from the it-sounds-good-on-its-face dept.
To mark the birth of their first child as well as "#GivingTuesday", Facebook's CEO Mark Zuckerberg and his wife Priscilla Chan have promised to give away 99% of their Facebook shares, currently worth about $45 billion, to charity over their lifetimes. MarketWatch notes a federal filing that indicates that Zuckerberg will donate about $1 billion per year over the next three years, but will retain his majority voting position in Facebook for the foreseeable future. From the letter:
Like all parents, we want you to grow up in a world better than ours today. While headlines often focus on what's wrong, in many ways the world is getting better. Health is improving. Poverty is shrinking. Knowledge is growing. People are connecting. Technological progress in every field means your life should be dramatically better than ours today. We will do our part to make this happen, not only because we love you, but also because we have a moral responsibility to all children in the next generation.
We believe all lives have equal value, and that includes the many more people who will live in future generations than live today. Our society has an obligation to invest now to improve the lives of all those coming into this world, not just those already here. But right now, we don't always collectively direct our resources at the biggest opportunities and problems your generation will face.
Consider disease. Today we spend about 50 times more as a society treating people who are sick than we invest in research so you won't get sick in the first place. Medicine has only been a real science for less than 100 years, and we've already seen complete cures for some diseases and good progress for others. As technology accelerates, we have a real shot at preventing, curing or managing all or most of the rest in the next 100 years.
Today, most people die from five things -- heart disease, cancer, stroke, neurodegenerative and infectious diseases -- and we can make faster progress on these and other problems. Once we recognize that your generation and your children's generation may not have to suffer from disease, we collectively have a responsibility to tilt our investments a bit more towards the future to make this reality. Your mother and I want to do our part.
Curing disease will take time. Over short periods of five or ten years, it may not seem like we're making much of a difference. But over the long term, seeds planted now will grow, and one day, you or your children will see what we can only imagine: a world without suffering from disease.
There are so many opportunities just like this. If society focuses more of its energy on these great challenges, we will leave your generation a much better world.
The letter goes on to mention other grand goals, global availability of Internet access, and the creation of the Chan Zuckerberg Initiative.
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Jesse Eisinger writes in the NYT that if you heard that Mark Zuckerberg donated $45 billion to charity, you are wrong. Here's what really happened: Zuckerberg did not set up a charitable foundation, which has nonprofit status. Instead Zuckerberg created an investment vehicle called a limited liability company (LLC) that can invest in for-profit companies, make political donations, and lobby for changes in the law. What's more an LLC can donate appreciated shares to charity, which will generate a deduction at fair market value of the stock without triggering any tax. "He remains completely free to do as he wishes with his money," writes Eisinger. "That's what America is all about. But as a society, we don't generally call these types of activities "charity.""
A charitable foundation is subject to rules and oversight. It has to allocate a certain percentage of its assets every year. The new Zuckerberg LLC won't be subject to those rules and won't have any transparency requirements. According to Eisinger what this means is that Zuckerberg has amassed one of the greatest fortunes in the world — and is likely never to pay any taxes on it. "Instead of lavishing praise on Mr. Zuckerberg for having issued a news release with a promise, this should be an occasion to mull what kind of society we want to live in," concludes Eisinger. "The point is that we are turning into a society of oligarchs. And I am not as excited as some to welcome the new Silicon Valley overlords."
Previously: Mark Zuckerberg to Donate $45 Billion Facebook Fortune to Charity
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday December 02 2015, @09:01PM
I'm not impressed.
I expect the charity's goals to dovetail with Facebook's agenda in the same way that the Gates Foundation puts a its money behind pushing intellectual property laws by refusing to purchase any locally manufactured drugs that haven't licensed the patents even when it is 100% legit according to the country's sovereign laws.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday December 02 2015, @11:12PM
I'm sure this will change faster than the Facebook privacy settings.
(Score: 1, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday December 02 2015, @09:09PM
He should donate a lot of that money to social justice causes and ones that serve good social services. He should do his homework to determine which ones are worthy of receiving the money. Some possible candidates to include are
Wikipedia
Techdirt (though this isn't tax deductible)
the ACLU
the EFF
Public knowledge
Khan academy
GPL and similar Linux projects
Firefox and other FOSS projects that need improvement but lack funding
Try to list others
I'm sure there are many others as well.
Charity doesn't necessarily have to be the 'big' guys. Heck, many of the big charitable organizations often have controversy surrounding how efficiently they use money they received. There are many smaller organizations that have done a lot of good as well and funding them is also important. At least with Wikipedia, for instance, we can see the social good they cause because everyone here has access to the services it provides that we the public benefit from.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday December 02 2015, @09:57PM
Yeah, like Wikipedia.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday December 02 2015, @10:23PM
There is no charitable organization that I am going to agree with 100%. For instance I am a Christian and I tend to be conservative on many issues and I find Wikipedia to be rather liberal and bias when it comes to a lot of stuff. I still donated money to them in the past because I use it a lot.
and on many things they have been cleaning up their act I did notice. There was one wikipedia page that was obviously an advertisement. It was up for quite a while. I complained about it being an advertisement in the discussion. Within a month or two the page got removed with the notice that it appears to be an advertisement. The person who worked for the company that had a huge hand in either creating or editing the page complained about it but it still didn't get restored. The page was obviously heavily edited by some spokesperson for a company.
I also think the ACLU, while it has done a lot of harm with regard to trying to restrict religious freedoms in certain contexts, has done a lot of good overall as well. This blog I tend to find too liberal on many things as well but I still visit it regularly because it gives me a different perspective on things.
If I had to find a charitable organization that I am 100% in agreement with before I donate I won't donate to any of them. Neither will most people.
I'm not saying they should donate to Wikipedia. Just that there are many organizations that tend to be neglected by big charity donors that are worth considering more. I'm just listing some possibilities that often get neglected not that I agree with each of them 100 percent. It's up to the donors to do their homework and decide who they want to donate to. If they're going to donate money at least make sure it's really going to a good cause and that you are very well aware of where you are sending it to and what they are trying to do.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday December 02 2015, @11:10PM
I'm not talking about perceived or real slants or biases, I'm talking about cold [dailydot.com], hard [theregister.co.uk] cash [theregister.co.uk].
(Score: 2) by PartTimeZombie on Wednesday December 02 2015, @11:34PM
Man, some people have messy lives.
(Score: 2) by takyon on Wednesday December 02 2015, @11:39PM
Hey, at least Wikinews was neutral [wikinews.org] enough to cover it.
[SIG] 10/28/2017: Soylent Upgrade v14 [soylentnews.org]
(Score: 2) by PartTimeZombie on Wednesday December 02 2015, @11:58PM
Good point. Also, I couldn't help thinking her story would make a great TV show.
Breaking Stupid maybe.
(Score: 2) by takyon on Thursday December 03 2015, @01:01AM
Wikimortals: A Lifetime Original Film
[SIG] 10/28/2017: Soylent Upgrade v14 [soylentnews.org]
(Score: 2) by PartTimeZombie on Thursday December 03 2015, @02:22AM
I'd watch that.
(Score: 3, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday December 02 2015, @10:20PM
Firefox [...] that need improvement but lack funding
The only thing you'd accomplish by giving Mozilla more funding is allowing them to ruin Firefox faster.
(Score: 2) by takyon on Wednesday December 02 2015, @10:40PM
Ninja'd by the AC but no.
Today: Mozilla Corporation: Thunderbird “a tax” on Firefox Development [soylentnews.org]
Warning - Firefox Has You in the Pocket [soylentnews.org]
After 10 Years with Google, Firefox Switches to Yahoo [soylentnews.org]
Firefox to Show Ads in Empty New Tab Page Tiles [soylentnews.org]
They still rake in millions of dollars from search traffic kickbacks, but can't seem to allocate devs to widely used features while acquiring/starting irrelevant projects.
They have made hundreds of millions in revenue [mozilla.org]. Certainly enough to set up a self-sustaining foundation to fund developers and keep the servers running.
[SIG] 10/28/2017: Soylent Upgrade v14 [soylentnews.org]
(Score: 3, Funny) by JoeMerchant on Wednesday December 02 2015, @10:21PM
Or, if the Zuckerberg foundation donated $3 for every user, the Wikipedia fundraising drive could be over forever and they could devote their fundraising resources to better administration of the product.
Україна досі не є частиною Росії Слава Україні🌻 https://news.stanford.edu/2023/02/17/will-russia-ukraine-war-end
(Score: 2) by takyon on Wednesday December 02 2015, @10:43PM
Wikipedia won't stop BEGGING for cash - despite sitting on $60m [theregister.co.uk]
[SIG] 10/28/2017: Soylent Upgrade v14 [soylentnews.org]
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday December 02 2015, @11:15PM
The money is going to their endowment. You know, so they could continue their mission in perpetuity.
(Score: 2) by takyon on Wednesday December 02 2015, @11:31PM
http://www.theregister.co.uk/2013/10/08/wikipedia_foundation_money_in_wrong_place/ [theregister.co.uk]
[SIG] 10/28/2017: Soylent Upgrade v14 [soylentnews.org]
(Score: 2) by JoeMerchant on Thursday December 03 2015, @03:39AM
Politics often gets nasty - with a volunteer based organization even more so. I'm not saying the referenced allegations of waste are incorrect, but there are a large number of people out there who a) have lots of time on their hands to edit wikipedia and b) have lots of time on their hands to get self-righteous about how the paid Wikipedia people don't deserve the money they get while the editors don't get the money they deserve.
To know the real truth, you'd have to have direct dealings with the organization - anything less in this environment will be hear-say subject to potentially extreme reporter bias.
Україна досі не є частиною Росії Слава Україні🌻 https://news.stanford.edu/2023/02/17/will-russia-ukraine-war-end
(Score: 1, Insightful) by Ethanol-fueled on Wednesday December 02 2015, @11:06PM
If Zuckerberg is dumping his shares, that means that Facebook is gonna tank, not because he gives a flying fuck about anybody.
Especially since he is a known a bad tipper [yahoo.com]. Of course, that's typical of his kind.
(Score: 2) by takyon on Wednesday December 02 2015, @11:26PM
Read the summary. He is only cashing in $3 billion over the next 3 years, and the full 99% over his lifetime.
Whatever cashing in he does, that still leaves the promise to donate it to charity. This is where you can cut in and tell me that the Bill and Priscilla Chan-Zuck Melinda Gates Foundation Initiative will do evil.
[SIG] 10/28/2017: Soylent Upgrade v14 [soylentnews.org]
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday December 02 2015, @11:31PM
What is Zuckerberg doing in business with George Soros, Prince Alwaleed, Bill Gates, Meg Whitman, etc? [breakthroughenergycoalition.com]
(Score: 2) by takyon on Wednesday December 02 2015, @11:37PM
Is it supposed to be some kind of sneaky secret? They shouldn't have made a web page for it.
I guess I will submit that story since it hasn't appeared on here yet.
[SIG] 10/28/2017: Soylent Upgrade v14 [soylentnews.org]
(Score: 3, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday December 03 2015, @01:39AM
Hardly charity if you are donating it to an LLC you control. Really, just a way to evade taxes.
(Score: 2) by bob_super on Thursday December 03 2015, @02:23AM
Came here to say that. Most US "charities" are tax evasion systems, with a dose of good conscience on top.
You know why they do it now? To make sure that baby of theirs still gets access to all of daddy's money if the parents drop dead tomorrow morning. because only inheriting $30B would be life-threatening.
It has positive side effects, but less than actually paying your taxes and not structuring your company to avoid paying its.
(Score: 2) by Covalent on Thursday December 03 2015, @03:16AM
99% of infinity leaves you with...infinity.
Now I know Zuckerberg doesn't have infinity dollars. But he almost does. And while he's donating billions a year, he's earning more than he's donating.
I'm not suggesting that he should donate himself into poverty, but it's really easy to say "I'm going to donate 99% of my money" when you're in the 0.1%
You can't rationally argue somebody out of a position they didn't rationally get into.
(Score: 2) by Wootery on Thursday December 03 2015, @02:06PM
I'm not suggesting that he should donate himself into poverty, but it's really easy to say "I'm going to donate 99% of my money" when you're in the 0.1%
When you're that wealthy, it's not about what you can buy, it's about having more money than anyone else.
Anyway, who cares if he keeps 0.1%? How does Zuckerberg not being rich any more directly help anybody? Charity and rich-hating aren't the same thing.
There are still plenty of reasons to be suspicious of this whole thing, as really he'll still be in control of the money, but I don't see any point in whining that he's still rich.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday December 03 2015, @03:21AM
This is probably an underestimate, just because a result can be repeated doesn't mean it has been interpreted correctly. The latter is even more dangerous:
http://www.nature.com/news/irreproducible-biology-research-costs-put-at-28-billion-per-year-1.17711 [nature.com]
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday December 03 2015, @03:24AM
Put another way, his entire donation may amount to two years worth of misinformation if he isn't careful. That isn't even enough misinfo to be remembered for...
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday December 03 2015, @05:07AM
How much of the $28 billion is for "Is coffee good for you?" studies?
(Score: 4, Informative) by CaTfiSh on Thursday December 03 2015, @06:38AM
Rather than taking the 501c3 route, he's set up a for-profit LLC. An interesting move which gives his foundation the freedom to lobby and other political activities. It should be interesting to see how this foundation is utilized and if other similarly fashioned "philanthropic" organizations emerge.
I'll leave you with these pithy words from Zuckerberg:
Zuck: Yeah so if you ever need info about anyone at Harvard
Zuck: Just ask.
Zuck: I have over 4,000 emails, pictures, addresses, SNS
[Redacted Friend's Name]: What? How'd you manage that one?
Zuck: People just submitted it.
Zuck: I don't know why.
Zuck: They "trust me"
Zuck: Dumb fucks
http://www.theregister.co.uk/2010/05/14/facebook_trust_dumb/ [theregister.co.uk]
(Score: 1, Informative) by Anonymous Coward on Friday December 04 2015, @12:25AM
More on how Mark Zuckerberg’s Altruism Helps Himself. [nytimes.com]
(Score: -1, Troll) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday December 03 2015, @12:43PM
Attention may be called to the fact that, in spite of his proclaimed readiness to make personal sacrifices, the Jew never becomes poor thereby. He has a happy knack of always making both ends meet. Occasionally his benevolence might be compared to the manure which is not spread over the field merely for the purpose of getting rid of it, but rather with a view to future produce. Anyhow, after a comparatively short period of time, the world was given to know that the Jew had become a general benefactor and philanthropist. What a transformation!
-- Adolf Hitler (Mein Kampf, Chapter 11)