A letter to our daughter | Hacker News Reader

A letter to our daughter

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790 pointsarasmussen518 comments

> We will give 99% of our Facebook shares -- currently about $45 billion -- during our lives to advance this mission. We know this is a small contribution compared to all the resources and talents of those already working on these issues. But we want to do what we can, working alongside many others.

Ninety. Nine. Percent.

I mean, what else are you going to do with $45 Billion? Build a really big house?

I've had the opportunity to rub shoulders with a few billionaires over the past few weeks, and it's remarkable how differently they think about money than the people who don't have it. Sure, they may buy a nice car (or jet), but after a certain level the only thing you can do with that kind of money is plug it back into something meaningful.

Hats off to Zuck and the other people who try to turn their success into something even greater than, well, their success.

>I mean, what else are you going to do with $45 Billion?

You are thinking about it the wrong way. You don't spend $45B on stuff for yourself. You spend $45B on changing the way governments and populations live work and how power is balanced.

When Bud Fox asked Gordon Gekko "How much is enough" Gekko knew immediately that Fox wasn't in the same league. Money isn't about stuff, it's about power and influence.

I strongly feel this power, influence, giant houses, jets, personal cruise ships etc are old generation stuff - something that grey haired Gekko will personify. The "new rich" is dramatically different and for the better. Today's centi-millionairs wants to stay anonymous, don't want to have butlers, have houses that they can manage without permanent staff and often prefers travelling first class or renting Yatch instead of buying them even if they can afford it. The new rich sets target to make X amount of money and then "retire". Their "retirement" consist of working hard doing their favorite activities and travelling the globe to sample the "regular folks" flavors. Most of them don't have desire to keep growing billion dollar business which will sip away their time and energy. They have strong political belief but have no desire for acquiring political power directly or indirectly. They are not in to heavily influencing how rest of the population shall live. They consider time to do their favorite activities far more important than keeping money scoreboard. They want to buy fashionable cloths and accessories but not those that will immediately attract attention and single them out in the crowd. They want to be physically fit and avoid having family as long as possible. They like to invest in ideas and technology more than traditional financial instruments.

I think new rich crowd will almost completely replace old generation wealthy in next 50 years or so. People who are born in this decade will have very hard time understanding philosophies and life style choices of Gorden Gekko.

>You spend $45B on changing the way governments and populations live work and how power is balanced.

$45B is even overkill for that. Each presidential candidate spent (or had spent on their behalf) roughly $1B in 2012. Zuckerberg therefore could have doubled a candidates spending for each presidential election for the rest of his life and still have half his fortune. $45B is that huge.

EDIT: The multiple downvotes seem to indicate I said something that is disagreeable. I'm not implying that buying elections would be a better use of Zuckerberg's money, just that he has so much money that elections are just more "stuff" he could buy without even thinking hard about it.

Which is exactly the type of stuff Zuck is talking about here, although in less power-hungry ways. So you're kind of proving @austenallred's point.

Exactly, when you have that much wealth, you buy things that don't have price tags on.

Nah. It's about ego(tism). Power & influence use different currency. You have to either - 1) not know or 2) not care - how badly you'll mess this up.

And you will.

$45B is not enough to change governments. That's about 4 days worth of US federal spending.

Spending money meaningfully is hard work. John D. Rockefeller had such a hard time with it that after awhile he just left it up to his son, who devoted his life to philanthropy.

At the Cleveland church he went to, significant portions of his time spent there was to write checks to parishioners.

I'd say it takes roughly the same amount of effort to spend money as it does to make it. You still need an organization, you still need to make really hard decisions day in and day out. It seems that there's something fundamental about philanthropy that doesn't scale.

Personally, I think the work a person does to earn that kind of money, assuming of course it's from legitimate commercial activity, is plenty enough, one shouldn't feel morally compelled to donate it back. But like you said, what else are you going to do with it? Doesn't make a lot of sense anymore to leave billions to heirs.

Relevant bit from Playboy's interview with Steve Jobs:

> Playboy: What does the money actually mean to you?

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

> Playboy: So what do you do?

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

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

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

> Personally, I think the work a person does to earn that kind of money, assuming of course it's from legitimate commercial activity, is plenty enough, one shouldn't feel morally compelled to donate it back.

Agreed. And not to get too political, but I'm thankful that individuals in the U.S. are exceptionally generous, and do think about these things. And that those who DO earn copious amounts of money have the choice of what to donate it to - rather than having 90% of it confiscated and doled out by someone else who didn't earn it.

>>It seems that there's something fundamental about philanthropy that doesn't scale.

There is.

You don't give people fish to eat, you teach them how to fish.

> I've had the opportunity to rub shoulders with a few billionaires over the past few weeks, and it's remarkable how differently they think about money than the people who don't have it.

Yah, I don't necessarily disagree with their mindset. I've crossed a lot of spectrums, including chilling and rubbing shoulders with the rich to scraping by. I definitely do agree with a lot of the lofty 'moon shots' and some of these people have achieved remarkable things not just for themselves, but for society as well.

But, with Zuck, I just don't know. Gates got rich off operating systems and crushing opponents at all costs (a success story for capitalism). Zuck, from advertising and selling 'your' data. It's admirable that he's giving 99% away, but, I just don't get a warm fuzzy feeling about it.

Time will tell and I hope it turns out good.

> Zuck, from advertising and selling 'your' data

IMO that's a really narrow-minded read of what Facebook is. >1B people log into products he founded every day. He lets advertisers target you using data you've provided, as you sit on the platform he helped build, but I'm not convinced that makes him an evil dude.

...Meanwhile, Samsung's owner Lee Kun-Hee is still officially alive (even though nobody has seen him in months after he had a heart attack), because the company still hasn't tied up all the loose ends for transferring the company's ownership to Lee's son while paying as little tax as possible.

So, yes, you can do a lot worse (to your society) with $$billions.

(Sorry for the rant. Please carry on.)

> I mean, what else are you going to do with $45 Billion? Build a really big house?

Leave it to your children so you can perpetuate hereditary wealth on a grand scale. Because your great-great-great-great-great-great-great grandchildren should never have to work, right?

I give Mark and Priscilla a lot of credit for this. There's a big difference between 50% and 99%. There's a big difference between leaving your children a few hundred million and many billions. They have certainly exemplified the challenge to ''put your money where your mouth is''.

Having said that, the first thing I thought of was the tax implications. If the shares were to eventually be sold (but not donated), the State of California alone would earn roughly 6 billion dollars in tax revenue. And the Federal Government another 13 - 15 billion. Assuming a lot of variables that could push the value up or down, of course, and the fact that they would be unlikely to sell the majority of their shares any time soon. My understanding is that by donating the appreciated stock to a charity, under current laws, there is zero tax due. I wonder if there's a state financial forecaster or analyst in Sacramento having a bad day today.

"There's a big difference between 50% and 99%. There's a big difference between leaving your children a few hundred million and many billions."

There is a saying "you can name the price if I can name the terms". Zuckerberg saying this and when he actually does this are two different things. (Per my other comment). I am not saying that he won't (how would I know?) but this is a promise that is based on a future event that, given the age of both parents, could easily be 50 or 60 years in the future. And of course exactly nothing will happen if he changes his mind (he isn't going to issue a press release on that) and nobody has any access to his finances anyway. So he is free to say anything he wants for any reason and that of course could change. That said it's his money and he can do what he wants with it. And there is no reason to even announce this if not playing some PR angle.

Edit: And to my point I just got a WSJ Technology Alert email with the headline "FACEBOOK'S MARK ZUCKERBERG IS GIVING AWAY 99% OF HIS SHARES" and then further down in a paragraph "over the course of their lives".

> Nonetheless the big winner here is the group of causes they donate to but it comes at the expense of a significant amount of tax revenue

Here is the world's smallest fiddle...

In this case it really does just sound like "the tax incentive is working as intended".

Good! Government is far less efficient anyway. How many different agencies and special interest groups does the money now not have to touch to get to where Zuck thinks it's best used? The government would just buy a few more F35s or funnel it to bail out companies like GM. Or squander it on 'investments' such as Solydra or market-distorting Ethanol subsidies. It certainly wouldn't get funneled into meaningful education reform or lowering taxes for the rest of us.

I might be wrong, but didn't he already pay the massive tax bill for all of the stock options? Meaning all of those stocks would be taxed at long term capital gains rates, not at the high rates you are saying here. I believe his Federal taxes on sales would be 15% of current price - IPO price so approximately 4.5B not 13-15B at this time. That is also assuming Facebook continues to be dominant and doesn't go the way of every other social networking site before it, but that is a different issue.

And either way, the charitable organizations deserve to be supported and will do good for society, and they get to pick how it is used. Which doesn't seem like a bad thing, when the Federal government can barely agree on any budget at all.

The current capital gains tax rate he would be avoiding is 20%, or $9b at today's Facebook market cap. There is also a 3.8% Medicare tax added on that would come to another $1.7B. The state of California would also get their hands on it and take another 13.3% (or about $6B).

tl;dr Giving capital gains away is very tax advantageous!

I think that's why they created a non-profit organization, Chan Zuckerberg Initiative. Non-profits are taxed differently and I'm sure they'll figure out how to get the money where it needs to be and pay as little tax as possible.

According to NYT, Chan Zuckerberg Initiative is LLC, and not a non-profit. See my comment here:

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10662073

Is it possible in the US to take both names after marriage?

If so, I'm disappointed that Mark didn't choose to be Zuckerberg-Chan.

They didn't announce plans to sell immediately and given the timeframe, I'd imagine that selling/transferring those shares will be done in the most tax-advantaged way possible.

Besides taxes, selling 44.5 billion worth of shares would affect the share value negatively. They will probably use some kind of derivative contract to get funds for the non-profit.

I think his point of "We must make long term investments over 25, 50 or even 100 years. The greatest challenges require very long time horizons and cannot be solved by short term thinking." is extremely important.

As someone doing research at a top university, I am constantly annoyed by short term vision and optimizing for publication number at all costs. This system is broken.

Alfred Sanger got 2 Nobel Prizes, and he spent a lot of time without publishing before each. Clearly something impossible to do these days.

If you're not already familiar, you might be interested in the Long Now. "The Long Now Foundation hopes to provide a counterpoint to today's accelerating culture and help make long-term thinking more common. We hope to creatively foster responsibility in the framework of the next 10,000 years."

http://longnow.org/

And on the other hand we have the public companies, lacking strong leadership, forced to look at quarterly returns.

Well there are more research institutions competing for the same dollars so the only way they can differentiate is based on publications. A lot of science is derivative and collaborative. Most important though it needs to be reproducible. Starting there is priority #1.

Is _top_ university an important distinction in this context?

It was just to highlight that things are broken even at the top. I've worked all the way from a relatively small institution and I've found little correlation between long term vision and institution ranking, which is quite surprising.

It actually is in my opinion. If the top, elite research institutes show these kind of problem, then we can expect it to be very prevalent in the rest of the field as well. As in, this isn't some no name low tier school run by mediocre people.

Implication is competition is paramount - both level and quality of output

Will this ~$45 billion go to efficient use? Based on his track record of $100 million to newark and how effective that was, I am skeptical.

Good intentions in philanthropy are a dime a dozen, actual results are less common.

Improving schools is HARD for techies and non-techies alike. Education is one of the major iniatives of the Gates Foundation and Mrs Jobs main charity.

Dumping money in to a proven failed approach was not a great idea. He should have founded a separate school system instead.

Has it really been so big a failure as the press has led us to believe?

https://www.facebook.com/zuck/posts/10102461245925231

If the Newark experiment winds up being a catastrophe, we do still walk away with a postmortem teaching us interesting things about the problems we face, and debunking the notion that all schools need is more money.

Did you actually read the results of the $100 million going to Newark instead of blindly believing the media? Probably not... #uninformed.

Now I don't feel too bad about Fb snubbing Telegram. /s

I'm curious how they plan to liquidate that shares as it will have quite some effect on the dynamics of Fb and on this:

  I will continue to serve as Facebook's CEO for many, many years to come

Pledge during lifetime means that they have the flexibility to do the bulk of the liquidation during the latter years of their lives, when perhaps he has assumed only Chairman responsibilities.

Also, you can get loans at very low rates by putting shares into collateral. This is how Larry Ellison funds much of his endeavors.

Crazy. Even crazier when you realize that that 1% is $450 million....

so Max will still be (half) a billionaire once she grows up.

She'll be way richer than that.

They'll donate 99% of their shares along their lifetimes. In the meantime, they'll get cash in several ways: dividends, salaries, bonuses, etc.

Mr. Zuckerberg probably has other assets ;)

Assuming Facebook maintains it's valuation.

Empires grow and empires crumble.

So much for the three comma club.

So she'll be OK. Hope I'll still be able to take care of my kids after Zuckerberg unleashes the flood of H1Bs to lower my salary.

Keep in mind that it is of the Facebook shares value, not net worth. Although admirable, it is not apart of the Bill and Melinda Gates pledge that many billionaires (notably, Buffet) have taken of giving away half of their new worth before they die.

Anyway though, it's still a lot. And I hope they follow what other billionaires have been doing; not just throwing it at charities, but putting it into research and even funding entirely new projects.

Funding startups and research labs that have no economic goal or an economic return to shareholders is something that is very needed. I see much of the funding coming from this.

"Although admirable, it is not apart of the Bill and Melinda Gates pledge that many billionaires (notably, Buffet) have taken of giving away half of their new worth before they die."

Are you referring to The Giving Pledge [1]? Both Mark and Priscilla have signed it [2]:

"We salute the Giving Pledge movement, and are proud to be part of its declaration that those who have been fortunate should give back at least half of their wealth during their lifetimes."

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Giving_Pledge

[2] http://givingpledge.org/pdf/pledge-letters/Zuckerberg_Letter...

>Anyway though, it's still a lot. And I hope they follow what other billionaires have been doing; not just throwing it at charities, but putting it into research and even funding entirely new projects.

You might be interested in reading about Chuck Feeney (the founder of Duty Free Stores), who was the original guy advocating for such hands-on charitable work.

How much does he have outside of Facebook shares? A billion or two? So it's still >90% of net worth.

Yeah... how's that for burying the lede? I almost didn't get that far through the post.

"During our lives" doesn't specify a time frame such that it will happen in the next 5 years or 50 years. What he appears to be really saying is "our heirs will only inherit 1% of our Facebook shares". Until both Chan and Zuckerberg pass away we don't know how many shares (or wealth) they will have access to.

It's very probable Facebook will get a competitor, and/or make a decision, that makes the company worth a lot less in a very short time, like its predecessors / previous competitors did. Internet companies can be fickle like that. Mind you, it's not likely to happen overnight and it also depends on how much the company's value is based on thin air, but still.

That would leave him with $450 million left over.

Four hundred. And fifty. Million.

He earned it.

lolz, the army of facebook engineers earned it.

He's still left with US$450 million, for living expenses...

He's not giving it all at once. He announced that he plans to give 1-2% of his Facebook wealth per year.

Chapeau Mr. and Mrs. Zuckerberg.

if they break up, it might become 49.5% as this is not a done deal...

Mark Zuckerburg is now officially the one percent.

What point are you making? Are you saying that's a lot or a little? We all read the 99% number. Adding periods between the words puts emphasis on it sure (great job putting in the extra effort to enhance the discussion by the way) but given the nature of this discussion I can't for the life of me figure out what you're actually trying to say.

At last Zuckerberg realized real problems of the world can't be solved by Facebook or for that matter technology. I am talking about healthcare and medical problems. Personally websites like Facebook are wate of time and barely make ant impact in human potential improvement.They do make us feel worse and sell our personal data to advertisers though.

There hasn't been another other thing that has had as much impact in bringing me closer to my family and friends across the globe. Waste of time for you, positive life changing medium for me. Further, who know what positive impact this have had on my health? Maybe it has prevented the need for medicines in many cases.

Except for the internet and computers and electricity and a few other things.

I hope you understand that your personal experience is anecdotal evidence at best and perception bias for you didn't take into account the downside for the rest of the population.

What about this stubborn family member who refuses to have a facebook account because he believes in privacy as a fundamental freedom, how exactly facebook is bringing you closer to him/her?

With the amount of money Zuk has he should start a non-profit drug maker that produces generic drugs at cost.

Maybe I'm being too cynical, but this seems about as philanthropic as Ron Hubbard starting a religion.

Firstly, the donation is stock not cash, so the value of this foundation will be directly linked to the value of Facebook shares.

Secondly, it has been stated that one of the things this foundation will do is "participate in policy debates". If the headline was "Mark Zuckerberg to put $45 billion is stock behind lobbying effort to establish Internet.org as a monopoly in developing countries", that wouldn't sound quite so positive, would it?

It sincerely depresses me that the top comment on Hacker News is so incredibly cynical. The man is giving away a huge amount of money and you can only find ways to detract.

> Firstly, the donation is stock not cash, so the value of this foundation will be directly linked to the value of Facebook shares.

So? The vast majority of his wealth is in Facebook shares. That doesn't change the fact that he's giving away the vast majority of it. You think he should have sold it all now, destroyed its value, and donated a much smaller pot?

> it has been stated that one of the things this foundation will do is "participate in policy debates".

One of many things. Not to mention he has never attempted to make Internet.org anything close to a monopoly.

That your reaction to an incredibly charitable act is such pure cynicism is absolutely disgusting. There are plenty of billionaires who hoard their money or perpetuate hereditary fortunes, and those who don't should be commended.

> Not to mention he has never attempted to make Internet.org anything close to a monopoly.

Do you even know what Internet.org is? They're providing free access to a subset of the internet that Facebook controls, while forcing people to pay if they want to access the internet as a whole. The entire reason Internet.org exists is to create a Facebook monopoly on data access in developing countries.

Your entire comment is naive.

Internet.org provides access to a subset of the internet that Facebook chooses to pay for. The target audience is mostly people that can't afford any internet access to the first place because it is to outrageously expensive. As well, that subset of the internet is open to developers to submit their own services to be supported by Internet.org [1]. Last time I glanced through the agreement, Facebook is just trying to avoid paying for HD photos and video downloads, which would increase the cost of Internet.org beyond feasibility.

An initiative can be charitable while also benefiting the donor. The users of Internet.org get free access to Facebook as well as the other services being provided and that doesn't detract from the service or make the whole initiative evil.

I have yet to see research that providing a zero-rating service is harmful as you suggest.

[1]: https://developers.facebook.com/docs/internet-org

Try exercising a less naive approach ("incredibly charitable act") perhaps.

In particular, regarding your statement "he has never attempted to make Internet.org anything close to a monopoly", it surely looks like that's the end game here - see https://www.techinasia.com/talk/facebooks-internetorg-evil/ (discussed on HN here: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10568525)

You are being too cynical. He's giving away stock not cash because if he sold the stock first to raise cash to donate, he'd have an enormous capital gains tax liability. By gifting stock, he can gift a far greater amount and the tax-exempt recipient charity can sell the stock itself to raise cash. This is standard in situations like this - e.g. it's what Buffett did when gifting away almost all of his billions.

Also the cause you listed is just one of many that he is gifting to so you're missing the forest for the trees. To help overcome this, list all of the good causes he mentioned (personalized learning, curing disease etc), then list the ones that you don't like. I bet the list of good causes will be far longer than the list of ones you don't like.

http://www.nytimes.com/2015/12/02/technology/mark-zuckerberg...

Mr. Zuckerberg and his wife, Dr. Priscilla Chan, said they were forming a new organization, the Chan Zuckerberg Initiative, to manage the money, through an unusual limited liability corporate structure. [...] By using a limited liability company instead of a nonprofit corporation or foundation, the Zuckerberg family will be able to go beyond making philanthropic grants. They will invest in companies, lobby for legislation and seek to influence public policy debates, which nonprofits are restricted from doing under tax laws. A spokeswoman for the family said that any profits from the investments would be plowed back into the Chan Zuckerberg Initiative for future projects.

Someone with more knowledge of the U.S. tax code than me will be able to explain how he's going to achieve this while funding a new corporation (perhaps he'll set up a foundation that owns a corporation, similar to what some endowment funds do to avoid UBTI), but there is no way that he's going to make this gift much smaller by doing it in a way that realizes a taxable gain at the time of gift.

If anything, you are not being cynical enough. This 'letter' can be summarized as "We will use the money for leftist lobbying in our country and establishing a monopoly in other countries AND we're going to say it's charity so no taxes will be paid".

I think you're being too cynical.

So what if the donation is stock?

Since when does

> We must participate in policy and advocacy to shape debates. Many institutions are unwilling to do this, but progress must be supported by movements to be sustainable.

mean "lobbying effort to establish Internet.org as a monopoly in developing countries"?

You're just picking the part of the story that you don't like. Zuck maybe has taken decisions that some of us don't share (most likely all related to privacy/monopolies in the internet)... but (like Bill Gates) he's undoubtedly in a unique position to bring deep changes and improvements to the world through philanthropic activities.

If having a child has made him rethink his views (which would be normal) then that's great. Too bad he didn't have a child before and started this initiative few years ago!

What part of "curing diseases" sounds greedy, egomaniac, or bad in any sense? I hope he joins Gates, Thiel, Parker, Diamandis, Page, Kurzweil, and many others on their quest to eradicate diseases from the face of earth. And I hope he funds Aubrey De Grey like Thiel is doing...

My first response was "why not just give it to the Gates foundation" since they're already doing it and well. What's his special insight into what makes a cause effective to fund? Are we perpetuating a world in which charities employ a bunch of people to convince any of a hundred different rich philanthropists/foundations to hand over wodges of cash?

It's a hugely net positive thing he is doing no question.

Gates managed to make people believe he somehow became a Saint after leaving Microsoft, even though he created and guided it to become pretty much the most evil IT company ever.

People just don't talk about it anymore, so he's all good now.

But there's obviously something shady about his dealings: http://newsjunkiepost.com/2013/06/07/bill-gates-big-pharma-b...

Something's always bugged me about relying on philanthropy as a source of funding the public good, as opposed to the public funding the public good through taxation and the democratic process: In the former case, the public doesn't really have much of a say about where the help goes. We must rely on the judgment (and personal values) of a few rich people and hope they pick charities that maximize the benefit.

Would the outcome be better or worse if we had, say, a 99% tax bracket at >$N million, and let the public decide the best way to deploy that funding via the ballot box? Would that process better align with the values of a democratic society? Or would we just get more corporate welfare, bombers and aircraft carriers?

I'm not ragging on philanthropy--it's awesome that some of these billionaires understand the meaning of "enough" and choose to give away their fortunes to worthy causes. But is it best for society to leave it to a few lucky 'elite' to judge what is and isn't a worthy cause?

Mark Zuckerberg donated 100 million dollars to Newark public schools a few years ago, and they ended up no better for it (and arguably worse off). Here's a great article on the topic -- http://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2014/05/19/schooled .

The main reason for the failure of the donation to create positive change was that the community wasn't engaged at all in the reform process. The first time Newark students and parents heard about the donation and the accompanying "reforms" were when Zuckerberg announced them on Oprah.

I completely agree with your sentiment, and wish philanthropy wasn't seen as an unmitigated good thing.

It is interesting that the same rich people created a political system that allows the public to be so disengaged.

We need the 99% tax because we had it before, and at that time, the public was more engaged. It will take time, but people can learn civic skills.

You're becoming too clouded in fuzzy ideals and missing the ugly reality that there is no virtuous public and democratic society, but the state. You say we must rely on the judgment and values of a few wealthy, but then completely ignore the whole landmine of public choice. Not that "having to rely on a few rich people" is even true.

I don't think OP is clouded, missing the ugly reality, or ignoring the landmine of public choice. That's why most of it was phrased as a question, and even mentioned:

    Or would we just get more corporate welfare, bombers and aircraft carriers?

OP is wondering, not unreasonably, if that reality might be less ugly than what we have today.

That's a little nihilist.

Traditionally the state has been a form of wealth redistribution, because while it may not be a true democracy, citizens still vote, and could potentially vote to have the majority of the wealth redistributed equally amongst themselves.

But instead we have a power struggle between those with the means to sway others and the idealists. While I'm sure the idealists will probably never attain their utopia, if they don't continue to share their dream we'll end up living someone else's self-serving one.

I have more faith in the judgement of the system that elects billionaires than the system that elects our government.

Billionaires will spend their money in more efficient and productive ways than our government spends tax dollars. You may disagree with a rich individual's vision of the future, but he will be vastly more likely to effect his vision than our elected officials.

The system that elects billionaires is the same as the system that elects our government.

Perhaps billionaires will spend their money more efficiently.

But they'll spend less of it on the public good.

The government may be less efficient (also, citation needed there, as I don't buy that at face value), but even if it is it has access to WAY more funds.

Sure, we have some nice billionaires like Zuckerberg and Gates who give their money away, but if you required all the billionaires to give up some money, you'd have a much larger pool to work with. So efficiency isn't the only part of this argument. There is also volume.

Hope you're ok with whatever that billionaire's vision is.

One difference is that billionaires (at least the Buffett / Gates crowd) seem to put a lot more of their donations toward projects in foreign countries than the government would. Since the vast majority of people living in bad situations in the world are not Americans, I think it's very plausible that they're doing more good with the money than we would get from taxing it.

> Would the outcome be better or worse if we had, say, a 99% tax bracket at >$N million, and let the public decide the best way to deploy that funding via the ballot box?

If we had that and still had charitable deductions, I suspect more public goods would be funded by charity rather than public decision-making then is now the case, since the marginal cost of charity giving would be much lower.

You're suspecting wrong. In the sense that less public goods and services are funded today on a global scale due to facebook tax evasion scheme.

Even with a 99% tax on Zucker's fortune, it would still be diverting money from countries around the globe towards the US, in other words the already rich and destroying condition favorable to human life USA would get richer by making the poor poorer.

In a world with no countries, it would make sense. In the current world it would be another way for the USA to abuse and exploit the rest of the world.

Hopefully you're not the only one, as I share your reluctance to embrace it as the "go-to" model of social constructiveness. There's a lot of good that comes from people "giving back" in one form or another, be it financial, skilled labor, or just simple time and attention when possible. I think it's admirable to want to change "institutions" like education for the better - I've been an advocate for 'progress' ever since I saw some of the challenges back in my own youth - but I can't help but think of such experiments as pet projects. Those can be productive, sure, but do I believe, deep down, that the Chan Zuckerberg Initiative is going to have the answer to the variety of problems that plague Chicago's South Side, New Orleans, or any number of troubled communities? Sigh, might just be me.

Would you voluntarily give more taxes to your governments? Or would you rather donate that money to a charity of your choosing / research?

> the answer to the variety of problems that plague Chicago's South Side, New Orleans, or any number of troubled communities?

No one (government, private sector, etc.) has the answer to those problems. Those are really really hard problems that require the cooperation of non-profits, local governments, religious institutions, families, etc. I don't think they're expecting to be a silver bullet.

I think it's good to have both. Philanthropy of rich guy means three things:

1. He can afford really good advisers. Democratically elected can be good. But they might be good at campaigning and only get selected because of party status.

2. He can afford to monitor charities closely. And enforce legal action if they fuck around. When you invest several millions, you probably take care that they reach the destination. If you just pay little taxes that go everywhere and you also have day job, much slimmer chance.

3. These individuals could fund projects that in the future give back to whole humanity. But such projects aren't always popular with the public in the start.

Do you have a say on how government spends your tax dollars? In theory sure, and in theory politicians represent our interests. In practice none of that happens and my tax money isn't spend on anything nearly as constructive as what any NGO (or foundation) is doing. Moreover, I'm obliged to contribute to whatever the fuck they want to do with my money, even if it's war. So yeah, that's better than a rich guy giving money away, right? Society already leaves it to an 'elite' to judge what to do - an elite of politicians and whoever is backing them financially. How can you be so naive?

So would "the people" know of a better way to deploy Zuckerberg's fortune than the man himself?

why is his opinion more valid?

edit: "its his money" doesn't explain why he would be more able to judge how to donate money, or effect positive change than someone else. i understand he is allowed to spend it how ever he chooses. the point i'm trying to make is that someone is not inherently more likely to know the right thing to do than someone else just because they have more money.

That's the principle of the free market -- central planning is inefficient.

I'd rather see them pay a considerable chunk of those billions in taxes - which Facebook and other giant companies like it don't pay in the US due to its lax tax laws, and which they evade in other countries using various tax evasion schemes. Then there'd be more money to pay for affordable schools and whatnot.

Then again, the US is more likely to spend trillions on wars abroad without those really improving their own country, so on that note, it's probably better for a philanthropist to invest the money in a charity with a singular goal, such as education or research.

It's not really "as opposed to". We have both, and I figure that's good.

Each model has its strengths, weaknesses, and problems it is most suited to, just like public vs. private industry.

If you have the ability and luck to make a billion dollars, you probably have a bit more skill than the average Joe to determine where that money should go...

i've wondered about this as well, and it seems really insane to me when you break it down. being good at making money does not imply being good at philanthropy, nor does it imply that your opinion is more valid. yes, i know there isn't a perfect solution, but isn't it silly that that's how things work now? it seems like letting the public vote would do better.

I feel only on HN and Reddit can people find reason to criticize a guy who is giving away billions of dollars for humanity. Talk about not seeing the forest for the trees.

I think it's a good sign if people don't take words at face value and be critical of it.

Their public pledge to donate 45 billion dollars to charity within their lifetimes with an eye towards long term solutions deserves criticism? Seriously, WTF?

If I may paraphrase the sentiment here:

Firstly,

  Their public pledge to donate 45 billion dollars

That number is based on current valuation of Fb and cannot be equated to someone writing a check for $45B. If Fb goes the MySpace way, how much is that donation worth?

Secondly there appears to be a duality between how the company operates and what this post tries to rally for.

Finally, using the pretense of writing a letter to their newly born daughter rubs some the wrong way.

The post you're responding to never said this essay deserved criticism. It said it's good people aren't taking it at face value and are being critical of it. They are not the same thing.

Being critical of the claim to donate 45 billion dollars is pretty natural. First, they didn't say 45 billion, they said a percentage of their worth which right now is 45 billion dollars. You would have a very strong point if they had just delivered the check for 45 billion dollars and people were criticizing it.

But they didn't do that. They wrote a post on the internet saying they're going to give away their money sometime in their lifetime.

The scope of this pledge in combination with the dollar amount would stretch so thin that it would have the net effect of giving every child in the world $20 and saying, here, go improve the quality of your life.

So, yeah, if he wants to open himself up to public scrutiny with a tastless "letter to my daughter that i'm actually making for the public because my daughter can't understand this for another 10 years", people are going to criticize.

But he has 45 billion freaking dollars, so I doubt he cares.

Who runs the initiative?

This seems more like PR than a genuine letter to a child. Which is fine, but I wish they'd treat it as such.

They talk about facebook, donations, improving the world, their beliefs, etc. but very little on how to be a better person or how to enjoy life. Maybe I'm projecting, but what would you want to find in your pillow after moving in for your first day of college?

I hope they wrote their daughter a real letter. One directed to her and not something that will be tweeted by hundreds of news organizations.

My brain hurts just reading through this letter. I'm trying to picture my parents -- or anyone's parents! -- writing:

"Your mother and I don't yet have the words to describe the hope you give us for the future... Our hopes for your generation focus on two ideas: advancing human potential and promoting equality... We can do this work only because we have a strong global community behind us. Building Facebook has created resources to improve the world for the next generation. Every member of the Facebook community is playing a part in this work... Love, Mom and Dad"

Philanthropy aside, doen's this "letter" read like a scene from the Silicon Valley TV show?

Isn't the birth of a child enough of a celebration, without smothering it in a multi-page manifesto?

Telling her they're donating $45B seems like a clear message on how to be a better person to me. Selflessness and the desire to improve the world.

Why are the techno-barons so focused on human health? Not that there's anything wrong with these efforts, but human disease is much less of a threat to our species and planet than an ever-increasing human population. What I'm saying is that humans have little difficulty reproducing; it's a solved problem.

What's not a solved problem is our disappearing fisheries[1], rhinos going extinct all over the place[2], farmland desertification[3], tropical deforestation[4], ocean acidification[5]... From my back of the envelope math, it seems that longer lives and a larger population will exacerbate our environmental and resource issues.

I'd like to see billionaires purchase large tracks of land simply for preservation. Cleaning up industrial waste from rivers. Foot the salaries of anti-poaching efforts. Get clean fusion energy production up and running. That sort of thing. Perhaps we should get our planet's shit together before tackling immortality?

[1] http://www.washingtonpost.com/posteverything/wp/2014/06/03/t...

[2] http://www.cnn.com/2015/04/16/africa/kenya-northern-white-rh...

[3] http://www.bbc.com/news/world-africa-34790661

[4] http://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2015/oct/30/indones...

[5] http://fm.kuac.org/post/increasing-ocean-acidity-threatens-m...

Bill Gates has teamed up with Mark Zuckerberg to form multi-billion-dollar clean energy fund: http://www.sciencealert.com/bill-gates-has-teamed-up-with-ma...

It sounds like they are doing exactly what you request.

Investing in new energy technologies is not an effective way to address any of the problems he mentioned.

I heard that healthy human is the key to sustainable population. Less-healthy human condition tend to make human have more babies since mortality rate on their babies are higher.

The cynic's answer is that human health is something that really rich do not have much control over. (SJ is just one shining example)

In other words you get billion dollars but realize it is all for naught as you will be worm food in 100 years.

So some go full Kurzweill, some find/found religion, some do a bit of everything.

This problem is not unique to billionaires but they can attempt to roll a bigger rock up the mountain.

Manoj Bhargava is doing something similar: https://imgur.com/gallery/teGsT

Bill Gates is actually very concerned with reducing population growth.

I think you have an OK point and the more intelligent rich people like Elon Musk are the ones furthering your agenda. Bill and Zuck were always too conventional to think big like this. Their conventionality was part of their success--they are both too uncreative to come up with something new but instead they know how to steal the ideas of others and make a more competitive business out of them.

Ted Turner bought a bunch of land.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Malthusian_growth_model

You make a very good point. Currently, the largest threat to long and happy life is a destroyed habitat.

Sometimes, I think people on HN probably think they get points for being the most cynical critic.

Can't we just say, "Dude we are happy for you, and thanks for the money."

And what happened to the rule about not saying stuff you wouldn't say to a person's face. Would you be calling Mark a narcissist to his face? Keep it civil people.

> Would you be calling Mark a narcissist to his face?

I definitely would. I'd call him a cunt too. He is one, and in my country you call a cat a cat. None of that tippy toeing around you english people do, Zuck is a horrible person as the last ten years has shown everyone, Facebook is a despicable company with despicable ethics.

This letter is vomit inducing, and the comment section is rich people stroking each other for "helping the world" after being major actors in destroying it, fuck them all too.

Where are you seeing "narcissist" reflected in the comments here? I'm seeing, "ulterior motive". And yes, I think most HN'ers wouldn't hesitate to call Zuck out on that. I know I would.

Zuckerberg isn't planning on retiring.

He will rival Bill Gates in the magnitude of philanthropic contributions.

And in other news Facebook Notes is challenging Medium as the default one-column publishing tool.

Note as well, that of all the immaterial goods that have the potential to create immense value to people and humanity, education and health are the ones strongly highlighted. Global equality is there, but to a critic this too will be seen as another factor in building and supporting an ever-growing, and long-living, consumerist middle class.

There is very little said about freedom, democracy, privacy, justice or self-determination. Even if this reading is unfair, cynical or simply too demanding of what this text and announcement is. Not to mention detracting from what is otherwise a highly admirable act.

According to the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation's financial declarations [0], assets as of December 2014 read at a hair under $45 billion. This very much rivals the size, even if it will take some time to build momentum and make as much of a difference as the Gates Foundation has to date.

[0] http://www.gatesfoundation.org/Who-We-Are/General-Informatio...

I'm signed up for CNN's "Breaking News" emails that are sent out whenever some earth-shattering crisis occurs or particularly important news that affects everyone. I received one of these email alerts upon the arrival of their daughter. This gave me a great sigh; good news for them, but how did it become worthy of worldwide immediate news notification?

You didn't read the article did you?

I did. What does that have to do with CNN Breaking News?

Couple problems with this otherwise well-intentioned effort:

1. It's a drop in the bucket compared to what governments spend on a regular basis trying to solve these problems. (Bill Gates has said as much.)

2. Private charity by the billionaire class is not a scalable solution. Historically most social advancement has happened through popular organization and government programs, not charity.

Silicon Valley itself is a product of government spending. The Internet and thus Facebook wouldn't exist without billions of taxpayer investment in early stage high risk research and procurement via DARPA and other government agencies. That continues today (just a couple examples: Siri and autonomous vehicles).

If we are serious about accomplishing social change and "long term investments over 25, 50 or even 100 years," the answers lie in greater government investment in these areas. Just like Silicon Valley. And that means all Silicon Valley companies should be paying back to the government just as they would an early stage investor. Not as a "noble choice" but as an obligation. (Currently they get the core tech pretty much for free.) That would drum up an order of magnitude more funding for much-needed social projects.

I'd like to hear more Silicon Valley CEOs talk about that.

To quote the letter itself: "We know this is a small contribution compared to all the resources and talents of those already working on these issues. But we want to do what we can, working alongside many others."

A far cry from "we know this is payback for public investment in tech companies, and we call on all of silicon valley to support formal remuneration to the federal government to give back to the public."

I'm not trolling, as much as it will seem the opposite, but I feel compelled to wonder about postnatal mania (mild postpartum psychosis) as I read the letter. I wonder how different (or private) the letter may have been had it come four months from now. I wonder how many really significant acts of charity and kindness by the super wealthy and influential occur in the days following childbirth. Just wondering aloud here.

I'd imagine they had such a significant decision planned far before the kid was born.

You would think there is significant PR-department oversight and long-term planning that went into this.

But on the other hand.. nobody really knows?

Reading this is impossible to not to think of Bill Gates. Someone who realized the impact his money can have. Many people in this industry have been influenced by the actions of Gates, especially in the tech community. As a 20 something the money I make certainty pales in comparison to that of Gates or Zuckerberg, but even at a low rate for the tech industry it is much above that of my friends, many of who have worked much harder to get to where they are. It is difficult to be in a position to give help and refuse. Perhaps the effect Gates can have on the minds of the wealthy will be even greater than the already vast contributions he has produced.

Just wow. I asked my parents how my birth changed their lives. They said they had to invest in some good ear plugs (for themselves) as a sleep aid, and that they lost a sock drawer until I graduated to the futon. While I did not spark the solving of the world's problems, at least I did have some small impact.

Never much cared for Zuckerberg but this changes my perspective.

Off-topic: can Facebook please go ahead and literally kill the blogging industry by giving the ability for everyone to use these updated Notes section? As is, the majority of the referrer on the Internet is Facebook. They might as well get the blogs out of the way.

I agree, let's put the entire internet in Facebook. News like this just proves Zuckerberg knows best. /s

It astounds me that people are taken in by this. There are so many ways that Zuckerberg can manipulate this to his self-worshiping benefit that I can't even guess which ones he'll pick. Consider the type of charity Zuckerberg has previously favoured: totally monopolistic internet infrastructure in India. Sure, people get internet, but it'll Zuckernet from now until forever. Philanthropy is a broken system, because powerful philanthropists never really give away their money: they retain control of whatever the charity is used to build. When you have everything and it's not enough, that kind of control is worth a lot of dollars to you.

Do you think your comments apply to Bill Gates?

It's less clear cut with Gates because he has a quite different personality to Zuckerberg. Gates has a genuine desire to understand and fix things, although that is amongst his more positive traits. Zuckerberg/Facebook, on the other hand, has well-documented antisocial and indeed malicious behaviour.

"As you begin the next generation of the Chan Zuckerberg family, we also begin the Chan Zuckerberg Initiative to join people across the world to advance human potential and promote equality for all children in the next generation. Our initial areas of focus will be personalized learning, curing disease, connecting people and building strong communities.

We will give 99% of our Facebook shares -- currently about $45 billion -- during our lives to advance this mission. We know this is a small contribution compared to all the resources and talents of those already working on these issues. But we want to do what we can, working alongside many others."

Mark has set some ambitious goals regarding poverty, disease, nutrition, and equality, and connectivity. I hope for all of our sake that he is successful in realigning many of the perverse short-term incentives through his and his Priscilla's generous contributions and efforts.

I wish he had spoken more about luck and balance. This is something that Bill & Melinda Gates, as well as Warren Buffet do very well. Understanding luck and balance is the key to empathy, which is also a phrase that is missing from this letter.

I also wish he had not marketed this press release as a letter to his daughter. Perhaps he has another, private letter that is actually more relevant and personal, but if I were Max, I probably wouldn't be thrilled to read this 20 years down the road.

But I'm sure he had a reason to release this letter as he did, and that he thought for a long, hard time before penning these words. Best of luck to the new father, mother, and daughter.

Most of these things can be achieved, but I really don't understand what most people expect from equality. For example, does equality mean that if I sit on my ass and do nothing, I get the same as the person next to me who works their butt off? Or does it mean that I get a fixed amount based on the effort I put in? How is that effort measured?

When people talk about equality, I'm not sure if they mean equal opportunity or equity or utopia (knowing that utopia depends on a slave class). Maybe it means something else.

The reality is that humanity has empathy and greed (noting they are not opposites). I can not imagine that I will ever see every person equally.

In this example, equality means that if you act in your best nature, you deserve as much as any other person who acts in their best nature. If sitting on your butt is the best thing, then yes you deserve as much as the next person, likely though sitting on your butt is not the best thing.

I find it disgusting that he's just had his first child and is already piggybacking a PR exercise off it.

In spite of the enormity of the announcement, to tie it up as "A letter to our daughter" is deeply crass and makes me feel queasy.

Applause to the Zuck for the public commitment to invest 99% of his fortune in charitable causes.

Providing cheap, reliable internet to underserved areas of the planet seems like an achievable goal. Much of the technology is present, and so this goal can be attacked now given available funding. The technology should improve further and become cheaper in the near horizon. Go for it Zuck. Make a dent.

"Curing disease", however, or "learning and experiencing 100x more than we do today" - these trite and nebulous platitudes seem line lines stolen from HBO's Silicon Valley script. "Eradicating polio" is a concrete, well-scoped, measurable, and realistic goal (regardless of whether its is the best apportioning of resources). "Curing disease" is not. Does someone who's married to a doctor really believe that all disease is eradicable in the next 100 years? Must we resort to impossible moonshots and unqualified invocations like "Make the world a better place!"? Something like "colonize space!" is not a helpful goal; "build a habitation on Mars which produces enough food, water, and O2 to sustain 5 people for a year" begins to be.

This pedestrian rallying cry is a chaotic amalgam of cliches. I hope Zuckerberg puts more thought, organization, and direction into how he will invest his billions for the betterment of posterity.

This leaves a bad taste in my mouth, for some reason. Must one's private life be this public? I get that Zuckerberg doesn't agree with privacy, but surely putting his daughter in the public limelight as soon as she is born is an imposition on her privacy.

Maybe I'm just getting old.

I see you have some downvotes but I came here to say the same thing. Zuck is using the birth of his daughter to advertise a new venture.

You want to be generous? Great, do it!

Telling us in a letter to your daughter as a hook to attract eyeballs is kind of weird and exploitative.

Update: I also thought I should say that this is no big deal, he has some different ideas about what's ok and what's not and I see that every day, I'm not mr perfect either.

I guess the reason it's interesting in this case is because he is head of facebook and entrusted with a lot of people's personal information. If his judgment is different to mine then I don't feel comfortable entrusting him with my social life.

Facebook is his thing, and he wants people to be public and share by default. So he is leading by example.

There are at least two sides to this. Mark is speaking openly and stating his view to set an example to others. I applaud that. There may be better ways to achieve this, but I feel this personal approach is a very positive gesture.

On the other hand, you have the Leonardo Di Caprios of the world who are very philanthropic and try to make the world a better place without open letters like this.

I personally am not offended by Mark's approach (and I'm not a fan of Zuck). I'd rather see someone express benevolent intentions than just about any other alternative (including silence, or prejudice/hostility/etc that seems so common today).

I am in your camp. I cannot even say that our culture is different, plenty of people fillin up FB with photos of their kids, but this just looks so wrong to me. And in this case, some mix of PR and bragging.

I would like to draw your attention to the time when the fb hit the privacy scandal and it was brought to light that the founder and CEO was too privacy conscious and shared little to nothing on his site.

May be I'm too cynical as I see that there was a conscious effort to post more updates. Recently I see another shift following the Internet.org initiative.

With you littletimmy. I couldn't read it after first few lines.

Some thoughts:

* Addressing a public press release to your private child's name

* Naming the initiative with your family's name

* Calling for "change now" as if the world isn't already working very hard every day towards progress

* Looks like a move out of a strategic playbook some advisers gave for "how to be President someday"

* Looks like they're marketing themselves as the royal family, like Facebook is the new kingdom

* Looks like that smug thing that's hip today where people compete to be most charitable

* Reminds me of the Melinda and Bill Gates thing, and the Google medical research thing

Part of this is the perspective of engineers who believe everything is solvable if you just build something to do it. If it isn't built yet, it must be because we're not working hard and fast enough. That if someone has billions of dollars, and are just willing to fund an initiative, they can take credit for curing all disease.

Part of it is the fear that's faced by people who felt invincible when they become old, or have a newborn infant. When you can purchase anything, the new difficulties are things like bacteria, viruses, and entropy. When you are a god in the eyes of the society and economy, yet a worm in the eyes of biology and ecology, there's no longer a clear path towards how to solve your daily concerns. If you're poor and need food, there's simple steps you can follow to acquire what you need. But when you're wealthy, what do you do to get well from illness, to escape the pains of aging?

These people, and much of the digital society today, need perspective and psychological understanding beyond what they have. But you won't see an initiative for that.

Aren't this "foundations" essentially just tax loopholes for the rich?

http://www.salon.com/2013/04/12/10_tax_dodges_that_help_the_...

read point 4.

The problems with these tax systems are far greater than just the wealthy exploiting income tax. There are so many hidden costs in the endless complexity of the tax and financial systems in nearly all of the modern Western governments.

It's a shame people rarely protest the sytematic issues, preferring to attack people or specific groups of people (often the wealthy or left vs right) - which are positions that generate adversarial responses rather than rational counter-arguments: http://lesswrong.com/lw/gw/politics_is_the_mindkiller/

The surest way to minimize abuse/loopholes while being supported by rational a-political benefits:

Flat tax + basic income.

Eliminating millions of hours of wasted time due to beaurocracy (and while treating each social class with consistent dignity). These arguments are more likely to be persuasive to politicians - both left and right. This is a lesson I believe the general public missed after the whole Occupy movement failed to result in much political change. The problem with the obsessive focus on "the 1%" was that it generated an us vs them response, further entrenching positions on both sides and further distancing already strained policial/social group relationships.

For example: the simplification of taxes would very likely increasing the speed at which people file taxes and therefore signficantly increasing the speed that tax revenue could be collected annually, while reducing the amount of time they spend chasing down people who fail to do taxes. <- These are the types of a-political positive benefits I hope will eventually get attention one day to make the previously mentioned policies less of a pipe dream.

yes, yes they often are.

Hope many more will follow, my sincere admiration.

Here the SEC filling: http://www.sec.gov/Archives/edgar/data/1326801/0001326801150...

First time I've heard of Facebook Notes, which apparently aren't new at all. The notes that I do see aren't styled the same way as Zuckerberg's letter.

I mean, technically, Facebook has had notes since the early days. I know the format and style has changed, but I remember writing 'notes' on my wall that any friend could read in a dialogue box since around 2005/2006 ish?

To that note, very few people I know actually use Facebook notes compared to other blogging platforms.

It's a new redesign: http://www.theverge.com/2015/9/25/9398895/facebook-notes-red...

Facebook has about 800 million features you would never know existed unless you went digging for them.

Facebook notes were a huge part of the platform at first, died with expansion of the Newsfeed and the way statuses work now.

All the notes I have seen lately have this same style.

> Can we truly empower everyone -- women, children, underrepresented minorities, immigrants and the unconnected?

Part of me thinks that Zuck means people without family or otherwise ties to wealth and influence. But another part of me thinks that he means those that aren't connected to the internet. If it's the latter, this is quite the bold statement. The implication would be that people without access to the internet are structurally disadvantaged. Which in a lot of ways are true. The internet enables anybody to acquire knowledge, skills, and relationships with an ease that is otherwise impossible. Thankfully, this bucket has a fairly clear solution path.

I'm all for rich people giving their mass fortunes to charity but they sure do seem to take a long time to do it. Bill Gates is STILL the richest person on the planet in 2015 and his wealth GREW $3.2 billion last year. Can we save the praise for giving away $44 billion until he actually gives it away?

Source: http://www.forbes.com/sites/kerryadolan/2015/03/02/inside-th...

It's actually quite hard to give away money faster than you get it above a certain level of wealth. I suspect this reflects more the performance of the investments Bill has than the level of charitable investment.

from an evolutionary psychology standpoint, we are all driven to constantly increase our social value (and indirectly that of our offspring). once you hit a certain level of wealth, it is rational for you to shift your attention from making more money. your social value is only increased by wealth up to a certain amount, after which the marginal returns in social capital approach zero for every additional dollar earned. to put it simply, how much more social value do you have with $1 billion versus $2 billion? The world is indifferent. At that point, you are simply a rich person.

once you reach such an inflection point of wealth, you must find an alternative means of increasing your social capital. there are two common ways: one is to demonstrate your evolutionary fitness in a field completely unrelated to how you amassed your wealth: many rich get into movie production, novel writing or other creative endeavor. These usually fail.

another alternative, the safer alternative, is to expend your remaining time and resources advancing social causes (running for an elected office certainly falls under this category). this is the simplest way for an adult, untrained in anything other than their primary business, to increase their social capital.

it's not a coincidence that zuck is still willing $450mm to his offspring--more than enough to hit that inflection point. he knows that any additional dollar beyond that inflection point provides marginal social value to his offspring.

New money mistake. You don't change the world by putting your money into non-profits but rather cultivating a dynasty that has tentacles in business, government and thus policy.

You consolidate this kind of wealth into the proper channels to influence public opinion and thus a much greater sum (measured in trillions) over a greater time to get the real change you believe in.

It's a good gesture but a losing strategy. But it's his money to do as he pleases so, cheers Zuck.

"Medicine has only been a real science for less than 100 years, and we've already seen complete cures for some diseases and good progress for others."

Thats a bit unfair. Scientists have been painfully working to advance the field of medicine for centuries.

Unless you have a very loose sense of the word scientist, that's very much untrue.

[1]http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2641521/?page=1

I think "real science" refers to reproducibly, experimentally driven science.

Arab scientists were performing reproducible and successful removal of cataracts 800 years ago. Surely thats 'real medicine'.

Doctors have been working to advance the field for centuries certainly but for pretty much all of them science by any reasonable definition wasn't involved in the process.

Evidence-based medicine (what else would it be based on?) is actually a thing and an uncomfortably recent one at that.

Okay, maybe it's just me, but after reading the introduction and getting through the list of extremely difficult "Can we..." challenges followed by the "We must..." directives, the first quote that popped into my head was a variation of “a poor man is crazy, but a rich man is just ‘eccentric.’”

I get the desire to solve the world's ills, of society's shortcomings, of essentially fixing the thousands of years of evolutionary programming to craft a utopia. What sane person would sit down and say "You know, when I die, I want to leave the world a chaotic fireball of pain and suffering" in all seriousness? Maybe I'm significantly jaded, but I hope I'm not the only one who finds such a letter a little bit narcissitic, brought to you by the originator of one of the most narcissitic platforms of the modern era, and hosted on that very platform, naturally.

>Our generation grew up in classrooms where we all learned the same things at the same pace regardless of our interests or needs.

This isn't true at all. "Our" generation grew up with having to work to acquire knowledge. To spend time in the library. To sit down and read. To think. It took time, effort, opportunity, and personal investment - so much of which is no longer a priority now.

>The internet is so important that for every 10 people who gain internet access, about one person is lifted out of poverty and about one new job is created.

Citation needed. Like, really.

Frankly, I find this is a very cynical approach to the lecture of this letter.

Most everyday Joes might not have the means to change the world but it is certain that when turn into billionaire, they rarely pledge the quasi-totality of their fortune to improve the well being of others.

If this is narcissistic, just let it be and be appreciate that for once, a great deal of money will be put to good use. The world is full of Koch Brothers, Saudi princes and European heirs to prove that most billionaires are more concerned about evading taxes rather than giving back.

I personally can't stand this sort of thing because it conflates something personal/intimate with a press release, and that's just kinda gross to me.

Whether or not the letter is narcissistic, one has to admire their initiative. It is not, unfortunately, the obvious thing to do, and they deserve to be applauded for that.

Whatever personal faults the man has, I'd argue this kind of philanthropy more than makes up for it.

His Charity is so great- that He simultaneously saves the world's poor while providing fodder for season 3 of Silicon Valley.

Man tries to help the world with his money and he's greeted with criticism.

> Maybe I'm significantly jaded, but I hope I'm not the only one who finds such a letter a little bit narcissitic, brought to you by the originator of one of the most narcissitic platforms of the modern era, and hosted on that very platform, naturally.

This is the problem in expressing your thoughts and feelings with words. The readers would extrapolate the words over all sort of things, rather than the essence to which those words were spoken. Its as if the speaker and his rational is subordinate to the various interpretations of those words.

The essence here is that a family here feels obligated to provide a better world for their newborn child. They are using all the means at their disposal for this. And the best part is that instead of keeping it to themselves, they proclaim it the world so that others can even judge on their promises. That is an admiring, inspiring and a courageous thing to do.

I found it off putting how he used his daughter's birth as a PR opportunity for his philanthropy. Those events are totally unrelated but he used one to supercharge PR for the other.

My opinion on philanthropy is that if you're not doing it anonymously then you're doing it more for yourself than for the cause. It becomes just another status symbol (I'm more good than you because look at that news headline of how much I donated).

I think many people, me included, get reflexively annoyed by pathos and sanctimony, because so much of it is used to justify just about the most ridiculous actions and theories and ideas. I do, however, think, that in this case, it is possible to be utterly annoyed at the sanctimonious tone, while simultaneously celebrating the fact that so much money will be put to good use

Too me it looks a reasonable.

>brought to you by the originator of one of the most narcissitic platforms of the modern era, and hosted on that very platform, naturally.

Facebook is only as narcissistic as its user, it is as much about taking part in other peoples activities, by commenting/sharing as it is about personal propaganda.

>"Our" generation grew up with having to work to acquire knowledge. To spend time in the library. To sit down and read.

You are ignoring difference in quality of library, value of teachers and external stimuli in learning.

> To spend time in the library. To sit down and read.

Maybe you need to think more broadly.

Not every school had a library. Not every child had the ability to spend substantial amounts of time in the library. And there definitely wasn't the breadth and depth of content we have today especially if you were more advanced in your learning. I grew up in the 1980's and was very interested in learning more about computing. Guess what. 1-2 books. And I was in an pretty affluent, middle class school. It wasn't until I got access to Compuserve that my knowledge grew.

> Citation needed. Like, really.

Zuckberg was quoting a study from Deloitte:

http://www2.deloitte.com/uk/en/pages/technology-media-and-te...

You're right in that a lot of this is common sense. But I think the strength of the message is in making the implicit, explicit. It's the same reason people suggest "writing things down" rather than letting thoughts/plans live in your head. When times get tough, or things go sideways, you have a manifesto to fall back upon to keep your vision clear and to hold yourself accountable to your original intents.

Yeah, he wants to give away tens of billions of dollars to help reduce poverty and fight diseases. What a narcissistic jerk.

I sounded like a useless thing until he actually pledged the resources to do something. But it does indeed sound crazy, even if it is I hope that it does something positive for the world.

In some ways "how can any two people actually have the power to fix so many problems" is somewhat defeated by the fact that these two people have 45 billion dollars and not to mention plenty of influence.

There are plenty of people/companies that seem to be working very hard to do make inequality worse so it's nice to hear a powerful figure say that are somewhere from neutral to positive.

I would like to see the citation too.

Joke: in the late 80s, Stasi employed nearly 1 person for 50 people in East Germany. They just say they can do that 5 times better with internet, not impressive in 30 years of technical progress. Give us more!

The same thinking that led to building Facebook or Microsoft or any other technology company won't work for solving socioeconomic issues.

Bill Gates tried 5 or so years ago to solve the problem with education with his tax shelter non-profit: https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/answer-sheet/wp/2014/06/...

Test scores showed that everything he did had no effect on the scores or grades of the student. Each school he built had Internet access the latest in technology, special trained teachers, smaller classes, personalized learning, etc.

If you ask me the technology can be distracting, I only say so because my son is failing chemistry because he doesn't study enough because he is distracted by Youtube videos and video games.

When I was his age I was using a calculator and my father said it was a crutch that I wouldn't be able to do math in my head, and he was correct on that. I could only do math on paper because that was the way they taught us. I have to use a calculator to do math, and the technology distracted me from learning how to do math in my head.

Did someone say narcissist? May I introduce you to: http://thelastpsychiatrist.com/

I understand your sentiment, but I would hesitate just a moment to judge it so quickly.

It's hard to look at this sort of statement, especially when it's posted on Facebook. The source of 'Like this posts to do XYZ' or '#KonyIsABadGuy'. But really, the ideals that they strive for seem to build on those that have formed the foundation of our very society. The equality and advancement of mankind. In many ways, this seems no different than what Jefferson or Franklin had in mind.

Does it matter whether or not he's a narcissist or whatever reason why he does it? Or Gates or Buffet do?

I say bravo, and am looking forward to the benefits of giga-scale philanthropy.

>Our generation grew up in classrooms where we all learned the same things at the same pace regardless of our interests or needs.

What are honors classes? What are remedial classes?

The internet does democratize access to information, but part of me thinks that for every job the internet created, Facebook destroys by wasting peoples collective time...

Well, regardless of its accuracy it perfectly matches the sentiments I felt at the birth of my son. The emotions I felt were be deep, vitalizing, positive and made me want to fight to make the perfect world for him. If anything it shows Mark and his wife to be normal human beings. They just happen to be rich, famous and successful and so their message carries a bit farther. I hope they keep their motivation and enjoy their new feelings for as long as possible. The world can very well use these emotions, at any time.

So if giving away $45billion for the betterment of the human race isn't enough, what does someone have to do to impress you?

I can't say I'm surprised to see the mental gymnastics that 'the internet' is willing to engage in to cynically criticize such a massive donation and doe-eyed optimism.

To paraphrase some guy on Twitter, Zuckerberg's letter is like a control in the way it measures the baseline meanness of the internet.

That would be you, 6stringmerc.

It wouldn't be HN without this being the top response to one of the richest people in the world announcing an intent to dedicate 99 percent of their wealth to the betterment of humanity.

If you can't respond positively to this announcement, you really should step back and do some serious self-examination.

> for every 10 people who gain internet access, about one person is lifted out of poverty

That particular number is… shall we say “often” used by Facebook’s PR? (Another way of expressing that comes to mind, but I'm not sure how to spell 'jackhammer').

The source is presumably the numbers in there: http://www2.deloitte.com/content/dam/Deloitte/uk/Documents/t... matched with the corresponding internet adoption in those countries at the same time. The parallel is discutable, expressly so.

Full disclosure: I tried and wasn’t able to match those numbers myself (with internal ressources, when I was working for Fb); I would strongly encourage anyone curious to go through the methodology notes: there are many things that deserves to be discussed around equality, literacy, institutional change. Basically, things that are looked at independently by the Oxford Internet Institute (OII) and the Society for Institutional & Organizational Economics (SIOE, formerly ISNIE). Neither institution have been involved in that estimation as far as I can tell — and they would have tremendous impact on the nuanced understanding of those forces once they do.

I believe that Facebook can have a dramatic impact on emerging markets, especially with their advertising platform; I know personally who works on measuring that, and I know it is too early to have a proper macroeconomic estimation — but the impact should be very encouraging: there are many places where you cannot grow your business easily.

In the meantime, I would take that argument as: Mark Zuckerberg wants Facebook, Internet.org and internet access in general to lift people out of poverty and into jobs. That means that arguments that argue against his efforts that involve negative effects less than a tenth of “being about to feed their family” will seem quaint to him. Measuring all impacts into orders of magnitude like that can seem a heartless exercice to many, but should not feel foreign to a regular reader of HackerNews.

On the other hand, this also means that efforts that connect internet technology with finding or creating jobs should have MZ’s undying support (modulo a possible ad fee).

What I believe is more interesting are things like: Does Internet favour local commerce or international transactions? (Unclear) Are devices and platform used for business similar to those used for personal transaction? (Apparently, yes.) Will West Africa still be ruled by Mama Benz's, even with widespread adoption the smartphone? (Three forces cannot be stopped in this universe: Death, taxes and Mama Benz's dressing up on Sunday. Samsung better adapt.)

>Citation needed. Like, really.

I'm of two minds about this. This is an excellent piece of writing and is extremely persuasive and accomplishes all of it's intended goals. This is very effective writing and may change someone's opinion from emotional calls. It's very human, easy to understand and people flock to it.

However; we have seen the constant and repeated abuse of using this style of writing. Advertisements are the most prominent and politics the most dystopian. It's also very easy to convince people that certain things are facts when that may be disputed or outright wrong.

So there's a weird question to come out of this: how accurate and cited do we really need our emotional appeals to be? Given the effectiveness of the writing, citations seem completely unnecessary. Given the context (letter to child; although I'm fairly certain it was orignially intended for a broader audience this is what they claim) you would assume it has no need to be entirely factual, but that context is changed now that it's become a public letter. A public piece of writing should ethically cite or have some backing for any statistics they claim (in my opinion). Although overall hacker news' culture would probably say that if you make a decision, it should probably be based on real data.

Personally, I think it's a piece of writing meant for a wide audience which in my opinion means they should cite any claims they make in this case. It's easy to mistake it for something else entirely because of how it's written, which is why it appears to get a pass.

No pressure or anything. Love, Mom and Dad.

As far as I can tell, this is a speech directed at other billionaires, attempting to 1. put them in an idealistic frame of mind and then 2. making the suggestion that the natural outlet for that idealism is philanthropy, while 3. Putting his own money where his mouth is for some peer-pressure.

If that works, then this will singlehandedly be the highest-ROI "evangelism" anyone has ever done. Unlikely, though.

Not to be cynical, but isn't this also just a method to ensure your company will remain for a longer duration? As a decline in facebook stock will indirectly hurt the philanthropic projects which are linked to it through his foundation. I would take his "pledge" more serious if he would invest actual capital (money, resources, ...) in such projects.

"He has informed us that he plans to sell or gift no more than $1 billion of Facebook stock each year for the next three years and that he intends to retain his majority voting position in our stock for the foreseeable future."

http://www.sec.gov/Archives/edgar/data/1326801/0001326801150...

What an amazing donation! But not for the foreseeable future. I don't care how multiplicative his voting shares are. If there is no plans to sell them in the foreseeable future, this is a pledge spread out across a generation, decades, while real problems are affecting us every year. Every year where he just capped himself at 1 billion dollars in donations.

Why are you applauding this?

> right now, we don't always collectively direct our resources at the biggest opportunities and problems your generation will face.

One of the biggest problems facing kids in the west is digital addiction. Society as a whole is still collectively in denial here as adults gain from it, from parents who get some peace while the kids play with the iPad to game developers pushing out endless FarmVille clones attempting to get kids hooked enough to convince their parents to approve some in-app payments.

The problem is already there - just need to look at the amount of Ritalin being subscribed - http://www.theguardian.com/society/2012/may/06/ritalin-adhd-...

It is unfortunate that we cannot accept the kindness and generosity from those who have been blessed with wealth and whom wishes to share it with others. Rather we ridicule them and surmise that they have some hidden agenda behind their desire to share.

This is very admirable. Hats off to Mark Zuckerberg. Very well done!

This is amazing. Money doesn't make us live longer, but does $45 billion help bring the future sooner? I bet it does. It will widen our horizons on what's possible. Everyone on earth will benefit from it.

I have had some problems with the way his company operates sometimes but I can't find a single thing he said I don't emphatically agree with here. Hat tip, Mark Z.

I find that I don't agree with the whole thing. It just seems like a PR stunt to me :( Why the fuck are you posting a letter to your daughter across the globe? Why do you have a letter at all, can you just say it to her sometime when she is actually able to understand. I guess for him completely different rules apply, but my wife and I don't even post any pictures of our daughter online nor are we sharing anything about her. She should be able to decide herself, what she wants to put there, when she is able to…

Dear Max, you are filthy rich. I accidentally created a very successful social network. People mostly use it to post cat pics, drowned babies, whine about everything and the best possible selfies they can take, or you know, post stuff that is addictive to humans. We then sell ads and well, make tons of cash. I say accidentally created because there where already social nets out there but mine was just out at the right time and had the right funding and coaching we needed. Well, honestly, I also had to screw a couple of guys to get here. Anyway, Maxy, all this is ancient and boring stuff. The deal is that since I have tons of cash and success people think I am smart, I think am smart too, so I ought to know a thing or two about how to solve real world problems. I mean it can't be that hard: it is just a matter of developing tech. Billy is throwing 2B to energy research, I can do just the same, see daddy will be a hero too! Anyway dear, this posting personal stuff on Facebook fever just got me and I love you and it is so cool Shakira just likes this post. Also, the post generated a billion views, we sold them ads at premium: your first day on Earth Maxy and you are one million dollars richer! Ok, thats it. Love. Dad.

Many wealthy citizens have only used their wealth to enrich themselves and their families. It is nice to see someone that is focused on making the world a better place.

I'm so glad I'm not on Facebook.

Okay yeah there might be a lot of flaws or criticisms about this, but at the end of the day, this is a net win for society. Go Mark and Priscilla!

Alternative proposal: Use that money to turn Facebook into a self-sustaining non profit that solely cares about maximizing its users experience and stop breaching privacy so that data can be sold.

Perhaps that's not as fancy as investments in health, education or the environment but at least it seems very doable and could solve one problem (excellent means for human communication) for good.

Thanx Mark. Now that your CIA financed endeavour became a money making machine, you find it is about time to contribute some sort of "philanthropy" to the world. It is no wonder the millions of serfs don't waste any time to congratulate you on this great action of yours. Please, a word from the world to American based institutions: Please, stop saving the world. Really, look at what your government is doing to Syria, etc supporting terrorists through CIA controlled channels. And for God's sake! Read the reports from World Bank before posting this "i will save the world" letter: Poverty and inequality have risen during the last years, not decreased!

When I read this stuff (as in the letter) I just think one thing:

You guys are so full of yourselves.

These opinions really are going to have an influence on the entire industry.

Interesting how internet connectivity is mentioned without a reference to internet.org after that got a lot of net-neutrality heat. Regardless, great to see so much money being invested in so many great causes.

Reading some of the comments make me sad. This has happened so often lately..

A great read indeed, plus a nice picture. I'm going to print out this and read along with my next generation.

I'm thinking about starting to use facebook again, left it a few years ago.

Seems that Zuck succeeded. So now all he has to do, to gain the old users who didn't agree with Facebook policies, to post cute family notes.

It's a trap.

Disappointed once again in the immediate cynicism here but by now I should know not to be surprised by it in any community where nothing is sacred.

What should be considered sacred?

I think a bad sentiment here is mostly generated not about what Mark says on his post, but what he does otherwise. We've seen a fair share of controversy regarding facebook, privacy practices etc, we've seen a fair share of controversy regarding internet.org.

I for one find it all skeptical - I don't see how his ideas would align with facebook goals as a company

I would have loved having parents writing such beautiful letter to me for my birth. It’s an extraordinary beautiful welcoming.

> Your generation will set goals for what you want to become -- like an engineer, health worker, writer or community leader.

Realistically, we can't all avoid being garbage collectors or street sweepers, can we? Or will automation really replace all unsavoury jobs with high-paying professions?

Oh lovely. This is the same man who called his users dumb fucks in the infancy of his company. Now he's worried about future generations and pushes his corporate agenda innocently using his newborn. Facebook is like a goddamn cult that acts like God's gift to humanity.

Can we truly empower everyone -- women, children, underrepresented minorities, immigrants and the unconnected?

Yes you can, Mark: Stop requiring people to use real names. And stop caving in requests from authoritarian governments that want to do their dirty work for them.

this melodramatic bs

I'm so excited about the trickle-down economics that I can hardly curb my enthusiasm

Well, I'll say that I appreciate the effort on Zuck's part, but somehow I still can't make myself like the guy :\

Oh well, I guess I don't have to like him to appreciate that kind of cash going into worthy causes.

Wow, addressing climate change and unsustainable resource consumption are absent from the list and "protecting the environment" is once mentioned in passing.

I think this letter and http://givingpledge.org/ are good.

But we all give away wealth when we die. To someone or another.

The pledge is not necessarily one of generosity other than looking past one's family. Which is something, but less impressive along the generosity dimension than giving away more earlier (while that money has a very real opportunity cost to you).

That said, if I had billions of dollars, I'd be investing in my own research and not giving it away. But that's just me.

His daughter is clearly not the intended audience of this post. In fact, the fact he is having a kid has nothing to do with this post.

https://imgflip.com/i/v2fo1

He just put his baby into the public eye; now it's paparazzi bait like some Prince's kid in England

Well I hope he learned something from the boondoggle his grant to Newark schools turned out to be.

Kayne and Kim named their son, North Mark and Priscilla named his daughter MAX.

This is really cool. I kind of missed notes in Facebook. How do you create one?

The "Notes" app in the sidebar.

As I said in previous post --- if I were writing a letter to my son, it would be a private affair and not posting it worldwide on FB.

Also, there is a huge difference between pledging to donate during our lifetime and "donating". Anyone can make that pledge and then decide a comfortable schedule.

In the end, the only thing anyone has to give is their time.

How many billions of hours are spent daily on Facebook? His fortune is won on the backs of those poor fools.

It ain't gonna happen, but shutting down Facebook now would be a greater philanthropic act. (Yea and obviously OtherFacebook would come online.)

so you equate to internet monolopy as impactful as curing diseases?? So the dude is doing something else you find objectionable, but it doesn't come close to good stuff he is trying to accomplish.

This would have been a lot more genuine if he had just wrote the letter - tucked it away - and then let his actions do the talking.

When a choice is between doing the right thing loudly, and doing the right thing quietly, the amount of noise you make is the inverse of the size of your dick.

~_^

Thank you Mark.

Time to short Facebook stock.

Given stock is the best way to motivate executives, when the guy on top is giving all of it away you know where the stock price is going.

Are you actually shorting their stock, or just blustering? You sound very confident.

I like Zuck. He seems to have picked the right role model to follow (Bill Gates). I just hope he cashes out before a credible competitor takes over.

Actions speak louder than words.

I'm dismayed by the lack of focus on the environment here. Humans as a species are doing just fine. Health gains just marginally improve that. We need to focus on finding balance with nature that doesn't involve mass extinctions and subjugation.

I suspect he looked at his daughter and saw the faces of billions. Not to say you're incorrect.

It is a lot of promises that are hard to keep.

They think they can just throw money at a problem and it will eventually go away given enough time.

They think people in communities will give up their bigotry against certain groups without a fight. They think everyone in the future will adopt the same worldview that they have. They think that they can solve poverty by giving everyone an Internet connection on the planet and most people who are poor are illiterate and can't read and write.

Like I said a lot of promises.

Some problems can't be solved with money, it takes innovation, it takes a new way of thinking, it takes doing things in a way nobody thought of yet.

Students who are poor and have family problems have emotional and psychological problems that hinder their learning. No matter how much money you spend on their school, as Gates has learned, their test scores don't go up. https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/answer-sheet/wp/2014/06/...

This effort by the Gates Foundation proves that building better schools does not give the students a better education.

You see they made the mistake of throwing money at a problem in order to solve it. Five years later and a disappointment in what they had created.

Parents of the students get by with low paying jobs, because there is a wealth inequality in our nation. It leads to poverty, family issues, emotional and psychological problems none of which building new schools could address. All of which factor into having a hard time learning and getting better test scores.

Why is there a wealth inequality and people have to settle for low paying jobs?

Technology has automated most of the good paying jobs so they can be done with computers for free. Microsoft and Facebook for example earn money from technology that does work for others for free and earns money. Websites can operate 24/7 and replace people who take phone calls or work at a desk to fill out forms.

Also we used to have factory jobs until we shipped those jobs to China because the labor cost less over there.

Getting a good education is only possible if you have a good enough credit rating to get a student loan, if your family is poor and struggles and misses paying bills, you will have a bad credit rating and not be able to get a student loan for college. Not getting good enough grades will lead to a lack of scholarships and other things.

People who can't get a college education face a life of hardship working low paying jobs just to get by. Not everyone can become a computer programmer after being a dropout, and then join a startup. Some have to work retail jobs in the service industry and 2 or 3 of those jobs. Not having time to raise their children properly. Not able to help with homework because they work overtime to get enough money to pay the bills.

These factors have not been addressed in the future plans for fixing our education system.

Sure you can learn a lot on the Internet and even use it to earn money, but most people just use it for entertainment value and communication. So there are distractions to learning on the Internet. But what happens when the freelance market suddenly gets 3 billion more lower wage contractors in it all competing for the limited amount of contracts?

I wish I knew how to solve these problems, but I learned from experience that you can't just throw money at them and solve them.

You need the government to help out with some sort of basic income program to lift people out of poverty as good paying jobs are scarce because of automation or AI advances. I expect that to get worse in the future.

You need better mental health clinics to address the emotional and psychological problems associated with poverty for the students to be able to learn better. You need to find money for tutors to help them with homework when their parents cannot. You need to teach poor students stress management and test anxiety management so that they can o better in tests and learn better study habits and score higher.

I've found at least with my son, that the Internet is a distraction for him. Time he could have spent studying for tests, he instead watches Youtube videos and plays video games. I've tried to help him as best as I can, but now he is failing chemistry as a junior in high school but passing his other classes because they are not as hard.

We are one of those poor families because I ended up on disability in 2003 and don't earn as much as I used to as a programmer. There is only so much I can help my son, he makes decisions for himself, but I cannot force him to study more or do better on his tests. I feel as if I didn't go on disability we'd be better off and I'd be able to hire a chemistry tutor for him to get his grades up. I forgot as I took chemistry in 1985, and it was so long ago. It is harder to raise a child than you think, esp if you are on a limited income. The school he goes to is a good one with good teachers and modern equipment and they use iPads for ebooks and learning, but it is not enough and still students struggle with their classes.

No matter what you do there will still be problems as no system is perfect, and students will still get low mtest grades no matter how good a personalized system you develop. The Dewey System was developed for personalized learning and it failed. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_Dewey

Most of what they are trying to do has already been tried and failed. It is like trying to go against human nature and change the way human beings behave so they can learn better. But human beings cannot be reprogrammed like robots, and almost all of these theories go with the case that human beings can be reprogrammed like robots to create a better community for better learning.

It is like trying to solve a social problem using technology thinking, you need to think in terms of society and the way people work, which is not the same way technology works. You need to lead social reforms in communities in a way that makes sense to everybody and not just people on a certain political spectrum that leaves out all others. You will face a resistance to change, as many won't want to change. People will come up with conspiracy theories over the changes, etc.

It is a good start to build a different system of education and try to make new communities for education for everyone, but money alone won't solve it, you need the cooperation of everyone in the community to change the way their human nature works and give up on the old ways of doing things. Some won't want to give up on the old ways.

Every rich guy thinks he knows what's good for the world. And why announce this together with the birth? Should the world celebrate this miraculous event that also led to our salvation?

Patrick Bateman -- World problems speech

https://youtu.be/dZlK_ThjMk4

> Today your mother and I are committing to spend our lives doing our small part to help solve these challenges. I will continue to serve as Facebook's CEO for many, many years to come, but these issues are too important to wait until you or we are older to begin this work. By starting at a young age, we hope to see compounding benefits throughout our lives.

In other words, I'm getting in on this philanthropy thing at a much younger age than Bill Gates.

When things like this pop up, as well intention-ed as they may be, I just think to myself, if this were just a regular guy and not famous, would anyone give a shit?

https://www.facebook.com/chanzuckerberginitiative/

"Please log in to continue."

Seriously? One might think they would prioritize raising awareness over increasing Facebook userbase.

It works if you disable XHR on the page (yes, really).

This sounds like a bug. How do you repro this? I started on the note when logged out and clicking "Chan Zuckerberg Initiative" brought me to that page with no dialogs about logging in.

Expensive shot at Bezos and his distate of charity. Well played, Zuck.

How is this at all related to Bezos?

Adorable baby girl, welcome to the world.

PS: stress and toxicity quite often are the real causes whereby the few diseases Mark mentioned is a consequence.

Wow, that's a lot of pro-facebook comments for a "Hacker news" site. Shouldn't you people be browsing reddit or better yet, facebook?

Reply on news.ycombinator.com