
Bill Gates: My Plan to Improve Our World, and How You Can Help - digital55
http://www.wired.com/business/2013/11/bill-gates-wired-essay/
======
Blahah
"If you write great code or are an expert in genomics or know how to develop
new seeds, I’d encourage you to learn more about the problems of the poorest
and see how you can help."

Check, check, check. And actually it was a previous article of Bill's that
made me want to become a scientist, and now we're Gates funded to develop more
efficient crops.

Coders of the world - we have awesome data to play with. Come and help :)

~~~
bowlofpetunias
"If you write great code..."

Sorry, but I nearly spat my drink all over my keyboard at that sentence. This
from the man who a decade ago used all his influence to fight tooth and nail
against the notion of sharing knowledge and code for the benefit of mankind
instead of profit, and didn't blink at screwing over developing countries in
this particular area to increase his profits

I'm sure he means well and does great things these days, but this is pushing
it a bit.

~~~
cscurmudgeon
Okay...

So, Selling code you wrote == Preventing sharing of knowledge.

~~~
bowlofpetunias
No. But keeping the code you wrote a locked up secret and trying to discredit
and destroy anyone that doesn't do the same is.

~~~
cscurmudgeon
I am curious. Can you be more specific? If I am making my living writing
software, and if you buy a copy of it and make it available to potential
customers, why is it immoral to ask you not to do so?

~~~
teddyh
If I have a copy of some information or software, and I can easily copy it to
my friend, and my friend needs it, why should I deny him? Would I not be mean
in denying him? If I would, then would you not be immoral for coercing me to
be mean to my friend? That, in essence, is the argument.

You could argue that your business model requires me, i.e. all your customers,
to agree not to give their friends (or anyone else) copies. _But the world
does not owe you a living._ If your business model requires you to ask people
to behave badly towards their friends, then it is destroying the social fabric
of society, and you could rightly be called immoral.

Anyway, see [https://www.gnu.org/philosophy/why-
free.html](https://www.gnu.org/philosophy/why-free.html) if you truly want to
read more.

~~~
mistermann
> If I have a copy of some information or software, and I can easily copy it
> to my friend, and my friend needs it, why should I deny him?

How about if you promised not to do that in your acceptance of the license
agreement?

Your friends "need" isn't necessarily a valid claim on the fruits of the
software authors labor. (A "need" for software? Come on.) It might make a very
compelling argument that the author _should_ choose to gift a copy to your
friend, or offer an educational version (as many do), but I can't see the
logic that a need is a valid claim, moral or otherwise, on someone else's
work.

~~~
belorn
Lets put this into concrete examples. Let say there is a kid who want to learn
physics, and I got study software that the child needs. However, the license
agreement say I can't. The child could maybe, in theory, reconstruct the
necessary experiments or read about them in the library.

Or let say that a cab driver see a child who missed the buss back home.
However, the cab drivers contract says he is not allowed to pick up passages
who can't pay. Without the drive back home, the child need to walk several
miles.

This is what people call moral dilemmas. To help a child, or to follow the
contract.

~~~
unfasten
You could buy a second copy of the software for the child. You saw enough
value in it to consider letting them use it and you saw enough value to buy it
for yourself. Either you consider the asking price fair for what it delivers
or you don't. If you don't think it's a fair price then you can either write
something yourself for them or spend your own time helping them learn.

There's no dilemma preventing you from helping the child.

~~~
belorn
So someone should go to university and study to become a programmer, and in
several years into the future when the child has grown up, you might be able
to reproduce the program? Could you provide a more straw'ish argument?

It is possible that you can spend money to buy a new copy, in the same way
that the cab driver could "pay" his employer the drive the child home.
However, anyone who sees the child could also spend the money for the cab. Is
the argument here that they are all equally moral bankrupt when they child end
up walking all those miles home? Does it matter that the cab driver was
driving in that direction anyway?

Many people around the world can say that they are helping children to become
the best they can be. Someone who refuse sharing can not. Which one are you?

------
chernevik
"Wars are becoming less frequent."

He wrote, as we approach the centenary of The War To End All Wars.

No one with an appreciation of human history would write such a thing. Nor
would they imagine that the technological innovations between us and that war
have been marginally more important than those in the century proceeding WW I.
The Green Revolution is fine, but it seems hard to believe its productivity
improvements outstrip those from the mechanization of agriculture, or the use
of railroads to move grain. Polio prevention is awesome, but its gains pale
before those from imposing simple sanitation codes and providing clean water.

And perhaps the "salvation through technology" set should reflect on the
impact of the addition of mobilization by railroad to the diplomatic problems
following the assassination of Ferdinand. Or on the confusion, to horrifying
cost, of military and grand strategy by the introduction of the machine gun.
The unintended consequences of those innovations, and the complete failure of
technology to solve them, made for the costliest and stupidest war to its
date.

By all means, pursue better and better technology. But the world's deepest and
most serious problems have always been political, and always will be, and will
always be beyond resolution by better gadgets.

~~~
ef4
That's not just a soundbite, it's a measurable fact.

Even when we include the horrors of the world wars, the 20th century _had
fewer per-capita battle deaths (both civilian and military)_ than the
centuries before it.

The same trend is detectable at decade timescales, and shows that we are still
improving since the world wars.

Stephen Pinker's book "The Better Angels of our Nature" goes into the
underlying statistics to support these assertions.

~~~
apr
Centuries or a single century (20th)? I have no access to the book and I would
be interested to see the numbers. It's hard to outdo the 20th century with the
jump in the military technologies (starting with the machine gun, the first
weapon of mass destruction), and two massive world wars. How, for example, do
we compare to the 19th century?

~~~
OvidNaso
There are quite a few resources on Pinker's website about the work. The FAQ is
probably a good place to start: [http://stevenpinker.com/pages/frequently-
asked-questions-abo...](http://stevenpinker.com/pages/frequently-asked-
questions-about-better-angels-our-nature-why-violence-has-declined)

Here is a direct answer to the question. There's a ton more info on the topic
and a huge portion of his book is dedicated to it:

*Wasn’t the 20th century the most violent in history?

Probably not; see chapter 5, especially pp. 189–200. Historical data from past
centuries are far less complete, but the existing estimates of death tolls,
when calculated as a proportion of the world’s population at the time, show at
least nine atrocities before the 20th century (that we know of) which may have
been worse than World War II. They arose from collapsing empires, horse tribe
invasions, the slave trade, and the annihilation of native peoples, with wars
of religion close behind. World War I doesn’t even make the top ten.

Also, a century comprises a hundred years, not just fifty, and the second half
of the 20th century was host to a Long Peace (chapter 5) and a New Peace
(chapter 6) with unusually low rates of death in warfare.

~~~
apr
Thank you! The FAQ is very informative and indeed answers many questions.

------
spodek
> " _40 percent of Earth’s population is alive today because, in 1909, a
> German chemist named Fritz Haber figured out how to make synthetic ammonia._
> "

More people living doesn't necessarily mean people living better lives. In a
finite world with limits to growth, relaxing one bottleneck only leads to the
next bottleneck.

(I use the term _limits to growth_ in reference to the book Limits To Growth
--
[http://joshuaspodek.com/the_best_book_on_the_environment_eco...](http://joshuaspodek.com/the_best_book_on_the_environment_economy_and_ecology)
\-- which strongly informs my perspective and I recommend to others as
particularly relevant here. It offers a _systems perspective_ \--
[http://joshuaspodek.com/systems-perspective-
population](http://joshuaspodek.com/systems-perspective-population) \--
necessary to create effective strategies to help everyone in the context of a
finite planet.)

Reducing suffering caused by disease undoubtedly improves people's lives, but
increasing the population without the ability to provide everyone resources
doesn't. We know that simply having enough resources for everyone doesn't mean
everyone will get enough resources. How we distribute resources matters and
that's a social issue, not technical. Trying to solve social issues with
technology doesn't work that well. Changing social patterns is much harder.
Capitalism is great at increasing the pie, but poor at distributing it to
those without capital.

I applaud his optimism and support for reducing suffering from disease and
supporting education. I suspect he's helping create a world with similar
fraction of people suffering versus happy, just more of them. And accelerating
toward limits to growth, some of which we can't overcome with technology.

(If you challenge the belief that the planet has limits to growth or even that
we're near any, I recommend the excellent blog "Do the Math" \--
[http://physics.ucsd.edu/do-the-math/post-index](http://physics.ucsd.edu/do-
the-math/post-index) \-- which looks at physical consequences to growth by a
Caltech-trained physicist. I also recommend it if you like reading thoughtful,
intelligent blogs by knowledgeable people who do the math behind what they
talk about.)

~~~
tptacek
This is glib Malthusianism. Population in the developing world is growing, but
metrics for quality of life are improving --- we're eradicating disease,
reducing malnutrition, enrolling students, and starting to enable bottom-up
markets. The limits your comment refers to are abstract, even hypothetical,
while the progress being made is concrete. "Better lives"? Polio: bad. Freedom
from polio: better.

~~~
InclinedPlane
It's not just glib Malthusianism, it's neo-colonialism. It's paternalism and
cultural superiority in green clothing.

In short: it's bullshit.

Oh, the poor little wogs, they lead such brutal lives, it's so sad that there
are so many of them, if only there were fewer of them the world would be a
better place. This is the sub-text that I see underlying these comments. It's
"surplus population" crap yet again.

These are people. People with dreams and ambitions. People with lives and
families. People who are capable of amazing things if given a chance. They're
not just grubby uneducated unwashed masses. These are folks who will build the
world of the 21st century, who will help lift their own countries out of
poverty. These are people who will build fusion reactors, and space ships, and
nano-technology. People who will cure cancer, create art, and music, and
literature. They don't need people who think that they are wastes of
resources, all they need is a chance, and just enough help to start building
their own futures.

~~~
dlsx
This.

Bill Gates is a massive investor in Monsanto, if you are naive you might think
Bill Gates is a saint. He is really just a globalist with an extremely
stubborn perspective of the future.

Think of his contributions to IT: Proprietary software.

Anyone that is a fan of Bill Gates cannot also be a fan of humanity
unfortunately.

~~~
nl
_Bill Gates is a massive investor in Monsanto_

I take it you aren't a fan of GMO foods then? If so, then you are wrong. I'll
leave it to former anti-GMO activist Mark to make that argument[1].

If you are talking about their business practices, then generally I agree with
you. I can understand the point of view of people who think otherwise, though.
I think people who agree with Monsanto's view are wrong, but that is a
disagreement about methods, not outcomes.

[1] [http://www.theguardian.com/environment/2013/mar/09/mark-
lyna...](http://www.theguardian.com/environment/2013/mar/09/mark-lynas-truth-
treachery-gm)

~~~
MrBuddyCasino
Thats an interesting link. I've felt the same about left-wing activists -
paying lip service to tolerance, while being very close minded in reality.
Doesn't mean I agree with nuclear power and GMOs, but I respect anyone who
bases his arguments on scientific reasoning.

------
pstuart
Simple things that could be done now by simply "changing the rules"

1\. Change "Foreign Aid" to be based on direct micro-loans rather than dumping
excess agricultural commodities and destroying local markets and pumping money
into corrupt governments that steal it.

2\. End the Drug War. It's killing people and is the foundation of organized
crime. And why grow food when you can make more money growing dope?

3\. Recognize women's rights: unfettered access to contraception/abortion and
education.

I realize the "sex" part of #3 may be controversial to some, but those who are
offended can just fuck off.

~~~
tdfx
I realize this is a social news aggregation site and not a diplomatic summit,
but I think you'll find people a lot more receptive to your ideas if you can
refrain from adding the last touch in your post. It reminds me of how I feel
about Bill Maher: I agree with him on almost every major policy issue, but he
comes across as so smug that it actually annoys you to hear him say things
that you agree with.

~~~
eruditely
Just stop being a pussy.

~~~
tdfx
Unfortunately this is the internet, and you have no idea who I am, so I can't
offer my personality as a counterpoint. I definitely understand the idea that
catering to the overly sensitive part of our population is a losing battle.

However, to even bother posting something like that, you have to be trying to
do one of two things:

(1) Trying to convert others with differing opinions to your side

(2) Make yourself feel superior and smarter by talking down to those with
different opinions

#1 seems to be a more meaningful use of one's time, so I was offering some
insight as to how to be more effective in doing that. If #2 is what you're
after, then by all means, please continue.

------
cnlwsu
It makes me feel incredibly guilty for how much a lot of people (myself) hated
this man over things that seem so petty now a mere decade or so later.

~~~
gnaritas
I doubt the people who's lives he ruined consider those things petty.

~~~
scholia
Ruined? Most businesses fail, and most large businesses cause many others to
fail (this includes IBM, Google and Apple) as well as providing the means for
many others to succeed and prosper.

Even if you were right, I don't think the lives of Silicon Valley yuppies have
been "ruined" in quite the same way as some of the victims of Chinese factory
production lines....

~~~
general_failure
Yes ruined. Instead of having desk jobs these failed business owners could
have had a shot at saving the world. The fact is he screwed people.

~~~
scholia
Fact is that Steve Jobs, Larry Ellison, Eric Schmidt and others also screwed
people, and in some cases, probably more than Gates. None of them has done
remotely as much to make up for it.

Indeed, while you are getting your panties in a twist about things you think
happened in the 1990s, Gates has saved millions of lives.

Have you considered worrying less about a few capitalists being "ruined"
(while living in the world's richest society and consuming a huge proportion
of the world's resources) and worrying more about the millions suffering from
war, starvation, disease and various other afflictions?

~~~
gnaritas
> Fact is that Steve Jobs, Larry Ellison, Eric Schmidt and others also screwed
> people, and in some cases, probably more than Gates.

I don't recall any of them being being brought up on anti-trust charges and
losing.

And no amount of saving lives wipes away those you ruined.

~~~
scholia
Being found to have a monopoly (by a judge who explicitly excluded Macs and
Linux machines) meant Microsoft was held to much higher standards. Other
companies can and do behave far worse and get away with it.

You want to compare the effects of these lives "ruined" (whose exactly?) with
the Chinese workers making your products committing suicide?

~~~
gnaritas
I made no such comparison and any such comparison is a red herring. Bill the
businessman was ruthless and unethical and destroyed many a business via
illegal means. Bill the philanthropist is a great man who's doing great things
that I very much support. One does not negate the other. I can despise Bill
the businessman and look up to Bill the philanthropist at the same time.

~~~
scholia
First, you're overstating things wildly. Unless you come up with some names
(people and companies) I shall continue to believe that you're blowing smoke.

Second, Gates wasn't uniquely bad, and he had plenty of equally ruthless
rivals including Jobs, Ellison and Noorda. He was, as mentioned, held to much
higher standards.

Third, it still shows a profound lack of humanity to think that what was
mostly antitrust-theatre has anything like the same importance as real life
and death issues in the wider world.

~~~
gnaritas
> I shall continue to believe that you're blowing smoke.

Well fuck off then, we're done. I'm not going to waste my time reiterating
Microsoft's crimes to someone's who apparently blind to them and continues to
throw out red herrings.

~~~
scholia
You've already made it obvious you don't actually know anything about
Microsoft's crimes. Which, sadly, I do.

------
tanvach
Personally, I feel that the biggest problem in developing countries is
corruption. Imagine all the wealth being created to disappear into
bureaucracy. I've seen police bully businesses, engineering projects finish
that is woefully substandard, rigged market competition, stolen aid money,
abuse of monopoly, and so on. I truly feel that this is the sauce of problems
many poor people face.

I really admire Bill Gates help with poverty and education. I only wish that
people start looking into anti-corruption. Maybe we should start creating
anti-corruption technologies.

~~~
shmerl
_> Personally, I feel that the biggest problem in developing countries is
corruption. _

Isn't it a problem in "developed" countries as well?

~~~
rayiner
People in developed countries can't even imagine the corruption that exists in
developing countries. In Bangladesh, my dad once had to pay a bribe just to
get his telephone service hooked up.

Going to lobby for an industry after leaving political office is what people
in developed countries call "corruption." Tens of billions of dollars in aid
money just getting "lost" is what people in developing countries call
"corruption."

~~~
shmerl
Yeah, that's actually not hard to imagine.

------
antonius
With all of the philanthropy that Bill and his wife are doing, my gut feeling
is that centuries from now, Bill will go down as being remembered more so for
his contributions to humanity than everything he did in his professional
career. Regardless, a great human being.

~~~
jorgem
Perhaps. Here's a quiz: Name a big Philanthropist from 300 years ago. From 150
years ago. From 50 years ago...

~~~
Fomite
50 years: Rockafeller. 100 years: Andrew Carnegie, Vanderbilt. 150 years:
Alfred Nobel. 300 years: John Harvard.

What do I win?

~~~
Gigablah
The thing is, I don't remember those people as philanthropists...

~~~
Fomite
You didn't watch enough PBS as a child then ;)

What do you remember Alfred Nobel as? John Harvard?

You could make a case for the industrialists, but I'd give good money people
can name "Rockafeller Center" before they can name "Standard Oil".

~~~
Gigablah
I didn't watch PBS since I'm not American :(

I read about Alfred Nobel in a children's encyclopaedia in primary school; I
mostly remember him as the inventor of dynamite who got a crisis of conscience
and thus created the Nobel prizes (I didn't think of those as philanthropy,
and I'm not sure if the "crisis of conscience" part is factually accurate).

John Harvard, purely name association with Harvard University. I guess I
should check his Wikipedia page out.

Edit: It's actually Harvard College. Shows how much I know.

~~~
Fomite
The name association with Harvard _is_ remembering him as a philanthropist.
The name of the college was changed because of a generous gift upon his death.

------
erikpukinskis
One of the things I really respect about Bill Gates is that he actually goes
and talks to poor people. I know so many people who will go on and on about
what poverty is and how to solve it, whether it's funding education or
creating a culture of responsibility or whatever. But unless you're chatting
with actual poor people, saying "hey how's it going?" at least every couple
months, I just don't think you can really have a workable understanding of the
problems.

------
Havoc
Reading the article I can't help but feel awestruck at how lucky the global
community is that Gates turned out the way he did.

Here is someone who thinks clear thoughts, behaves in an altruistic manner and
has the raw power to make it happen - a near impossible combination in today's
world.

And as if that is not spectacular enough he is in a position to persuade other
rich people to follow suit.

------
JacksonGariety
It's a common misconception that inherently social problems (drug abuse,
mistreatment of children, crime, war) can be solved with technical solutions.

The answer isn't in a new drug or a new device or a new kind of weapon, it's
in ourselves, and we don't need a foundation of rich entrepreneurs to catalyze
this change.

~~~
MLfan
Do you really think that poor kids stop dying of preventable diseases if every
single person who’s reading HN changes? Inner change is not the vaccine, it
can’t feed people, it can’t help with improving living conditions for the poor
countries. It’s Doing something for them that should help. Bill Gates is so
right at having his own plan how to help people and offering us to take part
in it. The actions should help not mere inner change.

~~~
JacksonGariety
Internal change can solve most every problem, because most every problem is a
reflection of an internal conflict.

It sounds far fetched, but when you boil people's problems down to what they
really are, you'll see the traditional western way of fixing things tends to
invent a technical solution to make up for where the previous one failed.

For example, factory-made pesticides that cause hyper-evolution in weeds that
try to resist. A newer more powerful pesticide can't fix the problem created
by the old pesticide.

------
mtalantikite
"I tend to trace it back to a trip Melinda and I took to Africa in 1993. We
went on a safari to see wild animals but ended up getting our first sustained
look at extreme poverty"

All of us with privilege need to stop referring to the place as just 'Africa'.
It's an incredibly diverse place, and just smacking that label on it to refer
to every place on the continent trivializes the population.

Sure, the national boundaries are just some lines colonists in Europe drew on
a map when divvying up the resources they were going to steal, but we need to
be able to have a respect for people while we're talking about these problems.

~~~
heartbreak
Chill out. He was simplifying his discussion throughout the essay so that his
writing would be accessible to a broader audience.

For all you know, his trip covered several African countries and he didn't
care to list them all in that sentence.

~~~
mtalantikite
I get that, and it's the simplification of an incredibly complex situation
that is the problem

~~~
heartbreak
Rest assured that Bill Gates has spent at least 2 decades and countless
financial resources in order to build his own understanding of the incredibly
complex situation that exists not only in Africa, but also the rest of the
world. He's part of the solution; are you?

~~~
mtalantikite
Sure, half of my family is from "Africa", and have started businesses that
create jobs and lift people out of poverty.

I also put myself out there to take a beating from peers of privilege to speak
up about things I think are part of the problem. Reinforcement of otherness I
think is a large part of the problem.

------
chappi42
It's great what he and Melinda are doing.

I'd put the focus much more towards reducing or even reversing the tremendous
population growth. Malaria, Polio, fertilizers.. all about more people (yes it
helps them, is good...; complicated, I don't know how to argue). But - if you
ask the overstretched seas, overhunted animals and so on - less are needed.
And each one will be more valuable.

~~~
bmajz
The general idea, as I understand it, is that as child survival and education
rates go up, population growth will eventually reverse itself as it has in
developed countries. Check out Bill Gates' favorite TED talks for some
Rosling, as well as Melinda Gates on birth control:
[http://www.ted.com/playlists/35/bill_gates_my_13_favorite_ta...](http://www.ted.com/playlists/35/bill_gates_my_13_favorite_tal.html)

------
yetanotherphd
When I was considering a career path, I thought a lot about this sort of
thing. Should I devote my career to helping people in the greatest need? In
the end, I decided I should not. Bill Gates correctly identifies the need for
money to do the things he wants to do, but money comes from economic growth.
And I believe that technological progress is a big driver of growth.

So I decided to make my career in advancing technological progress. Not
necessarily hardware, in fact I'm a software engineer, but I want to work on
things that push the boundaries. If I can write a library that makes 1% of
programmers 10% more efficient, or saves academic researchers 1% of their
time, that is probably a bigger contribution than I could make if I worked
directly on global health.

------
zamalek
Don't get me wrong, I love what Gates is doing. I do believe that while
technology has given us so much, it comes with incredible costs.

> How far away do these women live? we wondered. Who’s watching their children
> while they’re away?

I was born and raised in Zimbabwe (where the bush/wilderness is very similar
to that of Kenya) and this specific quote really shows the good and the bad of
technology and innovation. Those women walk miles to get water; technology can
now use pipes or boreholes to bring water closer to people - giving them a
slightly easier life. However, Bill fails to mention how these women approach
this hardship - having come across many of these people during my hikes in
youth I can testify that they are singing and laughing for the entire duration
of those daily ordeals. You simply won't find a person with that attitude
towards hardship in the first world/technology world. Their lives are hard,
but they are happy. Our lives are easy, but the first world is struggling with
depression[1]. Us people in the first world need to stop making the mistake of
assuming that a hard life is an unhappy one. Bring these people water, bring
them food, bring them vaccines - but don't destroy one of the last bastions of
happiness on the planet with the internet and laziness.

As for their children and who is looking after them: they are looking after
each other, playing in the dirt and in the sun, making their own toys out of
sticks, old tires and coat hanger wire [2][3]. What are _your_ children doing?
Sitting on an iPad? Their parents don't have to worry about psychopaths or
kidnappers - that is a first world problem in a very real way.

I'm a saying that what Bill is doing is wrong? No: he is making a very real
and very positive difference in these people's lives. What I am saying is that
us people in the first world need to stop assuming that technology solves
problems. The reality is that technology _replaces_ problems with other
problems.

[1]: [http://www.inquisitr.com/129438/depression-rates-higher-
in-w...](http://www.inquisitr.com/129438/depression-rates-higher-in-wealthier-
countries/) [2]:
[http://www.bsmarkham.com/mission/Africa/Apr%2005/huffs/18%20...](http://www.bsmarkham.com/mission/Africa/Apr%2005/huffs/18%2002.jpg)
[3]:
[http://www.losviajeros.net/fotos/africa/sudafrica/k_lesotho0...](http://www.losviajeros.net/fotos/africa/sudafrica/k_lesotho0004.jpg)

------
amalag
If you want to see real work on improving the rural Africa, we have to look at
sustainability, not bringing Monsanto into every corner of the world with GMOs
and ammonia fertilizers. This is the kind of work that is needed:
[http://workingvillages.org/about/](http://workingvillages.org/about/)

Getting African farmers into self sufficiency, not dependent on Monsanto or
any oil company. There is nothing wrong with doing manual labor on a farm. Why
should we measure progress by how many people stop working on a farm and work
in a factory instead. We should aim to improve efficiencies on a farm not by
minimizing the people per acre, but by maximizing the output per acre.

~~~
maxerickson
As people become self sufficient, they are going to look for ways to increase
their income. This will drive mechanization and the use of fertilizers.

I'm not saying that is the only way forward or that it will always be
happening, I'm just saying that at least some of the people you are talking
about will be motivated to exactly what you are saying they shouldn't.

------
gesman
Did anyone asked Bill Gates to fund research efforts that could potentially
have global benefits?

Anyone succeeded?

~~~
Blahah
Yes, we have Gates funding for the C4 rice project.

------
patrickg_zill
Maybe he could have Microsoft disclose the deal they made with the NSA over
the purchase of Skype and the change in encryption practices. Or is that not
the kind of improvement he is talking about?

~~~
bernardom
It's not. He's talking about something much more important.

~~~
sparkie
He is talking about the same thing, which can be summarized as _control of the
many by the few_. "We, the privileged, decide what's best for everyone else."

~~~
diydsp
> "people who have escaped poverty represent a huge market opportunity" \- B.
> Gates, 11/12/13, Wired Magazine

~~~
atonse
Not sure why you quoted this. Is that not true?

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rbanffy
I know it will be a wildly unpopular question to ask but, after his own
history at the helm of Microsoft, where he made most of the money he's using
now, can we trust him?

Is there a way we can be sure his donations (and the donations of people and
companies that decide to donate because he is doing so) are not furthering his
own agenda and creating a market for the companies he invests in? Even if they
are beneficial to the affected populations, can we call that philanthropy?

~~~
sparkie
While he claims he is a _devout fan of capitalism_ , he fails to address the
capitalist role in sustaining poverty and warfare. Africa is still completely
colonized by the IMF and World Bank, whose policies over the past half century
have forced its nations to take loans they can't repay, and as a result, they
are forced to sell under-priced foods. This food is then largely _wasted_ in
developed countries where Capitalism commands that people consume more than
they need to survive. At the apex of the Capitalist market is the arms
industry, selling weapons to tin-pot dictators in African nations which have
the opposite effect and only serve to increase poverty and suffering.

Meanwhile, Gates attends "private clubs" full of the men who run these banks,
are shareholders in those same arms companies and who dictate the foreign
policy of the developed nations. (e.g. Bilderberg 2010)

If not disingenuous to the point of turning your stomach, he is just naive and
sees the world through a very narrow scope. I suspect it's a bit of both.

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outside1234
"If you write great code or are an expert in genomics or know how to develop
new seeds, I’d encourage you to learn more about the problems of the poorest
and see how you can help"

I feel like I'm a great coder but I have a hard time connecting the dots and
seeing how I can help - am I the only one? I'd love to help - if folks know of
opportunities, I'd love to hear about them.

------
Thiz
> 'That innovation is the key to a bright future'

The road to innovation is a minefield of patents and lawsuits.

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jjoe
Now that's an outstanding man! I lived in Africa for almost half my life and
not once did I step foot outside of my comfort zone in the north west. If
anything I feel ashamed but thankfully enlightened and looking forward to take
the initiative to do something, anything.

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tokenadult
Bill Gates writes in the article kindly submitted here, after giving some
examples of inventions, "Thanks to inventions like these, life has steadily
gotten better. It can be easy to conclude otherwise—as I write this essay,
more than 100,000 people have died in a civil war in Syria, and big problems
like climate change are bearing down on us with no simple solution in sight.
But if you take the long view, by almost any measure of progress we are living
in history’s greatest era. Wars are becoming less frequent. Life expectancy
has more than doubled in the past century. More children than ever are going
to primary school. The world is better than it has ever been."

And that is correct. I'll focus on the huge increase in life expectancy, since
that is often discussed here on HN. The low-hanging fruit of increasing life
expectancy is increasing it for young people, by reducing infant and child
mortality. The Gates Foundation does a lot of work in developing and
delivering vaccines to protect children against infectious diseases. That
means mothers can be more sure of their children surviving infancy, and all
over the world (as other comments here have already pointed out), that results
in a "demographic transition," of families eventually having dramatically
fewer children. Children who grow up healthy and survive to adulthood do a lot
to transform societies from backwardness into development and innovation.

The increases in lifespan are occurring at the old end of the lifespan too.[1]
(This is a point that is often specifically denied in HN discussions, so I
thought I should draw attention to it here.) Life expectancy at age 40, at age
60, and at even higher ages is still rising throughout the developed countries
of the world. The increase in lifespan in developed countries has been so
steady for so long that a girl born in the developed world since the year 2000
has a better than even chance of celebrating her 100th birthday, with boys
likely to live almost as long.[2] And this comes from steady, incremental
progress in the prevention and treatment of disease and the maintenance of
good general health, not at all from any path-breaking research in "life
extension." This suggests that similar day-by-day improvements in human life
can come about from simple, barely noticed better practice replacing former
haphazard practice. The programmers who Bill Gates encourages to join in on
solving problems of the world may be able to harness computer power to notice
patterns in data that may improve health and longevity, environmental quality,
recycling of natural resources, and a variety of other important aspects of
human life little by little all over the world.

I read _The Limits to Growth_ when I was a kid, soon after the book was
published. It was the most spectacularly factually incorrect set of
predictions of all the predictions of the future I have ever read. I think
Bill Gates here is writing based on a better understanding of how the world
works, and I expect when my daughter has her 100th birthday in the twenty-
second century that she will enjoy a world almost unimaginably better for
almost all people than the world we share today.

[1]
[http://www.scientificamerican.com/article.cfm?id=longevity-w...](http://www.scientificamerican.com/article.cfm?id=longevity-
why-we-die-global-life-expectancy)

[2] [http://www.demographic-
challenge.com/files/downloads/2eb51e2...](http://www.demographic-
challenge.com/files/downloads/2eb51e2860ef54d218ce5ce19abe6a59/dc_biodemography_of_human_ageing_nature_2010_vaupel.pdf)

[http://www.prb.org/Journalists/Webcasts/2010/humanlongevity....](http://www.prb.org/Journalists/Webcasts/2010/humanlongevity.aspx)

------
darkFunction
How can I contribute my skills as a programmer to directly help out charity
organisations?

~~~
JeffJenkins
Find an organization and reach out on twitter, or via email if they aren't on
twitter. You'll probably find they would love the help.

------
ck2
Good luck stopping religions that don't believe in birth control, which sadly
the largest part of the population seems to follow, regardless where in the
world they live - one of our last major presidential candidates has FIVE
children.

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alexmchale
Step 1: Stop pushing GMO foods on people who can't afford to choose otherwise.

~~~
tdfx
I have not seen any well-constructed study showing that GMO foods are harmful,
but I see the argument you are advancing fairly frequently. Could you share
why you think GMOs in general are bad? I'm not informed enough to make a
determination either way at this point so I'd be very curious to see what is
compelling other people to have such strong opinions about it.

~~~
sleepyhead
I don't trust science at the current state to understand the long term impact
of GMO. Besides, I prefer to eating natural ingredients regardless if science
finds no problems with GMO in the future as well.

~~~
hackinthebochs
>Besides, I prefer to eating natural ingredients regardless if science finds
no problems with GMO in the future as we

This statement is absurdly irrational. I'm surprised to see this sentiment on
here.

~~~
nollidge
Wanted to comment that I downvoted not because of your first sentence, but
because of the second. Hackers have not proven themselves more rational than
society at large and I wish we would stop arrogantly thinking of ourselves
that way.

~~~
hackinthebochs
Yeah, I was a little hesitant about that second part also. It was more for
effect; I fully realize we're definitely not an insular bunch who can be
expected to be rational in all parts of our lives in comparison to the
irrational unwashed masses.

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speleding
"Everyone’s life has equal value"

That's a very idealistic premise, but not very realistic. Surely he values the
life of his children higher than that of some random hideous criminal.

------
Datsundere
[The last
question]([http://filer.case.edu/dts8/thelastq.htm](http://filer.case.edu/dts8/thelastq.htm))

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era86
One of the greatest philanthropist of our time.

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ffrryuu
Good jobs for everyone + managed population growth/stability.

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rogerthis
Leave me alone.

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a3voices
The way to improve the world is to have a global minimum income. Give every
person on Earth $5-10k per year, no strings attached. If you are living and
breathing, you get the money.

~~~
ianburrell
You wouldn't need to have minimum income that large to make a big difference.
The international poverty line is $1.25/day. A minimum income of $500/yr would
make a big difference to absolute poverty. More importantly, it would be
affordable ($3.5 trillion or 4% of world GDP) while your proposal would be
huge burden.

It would have little effect on the relative poverty in developed nations. But
there are a surprising numbers of people in the US ((1.65 million households)
in extreme poverty (defined as $2/day) that would be helped by a low minimum
income.

~~~
a3voices
That's a pretty good point. Even $500 per year would be an enormous help.

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humannature
why is no one addressing the problem of overpopulation?

~~~
sprash
There is no problem of overpopulation. The population growth is declining.
This means we hit peak population between 2050 and 2100.

Also there are enough resources to allow a decent life for everybody. It is
all just a matter of distribution.

