring progress towards those goals and evaluating all the organizations actions as they relate to achieving those goals.
No, that's precisely the kind of talk I was objecting to. For one, it leads to insane reporting requirements, often in situations where every hour and every dollar spend doing actual work saves -or at least changes- lives. For another, it leads to a desire for quantifiable metrics, which mean that a ton of really important aspects of development work get left by the wayside, because they can't be easily measured. For yet another, it turns the conversation into a financial one. That's important, sure. Nobody wants their money to be wasted. But it should not be the only topic discussed when evaluating the success of a non-profit.
All too frequently, though, that's precisely what happens when people try to run a non-profit 'like a business.'
I know it sounds whippy-dippy to say that concrete goals are of secondary interest when the real goal is saving lives, but bear with me. As a good friend of mine who worked in disarmament used to say, it's hard to know if you're doing well when you measure your success in terms of the number of people who didn't die. They don't always show up when you're forced to measure your progress in terms of 'concrete goals.'
I don't want to throw the baby out with the bath water. Good financial controls are essential. We're in screaming agreement on that count. But that's not nearly as big a part of the conversation as you might think when it comes to measuring success in this kind of work.
Re:All charity ends (Score:5, Insightful)
Call me crazy, but I don't think business should be run like a for-profit business either. That is to say, I don't think people should generally be motivated by, "what's going to generate the most possible profit at the lowest investment over the course of the next quarter."
If you're making a computer OS, then focus on making a kickass computer OS. If you're building hardware, make awesome hardware. Build your business around your business, around doing a good job at the thing your company does, and not around generating short-term profit.
Sure, yes, obviously you need to make a profit. You need to at least break even, or you'll go out of business. But so long as a business is making enough profit to keep their doors open, then in my not-so-humble opinion, they should devote their attention to doing a better job at serving the clients/customers and providing good products, services, and support.
Oh, and yeah, I know. Shareholders, shareholders, bla bla bla. Fuck'em. If we can't run our businesses responsibly because everyone needs to constantly kowtow to the abstract idea of "maximizing investors' profits", then it's time to reevaluate our system of investment.
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.
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In an inflationary environment created by the government the real return on interest is negative.
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Thankfully we are not quite there.
If I mister non-billionaire can make money this way, surely Mr.Gates can do better.
It is pretty telling how your faith in the free market suddenly vanished though.
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Thankfully we are not quite there.
You'd think that, but you'd be wrong: http://www.treasury.gov/resource-center/data-chart-center/interest-rates/Pages/TextView.aspx?data=realyield [treasury.gov]
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50 billions at 1 percent a year is 500 millions in interest a year. "Inflationary environments" cause the capital to loose value and the charity would loose purchasing power as years go by but this isn't directly related to the argument in the GP post.
Re:All charity ends (Score:5, Informative)
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.
Actually, one of the characteristics of Mr. Gates's charity is that this will not happen.
Gates's position is that while this sounds good, what you end up with is a charity that exists to function like a business. And then, like a business (let's take Microsoft for example), you end up with an organization that's weighed down with layers of middle managers, most of whose chief priority is to keep the business (charity) running -- not to achieve its goals, but to protect their own jobs.
Gates rejected that model. Instead his charity has a mandate that it must spend ALL of its money by XYZ date. After that date, the Gates Foundation will be broke, and it will disappear. Personally I admire this decision.
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One of the problems with these perpetual trusts is that long after the founder is dead they become sinecures for the people running them, making the occasional nominal grant while absorbing most of the trust income in salary.
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Or to explain, How do thems what don't no what the error is, ever learn?
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Charity comes without attachments or requirements.
If this article is in any way true, the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation is in no way acting charitably.
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You can make an interesting correlation lines between visits of the BMG fundation to emerging countries, and the influence on copyright laws, patents protections, and the type of software these government select (after the visit).
The fundation is only charitable if you believe that charity starts on ones door (preferably on the inside side where you personally live).
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Almost all Not-for-profit organizations are a for profit organization. They operate like a real business and make profit, they just change the vocabulary around "excess revenue", used to help grow the organization. A NFP organization is just like a company however they get particular tax brakes because their work help the community on the whole, and are willing to do things that may negativity effect their bottom line. (for example, a Hospital will keep funds to pay for services for patients who cannot p
Re:All charity ends (Score:5, Insightful)
Donor nations were shocked last month, when UNICEF disclosed that it has been forced to pay artificially elevated prices for vaccines under an arrangement called the Advance Market Commitment, which was brokered by Gates Foundation-dominated GAVI alliance, to greatly increase drug company profits. Stakeholders also worry that industry reports of particular vaccine's effectiveness might be skewed by marketing goals.
Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation proves once again that leopards dont change their spots.
Re:All charity ends (Score:5, Insightful)
Yet people have been denying this from day one on the phrase of "oh it's philanthropic".
If someone can't figure out that working with Glaxosmithkline, Monsanto and Coca Cola (who happily works with Cargill, as if they aren't bad enough on their own) might be a bad thing, then they deserve to have a fast one pulled on them by the Gates foundation.
Maybe now people will realize that Bill Gates didn't step down to do "Great things for the world". He stepped down to continue the Microsoft concept of business and expand it *further*, outside of the US's reach.
Excuse me for defying the Monsanto-bashing (Score:3)
I know it's all the rage to bash Monsanto as the big, evil corporation that causes all the misery in the world. But I feel obligated to point out that it's the research work that companies like Monsanto and ADM do that have given us the crop yields to support 7 billion people on a planet where most people aren't even farmers anymore. Do you really think we could sustain this planet as it is with a bunch of organic backyard gardens and fields of non-GM crops?
So unless a significant portion of the population
Really? (Score:5, Insightful)
Meanwhile Big Pharma has let farmers stuff farm animals with antibiotics until resistant bacteria (including old killers like tuberculosis) are a major health problem, while failing to develop new antibiotics. I, like many older people, depend on a couple of drugs to remain healthy and reasonably comfortable, but I believe that the drug industry needs supervision and regulation, just like the banks.
Re:Excuse me for defying the Monsanto-bashing (Score:5, Informative)
Hmm....
Let's let Monsanto go for a bit - I would just point out that few things are purely good or evil, the world is much more complicated.
However, the vaccine business is clearly not a win for the 'free market'. The early vaccines were not developed by drug companies, they were developed by universities. Even the measles vaccine [wikipedia.org] which was in part developed by the person who started Merck was employed in a government funded lab.
Vaccines make so little money and are so hard to produce that the US government had to write special legislation to entice Big Pharma into making them. That legislation shows just what a mess things are in the US at present. But I think it is quite reasonable to rage at Big Pharma while simultaneously trying to get them to behave in a socially responsible manner.
And the Gates Foundation is an example of this. They certainly do some good, but their structure is really set up to benefit large Western organizations, some governmental, some non governmental. Read up on the machinations of the International Monetary Fund some time. Take some generic anti nausea medication first.
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Re:All charity ends (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:All charity ends (Score:5, Insightful)
Shout all you like that the problem with health care is the US government, nobody can hold up an example country with fully privatized health care which is being run well (Well as in, people dont die early or have to live with treatable health problems for lack of income, not well as in it makes corporates boatload of money).
I hear what you are saying, and I tend to agree with you (having been in Japan, I know what good health care is, and how bad we have it here in the USA.) However, @roman_mir does have a point. Fully privatized health care DID work.
The problem here is not whether health care is privatized, or whether other countries have better health care systems with some type of government intervention. The root of the problem is the collusion of government and health care firms, which have created a self-perpetuating carcinogenic mass of middle man sitting between the patient and the physician.
Not all private enterprises are created equal. There are those that compete freely (with price controls dictated by supply and demand), and there are cartels. Two solutions to the problem exist:
1. Have a government-sponsored health care system as found in Japan or Germany
2. Have the goverment dismantle the health care middlemen cartels, forcing them to compete freely.
Either one will work, and both require goverment intervention of some form. People need to stop looking at goverment vs private enterprise as if both formed a zero-sum game, a black-n-white, matter-antimatter dichotomy. They are not. Such parrochial black-n-white window painting serve well to pander simple solutions to the simple-minded masses on both sides of the political fence, but that's the extend of its usability.
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Well, to be fair, it's not just the US government who makes this stuff fail. Countries like, oh, Sweden (or wherever it reputedly works out well financially and effectively, I think this was pretty much the only country that fits the mold) don't have the other socioeconomic problems the US does which exasperate the issue: obesity, obesity, diabetes epidemic, and of course, a health system itself which is merely a shell of a host for the pharmaceutical and "healthcare assisting" companies.
Re:All charity ends (Score:5, Insightful)
Until the US government got involved, running US healthcare strictly as a business left millions of us to get sick, stay sick and die, without preventive or responsive care available. That left many millions of other people to stay trapped in a sick home, unable to live fully, work properly or contribute economically or educationally.
Since the time the US government got involved in a coordinated way, through Medicaid and Medicare, the large majority of the population has been freed from the worst afflictions, healthwise and otherwise. Meanwhile the expanded healthcare economy has completely transformed health science and practice.
You and your fellow "libertarian" corporate anarchists would return us to the bad old days. Next you'll tell us war is good for the economy, so we should have more of what ruins us.
Re:All charity ends (Score:5, Insightful)
Medicare running out of money has nothing to do with whether or not it was a good idea. It is running out of money because of the combination of a baby boom and a poor economy. Even if it single handedly made the baby boom possible, it didn't make it necessary, and so it still was not necessarily a bad idea. In fact, statistics [wikipedia.org] suggest that more, not less, government aid results in better systems.
Another way of looking at it is that Medicare isn't designed to be profitable. The amount of money it can get is determined by law makers who decide how much goes to Medicare and how much goes elsewhere, like say, the military. If the military was running out of money, it wouldn't mean having a military is a bad idea, it would mean we're not funding it enough. It's the same with Medicare.
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The population of the U.S. is not growing unsustainably, were it not for immigrants, we'd have a net loss in population. The U.S. stopped producing more than replacement about 1999.
Medicare and Medicaid are running out of money because the population is getting older and poorer, the latter mainly due to the current recession. The former due to the Me Generation finally getting read to pop their clogs.
What the U.S. will be forced to do is reduce benefits either by raising the age limit for Medicare and/or ta
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I peaked at what you wrote, and there's this:
In a free market economy, the unemployment is very low, anybody with a job can afford * health care and insurance, because those services are very cheap, just like they were prior to 1965 **.
That's obvious bullshit. The introduction of very expensive diagnosis machines (MRI, gene readup and the like) and treatments (artificial organs, radiation treatments) push costs up. Probably hospital infrastructure's more expensive now, doctors more trained etc. Also patients want the best possible care whenever they realize their life and health is at stake. Best possible care today is expensive.
Trying to use the logic of supply and demand to determine prices i
Re:All charity ends (Score:5, Insightful)
Yeah, it worked so great that in 1965 all kinds of things would have been a death sentence that are now done on an outpatient basis.
Even in a perfect free market land if you get a disease that so few people have that no money can ever be made on a cure you are totally screwed.
Even worse is that short term profit motives will slow research to a crawl on all but the most profitable sectors of drug research. We would be able to have 40 kinds of pecker medicine and not much else.
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It seems many Ayn Rand fans literally had their mind blown away, ... :-)
And they are still searching for it
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Why is it harder for large countries to fund healthcare than small countries? I don't understand the rationale behind claiming that it does.
GDP per capita is surely a better indication of how good healthcare _should_ be, generally. Low population density can add problems, but countries like Canada and Norway seem to manage ok with this.
All other countries with more than 100m people are much poorer than the US, so a straight comparison is a little worthless, IMO.
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Then why have a charity at all?
If you are going to run a business, just run a business. The money is supposed to come from donors, like maybe Bill Gates. Having string attached to charity makes it not even charity. This is just Gates once again showing how horrible a person he is.
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Running a charity as a business ensures that the money that goes to charity is pretty steady and doesn't depend on a few wealthy one time donors. I thought this place liked charity? I don't even support charity and I have more sense about how to run it than anybody here.
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I think both of those are fine.
I believe the problem is the deals with Pharm companies that demand more expensive drugs be purchased. That kind of running it like a typical MS business. If you really want to save lives you get the cheapest drugs that do the job.
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The money is supposed to come from people who selflessly give money and time out of compassion to help others, not to make a profit. That's why charities in the US are almost always non-profit organizations.
You think otherwise, because you are an autistic narcissist. Every time you post [slashdot.org] something on Slashdot, especially when you start the discussion [slashdot.org], you demonstrate the precisely inhuman way to act.
Re:No. (Score:5, Insightful)
Spending all the income on bonuses to the executives and window dressing, sounds in every way exacly like running it as a business. Running it as a business is what they should move away from, which is why charities dominated by volunteers are so much more efficient.
Re:Speak for yourself, bucko (Score:5, Insightful)
So, do I need to RTFA to have that confirmed, or is that pretty much the gist of it?
Hey, I've got an idea. Try RTFA.
I know, new here etc etc...