Math wins.
I think that Warren Buffett was very foolish to outsource his philanthropy to Gates.
And yes, as long as you’re asking, I do in fact think that I’d be spending the money a lot smarter, and doing a lot more good with it, than the Bill and Melinda Foundation.
I once heard a hypothesis that the reason why education was better back in the “good olde days” (if it really was) was due to it being one of the very few vocational choices open to women. Hence those individuals who today could go on to more lucrative or personally fulfilling work would be “trapped” (along with all their amazing talent) in the educational system.
That’s probably not the primary reason *cough*education schools*cough*, but I think one cannot ignore the effects of opportunity costs.
Gates is still spending money to improve education, citing the alarming fact that 50% of all students are still below average…
As charity goes R&D has a huge multiplier affect. Bill Gtes has some competence in making smart technology decisions, this is not Buffet’s area of expertise, hence his investing his charity dollars with Bill and Melinda Gates. Bill and Melinda Gates do seem to be trying to spend money in the most productive way possible (not for PR purposes), and i suspect they are doing far better than most governments do on that front.
I still think they could do far better. If I were in their situation I would probably try to solve a number of the world’s problems directly – low cost space settlement, world energy, maybe low cost desalinization (food), global online low cost teacher-less education so everyone had the opportunity to get a first class education, similar automation of doctoring, default contraception (make every pregnancy planned), and so forth. This is where charity dollars can have a truly huge effect. On the math, the priority should perhaps be absolute wealth for the poor, not relative wealth (unless the intent really is PR).
Concur on the R&D. There are a lot of things in development right now (various fission and fusion concepts, nanotube-based water filters, etc.) that could have more of a revolutionary impact than an evolutionary one, and most of them can be massively ramped up with the odd billion here or there.
The purpose of the Gates Foundation is not to actually solve social problems by thinking out of the box and coming up with innovative ideas. Its purpose is to allow Bill Gates to convince the world that he is not a nerd. This is the reason why his foundation continues to try the same old, same old ideas to “reform” education and not try to do anything truly innovative.
If I were Bill Gates, I would be aiming at making an computerized teacher. Probably starting with math as the most objective.
Not a textbook, lecture series, tutorial, course supplement or drill engine – but with the intent of actually teaching the material, evaluating problematic areas, adapting teaching methods to the strengths of the student (are they visual? verbal? spatial? physical? How do they learn best?)
A specific goal could be “Get a full year ahead in math over the summer via an accredited course.”
Bill Gates would do a hell of a lot more good in the world if he spent his money doing those things at which he is talented, which do NOT include trying to figure out how to teach kids or reform schools or any other such crap. He’s good at managing a company that makes operating systems and software. Let him continue to do that. If the point is that he isn’t trying to make money, and can afford to lose money, then let him work on some operating system or software issue which is going to be a money-loser for a few decades before paying off fantastically sometime in the future.
It always amazes me when ordinarily sensible people say stuff like I’m giving value to society by volunteering, i.e. working for free. No you’re not. What society is willing to pay you is an excellent and direct measure of the value, to society, of your work. If you’re a software engineer, society is willing to pay you handsomely for writing code — because you write good code, and because good code is valuable to society. Society isn’t willing to pay you squat to, say, teach in kindergarten, because you’re no good at it, or at least there are plenty of people much better than you already available to do it.
If you want to do the most good for society with your labor, work at whatever job pays you the most, because that’s the job “society” wants you to do. As Thomas Sowell says, price is a signal.
Bill Gates has some competence in making smart technology decisions
No, that’s not it.
When everyone in the computer world was learning and sharing there ideas, BG had a copy of BASIC (did he invent it, no) and was whining, “mine, mine, mine”
IBM needed an operating system. Who could provide it? BG has the rights to BASIC maybe he could? BG goes to Seattle Computing and buys it. The OS is bit like highlander, “there can be only one” if you want market share. CPM86 dies.
Word processing, Spreadsheet, Database… for market share it helps if you control the OS.
Apple needs the best WP for their Lisa/Mac so let’s show it to BG. BG now produces windows… badly, but they’ve got the money to fix it… or at least make it look good enough… OS advantage wins again.
What is BG going to do with all his money, start a charity? No, buy up all the competition (after first making sure no competition exists for the preinstalled OS.)
BG gives away ham sandwich browser to ‘compete’ with netscape… finally ends up in court. They lose but with no real penalty. Judge can’t keep his mouth shut. New judge is a gift.
BG sees the light of political donations. Marries an employee. See the light of a charity where he can donate s/w for full price and make a profit giving it away.
BG does one thing right. He does research with regular users evaluating his U.I. He was ahead of the curve on CDs.
He is a nerd with no hacker ethic. I’m still waiting for the ham sandwich.
Ken, your rap lyrics are funky fresh. Got one about SJobs?
Or should I say, Notorious J.O.B.?
MfK @ at 6:51 am
Good one! I’ll remember that for the next school board meeting.
(pickings were slim so I got elected somehow)
The foundation is the brainchild of Melinda Gates. It was only after Bill married that he got interested in charity. He was notoriously known not to fund any charitable causes. His pet hobby used to be collecting sports cars.
Microsoft even today has a policy that they do not donate money to anyone, just Microsoft products.
As for Warren Buffet, he may be smart at managing other people’s money, but has proved notoriously stupid at managing his own.
Godzilla says:
“Microsoft even today has a policy that they do not donate money to anyone, just Microsoft products.”
Not entirely true. They do match employee giving to charitable organizations.
Just call me ‘Vanilla Wop’
Jobs don’t know his 6502 from an RCA 1802.
Jobs got the Wozniac, fo dat’
The Steves just like the Beatles.
Tramiel had his C-team; Then he bought the A-team.
Warner says if you pay the little ones, we’ll pay the big.
So Jack bundled the little bills and gave Warner the Whopper.
I miss the simplicity of the C64 and the Atari ST.
WTF? Pete blathered:
You and what army is going to force “default contracpetion,” and what the hell is “automation of doctoring”? For that matter what is this “absolute wealth for poor people” you babble about in your next paragraph? Creepy statist alert — or just plain loon.
Andrea, I am sorry that I am difficult to read but please stop looking for absolutes in my comments. I am not trying to say what you seem to think I am trying to say.
Carl, I would have to completely agree.
I would argue that one of the better selection criteria for financial decision makers is a track record of successful financial decision making (wealth generation).
As for Warren Buffet, he may be smart at managing other people’s money, but has proved notoriously stupid at managing his own.
Citation please, Godzilla. Last I heard, he was doing pretty well for himself.
Bill Gates would do a hell of a lot more good in the world if he spent his money doing those things at which he is talented, which do NOT include trying to figure out how to teach kids or reform schools or any other such crap. He’s good at managing a company that makes operating systems and software. Let him continue to do that.
Carl, I’m going to have to disagree. The problem here is that Bill Gates’ wealth is probably far beyond his ability to manage operating systems and software. Some people, such as Warren Buffet have the ability to repeat their success (given that he’s effectively done it for 40 years) though perhaps not the time to do so. Gates probably has the ability to make another good sized and effective software company, but even if he were thirty years younger, I don’t see him being able to repeat the success of Microsoft even to within a couple orders of magnitude.
In my view, that means the stuff he does with the return on a few tens of billions dollars is probably beyond whatever he could be doing if he were to start another software company.
In comparison, I’d say that Steve Jobs or Elon Musk could repeat their initial successes, but these were smaller than Microsoft.
I suppose with regard to Bill Gates there is also the assumption of an efficient market. People fairly earn the wealth they generate in a free and open market – not in a closed one. If Bill Gates was unjustly exploiting a monopoly position then he was in effect getting the world to subsidize his wealth.
Karl – he generated that wealth (presumably), one of the methods society uses to encourage wealth generation is to give individuals the right to decide how that wealth is spent (kleptocracies excepted).
Also, who is to say Bill Gates is not a good person to decide who the next Bill Gates is? How else should we decide our financial decision makers/decision approaches? ROI and the market place is one approach – from those with the wealth to invest (like Bill Gates…). Others are being elected, success in a religious hierarchy that focuses on charity, independent charities that compete for donations, academic bodies, and so forth.
He’s good at managing a company that makes operating systems and software.
He’s good at destroying competition and taking over markets. He went to court and lost. Because the court was incapable of doing it’s job, he’s still destroying competition and taking over markets.
His charity contributions are s/w (at full price of 100x his cost) offsetting his taxes and medical research because he does want to take it all with him.
Thirty years later and we still don’t have a solid OS foundation to build software on. The windows API is a joke. We still don’t have a development environment that leverages what people or what computers do best. We still have everyday software costing more than the computers they run on (even with the downward pressure of free s/w.)
His software license is a major cost of every computer sold.
Perhaps we would be worse off without Microsoft but there would definitely be more competition.
“Andrea, I am sorry that I am difficult to read but please stop looking for absolutes in my comments. I am not trying to say what you seem to think I am trying to say.”
Um, I quoted your words, dude. If you didn’t mean what you wrote then maybe you should write what you actually mean instead.
“Andrea, I am sorry that I am difficult to read but please stop looking for absolutes in my comments. I am not trying to say what you seem to think I am trying to say.”
Um, I quoted your words, dude. If you didn’t mean what you wrote then maybe you should write what you actually mean instead.
It is very, very difficult and time consuming not to write literally, at a certain point one can but hope not to be read literally.