Warren Buffett Bets the Farm

First you convince people that Warren Buffett did not make his $44 billion fortune by recording Margaritaville.  Then you wow them with the fact that his gift to the Gates Foundation will create a philanthropy whose annual giving (about $3.4 billion) will be larger than the gross domestic products of 43 out of 180 member states of the International Monetary Fund.

Mr. Buffett’s gift of 85 percent of his fortune to the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation will bring that foundation’s assets to $67.4 billion, making it six times larger than the second largest foundation on the planet (Ford).  Its assets will roughly equal the assets of the next nine largest foundations combined.

Coals to Newcastle?  Perhaps, but I like to imagine that this enormous concentration of philanthropic capital will make possible new ways of thinking about and doing philanthropy.

Does it suddenly become possible to contemplate the eradication of a disease?  Can third-track diplomacy, supported on a massive scale, undo some of the foreign policy horrors of the current administration?  Will we be able to provide—on a scale never before contemplated—opportunities for the young people in our country who currently live in poverty?  Will it finally be possible to introduce democracy to the United States by building widespread support for clean elections and meaningful lobbying reform?

These are lovely possibilities to contemplate as we’re …

Strummin’ our six string on our front porch swing.
Smell those shrimp
They’re beginnin’ to boil …

Comments

[erasmus]

I'm tuned in to this one, big time. Hope it shakes things up a bit. By the way, I never told you how much I like the new look of the blog. Dada meets ... uh, something.

[Albert Ruesga]

Thanks, e. Yep, the Buffett thing has certainly energized the water cooler conversation in our shop.

[Roger O. Thornhill]

Yay! These guys are my heroes. People who have accumumlated a great deal of money should be involved in social policy as they maturate, because their great hordes indicate that they possess sharp judgement, and there qualms as elders that develop in the period when they are derived of immediate need of more money lead to wisdom. Another nail in the coffin of socialist public education, teachers unions, and people who don't want to speak or write english.

[Albert Ruesga]

There are many who share your judgment, Roger, about the wisdom of involving elites in the development of social policy. Of course, Mr. Castro prefers not to speak or write in English, and he's a strong supporter of socialist public education, but he's certainly a great believer in his own "sharp judgment."

How would you define wisdom?

[Roger O. Thornhill]

Castro! The energizer bunny of communist corruption. This guy is the anti-Clinton, an adept in reverse-triangulation playing the extremes against the liberal center. I pray that world opinion will succeed in forcing this socialist Methuselah to refrain from torturing the prisoners he holds in the open-air dungeon of Guantanamo Bay.

What constitutes wisdom is an agreement among a group of people on how wisdom is constituted.

Perhaps there's another level of wisdom in which the category "wisdom" is critically examined, and wisdom, for those critically-inclined, consists of wisdom about wisdom.

Etc.

[Cackety Dishwitz]

Tooter says I'm asking the wrong question. Guess that means I hang with you. (Please, put down that white telephone. How many joints can a drunk be thrown out of in one night??)

[Albert Ruesga]

We have nothing but the wrong questions here. And we throw the wrong answers into the bargain.

[Cackety Dishwitz]

Thanks for the hospitality. I may use the white phone to call the white house, if you don't mind (provided that the bourbon holds up.)

[Dee Hicks]

Don't know if you saw this piece in the New York Times. The anti-abortionists aren't too happy about the unholy alliance between Gates and Buffett.