I'm getting a bit miffed at the comments talking about this being a "PR move" or helpful for a "tax break". Did I read this wrong or did it not say 500. MILLION. dollars?
The cynicism must be pretty darn strong to try and explain that away by anything other than Zuck wanting to do some good with his shares and money. We should be applauding it, not over-analyzing it for how it benefits him.
If you go into a HN thread like this and expect someone to not shit all over someone giving away millions of dollars to charity, you haven't been paying attention.
Unless HN is navel-gazing, negativity is the default.
You view charity in terms of the benefit to the recipient. I think that's the exact wrong way to view it.
I think charity should be measured by how much it hurts to give. $500 million is about 1/20 of Mark Zuckerberg's estimated wealth. He could donate $8.4 billion and still be a billionaire. He could donate $9 billion and still be set for the rest of his life. $500 million is almost inconsequential to him.
Compare this to an impoverished widow who lives off of $10K a year and donates half of that. Now that is charity. But by your measure, this is merely five thousand dollars, not 500. MILLION. DOLLARS. That miserly widow.
Also, charity isn't charity if there is any kind of quid pro quo. Your name on a building. Donating to that orchestra you always patronize. In Mark's case, the quid pro quo is the positive press he and Facebook receives from it. If he really cared, he'd have given as anonymously as possible (like Chuck Feeney did).
Generally, I view acts like this as the wealthy trying to buy their way out of hell.
I'm really, really trying to restrain myself from vigorously flaming you here in the way that I'd be tempted to if I'd seen this post in a forum where the cultural norms tend toward less civility than HN. Suffice to say that I find your views utterly abhorrent and unconscionable.
Charity is about helping people who need help, creating more happiness in the world than previously existed. Measuring its virtue in terms of how much pain it creates - for anyone - is a shameful, Manichean inversion of morality.
Maybe "the wealthy" are "trying to buy their way out of hell". They're also buying other people's way out of hell. Good on all counts; who wants to see anybody living in hell, other than someone who thinks that pain is good?
This is a win-win scenario, the charity gets lots of money and he gets his name on a building and positive press. Yet you're turning it into a negative because you believe he gets more than he gives.
I see charity in terms of impact you can make. If I have 1000 bucks, and give 500 for charity, this means that I donate half of what I have. If Zuck fives 500 Million, he donated 1.000.000 times more than me. It doesn't matter how much do he has, it matter how much he can impact. 1 milion dollars are stiill 1 million dollars, despite if the donors has only 2 millions, or 1 billion.
On the one hand I can see where you're coming from - charity can very often be done as a self-serving way to justify other evils. Kind of like the dad who out of guilt for never being home buys his kids a nice computer.
On the other hand, 500 million dollars hurts for anybody - even viewing it relatively, 1/20th of your wealth is a pretty sizable chunk of change to be giving away. Having his name on it is right in line with the Gates/Buffett thing of trying to provoke other billionaires to action.
As a side note...I may be wrong, but as I read your note, I think I hear echoes of Jesus talking about the impoverished widow's donation in Luke 21 - if so, I'd say this is a misunderstanding of what Jesus is getting at here - he's not saying the large donations were bad or wrong, but rather that the woman's giving both(!) of her two small coins caused her donation to be most valuable to God. He was focussing on the positive rather than being cynical about the others' gifts - he simply said her gift was more valuable.
The present value of the securities is certainly one aspect of measuring the value of said securities to Mr. Zuckerberg. Another aspect would also be the control of his company that he's giving up (since it's primarily stock I assume). The second one I believe is one that would interest Mr. Zuckerberg more than the dollar value of said securities. But even then, it probably amounts to a negligible steak in the company as well.
Agreed. Who cares if there is a tax break for this. I think this donation is well-timed and I would like to see more "rich" corporations follow suit.
I was initially thinking he might do something for Sandy Hook. There is a community torn to shreds that will never be the same. Here is a list of ways we can all help now: http://www.huffingtonpost.com/mobileweb/2012/12/14/connectic...
I care. Or well, I care if there _aren't_ tax breaks for this. People who complain about this being a PR stunt or driven by self-interest are missing the point. If appeals to self-interest are what it takes to get people to do good, then we should appeal to people's self interest and applaud those who give in to those appeals.
This kind of dignity just doesn't apply when it comes to solving certain problems. I doubt the kids with new opportunities in Newark, or the people without TB or Malaria in Africa give two shits about what motivated the people who helped them.
Edit: One other thing worth noting is that tax breaks for charitable donations in the US are actually a really, really awesome thing for the government to do. It's basically Uncle Sam saying "yanno what, we understand that there are certain things that government doesn't do well, so we're going to approve you diverting some of your taxes to these other organizations who do it better."
> Why would it matter if they're altruistic or not? It's a move, it's going to help. Who the fuck cares why?
You have to look at both acts of commission and omission when you're considering someone's impact on the world.
Zuckerberg is donating an eye-watering amount of money to charity. That's cool, but what about the rest of his wealth? His net worth is something like $14bn last time I checked.
That makes this a donation of around 3.5% of his net worth. No more impressive than someone with $200k of assets donating $7k to charity. In fact, given diminishing marginal returns to wealth, it's considerably less impressive. $500m is nothing to someone with a net worth of $14bn. It's just some digits on a piece of paper.
Consider a parallel universe in which Facebook never existed, and the $14bn that accrued to Zuck through his stake in the business was scattered amongst the many investors from whence it came. Who is to say these investors, between them, would not be donating an average of 3.5% of their net wealth to charity?
"Consider a parallel universe in which Facebook never existed, and the $14bn that accrued to Zuck through his stake in the business was scattered amongst the many investors from whence it came"
You're making a mistake. There wasn't $14bn in investors pocket that was simply moved to Mark Zuckerberg. Mark Zuckerberg created wealth. It wasn't simply moving existing wealth.
In your parellel universe, there was less money to donate.
"You have to look at both acts of commission and omission when you're considering someone's impact on the world."
No, that's wrong. When considering someone's impact on the world, you only need to consider their impact. Mark's impact was creating Facebook, with all that implies, the good and the bad. And it also, now, includes giving 500 million dollars to charity, which will probably save at least some lives (doubtful it will have no impact or a negative impact, imo).
Unless by impact you mean something more like "considering whether someone is morally good or bad", in which case I'd agree with your statmenet, but still rule that Zuckerberg is good from the public info on him.
> You're making a mistake. There wasn't $14bn in investors pocket that was simply moved to Mark Zuckerberg. Mark Zuckerberg created wealth. It wasn't simply moving existing wealth.
There was literally $14bn in investors' pockets that moved to Zuckerberg. That's how it works. They liked the cut of his jib, so they gave him money in exchange for a slice of his business.
If it hadn't gone to Zuckerberg, it could have gone to someone else, perhaps someone more charitable.
> In your parellel universe, there was less money to donate.
Zuckerberg may have created wealth, but he didn't create money. The money supply is controlled.
> No, that's wrong. When considering someone's impact on the world, you only need to consider their impact.
A person's impact on the world is determined by both the things they do, and the things they fail to do. We could argue at length about whether acts of omission ought to carry moral or legal punishments, but they are undeniably part of the overall impact that you have on the world.
> And it also, now, includes giving 500 million dollars to charity, which will probably save at least some lives (doubtful it will have no impact or a negative impact, imo).
My point is that, sure, Zuckerberg is cycling money into charitable causes, but in his absence the very same money may have been cycled in greater quantities, at a greater rate.
That's the bar at which you measure Zuckerberg's character.
Problem is Zuck wants your soul and takes it for far less than $500 mil then sells it to other people and gives someone some stock with those strings attached...
When you put it that way, he can't be anything other than an asshole.
Banks use your money for interest and loans (or at least a percentage) and you get "free" money in the form of credit cards and interest. Facebook uses your data for ads in exchange for "free" services.
You can always opt out if you don't like it. Store your data in your mattress. :)
> Did I read this wrong or did it not say 500. MILLION. dollars?
This isn't directed at Zuck or Facebook, or anything. Because I really don't know him.
But regarding your shock about the dollar amount...
Keep in mind that it's incredibly easy to be generous when you are at the top. It's actually so easy, that it's almost effortless.
There really is a difference between a man that writes a check that makes no difference to him (in the amount), and a man with nothing that roles up his sleeves, goes out, and dedicates himself to helping others.
I'll celebrate the latter before I'll celebrate the former.
One throws money away, the other helps change everyone around him.
Beyond that, even if we accept the premise that it's easier for Zucker to give away $500MM than someone with little to donate a fraction of that amount, the money will absolutely have a great net impact on society as a whole. Isn't that contribution to the betterment of all worth a major celebration?
I think part of the problem is that it's hard to conceptualize what sort of impact donations as large as these will have. If we actually met the thousands of people that this gift will help out, and heard their stories of what a different it made, I think it'd be much harder to dismiss than it is a written number.
This complaint comes up every time. But, can anyone explain to me how spending $500 mil /for the purpose/ of saving less than 500 mil in taxes would make any sense at all? People tend to frame it as if it was somehow a profitable maneuver.
Who cares if it's a tax write-off? What is at all negative about a tax-write off that in any way detracts from the manifest positive impact that the charitable donation itself creates?
500 Million is not effortless for anyone on planet earth. Mark Zuckerberg has somewhere in the range of 7 to 10 billion dollars. 500M is somewhere between 5 and 7 percent of his net worth. I realize that money has less marginal utility to billionaires, but donating 5 to 7 percent of what you've earned in your whole life is nothing to sneeze at. I'm pretty sure Mark thought about this decision as he has never been known to throw money around, and for you to dismiss it as "effortless" is fairly absurd.
First, "throws money away", really? It's going toward something good, helping real people's lives. Second it's fine if you want to measure someone's charitableness by their personal sacrifice, but that doesn't mean there's anything wrong with measuring it by the impact of their actions. In your scenario I would say the money being thrown away would have much more of an impact.
I've long stopped believing that money helps improve the world. People do.
If you throw money at a problem, often times you create a dependency on that aid, and other times you just end up with even more mouths to feed.
It's not that monetary aid is always 100% ineffective. It's just that once you tally up the bad and the good, you're left with something that's in the red.
Money is an extremely effective social organization and incentive system. It's a way to get people to behave in a way you want to. The right investments can help change the world.
You're not the first person to glorify volunteering and charity work over monetary donations, but I think it's misguided. It's my impression that most charities could use money a lot more than volunteer time, especially because it's easier to convert the former into the latter. If you make $50/hr as a contractor, you could go work as a volunteer for an hour or do an hour of contracting and give 5 man hours to a charity, as well as giving 5 people some work. Or if they don't need any extra labor but they need anything else they can use the cash for that. Even if it's a lot less romanticized, getting full value for your labor out of a market economy then redirecting part of it to charitable causes probably does a lot more overall good than doing a (relatively) inefficient amount of labor. You argued elsewhere that people can get dependent on money, but they can be just as easily as dependent on anything else you do.
The only exceptions I can think of are blood donations or anything where you're donating a 'human' element (visiting the elderly) rather than your work.
Ok, you can go back to celebrating your Steve Jobs poster. Jobs showed how much of a maverick he was by keeping all his money to himself and fuck the world. Now THAT took real courage and effort.
The cynicism must be pretty darn strong to try and explain that away by anything other than Zuck wanting to do some good with his shares and money. We should be applauding it, not over-analyzing it for how it benefits him.