The Bill Gates Problem

Taking the heat off Gates for a moment, we used to call it the Bob Geldof problem. Even though he always denied that Live-Aid money ended up buying weapons in Ethiopia at least Geldof himself had the humility to admit later that the unforeseen political side effects of Live Aid were depressing and thought provoking.

Philanthropy looked good in less complex times. Wealthy reformists intervening in social problems worked in the 18th and 19th centuries, in a single city. Today maybe it's just hubris for small groups or individuals to fund pet projects with potentially huge side effects.

Bringing it back to Gates. A lot of people like the man, but I sincerely believe he set back computing by at least 20 years. He could use his enormous wealth to fund real social computing projects, free open source etc.. to put right what he messed up on the path to wealth. But I expect Bill Gates is too ideologically invested and much too proud to ever do that.

>Had that tax been retained, Schwab reasons, the government might have invested it in more diverse and accountable ways.

This assumes the money would still be taxed in the same timeframe, rather than just sitting in the market to grow more, which is more likely.

This also assumes the government is good at allocating resources to these types of projects, when in reality it would be unlikely to make any meaningful impact, as it would just be a slight increase to the budget, which would be peppered around to the military, various existing programs, and lost to waste and bureaucracy.

> Furthermore, the Gates foundation’s support for treatments that offer the best chances of accumulating returns on intellectual property risks eclipsing the development of preventive public-health solutions, Schwab notes.

In other words, profiteering disguised as philanthropy. Arata Kochi had already ringed the alarm back in the aughts.

I had to check the date because this debate has been going on for a while. https://slatestarcodex.com/2019/07/29/against-against-billio...

The part about paying the people who grade your work is new to me though. It's reminiscent of criticism of securities rating agencies in The Big Short.

Dear lord, I really hate how so much of problem framing in the world today is to pick on some rich tech related person. Worse, it is framed in a way that this is a unique to today problem.

I'm open to the idea that the scale of things can be worse. I'm less sure that is the case for stuff like this. We had plenty of seemingly bad science in the past, by the knowledge of today. From all evidence I know, nobody has a monopoly on causing bad science. Similarly, nobody has a monopoly on good science.