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Comment by grandalf | Hacker News Reader

I have a lot more respect for someone like Elon Musk who invests his money back into new ideas than someone who simply gives most of it away to charity.

Malaria, low literacy rates, etc., are the byproducts of failed political systems and corruption.

Musk's impact on electric vehicle technology will drain a great deal of despotism from the middle east as dependence on oil wanes, far more effectively than any philanthropic contribution he might have made would have.

There are a number of technologies that can drastically change the dynamic between the elites (officials) and everyone else worldwide. Our most gifted thinkers and entrepreneurs should be inventing the next printing press or cotton gin, not attending charity functions.

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Bill Gates is also applying his money where he thinks it will have the most impact - their foundation often invests in new technologies and startups whose products will have the greatest impact per dollar. If Gates and Musk are both working to maximize impact their difference is who they focus on. Gates primarily focuses on the most impoverished on the planet, while Musk focuses on the first world (and indirectly the most impoverished due to the effects on climate change).

Saying that the Gates Foundation does not reinvest into new ideas that maximize impact does a great disservice to what is one of most effective and effectiveness-oriented philanthropic organizations on the planet.

Impact in terms of what? Alleviating suffering or helping to fix the institutions whose brokenness has let the problems fester?

Alleviating suffering over the long term, which includes fixing institutions when it's appropriate.

Those two things feed into each other. Basic health increases the ability of a populace to fix institutions.

You act like "fixing" the political institutions in a foreign country is some trivial thing, as if people haven't been trying and failing to make interventions like that for a hundred years.

I think the hypothesis of: make healthcare, credit, etc widely available, and the political landscape will change much more probable than the counter hypothesis: fix the political landscape through some intervention and healthcare, credit, etc will follow.

Gates doesn't simply give his money to charity.

I would argue that in terms of doing good, investing money in concrete and well founded technology causes a larger impact. We can already eradicate diseases, we can already end world hunger. We can make so many miracles come true, what good is it to create further miracles if only the very few ever get to have them?

> Our most gifted thinkers and entrepreneurs should be inventing the next printing press or cotton gin, not attending charity functions.

You cannot expect an entrepreneur who made billions in one industry to be a genius in some other industry. (Musk is an exception)

You cannot just transfer your passion from one thing to another to invent the next big thing.

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