The future our grandchildren deserve
gatesnotes.com
gatesnotes.com
But talking about inequalities, especially related to political systems and redistribution, we should be taking a closer look at power because this is, always, ultimately, the real thing.
Money can be kind of boring when you have too much of it, power has a longer lasting appeal, and for some people, the appetite is bottomless.
I tend to be wary of power-hungry types.
Also, contrary to wealth, power is a zero sum game, and the size of the pie is directly defined by the demography.
Not sure I agree. Power over other people maybe, but there is also power to affect the nonhuman environment. A modern farmer's power to alter his immediate environment is similar to a feudal lord's.
A corn farmer is ruled by the government, the market, the seed corporations, the fossil fuel industry, the different machinery manufacturers (vendor lock-in), the banks, etc.
The materialistic power ladders are just visible and highly competitive. People who don't want to bother with it usually gravitate towards something more esoteric.
I agree that Power, as a word, is a bit vague.
And to some extent I also agree that power tends to not be self-limiting to other humans, we tend to use it over animals and nature.
This looks a lot like correlation/causation confusion. Inability to understand basic algebra seems like it would be strongly correlated with learning disabilities or significantly below average IQ. Getting more students to squeak by with a barely passing grade won't fix those underlying issues.
Having the ability to pursue a "low paying career" when you're not financially stable is the future our grandchildren deserve, not just a future where some of them get high paying careers.
Who gives a shit about anticompetitive behavior in comparison to saving human lives from a preventable disease? Talk about missing the forest for the trees. It's so miserable to talk about positive actions these days, because it's verboten to focus on that when there are negatives to point out.
What does a "high paying career" have to do with "the future our grandchildren deserve" unless the goal is to produce the future Bill Gates wants. The future our grandchildren deserve is one where they're not stratified by their income such that "high paying careers"(read: tech careers, which just so happen to be what bill gates company profits off an excess of) are the only path for them to be "successful".
The idea that bill gates has done a "insane amount of good" is laughable because the "insane amount of good" he does for some reason never conflicts with the goals of Microsoft. "Missing the forest for the trees" would be ignoring the pattern of his decision and instead saying "he's done an insane amount of good, why are you criticizing him?"
Are the efforts to combat Malaria also somehow part of a corporate agenda?
There's an overwhelming amount of evidence that Gates was a ruthless and all around terrible human being back in the days he was running Microsoft. For example, there's the story of how Gates tried to screw his partner Paul Allen (who working hard to deliver DOS 2.0 while also fighting cancer) out of his stake in the company. [1]
In Paul's own words:
One evening in late December 1982, I heard Bill and Steve speaking heatedly in Bill’s office and paused outside to listen in. It was easy to get the gist of the conversation. They were bemoaning my recent lack of production and discussing how they might dilute my Microsoft equity by issuing options to themselves and other shareholders. It was clear that they’d been thinking about this for some time.
Unable to stand it any longer, I burst in on them and shouted, “This is unbelievable! It shows your true character, once and for all.” I was speaking to both of them, but staring straight at Bill. Caught red-handed, they were struck dumb. Before they could respond, I turned on my heel and left.
Don't take my word on it, read up for yourself. I can't find any stories from the early days of Microsoft that paint Gates in a positive light. His only skill was being insanely opportunistic.
If if this the way Gates treats his friends, I don't want to hear about all of the good he's doing in the world. I don't believe the end justifies the means. There are plenty of people in the world worth looking up to, Gates isn't one of those people.
[1] https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-1371608/Bill-Gates-...
These aren't changes of heart. They're worried about their legacy. How history will view them. The same thing driving people like him to donate and found charities is the same thing that drove him to behave the ways he did with Microsoft.
I mean, good on him that he refocused his energies. But don't fool yourself into thinking he's changed.
https://www.nytimes.com/2019/10/12/business/jeffrey-epstein-...
I get the impression Epstein met a ton of who's-whos, which makes it easy to generate a ton of click-baity "guilt by association" type articles. I.E. "Hey did you know that <controversial public figure> <met/dined/visited/flew> with Epstein?". Guaranteed views, little substance.
Again, not a Gates fan.
[1] https://www.reuters.com/article/uk-factcheck-bill-gates-epst...
Melinda met Epstein once in 2013 and said that she "wanted to see who this man was". [1] Of course her spider-sense was tingling in the presence of a known predator. The meeting cemented things in her mind, and as a woman/wife she didn't understand why Bill continued to meet with him.
Bill of course had no problem with Epstein. Gates regularly put aside any sense of morals/ethics for his own selfish financial interests. There was money to be raised here.
Melinda's main problem with Bill was mainly his character, multiple affairs, etc. Combined with other things (like his decision to do business with Epstein), she eventually came to the conclusion she couldn't trust Bill any longer. Not surprising, given what we know about Bill's ruthlessness and general inability to stand by his word.
I'm all for Bill bashing, but there doesn't appear to be a smoking gun here, just a lot of clickbaity speculation. I'm open to any evidence to the contrary, but all I can find is that Bill met Epstein several times, flew on Epstein's plane once, and he never visited Epstein's private island.
I worry that Gates misdeeds are being diluted with time and good PR, and he'll simply be remembered as the guy that did a ton of good (with some unsubstantiated allegations of misbehavior, which of course all dog all powerful people), and not for the person he actually was.
As they say, history is written by the winners.
[1] https://people.com/human-interest/melinda-french-gates-did-n...
I can forgive the stolen money, even credit him for how he's using his loot [2], but he hasn't lifted a finger to undo the damage he did to software freedom - our freedom. Objectively, that makes him hostile to any non-corporate entity.
[1] Acquired by underhanded means through the mentioned anti-competitive and lock-in practices.
[2] The parts used to fight malaria and such, at least. Not so much the $319 million he sent to his pet media outlets, to give but one example of what is counted as "philanthropy": https://www.theblaze.com/news/bill-gates-bankroll-media-outl...
You can't just put the word "objectively" at the beginning of something and make it objective. He's not hostile to those kids in Africa who don't care about software freedom but are not dead because they didn't get malaria.
I get that we're on HN, but this idea that the good of software is somehow the most important good is just lunacy. I genuinely cannot fathom how anyone can see stopping software patents as more important (or even remotely close to the same level of importance) than stopping malaria.
But it's not just the good of software, because software is eating the world. Software is in your phone, in the tractor that grows your food, in the gene sequencing machine (and gene sequencing software) used to fight disease, in self-driving cars, and in non-self-driving ones too. And you can bet there will be software in automatic weed killing robots.
It's how you access your bank, the news, even government services. It's how you find a date, a taxi, how you order food. It. Is. Everywhere.
On net, if you were at risk of malaria, he is not hostile. But to the average global citizen, and especially their descendants in the future, he is hostile. Because the line between software freedom, and just freedom, is vanishing, and fast.
What about the children?
Holding a candle of bitterness against him so long after he moved on to an admirably altruistic life and actively redistributed his wealth says more about you than about him.
(Spoken as someone who has experienced brutal commercial outcomes thanks to Microsoft shenanigans back in the day).
If that were the case, wouldn't it make sense that his new "altruistic" ideals conflict with the "ruthless competitor" ideals that Microsoft holds?
As the two monks carried on with their journey in silence, the younger monk blurted out, "You took a vow of chastity! You promised never to touch a woman! How could you have just picked her up?"
The older monk replied; ”My brother, I put her down a few miles back. Why do you carry her still?”
If bill gates in the past was "ruthless" and Microsoft was born from that, then it's logically inconsistent to say "bill gates is a good person because of his altruism despite his ruthlessness in the past" since his current altruism does nothing to address that past ruthlessness.
This guy deserves all the bitterness he can get. Here is the reason his wife divorced him. Now go and whorship somebody worthy.
Not a single mention of the exponential increase in chronic disease which is leading us down the path of Idiocracy. Having the main focus on infant/child mortality seems misguided.
Perhaps in your bubble you're surrounded by intelligent and competent people. Out here in the real world the vast majority of people are extremely unintelligent, incompetent, and sickly. And it pervades all professions. There is nearly no such thing as a "professional" anymore; just a bunch of bumbling fools trying to make it through their day and get back home.
Replacing all professions with AI should be a primary goal, so that we no longer have our lives in the hands of incompetent, sickly, poorly functioning people.
Overwhelmingly I see the most intelligent & healthy people not having kids, and the most unintelligent, sickly people making more copies of themselves.
I don't think the Gates foundation is a Ponzi, but I am not entirely convinced that all of this is really what is advertised.
Are there any reliable (external and independent) audits for charities?
Since you're skeptical of effective altruism, Givewell probably isn't going garner a lot of trust for you which is unfortunate because they really do some of the best work in the field for trying to understand the effectiveness of charities (e.g. on a cost/daly basis). Charity Navigator was founded with an idea of kind of providing independent audits but to me it's more like a Yelp for charities and not super useful.
But even then the cases you’re talking about are probably not black and white. So the answer is likely a further “maybe partly, maybe indirectly”.
Then if you take the profits and put it towards doing good in the world, have you done net good? Probably.
It’s complicated.
The rationalization they used to justify this is probably the same pattern they use for everything.
Why should I believe them?
Facts are more reliable than words.
What does that even mean? Be explicit. Right now I'm left to assume you think he's implanting 5G chips in children...
More to the point, barring huge changes in this country, what else can we expect of the ultra rich? What Gates is doing is nearly best case scenario...
The question is this: why should we give this foundation more credits than what SBF was trying to achieve?
How do we know this is not bogus? What about secondary effects? What about the potential induced corruption around those super-rich foundations?
SBF made his money from a Ponzi scheme. Gates made his money selling software.
SBF’s wealth existed only in fantasy land. Gates’ wealth exists on the real stock market.
I could go on. At no point am I claiming that Gates is an angel or that every action taken by Microsoft over the last 40 years is faultless. No, they’re both far from perfect.
But SBF is a con man. And Gates is not.
As for the hand wringing around secondary effects, corruption, etc. Who cares? Rich people are going to be rich. Gates is visibly giving money away, explaining his process, etc. What are the other ultra rich doing? We have even less insight and less reason to think they're pitching in for humanity.
And that's all by design in this country, and I doubt there's a plurality of people who would seek to change it.
I'm not trying to what-about-you. I'm trying to say, let's applaud the good, even if it falls short of perfect.
Look at what the foundation has done and judge them on that. You seem to be looking for a reason to judge them based on nothing other than your own suspicion.
The most (unfounded) ulterior motive that I can imagine is that they want to help poor countries prosper so that they grow the pot and keep our markets going up. That benefits everyone though so it's hard to knock it.
What's the point of asking a bunch of hypotheticals without presenting either evidence or an argument of some sort?
The whole idea of charities is that were letting private entities control the "altruism dollars" in society, the only reason to do this is to prevent the public from deciding the course of the funds and to add a layer of obscurity to make it harder for the public to see where the funds are going.
To the people responding to you basically saying "charities are good, what do you mean?", why is it that we have to donate money to the gates foundation to provide foreign aid, isn't that one of the things we expect our government to do and pay taxes towards?
Sorta depends what you think is advertised. AFAICT what's advertised is that Bill Gates gives away his money to create the kind of world and society Bill Gates wants to live in. I don't really see why I should want to live according to Bill Gates' ideas or preferences, so I'm critical on that ground -- but that doesn't make it a scam.
Maybe that’s a better approach. Dynasties can do good, especially when people are more critical of them, and willing to hold them to account.
Isn't it a bit odd to present a chart that shows buildings to be the least-important component of the problem, and then go on to talk about only that small component? Especially saying "Buildings are a surprisingly large source of emissions" when the graphic just above that sentence shows that buildings are not.
"Surprisingly large" does not imply it's the largest.
Ultrasound technology: Microsoft has a "digital health" department that would benefit similarly from more graduates in the field.
Construction technology: Microsoft has existing partnerships in construction technology, and would similarly benefit from an increased number of graduates in the field driving down wages.
Why are these things that benefit Microsoft the "future our grandchildren deserve"? It seems to be a pretty biased view of the future.
Get people in rich countries to give up cheap disposable stuff and give up energy consuming entertainment (international travel, etc) and get them to live frugally, obviously including the superwealthy.
Don’t celebrate becoming rich. Don’t celebrate consumerism. Put down tiktok, put down instagram. Practice secular (or religious) asceticism and be comfortable with that.
Oh, wait, people don't want to actually do what will work.
Between gains in efficiency, renewables, etc the "need for restraint" has a ton of legroom if the population simply does not grow. The rise in emissions from the last couple of decades is largely owing to growing demand from China and other countries with an emerging middle class. Vaclav Smil makes this clear in a few of his books (e.g. How The World Really Works), you don't need to rely on conjecture if you just look at the numbers. Since it would be inhumane to demand that the 3rd world not make use of fossil fuels to improve their quality of life (including for instance ammonia for fertilizer), we can expect demand to continue growing.
There's no reason to believe that, assuming a stable population, we would be relegated to conditions of asceticism in order to keep the planet habitable.
You may be onto something. It is fine to pay lip service to this ideal in an abstract, but as Covid pandemic has shown, politicians will drop the facade of masks at the drop of a hat if they are personally inconvenienced ( CA comes to mind, but it is not an isolated incident ).
At the end of the day, I want the rules to be applied equally, but they are not ( and likely never will be ).
Come to think of it, and it is going to sound truly awful, why do we devote so much energy to other countries instead of focusing on what is happening in US? Wouldn't it be a time better spent to make US ( the land I and Gates live in ) a better place?
<< Don’t celebrate consumerism.
I am not sure you appreciate how much US economy relies on this.
<< Put down tiktok, put down instagram.
No argument from me.
<< Practice secular (or religious) asceticism and be comfortable with that.
Eh. I think the question that comes to mind is why. I am not trying to be combative, but why do you think it is reasonable to impose your vision upon others.
We need to accelerate this in places that are still growing, slow them down but also modernize them.
Asceticism may not be necessary, but it is a target. Like many targets it's one one may miss, but in going for it it reduces footprint.
It depends on what you mean by this. But I think more growth is possible. The problem is negative externality.
It’s like saying “we can’t keep writing poems forever.” Sure we can.
Realistically, many poems will be forgotten.
During my lifetime, we’ve probably forgotten/lost more poems than were written in all of history before my birth.
But we can keep making them, just as we can keeping building parents and software and flux capacitors and warp drives.
Why is there an inevitable limit, I truely don’t understand.
The issue here is that "growth" is ambiguous, and right now is mostly defined as "GDP" or some other measure of money. Unfortunately, the nature of money is that zero-sum portions of the economy can get more expensive, but expanding-sum portions have a fundamental price limit. Therefore, if you define growth as "money", you can't have endless growth.
Of course, you can have endless improvements to quality of life that don't involve constrained resources, it just won't increase GDP.
Land isn’t zero-sum. If an acre of land loses value, that doesn’t mean other acres must cumulatively raise by the same amount. Likewise, rises in value don’t need to be offset by losses elsewhere.
Sorry if that’s nitpicky, but you’re placing a lot of importance on the “zero-sum” portions of the economy.
The international currency market is zero-sum. If the dollar loses value, it must lose value against another currency, and that currency must rise.
Do you think currency will eventually restrain growth, despite being (mostly) created by fiat?
Yes it is. There’s only a finite amount of land in the world, and the fact that you own some means someone else can’t.
> Do you think currency will eventually restrain growth, despite being (mostly) created by fiat?
There’s no “game” in life where the end goal is having currency in the economy. In the end currency is a means to an end (even if we may forget that). Land is one part of that end, and there’s only a finite amount.
And frankly I’d rather have lots of currency than lots of land.
Why doesn’t the zero-sum nature of currency markets prevent growth?
Unless you mean we could simply run like Logan, which, while indeed a possible solution, is not a particularly attractive solution.
I will admit that I think Bill Burr put the issue of overpopulation in mainstream consciousness and I can't deny that I worry that the solutions ( or forced by circumstances -- war comes to mind ) proposed are unlikely to be pleasant for the globe as a whole.
Still, in parent's defense, I am not seeing that stance in my interpretation of that post.
Bill Burr's running joke is that there is too many people in the world and if he was a dictator, he would be quietly depopulating the earth by sinking cruise ships ( and help economy by building more cruise ships ), because people who use cruise ships are likely low value individuals ( paraphrasing for brevity ).
The connection is there, but it is not apparent ( and not that many people these days are familiar with Logan's Run ).
This we should not do. First, Malthusians have always been wrong and I claim will continue to be wrong. Second, contraception encourages declining birth rates and low birth rates are destructive to societies. Third, contraception is intrinsically immoral because it frustrates and perverts the function of the sexual faculties (it's the analogue of bulimia). Fourth, contraception has the psychological effect of divorcing the intrinsic function of sexual intercourse from pleasure which results in a hedonistic view of sex, the objectification of people, and exploitative attitudes, among others. Not exactly a winning recipe for a healthy society. I would also emphasize the distinction between promotion and permissiveness; I am arguing against promotion only and a culture that normalizes its use as opposed to one that merely tolerates it.
> (see China vs India)
China is below replacement (1.70). India is at replacement (2.18). Fertility rates are low everywhere except Africa. I think Africa has had enough of philanthropic "interventions".
> Practice secular (or religious) asceticism and be comfortable with that.
You don't need to be ascetic. You just need to avoid prodigality and the consumerist vice of excessive acquisitiveness. Where clothing is concerned, prefer high quality, classic styles that last, even when they cost more upfront. Don't live beyond your means. Don't buy stuff you don't need or doesn't contribute real value to your life. Don't buy impulsively (unless you want to fill your garage with garbage). All these are just common sense.
There is so much more to sex than procreation or pure hedonistic desire.
What about infertile couples? Should they just not have sex because there is no hope of procreation? Gay couples?
I for one, am not super happy that half of the third world relies on a child rapists' friend to get their Malaria vaccines.
I think some of what he's doing is one-foot-on-the-gas-other-on-the-brake, though. For instance, as traditional family structure deteriorates, grades decline. It's sub-optimal to concentrate on math and reading until we shore up families (and that's hard to do.)