Bill Gates: "I have no use for money"

[Razosh]

Alright I was wrong and I apologize.

 

[Hakeem]

Don't worry, I can't tell what's real anymore either.

 

[BlackEnvyX]

Zombie. Sure, charity may be a way for extra publicity for the company. But you're missing the fact that they could just KEEP the money. I highly doubt one person would go "oh, they didn't help people in Africa, I'm not buying their laptop!"

People are going to buy their products anyways. Bill Gates is just a very charitable individual who feels like helping people. Have we really come to a day and age when giving back to the community is frowned upon just because of who's doing the giving?

 

[Hakeem]

That's because you don't see giants competing charity-wise. If you actually saw a company like Microsoft giving actual charity and advertising that they are helping people in Africa, you can bet that a ton of consumers would value that in their shopping decisions. Note: This already happens, just not in all aspects of industry.

 

[Statharas]

I don't see Microsoft products saying "Half your money will go in combating malaria" or stuff like that. Truth is, you only read/hear about it from the media.

 

[mikeisman2]

Irrelevant. Charity always has been a good method to gain social acknowledgment with which you can justify A) being bloody rich B) selling a crap product. Mr. Gates has always been criticized for accumulating too much wealth for no reason, with investing into charity, these critics are silenced and his company can carry on with being acknowledged for social responsibility.

It doesn't matter what you achieve with charitable contributions, what matters is that you still have 99% of your income on your personal bank account. With good media campaign (and achievements, of course) however, you can tune up that 1% to look like more, with which everyone will go "awww, he's such a nice person, using all his money for good deeds". That will also make your product sell better, since people won't only avoid turning away with disgust, they will feel involved with your charitable activities.

As I said, just marketing.

The key is hes still doing something who cares his reasons as long as he is doing something. Zombie do you give up 99% of your income to help people. Its easy to preach about how someones not doing enough but are you doing anything yourself.
personally i do charity at halfway houses and soup kitchens might i note i don't do it for school and not for hours i coudnt tell you how many hours i have logged for it cause i dont log them i do it because helping people is good. I dont get why people complain about other people helping when they most likely are doing nothing themselves. Yeah hes rich so what your not rich you expect him to just throw all that wealth he "EARNED" to other people. Yeah that would be nice but the reality is thats not happening. Now unless you want do make a new operating system and produce ground breaking technologies and make a killing and donate all your money id stop hating. Because that 1% is still doing a lot of good!

 

[Adiktuz]

And also that yes, his donations might be marginal compared to Microsoft's revenue... but don't forget that Microsoft's revenue is not Gates' revenue... and using revenue is not even a good idea since it's not what companies actually gain, it's the profit that matters since it's what stays in the company...

and also associating his personal life with microsoft is not something that people should do, seriously, it's people like you who like to form a permanent link between a person and his company is what makes these "good" things look bad...

and really, a lot of wealthy people hog their money... it's nice to see these other wealthy people sharing their blessings...

 

[Krolan]

Well, they can afford it. I agree with Zombie in terms of this being a marketing action. It is. If it wasn't, why wouldn't he spend half his income to something else, since he clearly does not need all that money, to help "even more people". Also, just because most of his money "will be spent in the next 20 years after his death", doesn't mean it will be one day sooner than exactly 20 years later, whatever may be left of it (inflation). Sorry, I'm a big sceptic when it comes to such things.

Also: Just because there's someone being worse, doesn't make the other better. In General It would be better if all rich people acted like gates, but also in general, it would be even better if all rich people acted like Jesus.

Just sayin'

 

[Basinator]

Irrelevant. Charity always has been a good method to gain social acknowledgment with which you can justify A) being bloody rich B) selling a crap product. Mr. Gates has always been criticized for accumulating too much wealth for no reason, with investing into charity, these critics are silenced and his company can carry on with being acknowledged for social responsibility.

It doesn't matter what you achieve with charitable contributions, what matters is that you still have 99% of your income on your personal bank account. With good media campaign (and achievements, of course) however, you can tune up that 1% to look like more, with which everyone will go "awww, he's such a nice person, using all his money for good deeds". That will also make your product sell better, since people won't only avoid turning away with disgust, they will feel involved with your charitable activities.

As I said, just marketing.

I disagree. First off, it is a good thing. Second, Bill is doing a lot of work himself. Do you even know how much he donated? There is no way he would earn even half that much money back by having a good reputation.

For what does he even need it? He isn't a MS employee anymore, hell, he even has a corporation which does....actually, nothing. Really, it doesn't seem to do anything, and IIRC it does this for a few years already.

Also, I think he is investing HUGE personal energy into his charity. Why? Because I fucking read his 33 pages blog posting about 3 mysths of development aid. Oh, and he did some Ask Me Anything on reddit too!

And I am pretty sure it is just the top of the iceberg what I saw from his work for his charity.

Mr. Gates has always been criticized for accumulating too much wealth for no reason

What is wrong about having a lot of money?

 

[Mageworld91]

Do you hear that Microsoft acquired Nokia . I'm so boring.

 

[Adiktuz]

yeah, like ages ago already...

It doesn't matter what you achieve with charitable contributions, what matters is that you still have 99% of your income on your personal bank account.

So what if it's 1%? The fact is that it still helps, and that 1% is still a huge amount especially for the people who will be on the receiving end...

 

[Death Adder]

As far as I'm concerned any action made by any person is made in the belief that it will give them something in return.

Maybe he want to make himself appear as a nice person, maybe he feel sorry for poor folks dying each day or w/e and it would make him feel better about himself to help them knowing that he did a good deed which warms his heart or some shit.

zombie went ahead and assumed it had to be for a specific reason (that the motivation is PR), I'm obviously going to assume that in reality nobody know or will know bill gates reason(s) besides himself (because nobody can know) which means that although it's possible that zombie is correct he wouldn't actually know if he is or not so claming it's for PR as a fact is stupid, it would be ok as an example.

tl:dr Bill Gates have a reason and a motive. (mind blown)

That however shouldn't be the point and isn't even worth mentioning since everybody does everything with their own self interest in mind so regardless of his reasons he most likely believe that he will get whatever it is by supporting these charities financially which (presumably) save thousands of lives each day.

Person A helping someone for another reason than person B does not make it less true that they're both helping someone.

 

[Justicebringer]

Just to mention, the worlds most famous people
have the most of their wealth in foundations,
its untrackable so forbes lists are not accurate.

 

[Nuclear]

What do you mean by that? What "foundations"? Non-profit ones? Those enjoy tax exemptions and are required to make their financial records public. I think the taxman might be a bit mad if someone was storing their personal wealth in one.

 

[Boris_Spider]

What do you mean by that? What "foundations"? Non-profit ones? Those enjoy tax exemptions and are required to make their financial records public. I think the taxman might be a bit mad if someone was storing their personal wealth in one.

Churches do it all the time, and people seem to like that...

:

 

[Karassu]

To Bill Gates: Use your money to make more videogames! Violent videogames!
And the casino, bet all your Billions to the casino one shot. If you lose... lolz.