<story><title>Larry Page: I’d Rather Leave My Billions to Elon Musk Than to Charity</title><url>http://www.slate.com/blogs/business_insider/2014/03/20/google_ceo_larry_page_elon_musk_would_get_my_inheritance_over_charity.html</url></story><parent_chain><item><author>hooande</author><text>I think this could be rephrased as &amp;quot;Charitable organizations aren&amp;#x27;t interesting enough to deserve my money.&amp;quot;&lt;p&gt;People, especially highly successful people, view charity as giving money away. Musk&amp;#x27;s inspirational projects seems much more appealing by comparison. There is a lot of truth in the idea that doing something like colonizing mars could do more good for humanity than giving people enough money to eat for a day or a week. Even what Bill Gates is doing has little impact on people&amp;#x27;s daily lives here. Eradicating polio is the most noble of goals, but it takes place far away and the benefits are difficult to see.&lt;p&gt;I think the best solution is to make charity cool again. FDR turned giving money away into something that was literally awesome, using the Tennessee Valley Authority to reshape the landscape with bridges and dams. 21st century technology allows us to have a much larger impact on the lives of many more people, regardless of where they live. Elon Mush doesn&amp;#x27;t have a monopoly on big ideas. As a technology community it&amp;#x27;s up to us to come up with projects that help people in need while still capturing our imaginations.&lt;p&gt;It doesn&amp;#x27;t matter if big problems are solved for profit or solved for charity. What matters is that they get solved. The danger is that fiduciary responsibilities will get in the way of doing good, working families will take a backseat to boards of directors and the rich will get richer [1] while everyone else struggles to keep even. This is why it would be better to make charity more interesting as opposed to giving money to dynamic and inspirational profiteers. It&amp;#x27;s always been difficult to combine making money with being of benefit to the world, but we need to raise the entrepreneurial and creative bar now more than ever. When one of the authors of &amp;quot;Don&amp;#x27;t Be Evil&amp;quot; decides that his money is better off in the hands of private corporations it should be a warning to all of us.&lt;p&gt;[1] &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Matthew_effect&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;http:&amp;#x2F;&amp;#x2F;en.wikipedia.org&amp;#x2F;wiki&amp;#x2F;Matthew_effect&lt;/a&gt;</text></item></parent_chain><comment><author>sanoli</author><text>&amp;quot;doing something like colonizing mars could do more good for humanity than giving people enough money to eat for a day or a week.&amp;quot;&lt;p&gt;The people who say stuff like this are always far, far away from the experience of not having anything to eat. It could be true that Musk&amp;#x27;s projects in the long run could have do more good for humanity in the long run, but also in a different sense. How is colonizing Mars, or having electric cars does more good for a whole continent that hasn&amp;#x27;t solved dozens of problems well below any technological&amp;#x2F;energetic one? What I&amp;#x27;m saying is, it might do more good for the developed world, but not for Africa. Bill Gates was right when he criticized Google&amp;#x27;s balloon internet project. What the african population really needs is different. To say otherwise is to be too removed from the real, basic, almost elementary problems that are still present in the continent.&lt;p&gt;(edit: I meant no offense to the parent with my first sentence. But I&amp;#x27;ve been to Africa, and I live in a 3rd world country with some very, very poor regions. Space programs have very little effect on life there.)</text></comment>
<story><title>Larry Page: I’d Rather Leave My Billions to Elon Musk Than to Charity</title><url>http://www.slate.com/blogs/business_insider/2014/03/20/google_ceo_larry_page_elon_musk_would_get_my_inheritance_over_charity.html</url></story><parent_chain><item><author>hooande</author><text>I think this could be rephrased as &amp;quot;Charitable organizations aren&amp;#x27;t interesting enough to deserve my money.&amp;quot;&lt;p&gt;People, especially highly successful people, view charity as giving money away. Musk&amp;#x27;s inspirational projects seems much more appealing by comparison. There is a lot of truth in the idea that doing something like colonizing mars could do more good for humanity than giving people enough money to eat for a day or a week. Even what Bill Gates is doing has little impact on people&amp;#x27;s daily lives here. Eradicating polio is the most noble of goals, but it takes place far away and the benefits are difficult to see.&lt;p&gt;I think the best solution is to make charity cool again. FDR turned giving money away into something that was literally awesome, using the Tennessee Valley Authority to reshape the landscape with bridges and dams. 21st century technology allows us to have a much larger impact on the lives of many more people, regardless of where they live. Elon Mush doesn&amp;#x27;t have a monopoly on big ideas. As a technology community it&amp;#x27;s up to us to come up with projects that help people in need while still capturing our imaginations.&lt;p&gt;It doesn&amp;#x27;t matter if big problems are solved for profit or solved for charity. What matters is that they get solved. The danger is that fiduciary responsibilities will get in the way of doing good, working families will take a backseat to boards of directors and the rich will get richer [1] while everyone else struggles to keep even. This is why it would be better to make charity more interesting as opposed to giving money to dynamic and inspirational profiteers. It&amp;#x27;s always been difficult to combine making money with being of benefit to the world, but we need to raise the entrepreneurial and creative bar now more than ever. When one of the authors of &amp;quot;Don&amp;#x27;t Be Evil&amp;quot; decides that his money is better off in the hands of private corporations it should be a warning to all of us.&lt;p&gt;[1] &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Matthew_effect&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;http:&amp;#x2F;&amp;#x2F;en.wikipedia.org&amp;#x2F;wiki&amp;#x2F;Matthew_effect&lt;/a&gt;</text></item></parent_chain><comment><author>dsuth</author><text>I don&amp;#x27;t think that gives Page enough credit. I&amp;#x27;d phrase it as &amp;quot;Charitable organisations aren&amp;#x27;t &lt;i&gt;effective&lt;/i&gt; enough to deserve my money&amp;quot;. Elon Musk is, above all, a do-er. He has shown the capability to not only think big about very relevant problems, but implement solutions. I suspect it&amp;#x27;s those qualities that give Page confidence that his money would make more of a difference in Musk&amp;#x27;s pockets.</text></comment>