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Comment by tptacek | Hacker News Reader

Oh for fuck's sake. How do you think a double-digit-billion endowment gets managed? By Bill Gates sitting around with a copy of the Wall Street Journal and a cup of coffee, picking stocks?

No. The money manager roles for the Gates Foundation are extremely serious, and extremely high-status. The guy who runs money management for the Gates Foundation was the former CFO of Merck. Presumably, managing the endowment for an organization with goals like "eradicate polio from the face of the earth in the name of Bill and Melinda Gates" is a job done with at least as much deadly seriousness as your average pension fund or university endowment, both of which are organizations that handle their money the same way.

"Hypocritical investments in Wal Mart". Sheesh.

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Universities can (and sometimes do) take a more ethical aim than some other funds. Example: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Disinvestment_from_South_Africa...

The article we're talking about does not accuse the Gates Foundation of investing in apartheid South Africa.

Yes, it just says he invests in oil companies in Africa and child detention centers. I'm sorry you just are familiar with the mcdonalds logo and nothing else.

Getting angry at me isn't going to make your argument any more valid.

OT: People have made arguments that Harvard is virtually a hedge fund

http://www.cnbc.com/id/100291522

http://theamericanscene.com/2008/05/12/is-harvard-just-a-tax...

Dude, wtf. How about a private juvenile detention centers ran by a company with a history of child abuse in those prisons? At least more due diligence?

Circulate a petition to end the private prison industry? I will sign it. Come up with a credible plan to fix that public policy problem? I'll donate.

Meanwhile: if you're going to manage a forty billion dollar endowment to maximize its impact on global poverty and disease, you're going to be working with large-scale corporate debt and equity. It would be very difficult to maintain diversified exposure to those markets without investing in something that would piss someone off.

McDonalds and Coca-Cola could be perfectly explained by your comment.

But surely a for-profit juvenile detention center is a bit of a stretch? And the other private prison the Foundation invested in listed "reductions in crime rates" as one of the risks to its bottom line. Surely common sense (or better-than-common in the case of Gates) would lead you to not invest in a company that literally grows with the crime rate... I find it hard to believe that it was so hard to find viable investments that they had stoop to investing in private prisons.

The Gates Foundation is awesome, but that doesn't mean they don't make mistakes. And hopefully they might consider being slightly stricter in deciding which investments they are morally opposed to if they are currently investing in private prisons.

I am morally opposed to private prisons and have a very low opinion of juvenile justice in general, but unlike say marriage equality, where I assume most reasonable people are bound to share my beliefs, I do not assume that everyone believes private prisons are evil.

Consider that juvenile abuse is endemic in the entire juvenile justice system, and that (a) a reasonable person might believe that private prison systems are actually more accountable for abuse, since the market can respond to their mismanagement (and because it is far easier to sue a private enterprise than a government agency), and (b) the statistics could conceivably bear this out. I don't know. My problem with private prisons has to do with incentive alignment. But maybe Richard Henriques disagrees with me?

Remember: the Gates Foundation endowment is basically a large private hedge fund that happens to have a charity as its beneficiary rather than a bunch of rich old dudes. The expectation that it be managed differently than any other fund clearly exists, but I'm not sure why that explanation would be valid. There are probably a bunch of universities that hold that private prison stock too.

But here's where we get back to how silly the article is, especially here on this thread: that private prison company is a tiny fraction of the endowment's equity portfolio. It isn't even listed above the fold in the article! The article concerns itself with the suggestion that any support of western consumerist capitalism is hypocrisy on the part of the Gates Foundation. What makes me think that? Because the first page of the article concerns itself with the Foundation's investment in Coke, McD's, BK, Taco Bell, and Pepsi. The article has an unmistakeable and ridiculous thesis.

Yup, agreed about the consumer type companies. As I was reading the article I was thinking the same thing. I was just a little surprised and disappointed when I got to the prisons. I actually think lobbying and long-term contracts remove the theoretical benefits of privatizing prisons, to the extent that reasonable people would probably agree at levels close to those for marriage equality--but that's for another thread.

That's great propaganda. What are a couple juveniles being abused compared to curing polio?

Yes, yes, I understand. I've been here as long as you have and I know where you're coming from. You do. not. like. Microsoft.

https://www.hnsearch.com/search#request/comments&q=rbanffy+m...

But you're getting yourself into trouble in this argument, because Bill Gates self-evidently hasn't abused any juveniles, but actually is working to cure polio.

I love the way you start your argument with an ad hominem. It's delightful how consistently you mention my public position in an attempt to discredit me.

So, tell me the difference in his money going to companies that abuse juveniles for profit and his money going to companies that try to eradicate polio. He is not eradicating polio himself either - he pays people to do so.

For one thing, Richard Henriques doesn't actually invest in "companies that abuse juveniles for profit", but the foundation actually does deliberately work to end polio.

That seems like a pretty relevant distinction to me, but, hey, if we weren't arguing over private prisons, you'd be telling me how evil Coca Cola (another foundation investment) is instead, because the real point here is spelled out in your HN profile.

The Microsoft you dislike still exists, and, worse, has communicated itself spiritually to other tech giants. It is downright weird that you'd focus your attention instead on something that really is exclusively an effort to work on global poverty and disease.

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