
Bill and Melinda Gates 2016 Annual Letter - comatose_kid
https://www.gatesnotes.com/2016-Annual-Letter
======
Mikeb85
> A cheap, clean source of energy would change everything.

Like nuclear fission? Or how about solar?

Anyhow, while I think the intentions are good, my experience in 3rd world
countries has me convinced that all the charity in the world won't help.

In general, the problem in 3rd world countries isn't education, or sanitation,
or lack of capital, or mosquito nets, etc...

The problem is corruption and safety. I've seen it in my wife's country -
savings rates are generally high, there's lots of labour, a ton of
entrepreneurial spirit and the barrier to entry is more or less zero. The
problem is, the second you start any sort of enterprise, someone will rob you.
Police will demand bribes. Politicians will demand bribes. If you don't give
in, they'll send their criminal friends after you. Even if you do give in,
they may anyway. Bandits will come rob you in the night, and if you're unlucky
enough to be there at the time, they'll shoot you. If you're lucky, they just
take some cash. There's literally zero incentive to do anything, lest you get
robbed and/or killed. That's reality. You want to fix the 3rd world, you need
to start with law and order. Nothing can happen until people feel safe, and
feel like doing something will actually improve their life.

After that, it's infrastructure. Power, roads, emergency services, bridges,
etc... Infrastructure enables travel, it enables businesses, lights, and so
on. When you have infrastructure you can bring your products to market. And so
on (most people know the economic benefits of infrastructure).

In my experience, families in the third world often have the equivalent of
thousands if not tens of thousands of dollars saved. Witness how much money
Syrians and Afghans pay to get smuggled into Europe. They won't invest that
because they don't feel safe, but they have no qualms giving a smuggler
thousands of dollars.

So much charity is just a band-aid, or worse, gets siphoned off to corrupt
entities. You fix corruption and safety issues, and the third world is the new
first world. But no, we give charity with one hand, and with the other are
propping up horrible dictators, overthrowing democracies for choosing the
wrong ideology, and encouraging corruption and oligarchy. Given what's
happened in the world since I've been old enough to follow the news, I'm more
convinced than ever that the developed world simply wants to keep the third
world as dependent colonies.

tl;dr - long rant, something something corruption.

~~~
kuschku
Nuclear Fission? Safe?

As long as for-profit companies are running the reactors, they’ll end up
saving everywhere, and, like we’ve seen before and before, it ends up in
meltdowns (for example, due to refusing to maintain the emergency generators
properly, see fukushima).

Any way you try to handle this issue, someone will abuse it. Make it a
governmentally funded operation, people will end up corrupt and use money for
themselves. Make it a for-profit company, they’ll try to get around every
regulation and save money.

No matter what you do, you end up with a potential disaster.

~~~
Mikeb85
> Nuclear Fission? Safe?

Nuclear power and uranium mining is far cleaner and safer than coal, oil/gas,
even hydro. Coal mining, hydro accidents, and the various deaths from oil/gas
extraction, power plant accidents, etc..., far outstrip deaths from nuclear
power plant accidents. Not to mention the health costs that coal has inflicted
on the world, the amount of people displaced and ecosystems destroyed by
hydro, and so on. Nuclear power gets a bad rap, but statistically speaking, is
rather safe.

~~~
kuschku
For the people who end up having to live with contaminated tap water and only
learn about it decades later (see Leukämiecluster Elbmarsch for example) it
ends up having similar, or worse, results than coal, though.

And especially the waste issue isn't easily solvable.

------
ghouse
I worked in energy development in sub-sahara Africa. Attempted several solar
projects, all of which would have sold electricity at a price considerably
lower than the utility's avoided cost from imported petroleum. We were
unsuccessful because the country was concerned that by contracting with us
they might jeopardize the possibility of a grant from the EU. Law of
unintended consequences. Or, great example of compassion disrupting a free
market doing more harm than good.

~~~
technotony
There's a whole body of poverty work devoted to these kinds of issues, called
Institutionalism. My own experience in poverty reduction was working in
Microfinance (in Kenya, Uganda and Philippines). I got disillusioned when I
realized that even when our loans helped someone make some additional income
there was always some group above them in the food chain who would find some
way to leach the additional profit from them. The issue wasn't access to
loans, our entrepreneur's work ethic, intelligence or creativity - the issue
was systemic corruption. Fixing that though wasn't something the free market
or bottom up entrepreneurship can solve.

~~~
kelvin0
Sometimes I think the 3rd world population most view the western powers as
Schizophrenic. On one hand you have some westerners trying to help with micro
lending and free solar energy initiatives, fresh water ... (the list goes on).
On the other hand, powerful corporations and western governments do everything
to counter any efforts by: meddling in local politics (outright financing coup
d'etats!), installing their local strongmen to further the profits of the
western world and keep the dysfunctional social fabric intact ($$$).

~~~
awakeasleep
Microlending counterpoint

[https://www.jacobinmag.com/2015/11/microcredit-muhammad-
yunu...](https://www.jacobinmag.com/2015/11/microcredit-muhammad-yunus-bono-
clinton-foundation-global-poverty-entrepreneurial-charity/)

~~~
kelvin0
I'm not against micro lending. I just don't think they'd need it if 'we'
didn't put them in the miserable position they are in now. It's like cutting
someone's leg off and then offering them a small fragile cane ...

------
dmix
This seems like a great opportunity for African countries to build on their
energy infrastructure which would both generate revenue for governments and
provide a stable industrial environment for development. It sounds like a
critical missing component in Africa's economy. Although this would also
depend on the public's ability to pay for monthly/yearly energy fees which
might depend on subsidies.

I've read a few articles mentioning how Africa has been inspired by China in
recent years who focused on infrastructure as a base for domestic growth
instead of just exports or raw materials.

I can't imagine the struggle it must be to survive without access to energy
and clean water. Our household recently had our pipes burst from freezing and
were nearly at a breaking point after three days without water. Worse yet is
the occasional black out. So I'm very sympathetic to this cause.

Bill and Melinda are doing some great work.

Sidenote:

> _Changes in weather often mean that their crops won’t grow because of too
> little rain or too much rain. That sinks them deeper into poverty. That’s
> particularly unfair because they’re the least responsible for emitting CO2,
> which is causing the problem in the first place._

Is this really true? I thought farms _were_ responsible for the most
generation of CO2 and pollutants? At least in North America livestock accounts
for something like 50% of the pollution (aka "cow farts"), even more so than
oil/coal. The worlds obsession with meat is actually more harmful to the
environment than cars/gasoline... but this is never popularly advertised
thanks to efforts of the livestock industry and willful blindness by
government agencies.

~~~
vezycash
In Nigeria and Ghana, important projects are left undone by the ruling parties
because they are long term projects.

Because, the opposing party would be the ones to reap the rewards, and praise
from the populace.

They'd instead focus on building new roads instead of maintaining existing
ones, building new schools instead of improving existing ones, starting new
high sounding schemes instead of continuing projects the previous regime
begun.

And btw plants convert CO2 to O2.

~~~
BurningFrog
That's how government works everywhere, to some degree.

The planning horizon does not stretch further than the next election. For long
term projects, private entities do much better.

~~~
narrator
What about China?

~~~
clock_tower
Or old-fasioned kingdoms and monarchies. A number of English kings underwrote
the wool trade; in general, the smarter sort of king tended to take an
interest in improving his country's manufacturing and agriculture.

------
ZeroGravitas
Bill's focus on new tech still seems odd to me.

Maybe he's thought about it, and as a famous geek thinks that the number one
thing he can do is champion tech innovation.

But he specifically talks about increasing energy efficiency. An obvious
opening to talk about carbon taxes that bake efficiency decisions into
everything we buy (and provides a ready made market for new, low-carbon tech).

Or he talks about coal, again a great opening to talk about removing subsidies
from that industry and getting the workers retrained in something else.

And he seems dismissive of solar, like those will only help African farmers
when the sun is shining and so are barely worth even thinking about.

In general he seems too focussed on getting carbon to 0, and not enough
focussed on the low hanging fruit which, if solved with todays existing tech
and policy instruments, would extend the runway we have to find breakthrough
tech before our world descends into anarchy and global warfare.

Just swapping natural gas for coal gives us much ability to burn fossil fuels,
since it halves the carbon per energy output. Might not be as cool as a fusion
reactor, but every carbon molecule counts.

~~~
scholia
Gates doesn't govern any countries and he's not in charge of any global
policies. Also, he is not superman and he doesn't have infinite resources.
He's just trying to find niches where a rich geek can make a difference. Child
vaccination was a good example.

Significantly, he's trying to do practical things to improve the lives of poor
people in the third world, as opposed to founding libraries or building more
William Gates computer buildings at elite universities.

It's fair to judge what he does against what he _could_ do, but it's
unreasonable to judge him for what he can't do.

~~~
hsitz
I don't think anybody would judge him badly for not doing what he's unable to
do. Of course not, just go back to Hume's "ought implies can".

I do think, however, that it does make sense to question whether he might be
wasting resources and effort.

~~~
scholia
Agreed, and that is exactly what he does: the foundation has an annual Fail
Fest to try to learn from its mistakes.

The website says: "Some of the projects we fund will fail. We not only accept
that, we expect it — because we think an essential role of philanthropy is to
make bets on promising solutions that governments and businesses can’t afford
to make. As we learn which bets pay off, we have to adjust our strategies and
share the results so everyone can benefit."

[http://www.gatesfoundation.org/Who-We-Are/General-
Informatio...](http://www.gatesfoundation.org/Who-We-Are/General-
Information/Letter-from-Bill-and-Melinda-Gates)

------
hanniabu
While I commend this, there's still also a clean water/pollution crisis that
plagues the world. And in this sense, I don't mean air pollution, but as in
trash - tons and tons of trash. While the US has its fair share of pollution
and clean water issues, other countries like the Philippines, Brazil, and
African countries allow mass amounts of garbage and pollutants into the
waterways and ocean. Huge amounts of toxic waste are being exported to Africa
and seeping into the oceans and ground water, or dumped into the ocean.
Everything in the world is connected, so pollution on the one side of the
world will eventually make its way over to the other. Another reason why this
is a huge problem is that a few drops of the right(or wrong) chemical can
contaminate hundreds of gallons of water, so when there's tons of pollutants
being dumped illegally or stored irresponsibly, just think about the damage
that can do.

~~~
neves
And don't forget that the developed countries like to export their most
pollutant industries. So great part of China pollution is for producing things
for USA and Europe.

------
Reza7865
"Poverty is not just about a lack of money. It’s about the absence of the
resources the poor need to realize their potential."

~~~
dominotw
Paul Graham would disagree with you on that definition of Poverty. In his
world poor people can wake up one fine day and start a business.

    
    
      Aaron : What drove the decision to go start a business?
    
      Paul : Poverty.
    
      Aaron : Poverty.
    
      Paul : I was tired of being poor. I was working as a    freelance programmer, and it was this sort of boom/bust thing where I would get money and then I would run out of money, and then it would be a disaster, and I just got tired of it. And then I thought, “I’m just going to work until I won’t run out of money.”

~~~
latj
Thats not what I think of when I think of poverty.

Paul got tired of being broke. When you're tired of being broke, but you're
educated, young, healthy, and/or from a privileged class-- you go to school,
open a business, hustle, whatever.

People living in poverty live the lives they do for various reasons-- born
into poverty, low education, mental illness, substance abuse, poor health,
elderly, single mothers raising children, or some political or historical
context (e.g. slavery, discrimination, unequal access to education/healthcare,
language/cultural barriers, recent migration).

Poverty (in my mind) means you are stuck on an island where every nation
around has guns pointed at you so you cant leave and there are only dirty
cookies to eat.

~~~
dominotw
Its scary how a gatekeeper like PG doesn't even have the basic understanding
of poverty.

~~~
prawn
He used "poverty" instead of "broke". What's the drama?

~~~
jacalata
One is a systemic condition that requires changes from society, the other is a
temporary condition caused mostly by factors under your control. Confusing the
two encourages ineffective 'solutions' for poverty to be created like 'we just
have to make it embarrassing/uncomfortable/illegal to be in that condition'.
These rely on motivating the poor person to fix themselves, instead of
attempting to fix the surroundings that are the actual cause and address the
symptoms that the poor person is unable to fix on their own, and then
dismissing the ones that don't bootstrap themselves out as lazy and
undeserving.

------
AndyKelley
What about nuclear power? Isn't that pretty much the cleanest, most efficient
power source we know of today?

~~~
thesimon
With just a few "minor" issues with safety and waste.

~~~
CamperBob2
_With just a few "minor" issues with safety_

History shows that nuclear power is very safe as long as you don't build the
plants in tsunami-prone seismic zones, operate them for decades beyond their
intended service life, or allow a bunch of unhinged Russians to play "Hold my
vodka and watch this" in the control room.

 _...and waste._

We've also learned that disposal of radioactive waste isn't a problem as long
as you mix it with carbon-combustion products and spew it into the air, like
coal plants do. Out of sight, out of mind appears to be the optimal way to
deal with deadly pollution.

~~~
clock_tower
On nuclear safety, consider that France runs on something like 80% nuclear
power. Hardly anyone knows this, because French nuclear plants are run well,
and haven't had any disasters.

~~~
tobltobs
A few years ago you could have said the same about japan.

~~~
CamperBob2
I can't remember where I read it, but Japan apparently has a history of
playing fast and loose with nuclear stuff. Their safety record prior to
Fukushima was far from spotless.

~~~
tobltobs
After a nuclear accident in France you will be able to read the same about the
"safety record" in France. The safety record of eg. Fessenheim does not sound
reassuring.

~~~
CamperBob2
Regardless, it would take a pretty bad nuclear accident to do as much harm as
existing carbon-based power plants do when operating as designed.

Not all harm involves glowing green blobs of radioactive doom on CNN.

------
suyash
Great letter, totally agree with the 'Clean Energy Crisis'. I'm glad Bill
Gates stepped into the cause as it will get more lime light now. As an aside,
I wish there was a way to turn off/on those side note in his blog, it was bit
of distraction - that is why I prefer Safari's reading mode.

~~~
melling
Hear, hear! I agree with my esteemed colleague on HN. Clean energy is
important. After 60 years of warnings, let's be happy that Bill Gates has
stepped up.

[http://youtu.be/m-AXBbuDxRY](http://youtu.be/m-AXBbuDxRY)

Now back to that Reader mode thing. Firefox and IE have them too.

Can anyone guess why clean energy hasn't been solved? Look at the chart in the
1950's and 1960s. We were barely doing any damage compared to today.

~~~
petra
Why it hasn't been solved ? Little political will arriving just
recently(mostly due to economics i think). Further more many of the energy
technologies have slow improvement trends, we didn't work until recently on
nuclear innovations due to political and economic reasons, and even with that
replacing everything that emits co2 is a huge project.

------
davesque
It's nice knowing that a powerhouse like the Gates foundation is working on
clean energy. In my view, that's the most important problem that society is
facing right now.

------
epicureanideal
Anyone care to do a back of the napkin calculation on whether there is any
scenario where mercenaries could offer "law and order as a service"?

~~~
GFischer
Well, that's usually what happens in 3rd world countries.

Private Security is an extremely established service in countries such as mine
(Uruguay), and even bigger in others like Brazil.

One link mentions 4 million security guards in Brazil alone (compared to less
than a million policemen).

Other links speak of 1.5 million of legally registered security guards.

Compare to 600.000 security guards for the entirety of Europe.

[https://www.opendemocracy.net/opensecurity/flavie-
halais/spe...](https://www.opendemocracy.net/opensecurity/flavie-
halais/spectacle-and-surveillance-in-brazil)

[https://www.oas.org/dsp/documentos/Publicaciones/PUBLIC%20SE...](https://www.oas.org/dsp/documentos/Publicaciones/PUBLIC%20SECURITY-%20URBAN%20CENTERS.pdf)

~~~
epicureanideal
But you would want private security that is willing to engage in serious
shootouts with roving bands of warlords, but make those warlords fearful of
doing that because they expect the security to win decisively.

------
emgoldstein
Whenever I see smart geeks talking about tons of CO2, I always wonder what
percentage of them know whether the Arrhenius effect (temperature forcing as a
function of CO2 concentration) is exponential, linear, or logarithmic.

Answer here:
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Svante_Arrhenius#Greenhouse_ef...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Svante_Arrhenius#Greenhouse_effect)

------
alexashka
Oh Bill, oh Melinda...

There is so much wrong with their thinking it's sad. Here's one example:

"If you’re an American, three out of four moms at your school have a job. Your
father probably does at least some cooking. There’s a 35 percent chance you
live with one parent"

She mentions these things in passing and goes on to claim how women do more
'unpaid' work and that that needs to change.

Really Melinda?

You think 'equality' is more important than not having the choice to stay at
home and raise your children?

You think 'equality' is more important than the alarming number of single
parents?

How many Americans are obese? Are they really happy with themselves? Not for
long if they are. Where is that in your letter?

When you can't get the 'best country in the world' to stop eating itself to
death, have failed marriages and constant fear of unemployment which causes
financial ruin, not to mention absence of free education and health care - do
you really think the priority is 'unpaid work' between men and women?

Unbelievable. Who raised these people? Rich people are so out of touch, even
when they try to 'help', it's simply insulting to your average brethren.

~~~
cwal37
I see marriage failures or catastrophic divorce rates bandied about a lot in
these types of societal decay rants, and it bothers me. The divorce rate has
been dropping for decades[1]. A proposed reason for that actually has to do
with more equitable opportunities in career, in that women are more free to
pursue a career of their choice, and so value systems have realigned to where
marriages could be based more on couples being partners, with similar
interests and ambitions.

[1] [http://www.nytimes.com/2014/12/04/upshot/how-we-know-the-
div...](http://www.nytimes.com/2014/12/04/upshot/how-we-know-the-divorce-rate-
is-falling.html?_r=0)

~~~
alexashka
You must be confusing me with somebody else - I'm not pointing out decay so
much as abysmal state of affairs.

Whether things are decaying or not - you can look up how much the prices for
the basic human necessities like housing and food have gone up in relation to
wages. From what I recall there's no question the middle and lower classes are
getting screwed right?

Anyhow one can be wrong with 1 instance out of 10, the overall picture remains
the same.

What you're doing is referred to as nitpicking :)

------
Saikia
"...I feel very lucky and blessed that drstanleyspelltemple@hotmail.com were
able to turn my marriage around like this with his powerful spell. My husband
used to spend as much time as he could away from home with other women. Since
he cast the love spell on him, My husband is now so in love with me and
committed to our marriage than before. its so funny that my husband had not go
out for weeks now!"

------
crackpotbaker
I'm surprised Gates, for all his work in this field, has failed to recognise
that we're burning up more food growing cattle and farming animals, than if we
were to just eat the plant resources we use to feed the animals.

It's mathematically crazy that, during a mass shortage of food in some parts
of the world, we're feeding a net loss of food in order to eat animal produce.

He's even insane enough to support getting more meat, dairy and eggs to
Africa, instead of just bringing the nutrient filled crops.

With his attitude about energy and carbon footprint reduction, there's no way,
India, China and Africa live sustainably on a meat filled diet.

~~~
henrikschroder
We will not solve the problems of the meat industry by convincing people to
eat less meat, asceticism never works as public policy.

The way forward on that issue is to develop synthetic meat products that can
out-compete animal meat on economical/ethical/environmental dimensions.

~~~
jackpirate
You just have to put a sin tax on it like we do with (for example) cigarettes.

~~~
crackpotbaker
This is true. If the US stopped giving tax breaks, money, to the corn guys,
the hamburger would be a more expensive meal.

Tax-payers are currently paying for people to get cardiovascular diseases.

------
edw519
_Poverty is not just about a lack of money._

Someone who was gifted $1 million on the day he was born preaching about
poverty is like someone who has never written a line of code running an I.T.
department.

~~~
burkaman
Yeah, or like a doctor who has never had cancer running an oncology
department. You know the old saying: "write what you know, and absolutely
nothing else because empathy does not exist".

