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.
Unless HN is navel-gazing, negativity is the default.
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.
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 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.
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."
The saying goes "Don't look a gift horse in the mouth"
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?
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.
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.
It'd come with strings attached...
When you put it that way, he can't be anything other than an asshole.
You can always opt out if you don't like it. Store your data in your mattress. :)
People know how banks operate and they are regulated. The same is not true for Facebook, which makes negative policy decisions all the time.
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.
But (for example purposes - not targeting Zuck) why would you celebrate a person who is using a donation as a tax write-off?
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.
Why do you think that's fine? Do you regard the notion that one person's happiness must be "paid for" by another person's suffering as a virtuous one?
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.