Whether or not the letter is narcissistic, one has to admire their initiative. It is not, unfortunately, the obvious thing to do, and they deserve to be applauded for that.
Whatever personal faults the man has, I'd argue this kind of philanthropy more than makes up for it.
That's fair, but if you notice a great deal of the letter is simply telling the child about the great achievements and dreams of the parents - if there's one thing I've learned the hard way, it's that dreams are easy to put into words and fuckin' hell on wheels to make reality. Philanthropy is a good social construct, for sure. I guess maybe I just have some inherent bias against preaching from atop the mountain of wealth inequality, a position that was obtained through a combination of luck and timing as much as any pure personal willpower and genius.
I think you were right in your initial comment about being "significantly jaded". The dude is literally trying as hard as he can to fix problems in the world but both your comments do little other than detract from his effort/energy.
A PR stunt, which this is, is not fixing any problem in the world. Besides, the guy is responsible for some of the world problems and his corporation is pushing to worsen some of those issues because it fits its own agenda and profit.
Let him clean up his act and his company's first, until then he has zero credibility.
Well as a scholar I learned there's merit in taking a contrarian position for the purpose of discussion and analysis. I'm not so sure he's "trying as hard as he can" as you would put it, because if he was, then he'd be so confident in his abilities that he'd donate everything now and the letter would explain to his daughter why he didn't leave her more than a basic trust fund for college expenses rather than millions. Hey if you want to get in line and shake his hand for doing what is, fundamentally, the right thing, then great! More power to you!
But, you know, he could've done all this in private and given her the letter when she turned 16 or 18 or whatever.
Exactly. Bill Gates came late to the game. He pretty much had to conquer the whole world before developing an interest in philanthropy. Now it's his "real work" and I guarantee you he'll be remembered more for that than MS-DOS!
Zuckerberg, like Gates, is a brilliant but deeply flawed person. However, Zuckerberg appears to be maturing much faster than Gates. I have lots of hope for him left.
To be honest, I think this "interest" in philanthropy is simply due to the diminishing returns of money: the more money you have, the less value each unit of money has to you, therefore you feel more inclined to give it away for good causes.
Overwhelming evidence is needed that Gate's philanthropy will be remembered more than his computing career. Carnegie is remembered for steel before philanthropy.
Carnegie's wiki page "Andrew Carnegie was a Scottish-American industrialist who led the enormous expansion of the American steel industry in the late 19th century. He built a leadership role as a philanthropist for the United States and the British Empire."
I've never felt Mark was brilliant. Would a brilliant man know what an average man wants, or really values? I'm not knocking the guy, he just never struck me as being brilliant.
Maybe being kinda average is a blessing?
I'm am greatful these billionaires are giving away their money. I've seen so many wealthy families who are absolutely misserable. Why not give it to good causes? His gift to his daughter is not monetarily spoiling her?
That said, I wish more would just give the money without any strings. Set up the foundation, vet the BOD, and walk away. Just because you are good in business, why would anyone think they are in any position to know how to fix societies problems? Most of these guys gave lived most of their lives in a bubble.
On the other hand, I have yet to see a charity/foundation that I completely trust. The more I look into so many charities/foundations; the more cynical I get.
I do like Mark much more today than yesterday though. You made a great move Mr. Zuckerburg!
I hope your charity dies wonderful things.
(I didn't even read the article. I'm just assuming he's actively involved? If wrong, I applogiguse!)
If you're in the US and want to actually make the world better there are ridiculously more efficient ways to do so than handing your money to the government. Tax dollars paid in the US are probably more of a negative force in the world than a positive one when you consider the damage our military and corporate subsidies have done over the last 50 years.
I don't disagree, but it's not because his wealth is actually valued at 45B that he deserves more democratic power than me or anyone else in the US or the world.
This trend for "corporations can make the world better" is misleading. Everyone else has failed: military corp, narco, public corp (as in ancient urrs), ... If only one has succeed, we should see it.
Facebook has oodles of untaxed cash by virtue of the Double Irish, so it could choose any of a number of EU governments to invest charitably in. Not just the USA.
I wonder what Greece would think of free cash injections, for example? What could improved infrastructure do for that struggling country?
what makes you think pumping even more free cash into greece would help anybody but a select few that handles that cash? just throwing cash at problems rarely fixes them, what these guys are trying to do (zuck, gates, etc) is create a movement that goes for the root of the problems. it's quite encouraging and kudos to them
The pith of my point was that Facebook does not need to repatriate money to America and get taxed to do good, contrary to my post's parent's assertion. There is plenty of good to be done all over the world, and Facebook already has untaxed pools of Euros to use.
If Facebook were to pay taxes "where the real business is done" (assuming there is a legal way to avoid doing so), it would probably be considered gross negligence. I imagine the same is true of any multinational.
Besides, Facebook can put that money to much better use than government. All the lowly users of Facebook on the other hand do not know how to best spend their money and had better hand it over. Zuck says so (so do Gates and Soros).
I have yet to see unemployment checks from facebook, or social security, or public services or infrastructure. But I've seen budget cuts and austerity and the GAFAM's tax evasion plays a role in this.
The point is that if facebook were to stop its tax evasion business, it would probably not be profitable.
Well, if you consider the double irish with a dutch sandwich designed to take that money from states (who would use that money to finance stuff such as public services, medical insurance, social welfare,etc.), the market manipulation during the IPO, the spammer methods and a transnational corp whose business is the collection of personal and private data from users while trying to replace the web/internet among other wrongdoings, all to put that money in zucker's hands (and a few others) then it becomes obvious that this has nothing to do with philantropy or altruism, to the contrary it's narcissicism, ego and maybe guilt.
>to the contrary it's narcissicism, ego and maybe guilt.
Lets not kid ourselves here, Zuckerburg probably likes to think he is God, and with his investments into VR also probably sees his daughter as one of last to be born in anything resembling the natural world. To begin to even try to assign any sort of psychological pathology or diagnostics would be futile. We'll have to hope the universe has a way to keep tech monsters like him in check or that he realizes playing neuromancer with the parents of his child's friends destroyed any sense of authenticity in his daughter's life.
Whatever personal faults the man has, I'd argue this kind of philanthropy more than makes up for it.