
Tough questions we get asked: 2018 Annual Letter - kumaranvpl
https://www.gatesnotes.com/2018-Annual-Letter?WT.mc_id=02_13_2018_02_AnnualLetter2018_DO-COM_&WT.tsrc=DOCOM
======
sharkweek
I love the self-awareness in their response to question #8 - we are fortunate
that “the king is just” in the case of the foundation, but it is very
undemocratic for the wealthy to solely pick causes they care about at such a
large scale.

Just last week, Gates himself was arguing that he and other billionaires need
to be paying significantly more taxes.

[https://phys.org/news/2018-02-gates-billionaires-
significant...](https://phys.org/news/2018-02-gates-billionaires-
significantly-taxes.amp)

~~~
qaq
? It's his money that he actually decided to give away why should you or I
have a say in it?

~~~
makotech222
The argument is, why do we as a society allow people to amass wealth on the
scale of nations. Instead, perhaps that wealth should be democratically owned,
and then put towards what the society needs, rather than what one person
decides.

~~~
ianai
Two things can happen. We can be a society that ensures social needs are met
while allowing vast concentrations of wealth.

~~~
Daishiman
That is, historically, false. Concentration of wealth always ends up implying
power, whether soft or hard. Having such amount of power outside of democratic
institutions is a threat .

~~~
tatersolid
This is, historically, true: in communist countries with “equal sharing of
misery”, power and wealth was 100% concentrated into the hands of a few elites
or outright tyrants.

------
jupp0r
It always amazes me how pessimistic people can be in terms of where the world
is heading, especially people who tend towards populism (on the left and the
right). In debates, I eventually point out actual data about living
conditions[1]. Looking at data instead of news stories, it becomes clear that
extreme poverty, vaccination, child mortality and education are vastly
improving for a majority of humans on this planet. This leaves aforementioned
populists with nothing to argue about but the validity of the data they are
seeing, unable to reconcile reality with their world view.

[1] [https://ourworldindata.org/a-history-of-global-living-
condit...](https://ourworldindata.org/a-history-of-global-living-conditions-
in-5-charts)

~~~
autarch
If you include all sentient beings in your analysis there's no question that
the world has gotten _much_ worse over the past 50+ years. The number of
animals living lives of unending torture has gone up and up during that time
period. Any gains made by humans are a blip in the statistics.

I'm somewhat hopeful that we are in the middle of the time when that start
changing, but until it does, I think it's quite clear that things have gotten
worse, not better.

~~~
ChadNYC
To add to your point, the affect of the amount of animals bred into existence
coupled with how they are treated is devastating the environment.

~~~
wu-ikkyu
Indeed. None of these apparent positive gains will matter for very long if we
destroy our own ecosystem in the process

------
Codestare
I sometimes wonder what would happen if Bill Gates and say Warren Buffet spent
a ridiculous amound of money on lobbying, in order to drastically change the
political landscape.

------
ianai
Unrelated but the first thing this site did was ask me to fill out a user
survey. That’s the exact wrong time to ask a user to fill out a survey.

~~~
zcid
Exactly why I default to no JS. But in cases like this, I load a 20k line
webpage and see zero content until it's enabled. Welcome to the modern web.

~~~
braderhart
There are people working on a decentralized web that doesn't require clunky
(impossible-to-fully-audit) web browsers and it is JavaScript free.

~~~
madez
Please elaborate.

On a side note, please don't make people ask for essential information, just
state it right away.

------
spectrum1234
The first 2 questions remind me of the (fantastic) book I'm reading Doing Good
Better. This is basically effective altruism.

This book argues that a dollar goes a lot farther in the third world.
(Obviously.)

It also has a great story about how money spent on educational resources can
have almost no effect while money spent on deworming (yes, worms) can greatly
increase educational results. (Not so obvious.) This is a third world example
but its fairly obvious the problems with US education aren't' resource or
efficiency based.

~~~
randomstring
Another good book on effective altruism is The Most Good You Can Do by Peter
Singer.

[https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/23168483-the-most-
good-y...](https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/23168483-the-most-good-you-can-
do)

It's clear that Bill and Melinda Gates are practicing effective altruism in an
effort to do the most good with their money.

------
detcader
"I think he broke the law, so I certainly wouldn't characterize him as a hero"
\- Bill Gates on Snowden. A question I'd love to hear any rich person answer
explicitly: is it impossible for a criminal to be a hero?

[http://www.rollingstone.com/culture/news/bill-gates-the-
roll...](http://www.rollingstone.com/culture/news/bill-gates-the-rolling-
stone-interview-20140313?page=2)

~~~
rorykoehler
I'm pretty sure Bill Gates has a very different view on this than anyone
reading this site. He would have doubtless been exposed to the realities of
the US government for decades.

~~~
schoen
In press interviews, he's also expressed criticism toward Apple about the San
Bernadino iPhone case and about the goal of deploying end-to-end encryption
that nobody can break.

(I work on these issues on what's apparently the other side from him.)

~~~
schoen
A subsequent example on cryptocurrency anonymity (which is a topic that's
often controversial here, but with relatively few people taking it as far as
Gates did):

[http://www.businessinsider.com/bill-gates-on-
cryptocurrency-...](http://www.businessinsider.com/bill-gates-on-
cryptocurrency-2018-2)

------
detaro
previous discussion:
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=16366263](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=16366263)

------
HillaryBriss
Maybe one of the most controversial statements they make is: "In our U.S.
work, one premise we start with is that a college degree or career certificate
is critical to a successful future. In short, a college education should be a
pathway to prosperity for all Americans."

I wouldn't dispute that having enough skill/education to offer value to the
global/US marketplace is critical, but I have some doubt about whether what we
call "college education" is the way really large numbers of people (not just
the elite) can obtain that skill/education.

Maybe we're over investing in an outdated, inefficient process and it will
never be good enough.

~~~
ianai
You don’t even need to be near a campus to go to college these days. It can
all be done online provided the infrastructure are there. I see two critical
problems to address and a third more radical option.

1-Invest in bridging the last mile gap for broadband.

2-Clear headed planning to address the fundamental employment issues
undermining labor/per capital wealth.

—-there aren’t enough jobs to employ everyone given current market conditions.
Ie lower the full time/OT line to 20-30 hours or so and make better support
systems (healthcare for all, housing projects for all that aren’t crimes dens)

—-make programs to help college students prepare, correctly for the labor
force.

------
soperj
I can't be the only one who wishes they spent nothing in the US on Education
and direct it all to homelessness, so they can stop screwing up Education.
Common Core is horrendous.

------
gt_
_> We are outspoken about our optimism. These days, though, optimism seems to
be in short supply. The headlines are filled with awful news. Every day brings
a different story of political division, violence, or natural disaster.
Despite the headlines, we see a world that’s getting better._

It should take a lot of nerve to open this way. Sympathy, or I guess we call
it _empathy_ , who knows, cannot be achieved through optimism alone. The
unfettered optimism in this intro seems tone-deaf. I think it undermines the
effort they make to the contrary.

~~~
jhbadger
I'd argue the exact opposite. It is all too easy to just throw up your hands
and say "The world is fucked; there isn't anything to do about it". Empathy is
impossible without the belief that something can be done, which is optimism.

~~~
gt_
HN readers are quick to be enthusiastic in celebrating urgent acknowledgement
and critical response in the case of server outages and security breaches. Why
limit this regard to that?

Sure, saying there isn’t anything we can do about it is irresponsible, and so
is the lack of nuance of “the world is fucked”.

Is this the only alternative you can imagine?

 _> Empathy is impossible without the belief that something can be done, which
is optimism._

That is not what optimism is.

If you can not identify problems, you are multitudes more unlikely to solve
them. My critique is as basic as that.

------
bambax
> _Submit a question below and we will answer the best ones in the near
> future._

No you won't. You will select some questions you like, and answer them. They
will not necessarily be the "best" (whatever that means... according to what
criteria??) or the ones most people would like to see answered. Just the ones
you feel like answering.

A more democratic system would be to let people vote for questions, and
promise to answer the ones with the most upvotes. Or maybe (why not) offer to
answer ALL questions.

~~~
lkbm
"Are you imposing your values on other cultures?" and "Is it fair that you
have so much influence?" are close to the touch question I expected them to
not have. The big complaint I see from the left is that billionaires get to
determine the direction of philanthropy--two unelected people get to impose
their ideas about public education, for example.

That said, while those questions are close to the big tough question, I don't
think their answers really addressed them in an adequately thoughtful way.

(I think the Gates Foundation is mostly making good choices with their
philanthropy, but maybe we just got lucky. How about [Soros|Koch] (pick
whichever you like least)?)

~~~
bambax
None of the 10 questions listed is "tough", and at least one (out of ten, so
10%) is of tabloid level: _" What happens when the two of you disagree"_ \--
the answer includes the nugget that there's a sculpture in front of their
house, of two birds looking ahead in the same direction. Isn't that something.

If one doesn't like the idea of Internet voting or answering all questions,
then let them hold a press conference with real journalists. But this is not
it; this is nothing; this is a show with pictures of the couple laughing and
showing a serious face in front of poor people; this is just marketing.

An interesting question would be, how do you justify speciesism[1].

When they describe how they're "optimists" and how the world is getting
"better", they're obviously only talking about humans. The world is getting
much much worse for every species of living things, except (some) humans, so
the only way to consider that the world is indeed getting better _in general_
is to consider that humans are so superior to any other living thing that any
amount of suffering / extinction of other species is more than offset by the
marginal utility we get out of it.

If you're religious, maybe your religion offers a way to accept that
(depending on the religion).

But if, like the Gates (or me), you're atheists, how does this work exactly?

[1]
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Speciesism](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Speciesism)

------
gullibleAndVain
Duh. Why not clean water instead of vaccines?
[http://www.organiclifestylemagazine.com/how-plumbing-not-
vac...](http://www.organiclifestylemagazine.com/how-plumbing-not-vaccines-
eradicated-disease)

~~~
teslabox
Providing clean water, infrastructure ('outhouses') and good-enough nutrition
are much harder problems than organizing vaccination campaigns.

------
yodsanklai
I wonder how Bill Gates can use a huge yacht for its own enjoyment, while at
the same time spending money to fight climate change. I'd be curious to know
his point of view.

~~~
ianai
I’m never going to ask someone to renounce luxuries when they are clearly
donating much or a majority of their wealth. That’s a recipe for no giving.

------
alexashka
I am irked to no end how off the mark their entire foundation is. It's like
the person with the least imagination on earth, got handed billions of
dollars.

What is the lowest hanging fruit of all time? Right, the night-time ads on TV
with poor children in a foreign country.

What is the least imaginative way of helping a developed nation? 'Better
education'. Sigh.

Really? We just need to stop children from dying, educate the parents, and
everything will be fine?

It's not that people are pessimistic - they are just REALISTIC, about what a
crock of shit they're being handed, and Bill and Melinda's answer is to meet
Steven Pinker and go 'hey, statistics show that everything's better than it
ever was!' My god... We're talking billionaires, having no ideas, no
imagination, and no idea that they have neither, and wondering why things kind
of suck?

Because people with no ideas, no imagination, are the ones who get to make
billions of dollars in our society? Maybe, just maybe, that has something to
do with it Bill...

~~~
Daishiman
This is completely uninsightful.

~~~
alexashka
If you had cancer and didn't know it, and someone named Melinda came and gave
you a nice bed, some pain-pills and told you she cared, you'd feel a bit
better.

Except you'd still have cancer.

When someone got you to a doctor, who operated on you quickly and saved your
life, you'd not only consider the person who got you to the doctor insightful,
but far more helpful than Melinda, and be rightfully outraged at Melinda's
well-meaning but clueless efforts to help you.

I am the person getting you to the doctor, Melinda is Melinda Gates, and the
insightful bit is figuring out what cancer is, and what a doctor would be, in
this metaphor.

Melinda and Gates think it's lack of education in the USA. You tell me.

------
arca_vorago
I wonder if they could quantify the human suffering and death that has
happened as their proprietary surveillance operating system has betrayed it's
users to totalitarian governments worldwide and just how vital it has been in
eroding the constitutional protections of the fourth amendment by essentially
backdooring everyone that uses it.

Bill Gates was never a good guy, and I don't really give a Fuck if most of you
reading this don't like me saying this because you forgot what the word hacker
really means because there are too many businesspeople here pretending to be
hackers here instead of the other way around.

~~~
braderhart
Well, you can use their OS, which has for years tried to undermine the free
and open source communities, but you have to pay for it. And you have to agree
for them to spy on you. And you're poor?? That is okay, just give up more of
your privacy rights and we already sold all your data, so you will be a good
consumer now.

You run Windows. Your mind belongs to us. Your ability to think beyond .NET
and C# will soon diminish, and we will give you some mediocre job now based on
your mediocre proprietary skills, and your role as a tech worker now be to
spread your love for MS to everyone, because if you don't we will stop paying
you, and you will have no food and no home. And you will not know how to use
anything but Windows.

~~~
gaius
_And you have to agree for them to spy on you. And you 're poor?? That is
okay, just give up more of your privacy rights and we already sold all your
data, so you will be a good consumer now_

This is hilarious. What OS do you think Google, Facebook and the NSA run?

~~~
braderhart
Google provided an open source operating system, web browser and built a
container solution used by every major cloud provider.

~~~
gaius
You think that was altruism?

At the end of the day Gates wanted to sell products for money, straight up
cash transaction, take it or leave it. Google et al are sly and underhanded,
you don’t know the price upfront, they try to turn you into the product...

~~~
braderhart
You mean, like if I were to go buy a laptop pretty much anywhere, and they
just include Windows in the laptop price??? I don't see how that is any
different. I can go buy an unlocked Android phone at Costco for $199 that has
Android 7.1.1. I know that I am paying for the hardware, and the OS is free.

So, you are basically trying to say that proprietary is better because we
don't know what the open source version costs? Well, you have the source
code... so I guess you may not be willing to look inside, but the other one
you don't have the option to even look.

~~~
gaius
_am paying for the hardware, and the OS is free._

It is not free, unless you think Google is made of unpaid volunteers and all
its shareholders are charities?

You are Gates’ customer, but you are Google’s inventory

~~~
braderhart
So, if you go here:

[https://source.android.com/](https://source.android.com/)

Or here:

[https://chromium.googlesource.com/chromium/src/](https://chromium.googlesource.com/chromium/src/)

Compile it and run it, you are inventory of Google for compiling free source
code that you can modify however you want? Where do you get the source code
like that to compile for Windows?

~~~
braderhart
@gaius: Now I'm blocked from responding to you. The only source code I could
find for Microsoft, is for debugging, and doesn't give you access to all the
source. You have to use a smart card that they send as well.

Here is the license for Android:

[https://source.android.com/setup/licenses](https://source.android.com/setup/licenses)

Where is the license for Winblows?

~~~
gaius
You’re not blocked, HN just rate-limits comments :-)

~~~
braderhart
Good to know that my anti-Microsoft messages aren't being entirely censored.

