Ford Foundation is a great example of what can happen. Olin is a good example of a foundation that was set up to dissolve after some length of time.

(And then, of course, given his enthusiasm for AI, there is a major question of whether 'keeping your powder dry' is a huge mistake - one way or the other.)

In that sense, I suspect targeted and planned large investments into charities with scalable plans is a lot more efficient than years of trickle donations.

Gates moved $50 billion into a tax-exempt entity he controls, avoided all capital gains tax, secured over $11 billion in total tax benefits, and only needs to distribute 5% of the foundation’s assets annually, all while retaining effective control and reaping massive reputational returns.

This is nothing more than tax optimization for billionaires and can guarantee you the private plane bills, security costs, hotel suites are invoiced to the foundation...

People who believe this, also believe Warren Buffet makes money by value investing and picking stocks. Warren Buffet who by the way also used the Gates foundation for tax optimization to the tune of avoiding 20 billion in capital gains tax.

If politicians wanted they could set a 95% tax on billionaires tomorrow, just like next Monday, and none of these 250 individuals would have the minor inconvenience of their lifestyle. It seems to be possible for tariffs...But those are a tax on the other 99% tax payers. It happens overnight...

Such a smart guy, but not smart enough to stay away from Epstein...

Many will say Bill is attempting to reshape his legacy and narrative post-Epstein.

The most important thing is that money is being returned to society on an accelerated timeline.

Without this redistribution of wealth from billionaires back to especially the middle and lower classes we are headed for violent revolution on a massive scale.

Hopefully other billionaires redistribute during their lifetimes to address housing, education and health issues as well.

Anyways, the type of person who can earn a lot of money in this economy, and the type of person who can best decide how to spend it altruistically, are almost certainly not the same person. The person who earned the money certainly understand this. Yet. Here we are.

Ha ha, well here's mine. First, I'm way ahead of Mr Gates: I'm already worth almost nothing.

But if I had billions to give, I would be supporting Science Education, Democracy and Journalism. Scholarships for bright, motivated students.

With all due respect to Mr G, I don't believe any of his objectives is possible with stable, educated, science-orientated social progress. Humanity depends on it.

Which charities are giving away less than 4% a year? Charitable foundations in the US are required to give away at least 5% of their endowment a year:

https://www.ncfp.org/wp-content/uploads/2018/09/The-Five-Per...

All money spent is voting for allocation of resource. Sometimes there is too much money fighting the same goods in which case it may not be a good allocation of resources. That money can sit to become more money.

Gates is thousands of times better than most. He and Melinda have done more good for the world than all but a few handfuls of individuals. I've heard estimates his original MSFT stake would be worth over a trillion dollars now.

An alternative would be that company like Microsoft couldn't gain so much wealth, simply because their revenue would be capped / taxed high enough that the extra money they make goes back directly to people and governments

In this case, *everyone* gets to vote and choose for what philanthropies the amount gets used, rather than having just "one guy" deciding for himself how to spend all this money, which is prone to errors

Strictly speaking, the foundation discourages individuals from donating directly to them, mostly because the tax treatment of giving that way isn't necessarily favorable. They've set up Gates Philanthropy Partners as a 501(c)(3) charity which is aligned to the same philanthropic goals.

(Of course there's also many other worthwhile players in the broader EA space.)

It'd be smarter to see who they are giving money to (which is all public) and give directly to those orgs. The Gates foundation itself spends a lot of money on consultants, "government engagement" (aka lobbying by another name), and fancy dinners.

That's fine or maybe even noble for a family foundation, but it's probably not something individuals would want to fund.

You could be massively wrong about that. Many charities are desparate for IT help. I am a developer and volunteer at a charity. I have done some IT stuff for them (mostly setting up some Airtable databases) and it has been (modesty aside) transformative for them.

Can you provide some sources for this? I'm by no means an expert in this area, but my city happened to receive some of his modified A. Aegypti since 2017 and it didn't make the people here happy, at all. Though I don't even think there's a comprehensive study on how much good or harm came from it.

That's just insane. Bill Gates is absolutely not a good guy but you cannot be convinced to that given how much you idealize him. Have children. I would have replied to the sibling comment saying the same but comments become unreplyable once they get enough downvotes.

How do you judge the actions of someone when those actions are powerful enough to move markets, take down regimes, and change people's lives for generations?

We take them at their word and assume that everything they do is well-intentioned and good and has zero negative impact or secondary effects, but is that really the case?

To me it seems like the only charity that can be trusted is a small-scale one that acts locally and with lots of transparency.

Since his net worth is only up 3x, that means he gave away about 70% of his wealth.

In the billionaire’s defense, he probably didn’t plan on us as a society deciding to shoveling money at his class as quickly as we possibly could.

Appears to be more along lines of approval from others, which is a type of self-promotion if you will. IMHO a true do-gooder would go about his philanthropy/help/charity with zero publicity and would actively shun any.

Steel-manning: Gates has run a deliberate PR campaign for decades to rehabilitate his reputation. In the 80s & 90s (before the Gates Foundation) he was known as a ruthless corporate tactician who crushed competitors like ants and earned a federal antitrust suit against Microsoft. Prior to his divorce he had a widely-publicized affair with a subordinate. He befriended Jeffrey Epstein and appeared in his flight logs after Epstein had already been convicted of soliciting prostitution from a minor. (Gates has worked very hard to distance himself from Epstein since then - another example of the PR machine at work).

Someone who wants to paint the least charitable picture possible of Gates could factually describe him as a cutthroat businessman and a philanderer who associated with a pedophile on at least a few documented occasions. And that's ignoring the nuttier Gates conspiracy theories (e.g., Covid microchips).

Sure, everyone knows him. But he'd rather be known as a voracious reader who fought polio & malaria and provided drinkable water to millions. Not a bad use of his billions - what else could he spend those on that would materially affect his life?

Still the same greedy asshole though.

Javascript? Check.

Android? Check.

Windows? Again, capturing market via transitioning from DOS.

They did focus on many important things like having exceptional backwards compatibility (transitioning from DOS, etc), and kernel team does a decent job usually, but none of this is necessarily attributable to Gates and it's simply what you have to do to capture a market/platform.

I don't know if this is genuine sentiment you're expressing or just naivety, but people that can glaze this hard this easily usually go very far in life. I'll give you that, I wish I could do this.

Gates is more notable for NOT Netscaping or Sunning or Lotus-123ing his company than for any particular decision.

I'm curious where you grew up? I am high school class of 1992. I skipped third grade, where a lot of penmanship is taught. We had a computer lab in Junior High (so late 1980s), I had a PC Clone at home that we bought in 1985. I'd turn in writing assignments printed on my epson dot matrix printer. To my knowledge, my appalling handwriting was never considered by anyone.

The computer would have taken off regardless of him. Just like the electric bulb and the radio, the computer had no one single inventor/promoter/business.

I dunno, my 3rd grade teacher in the 80s said of my handwriting "We've done all we can do. He'll have a secretary, so it'll be ok"

Sadly, I never had a secretary; but my terrible handwriting hasn't been a major deterrent to getting things done.

Though he and his company did a lot to change the prevalence of typing, if he or Microsoft didn’t come along, someone else would have led the computing revolution with probability 1.

It seems like most "effective altruists" want to do things that help "humanity" but don't help "people" -- so developing technology to explore the stars is on the table, but fighting poverty is not.

This implies that they got rich by pillaging instead of countless people voluntarily giving them money in exchange for what they offered.

This assumes the money would not have been better spent by giving it to the workers of the company that generated it in the first place.

While I agree this is technically accurate, it implies there was something imoral about how he got his money. He created the most popular modern OS and a myriad of other technical innovations. It would be almost impossible to create more positive good in the world through his charitable donations than Microsoft

I have to assume that anyone who thinks of Gates as a rich old man who just wants to cure Malaria is quite a bit younger (or their memory is easily overwritten).

You left out expectant mothers under control of a repressive regime that demands their death sacrifice.

You'd be better off starting a clandestine agency that simply assassinates evil people. If anyone who started a war or oppressed their people was bumped off they would soon learn.

Now he did lose my trust and that’s because of two things:

1. His association with Epstein. It is documented and quite possibly the reason for his divorce.

2. His trust made controversial deals during Covid. The poorer countries wanted the formula so that they could scale up production themselves. However, the gates foundation supported the patent on the vaccines instead and had themselves and middlemen to arbitrate price on the supply

So if they all dumped their wealth and saved a billion (should be enough to retire on, even for the conservative portfolio!) we would have 3.72 trillion - it would cover the US deficit for two, maybe three years.

I can, I can take my bitcoin private keys with me when I die. He could do the same if he wanted to.

https://www.lioness.co/post/microsoft-is-using-illegal-bribe...

This is great, but what about the rich people who don't give? Won't they just continue to get more and more power?

The scales are tipped and this is not sustainable. Gary Stevenson is a bit extreme, but he's not wrong about centralization and it's dangers!

At least that's what we've been voting for.

Don't misunderstand me, I'm all for reigning in excessive executive pay. We should do so in any case. However, what I'm trying to say is, we can reign in executive pay as much as we like, and billionaires will simply siphon that leftover money to themselves in addition to the money they currently hoover up.

Cannot ignore that his communicable disease research and treatment has been effective. But his school voucher and farming initiative have been awful. Ultimately it would have been better as general revenue to provide these services through government.

He also did awful things in the business world when he was younger. He's no saint, either, he is just a normal, messy person. But he's done more for the poorest and neediest people in the world than most countries.

Beware that you don't fall into the trap of thinking the 1% of the population that makes 90% of the noise on the internet is "significant" or a representative sampling of the population. Most everyone else's views are quite boring and detached from extremism, they just don't shout their moderation on the rooftops.

he's "extorted" a lot of money from various states by locking and price-gouging, money that would have otherwise been spent on social projects

basically he has done

Gates -> extort money -> fantastic personal wealth -> gave back to organization *he* decides to give too

while the normal path would be

Governments and people have lower spending because they don't need to give Microsoft too much cash -> governments and people decide by themselves how to spend extra money -> there are more, and more diversified, humanitarian actions

That people can create wealth is alien to most people!

They think wealth is money, which leads to a zero sum belief system. That is, if Bill has $200B, he must have taken it from the rest of us.

And then I suppose that Steve Jobs is the Christ in this story.

You only have to look at the research output of Microsoft Research to know that it is the other way around. Kind of weird how even smart people get things mixed up.

For instance, his foundation pushes birth control in developing nations. On the surface, it look like a just and noble cause.

But imagine how a developed nation would view an act like this on its own people from a foreign body. Imagine some wealthy Chinese national started taking out ads on American television telling Americans to have fewer children and going to poor neighborhoods in the US and handing out free contraceptives.

It's a kind of soft imperialism and social engineering that I imagine a lot of people object to. The guy can't even keep his marriage together and he's insistent on telling people half way around the world how to run their life?

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bill_Gates#Treatment_of_collea...

What I don't understand is the comradeship I see in people competing to effusively praise oligarchs. Bill Gates fought against technological progress, fought against free and open source software, fought against antitrust, even bribed officials to push out competitors. Why would people pat each other on the back for admiring him?

Even afterwards, when he bought his redemption by showering money upon dubious nonprofits, and by creating other, even more dubious nonprofits - simply paying everyone who could possibly have a problem with him, including dozens of journalistic organizations and hundreds of individual journalists - all of his charitable efforts are still obviously ways to play with various social theories that he has, not to help people.

It takes a real psychopath to accumulate that much power, with so few principles, and then to use it to play games with people's lives. His entertainment and the entertainment of his class is endangering the world.

And I still listen to Michael Jackson, so whatever, but we know that his relationship with Epstein was pretty extensive, and what was said during his divorce (in relation to that) was alarming, as well as the fact that he immediately crumbled and gave her the farm. There's your conspiracy theory; I'm not going to be caught praising a guy for mosquito nets whom I pretty much knew hung out with Epstein for a time as intensely as anyone else did. Epstein was giving away money for elite approval, too.

What's money for if not for patronage? You can't take it with you.

Many in tech were along for the Bill Gates show and felt he was a negative actor to the industry in many ways. The fact that he is taking that wealth and channeling it through charity to achieve what he believes is important worries many on both sides of the political divide because of the enormous amounts of power he has.

Specifically over the foundation: 1. Influence Over Public Policy Criticism: The foundation’s massive financial power allows it to heavily influence public health, education, and agricultural policy, sometimes without democratic oversight.

Example: In education, their support for charter schools and Common Core standards drew criticism for pushing reforms without enough input from teachers and communities.

2. Pharmaceutical and Vaccine Influence Criticism: The foundation has been accused of favoring pharmaceutical-based solutions, sometimes at the expense of broader public health approaches.

Example: Critics argue that funding pharmaceutical companies during vaccine rollouts (especially during COVID-19) prioritized private profits over equitable global access.

3. Corporate Ties Criticism: The foundation has invested in companies that contradict its stated goals (e.g., Coca-Cola, ExxonMobil), raising ethical questions.

Example: Investments in fossil fuel companies were seen as inconsistent with health and development goals.

4. Global South Criticism Criticism: Some argue that Gates Foundation programs in Africa and other regions can be top-down, lacking local input, and continuing a form of “philanthropic colonialism.”

5. Agricultural Interventions Criticism: Through the Alliance for a Green Revolution in Africa (AGRA), the foundation promoted industrial farming and GMOs.

Response: Some say this undermines traditional, sustainable farming practices and increases dependence on multinational corporations for seeds and fertilizers.

6. COVID-19 Vaccine Access Criticism: Gates opposed waiving IP rights for COVID-19 vaccines, which some argued delayed access in poorer countries.

Defense: The foundation claimed that maintaining IP was key to quality and speed, though many public health experts disagreed.

He is an interesting and unique character who achieved much but don't polish those angel wings just yet.

His #1 goal listed is almost offensive when you consider what is happening right now in May 2025 -- an utterly preventable scenario that he can't even mention lest it get "too political" and tar his image.

In other words, it's perfectly valid to be skeptical of his motives, which seem primarily to be around elevating his personal brand and legacy.

There are two possible reasons for this (the 'why' remains -- not enough money?):

- He's admitting he doesn't care about the environmental mission, just the returns

- He thinks tesla is a fraud, but isn't saying it publicly

Either way, it's sus, so it's tough to trust him.

You don't really "save yourself from taxes" by donating money to charity.

Option A: sell stock for $100, pay taxes of $20, spend $80 on yourself Option B: donate stock of $100 to charity, and spend $0 on yourself

Which of these options leaves Gates with more money in his pocket to spend on himself?

Giving money away doesn't save you from taxes on your income; you just forego the income entirely. The money is gone. It's no longer yours. Why would you be paying taxes on it?

It is a way of acting and holding public power outside of democratic accountability. I'm with Gates' implicit vision here, that the end-goal is for philanthropic initiatives towards a given problem to eventually not be needed.

Philanthropy is often used as a way to curry public (and government) gratitude for a rich person who deigned to direct crumbs of their wealth towards the public, which in turn one uses to amass or solidify power – again, outside of democratic structures.

By demanding that matters of public welfare be properly handled by the state, shift power back to democratic processes. As a bonus, government has an incentive to actually address issues. Performative philanthropy thrives on the continued existence of the problems they claim to address.

We've always known that babies need nutrition, but knowledge of the role of the gut microbiome, how to develop it and ensure it is healthy is relatively new.

But then we can debate if Microsoft made their money honestly or not. If Microsoft exploited their monopoly, then perhaps Bill Gates stole from the rich to give to the poor...

Saying "99.999%" of my wealth invites critics later on when he donates "99.98%".

Substitute "virtually" by "almost" and it's the same. It's just style.

Doesn't fix what he has already done, totally, but not only is he away from that now, he is doing stuff I actually respect. Absolute best case scenario.

Also, billg has laid out the goals of his Foundation and what they aspire to achieve. Which one of those aspirations do you think should be replaced with "fundamental AI research"?

A lot of the Foundation money goes on disease research and preventative and curative vaccine and medicine development. All of those areas are already being transformed by AI as a tool, and a lot of that development happens as a result of philanthropic, government, and private investment.