

Bill Gates on His Foundation's Health and Education Campaigns - hypr_geek
http://www.businessweek.com/articles/2013-08-08/bill-gates-on-his-foundations-health-and-education-campaigns

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Bootvis
Given the question asked, it's a reasonably fair swipe, though. I don't think
there is much to argue against: Vaccination and eradication of diseases has a
more direct effect than access to broadband on health. The secondary effect of
fighting disease broadband is a reduction of poverty which will both lead to
better health.

So not sure why the swipe part is added to the title here on HN.

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waveman2
This seems like an obvious point, but when you are dealing with complex
systems second-order effects often result in totally perverse outcomes. Often
the result of pushing the system in one direction is an outcome in the
opposite direction.

In this case, providing medical services results in more children living,
which [often] means larger populations, which means more pressure on food and
infrastructure, and more unemployment.

So providing medical care can make people worse off.

The book "An End to Alms" points to an interesting example of this phenomenon.
Hygiene standards in England were far worse in earlier times than in China
[read Samuel Pepys's diaries if you don't believe me]. As a result, more
people died from infections in England at a given level of nutrition than in
China. As a result, per person calorie intake in China fell until the lower
food intake balanced out the higher standards of hygiene.

More in any book on Systems Theory, or "Poor Charlie's Almanack".

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Alex3917
> When we get into a field, we do take a point of view, and raising
> controversy is a symptom. Fortunately, there is what’s called the charter
> school format that lets you try new things. The system is good at shutting
> down the ones that don’t work and replicating the ones that do. The big
> actor is government. If somebody says somebody is too big, it would be
> strange to point to us.

What a load of shit. What Gates is trying to do isn't using a small number of
charter schools as a laboratory for discovering news approaches to education
that are more effective, which was the original idea of charter schools.
Rather, he is trying to replace most of the public schools for low-income
minorities with privatized charter schools, and he wants to be the one person
who gets to create the criteria that determine whether a given school is doing
well or not.

Here are the actual criticisms of his agenda that the article is likely
referring to (with an added quote on his malaria work to illustrate the
point):

[http://pastebin.com/XUxCmdiN](http://pastebin.com/XUxCmdiN)

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waveman2
His foundation makes great play of the claim that they are evidence based and
totally, totally use metrics and quantitative feedback to guide their work.

So I go onto their site and look for such metrics, feedback, evidence that
they have change their policies and practices based on data.

Nothing.

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mathgladiator
> In the U.S., if we have an education system where the inner-city kid and the
> suburban kid have equal opportunity, that would be a huge contribution.

I feel like this isn't the best metric and could have unintended consequences.

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justin66
Even though I don't really agree with him, his slam here was great:

> Everybody’s got their own priorities. In terms of improving the state of
> humanity, I don’t see the direct connection. I guess it’s fun, because you
> shoot rockets up in the air. But it’s not an area that I’ll be putting money
> into.

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rz2k
I really don't understand how that comment section could come from typical
_BusinessWeek_ readers.

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codex
When BillG ran Microsoft, he was a total asshole. Now he's trying to be
remembered in a positive light, but he's still thin skinned when it comes to
competition.

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eps
I really doubt that he's doing that to create a better legacy. It's just that
people at his level can do whatever they like, _absolutely anything_. So some
are buying Hawaii islands and others try and help other people. Gates is one
of the latter.

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saraid216
His family sort of has a history of doing this kind of thing.

