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Comment by woodruffw | Hacker News Reader

I didn't downvote this (and don't generally do so), but here's a line of reasoning that might explain it: something has to go seriously wrong in the world for the lives of millions of people to be contingent upon the charitable sentiments of one obscenely wealthy man. Put another way: regardless of whether he's doing good, it shouldn't be the case that polio eradication depends on his material wealth.

Celebrating the beneficial outcomes of Bill Gates' charity without reflecting on why he's able to give away billions of dollars without breaking a sweat invites us to ignore the fact that the system that enriched Bill Gates doesn't actually encourage him to do any good (and actually involved him doing quite a lot of harm).

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I have the opposite sentiment. Things have been going extremely right for a single person to be able to go out and destroy issues that literately thousands upon thousands of people are affected by. Since governments of the developed world are mostly democratic no action to fix those issues in other countries is taken. This would have not otherwise been possible.

To be clear: it is good, morally speaking, for Bill Gates to contribute to the effort to eliminate polio. The observation is that Gates' ability to do so (i.e., his profound wealth) is completely unfixed to any good he produces: he could just as easily use his wealth for morally bad ends.

In others words, we're extraordinarily lucky that this particular ultra-wealthy person has decided to do good things with (some) of their money. But grounding moral and humanitarian progress on a steady stream of luck seems shortsighted.

I don't think it's luck. A significant part of the very rich are donating huge amounts to charity. With the giving pledge being the most clear example.

It's most certainly not a fluke that the mega rich are solving problem governments can't or won't.

> It's most certainly not a fluke that the mega rich are solving problem governments can't or won't.

There is no "can't or won't" on a global scale: some countries have, others haven't as a function of their means. The fact that ultra wealthy individuals have better means than entire countries is an indictment of the state of affairs, not praise.

Edit: To elaborate on the above: eradicating polio isn't something that democratic, liberal countries are uniquely good at. Autocratic and despotic governments have also historically been good at it and have aggressively pursued it, because paralyzed citizens just aren't very useful. Countries that don't pursue eradication are historically ones that just lack the means (whether that's money, or infrastructure, or whatever), not ones with specific political structures.

> There is no "can't or won't" on a global scale: some countries have, others haven't as a function of their means.

That is exactly "can't or won't". The USA or China certainly "can" fix these issues in Africa if they want to but they "won't". But the African countries themselves obviously don't have this capability thus they "can't" fix it.

> The fact that ultra wealthy individuals have better means than entire countries is an indictment of the state of affairs, not praise.

Why is this an indictment. This is not self evident at all to me. The opposite is true from my perspective. This story and initiatives like the giving pledge very clearly show me that that the mega rich are doing things no country is doing. And thus these problem would remain unsolved if they would not be here.

Charities like the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation tend to be one of the charities that critics of rich philanthrophy actually exclude. The common argument is that such philanthropic endeavors should not be at the whims of the rich, but should rather be run by the government and the rich should be more greatly taxed by the government to secure those funds.

However, The Gates Foundation tends to fund programs in developing countries where those countries's governments are not capable of funding it themselves.

It helps that the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation has a hyper focus on outcomes and a track record of delivering. It's an example of what is possible to accomplish when philanthropy is done well.

While I can understand and in some sense agree that it's unfortunate our current best solution to tackling some of these problems is for someone with a lot of resources and no bureaucratic entanglements to focus on solving the problem once and for all. I can also recognize that few governments are capable of solving it regardless of political philosophy.

I'm more than happy to celebrate a solution that works today over a hypothetical solution that hasn't been successfully deployed yet. Maybe I'm too pragmatic.

I hear what you're saying, but, who or what organization would else would do it? Individual countries struggle with it because, amongst other reasons, they're not as wealthy or stable as the US and Europe was when they beat (in this case) polio; they struggle to stay afloat, and they have bigger concerns for their people, base necessities like water, food and housing.

The UN? They (to me / personal viewpoint / citation needed) don't seem to have any power, influence, means or goodwill to handle a problem like this. I mean they have never been as silent as they are now, while China and the US have literal concentration camps, Russia is assassinating political opponents and is encroaching on other countries - directly (Ukraine) or indirectly (influencing governments, heavily influencing destabilizing decisions like Trump's election or Brexit), the US is in a civil war and on a crash course towards a fascist dictatorship, currently working towards a sham election, actively undermining postal services so mail voting will not work so that Trump can go "Well shit is fucked, I'll just stay on a bit longer to fix this for you" and declare national martial law so that the army can beat down whoever objects.

AKA don't have the player, hate the game.

Bill gates did indeed do "quite a lot of harm" to many businesses and I have cursed his name many times while wrestling with some Microsoft chicanery.

But that harm was done to competitors, on the business field. The people who became collateral damage could always go and get jobs at some other company. The companies suffered and sometimes died but such is the way of capitalism.

If the upside was that his money gets redistributed to the genuinely poor and needy, who don't have any opportunity to earn for themselves in some cushy IT job, then I'm personally OK with it.

(I forget the specifics, but a piece of ancient code we wrote included a dummy assignment to a variable called BILLGATESBOLLOCKS, to get around some MS devilment).

It’s good that he’s a billionaire that uses his wealth for truly great humanitarian causes. However, he is an exception and most billionaires don’t do this. And they probably shouldn’t have to, if we created a system that doesn’t allow for this kind of obscene enrichment of individuals.

Personally I trust Bill Gates to do more good with his money than the US Government. Eradicating polio in other countries seems very much preferable to bombing them into democracy.

That’s a false dichotomy. The WHO and other International aid organizations were founded and funded at the direction of the USG. The US continues to fund humanitarian causes around the globe. Gates himself has said that Government funding is essential to the causes he’s interested in.

he is an exception and most billionaires don’t do this.

Citation required.

No.

Given the incentives, isn't this a Robin Hood story ? Bill Gates, Robbing the rich to give to the poor ?

But the problem is that we are those rich people. We as tech people have suffered under the microsoft monopoly. Heck, we still suffer, from the horrors of windows 10, to browser incompatibilities, etc.

So we hate Microsoft. So it's hard to love Bill.

Never has the phrase "first-world problems" been so applicable.

How could these Africans ever comprehend the pure dread of being forced to develop for IE6? /s

So what if he did "terrible" stuff 25+ years ago? I am sure no-one in this thread would give 90%+ of their personal wealth to humanitarian work such as these. People just like to complain.

I would

Please, 90% of a 100 billion (that is currently growing faster than he can spend it) is not a fair comparison. Money is worthless once you've bought everything you want.

>Money is worthless once you've bought everything you want.

Not true, for what some people want is power and they continuously dish out money to get it.

It's often used as a vector to create a lot of the world's problems. I'm pretty happy to see it used the other way. A win is a win.

I understand where you are coming from, but he could have some stupid mega-doomsday-underwater-mansion project for the ultra-rich, instead he's doing this, why not appreciate it?

100%, just criticizing parent about how you and I not donating 90% of our wealth is different

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