Lately in the news was Mark Zuckerberg, Facebook founder and a newly minted billionaire, joining the group of billionaires that includes the likes of Bill Gates and Warren Buffett who have pledged to give much or most of their vast fortunes to charity and/or what they consider to be worthy projects to help people. Zuckerberg may be trying to polish his image but at least some of the others seem to be genuinely interested in alleviating suffering. I first noticed this phenomenon quite some time ago when Bill Gates started the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation and I started hearing about good works such as campaigns to end some horrific diseases in Africa and numerous other projects.
These are wonderful things, I'm sure, but I think, monumentally shortsighted. Perhaps it's like that often used adage about giving a man a fish and feeding him for a day versus teaching him to fish and feeding him for a lifetime. If the Gates Foundation eradicates malaria in Africa and saves uncounted millions, how does that help mankind? It adds many more empty bellies to a land where famine is endemic as population growth has outstripped their ability to feed themselves for years. I remember a few years ago listening to a report on some humanitarian project in Ethiopia (I think) and a woman who had given birth to eight children (I don't remember how many actually survived but it was considerably less) was being provided counseling about limiting family size. She rejected that information, saying, "I will have as many children as God sends me". I thought, terrific, then you and God can watch them starve.
I would argue that Gates and company need to think much bigger. They could change the course of human history by using their vast wealth on research and development projects to alter aspects of human existence that matter much more than any particular group of people. Get some of us off this planet so the next really big rock that slams into Earth won't wipe us all out. Develope nanotechnology that could cure disease and aging. Build nanomachines that can assemble anything we need from simple atoms and molecules the way nature does. Develope artificial intelligence, solve our energy problems, vastly expand human learning, educate people - especially women - and break a cycle of ignorance and poverty and all its attendant ills. Just don't cure a disease or three and leave us laboring under the same limitations that have dogged us since existence began. Collectively and individually, Man has the unfortunate tendency to be his own worst enemy. Get projects underway to save us from ourselves.
A few billionaires; the Google guys, Sergey Brin and Larry Page, the Paypal cofounder Elon Musk, have poured money into things that have the potential to be game-changers. Google is financing research into vehicles that drive themselves and alternative energy sources to name a couple. Elon Musk has spent hundreds of millions developing space lauch capabilities and just recently his company, Space X, became the first private company to launch a ship into space, orbit the Earth, and bring it back home.
Anyway, I'm thinking I should write a letter to Gates and others who think charity and humanitarian projects are the best use of their money and implore them to reconsider. (In the case of Zuckerberg, I'm wondering if I shouldn't try to make the case that if he must give away some of those billions I would be glad to take it off his hands and apply it in the manner I've advocated. If he just wants PR points I'd be delighted to give him all the credit.) Seem reasonable?
Glad you're blogging now! Great post, by the way. Not that I'm against philanthropic efforts, we should definitely be helping those in need, but I agree with you too in that we need to be directing monies toward research that will overall improve our future. And good luck in your proposal to Zuckerburg ;)
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