His foundation really does seem to do a good job with 'effective altruism'. There's a reason they're marked as secondary beneficiaries on all my accounts.<p>Also, as a recommendation, you guys should look into whether your employer matches charitable donations to 501Cs in any amount. I find giving a solid chunk of my discretionary budget to charity every year lends a sense of purpose to a job that wouldn't otherwise have much (at least, in the sense of helping others).<p>I enjoy being a dev, and I've given serious thought to simply continuing working once I reach my FIRE number and donating half of what I earn to charity. I think most charities would have more use for my money than my time, given my disability
It's interesting he decided to go this way rather than put it into a sustainable trust and just trickle money out indefinitely.<p>I suspect he believes that these causes need shock therapy. To eradicate a disease, you are better off doing it all in one go.<p>I also wonder if he looks at something like the Ford Foundation and realize in the long run that any charitable trust will just turn into an overstuffed political advocacy group that does little to advance his charities or even his legacy.
This is the way that foundations and endowments should operate.<p>Too many well-intentioned organizations wind up milquetoast tax-exempt hedge funds aimed primarily at self-preservation because the received wisdom is that they should focus on building endowments and keep their withdrawal rates below 4% in order to achieve immortality.<p>I'm a big believer in research-driven philanthropy and mission-driven organizations. But i've seen the institutional desire for self-preservation supersede essential purposes at a few of them, with disastrous implications for their effectiveness.<p>The Gates foundation probably controls ~5% of the ~$2T that charitable foundations have in endowments globally. If the majority of these organizations adopted these sorts of depletion goals, their program budgets could probably more than double.<p>Thank you for coming to my TED talk.
I don't see his post as an attempt to self-promote as some commenters here have made. To what purpose? He's already known to most adults, already rich beyond anyone could possibly dream to be. And it sounds like from the post that he already had this path planned albeit several decades after his death.<p>I think accelerating that timeline is a good thing as I think he will be better than anyone who came after to direct how the funds as applied.
Gates seems like a real embodiment of "Effective Altruism".<p>1. Get a bunch of money by any means necessary.<p>2. Donate/invest in altruistic causes.<p>Unfortunately, most people that use effective altruism to justify themselves hoarding wealth seem to forget the second part.
>While I respect anyone’s decision to spend their days playing pickleball, that life isn’t quite for me—at least not full time. I’m lucky to wake up every day energized to go to work<p>Bit of an unfair comparison though.. Most people dont retire from a job where you're literally handing people money.<p>That said, I'm a huge fan Bill's work post-microsoft :)
Nice! And with what he will be left he could, if he deploys it also during 20y, help 1200 people per month. With 1k daily give aways.<p><a href="https://ayudaefectiva.org/simula" rel="nofollow">https://ayudaefectiva.org/simula</a><p>Or with 10k daily, 310k monthly, adjusted by historical inflation it’s 100 million during 20 years.<p>That’s 3 million people helped.
No criticism of the man, but I think he may fail in this part of his goal<p>> People will say a lot of things about me when I die, but I am determined that "he died rich" will not be one of them.<p>It's easy to forget how absurdly wealthy the very richest in society are. Say he started this initiative on his 70th birthday and he's spreading his giving fairly lineraly over the next 20 years but dies just 1 day short of his 90th birthday, he'd still have about $13,698,630 to his name. I think most would consider someone with that money to their name rich.
Related:<p><i>Bill Gates pledges 99% of his fortune to Gates Foundation</i> - <a href="https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=43926212">https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=43926212</a> - May 2025
I really like the idea of a non-profit with an end goal. It makes it much more targeted and accountable. Even providing bonuses (within reason and making it difficult to game) for completing the goal quicker would work as well.
How much power is concentrated in the hands of individuals... It's great that Gates is choosing to use that power philanthropically, but it also raises questions about the long-term role of private wealth in solving public problems.
Bravo!<p>Future generation will be richer and better-off than the present. Saving your charity for the future is, effectively, stealing from the poor and giving to the rich.<p>Also, giving now maximizes the compounding effect of your charity. Saving 100 lives today is way better than saving 10 lives every decade for the next 10 decades.
Can he do something to make up for taking away MacBasic?<p><a href="https://www.folklore.org/MacBasic.html" rel="nofollow">https://www.folklore.org/MacBasic.html</a>
It is heartwarming to see him continuing to give away most of his wealth even if he's left with a billion or more at the end, and I wish other uber-rich would follow suit.
"Taxes, taxes, taxes. All the rest is bullshit in my opinion."
<a href="https://www.vox.com/future-perfect/2019/1/30/18203911/davos-rutger-bregman-historian-taxes-philanthropy" rel="nofollow">https://www.vox.com/future-perfect/2019/1/30/18203911/davos-...</a>
>The Gates Foundation’s mission remains rooted in the idea that where you are born should not determine your opportunities.<p>Arguably he's already done so much for billions of people. Had typing on computers not became the main way businesses communicate , anyone with bad, handwriting would be stuck in menial work.<p>When I was growing up in the 90s my hand writing was so bad it was assumed I would never amount to anything.<p>Then computers completely take over all aspects of business in the early 2000s. No one is writing TPS reports by hand.<p>All of a sudden my horrible handwriting doesn't matter. It's still really bad. But I've made 6 figures for well over a decade, along with an amazing year at about 200k.<p>None of this would of been possible without Gates. I also owe the creator of Android Andy Rubin. It's been a while ( and it might of been one of the other co founders), but I was able to thank Rubin. His response was something like "Well, we still need to get building applications working on Android."<p>I've also been able to thank( on this forum) Brendan Eich, the inventor of my first programming language, JavaScript. Amazingly humble for someone who helped create trillions in wealth.<p>Apart of me thinks Gates could still lead some innovation in computing. I hope somehow he's still coding under a pseudonym perhaps, and occasionally answering tech questions.<p>His gift to us has been this amazing industry.
> Today, the list of human diseases the world has eradicated has just one entry: smallpox... I’m optimistic that, by the time the foundation shuts down, we can also add malaria and measles.<p>What is Gates going to do about the anti-vaxxers, especially now that they're running the US government health programs?<p>Many of the problems that the Gates Foundation wants to solve are effectively political. In other words, the dysfunction of governments allows these problems to fester, such that the only, temporary solution is for someone like Gates to step in. What is Gates doing to solve the fundamental political problems? The foundation is trying to do the work that governments should be doing, so what happens after Gates dies and/or his money runs out?<p>Gates has a scathing critique of Elon Musk, accusing Musk of killing millions of children, but that's the inevitable outcome of a system where everything depends on the whims of billionaires. Gates himself appears like a rarity among them now, with a bit of a conscience and sense of public responsibility. We may praise Gates for his philanthropy, but it would be irresponsible of us, the non-billionaires, to leave the public's welfare to chance like that, and neither should Gates, about to turn 70 years old, support a world that depends on his personal existence in that world.
It's a noble goal.<p>But the track record of the rich does not inspire confidence that this is the route our society should take in reclaiming these assets.
>There are too many urgent problems to solve for me to hold onto resources that could be used to help people.<p>You can't hold onto it regardless.<p>The best you can do is choose who gets it.
How brave, giving all your money away by the time you will die. When you’ve got absolutely no skin in the game.<p>Why not just do it now? Why did you act so evil for decades? You don’t just get to “be good” now
$108B net worth now (per chart in the article), so he will be left with paltry $1B.<p>Still, would be beautiful to see all megarich do the same. Keep a few yachts, mansions and planes if you give back a few small countries' worth of GDP back.
i think it is telling that we trust Bill Gates to give away his wealth more effectively than if the same assets were handed over to the UN or some other global health charity. why?
It seems like he intends to give away the same way he did until now.<p>How is this a good idea considering that a political instability can wipe out all that effort?<p>Here's an idea: Give away your wealth to run unprofitable but essential "machines" like social media and news organizations to stop the vicious circle the humanity plunged in. Do it just like Musk but hand it to an independent organization that does't push for an agenda or profits.<p>Russians for example, pay social media personalities to push their talking points or even better they pay people who push talking points that are beneficial to them without directly agreeing on the transaction. Hijack the method, pay influencers you believe are beneficial for your causes and ideals.<p>It may look like just another billionaire trying to influence politics but you can make it into transparent institution. You can award prizes(monetary and honorary) like Nobel did.<p>Wouldn't be great if Twitter was run buy a transparent institution that releases logs, stats and full source code and doesn't need to do sketchy shit? Sure it would be imperfect but it can be beneficial, like Wikipedia for example.<p>Make social media into an impartial infrastructure with decades of runway and let people build the specialized things around it.
Remember when Gates refused to lift IP restrictions on the COVID vaccine<p><a href="https://www.wired.com/story/opinion-the-world-loses-under-bill-gates-vaccine-colonialism/" rel="nofollow">https://www.wired.com/story/opinion-the-world-loses-under-bi...</a>
The one problem Gates doesn't seem willing to tackle in earnest is the billionaire problem.<p>i.e. Somebody close to the control of money funnels a disproportionate (based on expertise, intelligence, effort, contribution, etc.) amount to themselves. They quickly come to view this as the just natural order and view anyone who disagrees as a communist hater.<p>Elon Musk is the current best example. Despite spending most of his time at twitter last year, Tesla was trying to set Musk's compensation at over $100 billion[1]. For what, exactly?<p>Bill Gates was every bit the problem billionaire in his own time. Only a tiny proportion of billionaires ever decide to engage in significant philanthropy, much of which wouldn't be necessary if their peers weren't draining society of the capital to do it's own research and building. Some argue that billionaires can serve society by hoarding resources and then directing them intelligently in directions governments are too stupid to consider, but that argument falls flat if <i>most</i> billionaires never get past the hoarding stage. Gates has called on his peers to do more. Few have listened.<p>It's great that a few former robber barons are engaged in serious philanthropy, but it's like slapping a band-aid on a bullet wound. It would be far better to stop the shooting. Reigning in executive pay would be a solid start. How do we do that?<p>[1]<a href="https://www.investopedia.com/elon-musks-multi-billion-dollar-pay-package-8757243" rel="nofollow">https://www.investopedia.com/elon-musks-multi-billion-dollar...</a>
You could maybe compensate all the people and companies you put out of business by throwing your weight around in the 80s and 90s.<p>Maybe throw Jerry Kaplan a billion or two for fucking up his launch of the Go Communicator.<p>Seeing downvotes, which means you haven't been around long enough to remember all the shit Gates pulled back in the go-go 90s. ANY new technology would instantly get a press release from Microsoft saying they were working on the same thing, leaving customers and investors to wait for Microsoft's product. Which most of the time never came or was stillborn. Gates was an asshole, and he might still be, but a tidal wave of greenwashing can fix anything in the good 'ol USA. Now he's a fucking saint, right?
What would you do with so much money?<p>At his level, he doesn't just spend or give away a pile of money, he is somewhat like a force of nature: he controls and directs a significant portion of the money stream in the world. Think of what the Gulfstream does for air, but for money.<p>His story started with computers: he was among the few who built the foundation of the technocratic civilization. Computers and machinery have created a good deal of prosperity, but there is a grave problem with it: computers and machinery have been completely isolated from ethics. Research in AI is no longer guided by what's good for humanity, but by what's possible. Today this manifests in such relatively innocent crimes as disregarding copyright and data privacy when training AI. But that's a sign of a deeper disease: the isolation from ethics. If it's allowed to continue like that, in a few decades this anti-ethical AI will kill at first humanity within humans and then the civilization itself.<p>IMO, the biggest difference he can make now is finishing the story that he started long ago, by bringing the AI beast under the umbrella of ethical control. It won't stop it, but will significantly reduce the fall out.
The thought that a _few_ benevolent billionaires will save the world was a preposterous notion in the 2000s and is still an absurd notion today.<p>This is nothing more than a billionaire (with a rich history of his own in destroying society) trying to buy his reputation back.<p>Reminds me of all of the billionaire shitheads (Walmart/Walton Family, Purdue Pharma/Sacklers, …) that buy the naming rights on education facilities, dying arts academies, and even libraries. Nothing but trying to wash away the guilt.<p>Our shitty family contributed to the opioid addiction en masse all in the name of profit, but hey at least you get a reduced or free tuition to pristine art academy or academic institution (if you meet criteria).<p>Tax the rich. End subsidies given to ultra wealthy.
One of the great tragedies of the world is that while he is arguably the philanthropist with the highest positive impact in human history, a significant part of the population seems to still think he is the literal Antichrist.
> We now understand the essential role nutrition—and especially the gut microbiome—plays in not only helping kids survive but thrive.<p>Glad we finally know now that babies need nutrition.
It’s too bad this guy turned into one of the bigger fear mongers during Covid times. He was one of the main pushers of the whole “New Normal” narrative and his doomsday prognostications did significant damage to society and generally went completely against every value he claimed to have.<p>But hey, people like him got a free pass to spit whatever nonsense came out of their mouth as long as it was pro-doom. Good news was never allowed and Gates was great at stirring up fear, panic and bad news.
I actually do believe that he genuinely wants to give all of his money to some purposes. I mean money is just a number to him now. You definitely don't want to die with a huge pile of assets left behind.<p>It's just that I might not agree with the purposes he chose. But hey, he is the boss, he can do whatever he wants.
Use to admire Gates, and good on him for doing what he is doing.<p>For me now, this statement by Larry Page resonates better:<p>“You know, if I were to get hit by a bus today, I should leave all of it to Elon Musk.”
Bullshit. He's not donating. He's investing.<p>It would be more effective to use his wealth to put a president that is not a war criminal and stop making US the bully of the world. That would be a blessing for humanity
It's hard to overstate the significance of Gates’ decision to give away nearly all of his wealth within his lifetime — not just as a philanthropic gesture, but as a shift in how concentrated capital can be redirected.<p>What stands out here is the 2045 sunset clause for the Gates Foundation. That’s rare. Most large philanthropies operate in perpetuity, which often leads to bureaucratic stagnation and mission drift. A fixed horizon forces prioritization and urgency — something sorely needed in global health, especially as government funding wanes.<p>That said, there's a growing tension worth discussing: when individuals like Gates can shape public health policy at planetary scale, how do we reconcile that with democratic accountability? The Foundation emphasizes collaboration and transparency, but private philanthropy still lacks the checks and balances of public institutions.<p>The move is commendable, but we need to ask deeper questions too:<p>Should wealth redistribution be a matter of voluntary generosity or systemic policy?<p>What happens to these initiatives once the sunset date arrives?<p>And what model — perpetual or time-bound — actually delivers more long-term impact?<p>Philanthropy at this scale is powerful. The real challenge is making it equitable, accountable, and sustainable — with or without billionaires at the helm.
It could have an unintended effect.<p>Injecting this money may create inflation and accidentally increase poverty as more money becomes freely available and circulating.<p>Could be in some way better to just destroy it ?
I don't think promises like this should be considered news. Take a look at the list of people who have signed Gates' own Giving Pledge and ask yourself if making the pledge changed their behavior at all: <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Giving_Pledge" rel="nofollow">https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Giving_Pledge</a>.