Not that it’s my choice to make you understand:
Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg and his wife have said they plan to donate 99pc of their shares in the social network to charity.
The stock, which is worth around $45bn, will be given to causes that “advance human potential and promote equality for all children in the next generation”, Zuckerberg said in an open letter on Tuesday night.
Hmm.
Through the venture, Zuckerberg and Chan have already donated $120m to support education in underserved communities in San Francisco; $75m to the Zuckerberg San Francisco General Hospital; $25m to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention to fight Ebola and $100m to the Newark Public School System.
So far at least he’s just dropping money into dysfunctional bureaucracies. That Newark donation, for example, achieved the square root of entirely fuck all.
This is where Bill Gates has it right. Yes, sure, the money’s a useful multiplier. But it’s skill at getting things done which is the rarity in this world. Actively managing the money to achieve a specific goal is the way to go, not just dropping it off into the waiting palms of the usual SJW bureaucrats.
Gates may fail, nowt wrong with that, but a true malaria vaccine will do more for humanity than any amount spent on the American inner city schools. Schools which aren’t actually short of money in most cases, but could do with a bloody and vicious clear out of absolutely everyone who runs them.
But, obviously, it’s not my choice to make, is it?
So, that’s Priscilla doing a Melinda with her husband’s money then.
Marry a wealthy man. Spend his money on moral crusades. Rinse, repeat.
Chan’s total career by the way was two degrees separated by a year as a grade school teacher.
All too often there’s a danger that other funders will say: you’ve got plenty of money from $othersource, so we’re going to turn our funding tap off.
And Ritchie will be claiming he’s only doing it for tax avoidance in 3…2….1…..
Actively managing the money to achieve a specific goal is the way to go, not just dropping it off into the waiting palms of the usual SJW bureaucrats.
Bill Gates is also trying to design a better condom. As if, you know, there isn’t a large industry of actual professionals who have been trying to do this since Prince Phillip was in diapers.
Even the sensible can go astray.
And no knocking Ms Chan. I am sure she has earned her money the hard way. Either way, she is a good role model for young girls. Better than Katie Price anyway.
Katie Price earned her money providing a service in the market. Ms Chan married hers. Good role model?
Ian B – “Katie Price earned her money providing a service in the market. Ms Chan married hers. Good role model?”
We don’t need any more hard ar$ed slappers. We do need more stay at home mothers. Excellent role model.
Zuckers is already helping out enough bureaucracies in the form of giving all your info to the NSA,CIA, OTC ( that’s Uncle Tom Cobbley) etc
He can stick his handouts up his state-widened arsehole.
That’s UTC–too early in the morning
Katie Price has six children, after a productive and successful career.
Chan’s total contribution to society is to use University as a dating agency to snare a wealthy man, whose money she is now spending on his behalf while, one gets the strong impression, treating him like a doormat.
His money will be used to fund SJW causes by his society matron wife. This is not at all a good role model. Unless you’re a hard-arsed parasite.
Ian B – “Katie Price has six children, after a productive and successful career.”
By three different men. Only one of them could be described as a decent, if dim, person and she p!ssed all over him. That is, bad role model and likely a bad mother. We will be paying the hospital and prison bills for her feckless underclass children for decades to come.
“Chan’s total contribution to society is to use University as a dating agency to snare a wealthy man, whose money she is now spending on his behalf while, one gets the strong impression, treating him like a doormat.”
Well I am not big on that doormat part, but she is a good role model for her child. I hope she has more. She is doing more for society than she could otherwise by, for instance, getting a job.
“His money will be used to fund SJW causes by his society matron wife. This is not at all a good role model. Unless you’re a hard-arsed parasite.”
Alas she probably will spend it on SJW causes. In part because he belongs to a partly assimilated minority that, to be honest, by and large, hates and fears us. But also in part because of over compensation. She will need to prove she is an independent hear-me-roar women precisely because in reality she is none of these things. The solution is not to shame her for following her biology but to praise her. That would give her the self respect she needs so that she will not have to over-compensate. We should not try to shame women out of their natural roles.
Ah, we’re back with the SMFS analysis that only two classes exist- the upper middle class and chavs. There really is nobody else, is there?
Can somebody explain how he is going to offload 99% of his stock yet still remain in control of the company (as the papers are reporting)?
Tim N: he’ll probably put it in a trust that will receive and distribute the dividends (or progressively sell down the holding). The trust’s voting on shareholder resolutions will remain in his hands.
Such is, to the best of my admittedly hazy recollection, how Warren Buffett handles it.
“Zuckerberg and Chan have already donated $120m to support education in underserved communities in San Francisco”
I read ‘underserved’ first as “un deserved” rather than “under served”
Also, I expect these ‘communities’ have had public money hosed at them for years, so the “under served” is dubious as well.
@ CJ Nerd,
Thanks!
Zuckerberg might think that he has no real talent for running a charity/research foundation. If he’s right, then giving the money to someone else makes sense. Just like Buffett is giving to the Gates foundation, not setting up a Buffett foundation.
My pipe-dream is to come by a vast fortune and spend part of it for the betterment of mankind, as follows. First, restrict my activities to a country where I have some hope of understanding people, i.e. here. Secondly to use it to fund a cadre of anti-bureaucrats, anti-lawyers etc. Their job will be to get bureaucrats, school teachers, lawyers etc sacked or jailed. Thirdly, to arrange that this cadre is paid on a subsistence salary plus bounty-hunter principle. Every time you get some destructive twerp sacked from being a headmistress, you earn a star on your record and some moolah. If you manage to get a school to adopt rational teaching methods and thus to lay off a third of the staff, more moolah.
The great thing is that it’s in every way likely to do some good, and far less likely to do harm than SJW tripe.
My concern with these foundations is that so often they end up promoting the prejudices of rich men. For example Bloomberg’s foundation, and the Robert Woods Johnson Foundation are both heavily involved in anti-smoking efforts. The neo-prohibitionist policies they’re promoting are doing much to increase smuggling and criminality, thus doing real harm.
Gates with his fingers in the Global Warming pie is also probably indirectly doing much to deprive poor people of cheap energy, and thus doing harm too.
The World would be a better place if they just left their money to their descendants who could then entertain us with their antics pace Paris Hilton.
It’s another example of the old rule:
Old System + More Money = Expensive Old System
Rather like the NHS when you think about it.
Bill also gets that technology is a permanent thing. You learn how to cure malaria, you don’t have to spend money learning to cure it again. Ever. OK, you still need to make and distribute the vaccines, but that’s a tiny cost. And compared to say, people dying from malaria and leaving their family destitute, it’s a no-brainer.
Me, I’d put money into solar and battery research. Fuck internet. That’s happening anyway. 2 billion people added in the past decade. Make people a little richer, and they’ll buy phones. The market’s doing a hell of a job making those cheaper anyway. Before internet, you need electricity. You give people extra hours of light, you raise productivity. The cheaper and easier you can get electricity to people, the richer they’ll become.
See, I don’t think Zuck’s actually that bright. I think Bill is, I think Jobs was, I think the Google guys are. Facebook was just the winner in the Highlander game of social networks. It wasn’t really anything particularly innovative over MySpace or the rest, just one had to end up as the winner.
“The stock, which is worth around $45bn”
That is a staggering number.
Given the recent discussion on this site about supplying school meals and its impact on child labour and the studies that show giving kids books to own has on literacy rates is say throwing $120m at a failing public school system in SF (not exactly a poor place even in the US) isn’t well spent in comparison.
Maybe his employees want to move to cheaper areas in SF so he’s seeding the school system so they can move there without having to go private education.
Rob,
It’s bubble numbers. Facebook has a P/E ratio of 107.
Ian B – “Ah, we’re back with the SMFS analysis that only two classes exist- the upper middle class and chavs. There really is nobody else, is there?”
There may be. But in this discussion there ain’t
If his general statement is I really don’t need more than $450m of general spending money, I’d be very happy to sign up to that. Actually where do I sign up to that?