I don't think the Gates foundation is a Ponzi, but I am not entirely convinced that all of this is really what is advertised.
Are there any reliable (external and independent) audits for charities?
Since you're skeptical of effective altruism, Givewell probably isn't going garner a lot of trust for you which is unfortunate because they really do some of the best work in the field for trying to understand the effectiveness of charities (e.g. on a cost/daly basis). Charity Navigator was founded with an idea of kind of providing independent audits but to me it's more like a Yelp for charities and not super useful.
But even then the cases you’re talking about are probably not black and white. So the answer is likely a further “maybe partly, maybe indirectly”.
Then if you take the profits and put it towards doing good in the world, have you done net good? Probably.
It’s complicated.
The rationalization they used to justify this is probably the same pattern they use for everything.
Why should I believe them?
Facts are more reliable than words.
What does that even mean? Be explicit. Right now I'm left to assume you think he's implanting 5G chips in children...
More to the point, barring huge changes in this country, what else can we expect of the ultra rich? What Gates is doing is nearly best case scenario...
The question is this: why should we give this foundation more credits than what SBF was trying to achieve?
How do we know this is not bogus? What about secondary effects? What about the potential induced corruption around those super-rich foundations?
As for the hand wringing around secondary effects, corruption, etc. Who cares? Rich people are going to be rich. Gates is visibly giving money away, explaining his process, etc. What are the other ultra rich doing? We have even less insight and less reason to think they're pitching in for humanity.
And that's all by design in this country, and I doubt there's a plurality of people who would seek to change it.
I'm not trying to what-about-you. I'm trying to say, let's applaud the good, even if it falls short of perfect.
SBF made his money from a Ponzi scheme. Gates made his money selling software.
SBF’s wealth existed only in fantasy land. Gates’ wealth exists on the real stock market.
I could go on. At no point am I claiming that Gates is an angel or that every action taken by Microsoft over the last 40 years is faultless. No, they’re both far from perfect.
But SBF is a con man. And Gates is not.
Look at what the foundation has done and judge them on that. You seem to be looking for a reason to judge them based on nothing other than your own suspicion.
The most (unfounded) ulterior motive that I can imagine is that they want to help poor countries prosper so that they grow the pot and keep our markets going up. That benefits everyone though so it's hard to knock it.
The whole idea of charities is that were letting private entities control the "altruism dollars" in society, the only reason to do this is to prevent the public from deciding the course of the funds and to add a layer of obscurity to make it harder for the public to see where the funds are going.
To the people responding to you basically saying "charities are good, what do you mean?", why is it that we have to donate money to the gates foundation to provide foreign aid, isn't that one of the things we expect our government to do and pay taxes towards?
What's the point of asking a bunch of hypotheticals without presenting either evidence or an argument of some sort?
Sorta depends what you think is advertised. AFAICT what's advertised is that Bill Gates gives away his money to create the kind of world and society Bill Gates wants to live in. I don't really see why I should want to live according to Bill Gates' ideas or preferences, so I'm critical on that ground -- but that doesn't make it a scam.
Maybe that’s a better approach. Dynasties can do good, especially when people are more critical of them, and willing to hold them to account.