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Comment by prezjordan | Hacker News Reader

> 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.

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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.

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.

I think Zuck is still power hungry, he's just more veiled about it. Everyone with enough power (through money) wants to shape the world in their specific ideal.

I'd go one better:

"Everyone ... wants to shape the world in their specific ideal."

Most people give up on this idea in their mid-20s though or never really believe that they can.

That's because most people actually can't.

If we define "power-hungry" so broadly that it encompasses merely wanting to make the world a better place, I'm not sure what use the term is anymore.

The problem is "better" is subjective, and its probably preferred that the majority of people determine what better is instead of the small minority of people with billions of dollars.

I like the future Bill Gates and Elon Musk want to bring. I do not like the future the Koch Brother's envision.

But would you be in the majority with that? :)

Yes, I'm part of the 7.3 billion people who are not billionaires.

Sorry I was referring to the second part of your comment.

Even if you happen to be in majority with your progressive views, in this instance, there is no guarantee for that generally, especially if we consider the entire global populace.. is what I was trying to point out.

I'd argue 7 billion people can find common ground on what you'd consider "quality of life" for everyone.

That seems counterfactual to me, but that's just my opinion.

First you'll get the one, then the other. Elon Musk and Gates are hardcore egotists. Charles Koch was just trying to live up to his father's expectations. He's stated that his guiding principle is economic consumer surplus.

I won't excuse the whole "killer instinct" thing they all have in common. It's just how humans sometimes work.

Don't get me wrong - Koch et al is a weird company but there's room for that, too. W.R.T energy I hope you're right but it moves slowly.

I sincerely doubt Zucker wants to make the world a better place, else why would he be doing the opposite while making billions out of it ?

Usually a billionaire giving his fortune away does it out of vanity, out of guilt, for the tax breaks, out of conviction that their success in business makes them equally expert in solving the world’s problems or last but not least as “legacy” as explained by John Caudwell: http://www.theguardian.com/society/2012/mar/07/new-philanthr...

I sincerely doubt he thinks he has been doing the opposite.

What is so awful about Facebook? I mean it's hardly an original idea, and if Facebook never existed, I'm sure that Myspace or Friendster or some hereto unknown company would have taken its place.

It's like hating Ford because they make cars, while ignoring all other automobile companies.

Yur analogy makes more sense if Ford make cars that contain cameras and microphones and they monitor everything you say and do and where you go and they send all that information back to the mothership.

And they want to build cars for all poor people, but those cars can only travel to certain destinations on certain roads, but Ford making and providing these cars means other organisations who sell bicycles or mopeds or small cars (which provide a lot more freedom) are hampered.

Agreed. The fact that they're having a big press release about all the awesome stuff they're going to be doing before they've done any of it, heck before they're even ready to say what they're actually going to be doing, is telling. As is naming their initiative after their daughter.

It's nice when vanity projects end up helping the masses (and we'll have to wait and see how successful it is at that). However, we shouldn't act like this very public display of wealth (again, before anything is even done) has motives that are so different from, say, giant statues of oneself or giant mausoleums.

How is any of that stuff bad, though? Seems like a good trade. You put $45B into improving the world, we'll sing your praises.

What's the difference between it being all done in vanity and it being all done in goodwill? It's literally the same thing to the rest of the world, the only difference is some internal chemical state in his brain.

Except he still didn't do a thing besides putting out a press-release. Do you think his real intentions will not shape the way he acts in the future? How can you say it is a good trade when no trade happened yet?

You think he's going to just put a press release out and not actually do it?

I still remember what Internet.org was supposed to be and what it turned out to be. The man is an egocentric liar.

We've become too cynical and rent-seek-ey. Many people realize that a large wad of money was Nature's way of telling them to keep doing what they're doing.

Instead, it has to be "charity" now. Very few rich people ever did charity well.

I see more and more that hubris is apparently a deprecated concept.

although in less power-hungry ways

Yes, well that's 100% the distinction.

The OP seems to think that the obvious choice is for money to "go to something meaningful" without specifying what "meaningful" actually is. Within this context, that would seem to mean the "meaningful" thing is "greater -good" charity. My point is that more frequently, this type of money go toward direct influence of power like setting up Super PACs, hosting power networks like Sun Valley Conference, establishing think tanks, grants to universities for certain research etc...

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

>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.

The Koch brothers have a combined $100BN and they still haven't gotten the influence that they want. So yes, $45B is a shitload, but practically once you spread it out to where you need it to be to make the world look like you want it to, it still only makes a dent.

The Koch brothers are the most influential political backers in the country and they spend somewhere in the neighborhood of $200M per election cycle. They are the closest someone has come to trying to buy an election, but even their donations are still only rounding errors in comparison to their overall fortune. Politics is a relatively cheap game for someone with tens of billions of dollars.

It is a cheap game for someone with millions of dollars even. ROI on these sort of political contributions can be absolutely insane. Apparently corporations on average receive ~$760 for every $1 spent influencing politics. Depending on the industry, ROI is anywhere from 5,000 to 77,000 percent.

http://www.zerohedge.com/news/2015-03-16/words-greatest-inve...

Zerohedge is... rarely aligned with reality. Do you have a reliable source?

> Depending on the industry, ROI is anywhere from 5,000 to 77,000 percent.

That is clearly not true. If that sort of ROI existed in anywhere near the general case, a lot more people and companies would spend a lot more money on it, and they don't. Perhaps there exists lobbying opportunities with these kinds of ROIs, but they are limited, and there definitely isn't a 5,000% floor on it.

https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/the-fix/wp/2015/05/04/am...

I think the problem with the zerohedge article (and the report it summarises) is that, first, they seem to assume that all corporate welfare benefits the businesses doing the lobbying locally (not to businesses in general, which is probably more the case -- Ford lobbying against foreign competition will help Chevrolet equally, regardless of how much either firm spends on lobbying), and second, that corporate welfare only exists because of lobbying: Politicians still need to get elected, and creating industry, jobs and high-profile ribbon-cutting opportunities in their districts (regardless of whether businesses lobby them for it or not) is likely to remain a popular tactic in the absence of lobbying.

I'm not sure if you meant it that way, but for the record: politicians don't create jobs - entrepreneurs do.

The best thing politicians can do for the common good, is to get the hell out of the way and let productive people be productive.

I agree fully with you -- I was trying to frame the comment inside the political calculus, in which actors can certainly redirect public funds in such away that it appears new jobs are created in their districts, even if it's often zero or negative sum for the economy at large.

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.

These people you're describing are no different than the old aristocracy. Aristocrats have always attempted to live a comfortable, quiet life of idle pleasures. A Rockefeller or Ford figure that works really hard is the exception--and they are a very American invention who were raised with the protestant work ethic.

Hate to break it to you but what you described about the "new" millionaires is the majority of all multimillionaires, regardless of generation.

See: The Millionaire next door

I accidentally downvoted you due to fat finger error, sorry.

Well I'm crushed, but hopefully I can get over it ;)

I hope most people understood this. In fact bulk of the worlds rich is invisible, they become rich through mundane savings and investment methods everybody else avoids.

World is a strange place. Very few millionaires win and lose spectacularly. Nearly all of rich people out there are silent and invisible.

you're idolizing new rich a bit too much. yes there are people like you describe, but that's nothing new with this generation. then there is remaining majority, which is a mix of it all, including the worst "offenders".

just because via social media you see more of the "new rich", which have desire to make public statements and be as visible as possible, doesn't mean that's all there is.

> Today's centi-millionairs wants to stay anonymous, don't want to have butlers

Peter Thiel, the godfather of "today's centi-millionaires", has a butler.

— At least he had one in 2007:

http://fortune.com/2007/11/13/paypal-mafia/

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

Yeah but it's more than enough to bribe the hell out of a lot of senators.

It's more than the annual budgets of about 2/3rds of the world's countries, including places like Croatia, or the Philippines. I'd call that politically significant.

ISRO spent a mere $73 million to go to mars. Big and small are perspectives between what one can do and what one can't.

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.

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.

> 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.

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.

honest question - how did that went? I mean donation & public foundation part

He died before it happened.

In typical Jobsian fashion. He talked a good game, but decided to do the opposite. Put his wealth into a living trust to shield it from taxes and publicity and left it to benefit his wife and children.

>>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.

John D. Rockefeller started the University of Chicago. Much of his time had to be spent convincing his trustees that they had to spend time soliciting funds from other donors than him. They tended to get slothful and spendthrift otherwise.

Teaching isn't presently scalable. You can look to the failures of our public school system for evidence. One might be tempted to look to other countries for systems that work better, but there has to be a political path forward for implementing those systems here.

One good teacher can only teach so many. That good teacher may not be good at teaching teachers. Teaching is not warfare, where good soldiers can teach other people to teach soldiers.

Teachers that are good at teaching teachers can only teach so many teachers. Any attempt to scale a working method will eventually run out of talent. And if you don't stop when you run out of talent, then the quality of your teaching will inevitably go down. Universities can only get so big.

Billionaires who want to put their wealth towards education are pretty limited in their options.

> 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.

My problem is him collecting data on people who aren't even using the service. They collect data on any site with a Facebook button. I don't even use the service and he has my data. I'm not getting any value from his product, so what right does he have to my data?

well, I don't think there are many FB users who would like that to be done to them either, I know I am not.

FB might not be some evil company, but they are definitely not nice guys.

"Dude they just give me their info. Yeah... Dumb suckers!"

Okay perhaps he was young and naive. But is Facebook naive now in Belgium where they want to track people outside of facebook "for their own safety"?

This is EVIL!!

...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.

> 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.

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.

He's not selling the shares. He said they "will give 99% of our Facebook shares." If he sold appreciated stock and donated the proceeds, he'd still have to pay tax on the capital gains, and could only deduct the amount of the actual donation, which would be smaller after tax.

By donating stock directly, he still gets to deduct the full value of the stock without paying any tax, and the charity (or more likely, private foundation) gets to keep the full value without paying any tax. And it could take as long as it wanted to liquidate the stock and get the best price.

> the charity (or more likely, private foundation) gets to keep the full value without paying any tax. And it could take as long as it wanted to liquidate the stock and get the best price.

Yes, and the foundation will likely not liquidate the stock, but use the proceeds of some kind of swap contract.

The Initiative is an LLC and not a public charity or private foundation, so as not to limit the activities they can take part in. This will all be taxed at some point (though the Initiative may further grant shares to public charities).

Yeah, I missed this the first time around. But you are not quite correct. An LLC is a pass-through entity. No doubt it will be treated as a disregarded entity for federal tax purposes. So, gifting shares to an LLC is not a taxable event. If the LLC sells shares for a non-charitable purpose (e.g. lobbying, or funding commercial ventures), then sure, that will be taxable. But if it in turn donates shares to either a private foundation or another charity, in that case, it will not be taxable, and will in fact be deductible for the Zucks.

Basically, if the Zucks own the LLC, then until funds actually leave the LLC they really haven't made a donation at all.

However, if the Initiative ever liquidates shares, regardless of what it does with them, they'll owe cap gains just M+P would have.

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.

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.

In the US you can change your name to anything. The guy can change just as the girl can but it is very uncommon for the guy to change his last name.

Honestly, why are you disappointed?

"Chan is a diminutive suffix; it expresses that the speaker finds a person endearing. Thus, using chan with a superior's name would be condescending and rude. In general, chan is used for babies, young children, and teenage girls. It may also be used towards cute animals, lovers, and close friends. "

It's otaku humor.

In Japanese ... his wife is ethnically Chinese.

Doesn't matter in the context of the joke. Has nothing to do with his wife, only 'chan'.

It's possible to do anything with your band. I'm disappointed he didn't choose Suckitwinkelvoss.

Yeah. I have an extended family member who took both names and a friend who opted to just take on his wife's maiden name and dropped his. Another set of friends came up with a last name that was new to them both.

The hyphenating of both names is an interesting concept, but would in all practicality be a difficult thing to pass on after a few generations if it were the standard. Though maybe I'm not thinking thorough it properly.

Neither of them changed their names.

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

Where isn't it possible?

In Switzerland for example. Either both use the same name or they keep the one they already had.

According to https://www.ch.ch/en/married-name/

> Surnames combined with a hyphen, such as Meier-Müller, are still allowed. Combined surnames are not official registered names, but may be used in everyday situations and recorded in your passport and identity card.

So, it's not "official" but you can use it everywhere including on your official documents.

Everybody's disappointed with Mark one way or another, it seems.

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

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

Thanks for the correction.

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 did miss the Medicare Tax part yes, however he takes a $1 salary which would put his regular tax bracket at 10% and long term capital gains would be 0% to start and work his way up to 15%. As long as he doesn't cash out $400k a year he never pays that 20%, and he shouldn't need to ever. You also need to subtract IPO price from current price. Which is about going to drop those estimates about 35%. It still a big chunk of change, no doubt, but I have no problem with getting around it by going to charities. Especially when he already paid ~$2Billion in taxes for the stock at IPO time. The top 400 tax payers only payed $16Billion in 2009 so, he has paid a huge amount.

It would be shocking if he doesn't have alternate income from investments that would knock him up to the top tax bracket. Even moderate dividends on $25m add up to putting you in the top bracket. I have to imagine he has more than $25m in non-Facebook assets.

Regardless, he's saving a fortune in tax by donating money to his own foundation. It could turn out to be awesome like the Gates Foundation, but it could also be a decades long experiment in tossing money down the drain as he works on pet projects. Hopefully the former!

"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".

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.

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

Is _top_ university an important distinction in this context?

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

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.

Actually, I’d say it’s the opposite.

"Top" "Elite" universities are usually optimized for their metric – which is the Shanghai index, which is based on number of publications in english-language magazines.

In countries outside of the Anglosphere often research at universities can go a lot slower, as they have no chance in the Shanghai index anyway.

The Fraunhofer institute has, in cooperation with Sony, VW and Mercedes, worked on self driving cars since 2002. Sometimes you just have to throw a few million euro and a few decades onto a project to get some results.

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.

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/

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.

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.

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

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

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

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.

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.

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.

Mr. Zuckerberg probably has other assets ;)

So much for the three comma club.

Assuming Facebook maintains it's valuation.

Empires grow and empires crumble.

Chances are at least 1% of their wealth will be put into something stable. Index funds, bonds, treasuries. Hell, cash'd be fine.

Indeed. Bill Gates owns a railroad in Wisconsin, for example.

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.

Zuck takes only $1 as salary btw from facebook.

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.

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

>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.

"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...

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.

No, they did the work, he earned the money.

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.

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

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?

Anecdotal? Perception bias? Okay, let's go by hard data. 1.4 Billion active users. Billion of advertising dollar flowing through the platform because users are engaged. How many billions of family pictures shared and enjoyed? You think people are suffering through the experience and being forced to use facebook? Think again. And that stubborn family member with the tin foil hat (edge case), he can surely pick up the phone and give me a call.

yes one's own experience is always anecdotal and due to perception bias we believe our personal experience to be significant. You're not special, we pretty much all do this.

Please define active user as it could mean anything, then again don't, as number of used (which is more appropriate than users for facebook) and advertising dollars are hardly valid metrics for bringing people together and positive life changing. Turns out you are right actually, some are suffering through the experience and feel they are forced to use facebook[1][2][2], note that they are mostly in the same demographic group which happen to be the next generations of adults.

This tin foil hat edge case is a boat that has sailed a while ago, facebook is a major privacy problem[3][4][5] and as we know privacy is the foundation for liberty and freedoms. But Facebook is also censorship[6][7] and manufacturing public opinion[8].

Not only that, but contrary to your personal experience facebook usually makes people miserable and feel bad about themselves[9][10][11][12] and other personal experience point to it being bad and getting worse at giving you the meaningful posts[13].

If you care about your loved ones and family you should help them get away from facebook[14][15], not trap them in by putting all you interactions with them there.

[1]: https://medium.com/backchannel/a-teenagers-view-on-social-me...

[2]: http://www.slate.com/blogs/xx_factor/2013/05/22/teenagers_ha...

[2]: http://mashable.com/2013/08/11/teens-facebook/

[3]: http://www.techrepublic.com/blog/it-security/why-you-should-...

[4]: http://www.dailykos.com/story/2013/06/23/1218189/-HBGary-Pal...

[5]: http://techcrunch.com/2015/06/06/the-online-privacy-lie-is-u...

[6]: https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/the-intersect/wp/2015/01...

[7]: https://www.aclu.org/blog/naked-statue-reveals-one-thing-fac...

[8]: https://medium.com/message/engineering-the-public-289c913902...

[9]: http://www.npr.org/2012/10/18/163098594/in-constant-digital-...

[10]: http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0747563214...

http://www.theguardian.com/technology/2012/mar/17/facebook-d...

[11]: http://qz.com/546799/a-study-forced-people-to-quit-facebook-...

[12]: http://www.economist.com/news/science-and-technology/2158359...

https://hbr.org/2011/12/facebook-is-making-us-miserabl

[13]: https://www.refheap.com/ee96f4d90abd10b643cee0448

[14]: http://saintsal.com/facebook/

[15]: http://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/andrewbrown/2010/ma...

We both agree that individual experience is anecdotal. That is why I tried the way of stats. But you are now questioning the number of users on fb. That boat has sailed few yrs back.

A.We can all confidently agree that a large number of users use fb.

B. Most of what you have linked is opinion pieces. The first one I clicked had private chat transcripts from Zuckerberg when he was a kid and fb was nothing like what it is today.

C. Some studies are referenced which show people are miserable using social networks. Similar results have been "derived" for almost anything: news, video games, television, cell phones etc. I recommend taking it with a pinch of salt.

D. You say that advertising dollars mean nothing. Exactly the opposite is true. Try getting coke, kraft, apple and other brands to associate themselves with something that makes miserable.

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