Bill Gates

by Michael Becraft

  In 2011, Gates declared that despite his great wealth and contributions from others like Warren Buffett, that the Foundation was created to end within two decades of the passing of Bill and Melinda: “Our foundation won’t last long beyond Melinda’s and my lifetime. The resources will last about 20 years after whichever is the last of us to go. There is no family business, and my kids will make their own careers.”33

  RE-ENVISIONING THE TOILET

  Along with the low-cost initiatives that save lives, Gates has also worked with organizations to other initiatives that require creative thinking to save lives. In 2014, one of those initiatives was the “Reinvent the Toilet Challenge,” which he presented to the National Academy of Sciences—leading experts and many Nobel Prize winners—at a 150th anniversary event. The expertise of these individuals would help derive with new ideas to solve challenges that are often not contemplated in more affluent regions. The toilets most of us recognize are still not available to 40 percent of the world’s population and require infrastructure—water and sewer services—that are unavailable or unaffordable. As a result, 1.5 million children a year die from contaminated water supplies.

  Gates mentioned awarding three prizes to teams of students from universities in the first Reinvent the Toilet Challenge, even joking by writing “It probably says something about me that I really had fun handing out prizes for toilet designs.”34

  CRITICISM OF VACCINES, EDUCATIONAL INITIATIVES, AND SCOPE

  On the Internet, one can readily find various sites with identical statements to suggest that the vaccines created with the support of the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation are intended to reduce the population and/or cause widespread harm to children. Fortunately, these sites are untrue; however, the belief of a link between the vaccines and afflictions like autism has prevented many children from receiving ordinary vaccinations. In an interview with Dr. Sanjay Gupta of CNN, Gates spoke about the discredited research:

  (Sanjay) Gupta: There has been a lot of scrutiny of vaccines recently—specifically childhood vaccines. There has been a lot of news about is there a connection with autism, for example. What do you make of all that? Dr. [Andrew] Wakefield wrote a paper about this [in The Lancet in 1998] saying he thought there was a connection. And there were lower vaccination rates over a period of time as a result in Britain, then the United States. What are your thoughts?

  (Bill) Gates: Well, Dr. Wakefield has been shown to have used absolutely fraudulent data. He had a financial interest in some lawsuits, he created a fake paper, the journal allowed it to run. All the other studies were done, showed no connection whatsoever again and again and again. So it’s an absolute lie that has killed thousands of kids. Because the mothers who heard that lie, many of them didn’t have their kids take either pertussis or measles vaccine, and their children are dead today. And so the people who go and engage in those anti-vaccine efforts—you know, they, they kill children. It’s a very sad thing, because these vaccines are important.35

  The article where the researcher claimed to make the link between vaccines and disease was indeed retracted (taken back as incorrect) by the publisher; an investigation showed that the research was paid for by parents who wanted to sue vaccine makers, that he conducted medical tests without ethical permission, and that he had patented a different vaccine for profit (one that would be used if the one he wrote about negatively was taken off the market).36

  In education, the Foundation was subject to criticism for the Gates Millennium Scholarship Fund for minority students seeking college study, driven by his awareness that students with minority backgrounds were far less likely to be able to afford college. With K-12 education, the criticism is centered on topics such as the Gates Foundation paying for the development of the Common Core Educational Standards in the United States—effectively, the Foundation creates an idea of what should be taught instead of the government doing so.37 Furthermore, the Foundation did not accurately interpret statistics before providing grants to support smaller schools, then not seeing the desired impact. A third initiative subject to criticism has been using a private sector tool of ranking teachers, partially based upon educational attainment of the students, to decide which teachers should be more highly compensated and which should not be retained.38

  In response to a question about criticism the Foundation receives about changing behavior due to the size and scope of the Foundation, Gates acknowledges that controversy is a part of tackling the problems. With educational institutions in particular, he notes that charter schools are one way of testing the theories he proposes for success or failure, and that the government is the largest actor in the field of education.

  When we get into a field, we do take a point of view, and raising controversy is a symptom. Fortunately, there is what’s called the charter school format that lets you try new things. The system is good at shutting down the ones that don’t work and replicating the ones that do. The big actor is government. If somebody says somebody is too big, it would be strange to point to us.39

  2014 ANNUAL LETTER

  In 2014, Bill and Melinda Gates released their annual letter on behalf of their Foundation, a practice he had picked up from his friend Warren Buffett, who issues an annual letter to Berkshire Hathaway shareholders. In that document, he made a sweeping new prediction: “I am optimistic enough about this that I am willing to make a prediction. By 2035, there will be almost no poor countries left in the world. Almost all countries will be what we now call lower-middle income or richer.”40

  Combined, Bill and Melinda made a conscious effort to refute three of the myths that they felt were constraining success in the fights against poverty and disease, with data they hoped could be shared in discussions at all levels.

  Myth 1: Poor countries are doomed to stay poor.

  Myth 2: Aid is wasted.

  Myth 3: Saving lives leads to overpopulation.

  In a compelling way, Bill dispelled the first two myths with data showing increases in global wealth and stressed that in cases where people believe aid is wasted, the results-driven experience he has with the Gates Foundation actually reveals the limited cases of abuse while the vast majority of pledged aid is truly doing well. Melinda provides data to refute claims that saving lives leads to overpopulation, with evidence that families have fewer children as infant mortality decreases.41

  THE GIVING PLEDGE

  Once a vast quantity of wealth is amassed, the holder of that wealth faces many choices. There are no government regulations restricting the maximum wealth of an individual, provided compliance with appropriate tax laws. A wealthy person has many options ranging from maintaining the wealth and passing to future generations of family or associates, using the wealth to fund major endeavors during his or her lifetime, or using some/all of the wealth to pursue philanthropic pursuits.

  In 2010, Bill and Melinda Gates teamed with Warren Buffett, challenging the wealthiest U.S. residents to commit at least half of the accumulated wealth toward philanthropic initiatives: “We have been blessed with good fortune beyond our wildest expectations, and we are profoundly grateful. But just as these gifts are great, so we feel a great responsibility to use them well. That is why we are so pleased to join in making an explicit commitment to the Giving Pledge.”42

  Due to the wealth amassed through Microsoft and various other initiatives, the Gates family recognized that personal family needs could be met with only a small proportion of those assets. However, the Gates family and Warren Buffett are exceptionally influential people, who have the ability to speak to other billionaires who might have the same interest in promoting philanthropy or charitable causes. Consumer advocate Ralph Nader had realized the influence of these two individuals in 1998 but was a bit of an antagonist to Gates and Microsoft at the time. From the connections made by Gates and Buffett, the idea of the Giving Pledge was initiated.

  The Giving Pledge is not any form of contract that requires billionaires to use funds for philanthropy or charitable ca
uses; the pledge itself is merely a public statement that more than half of the wealth would be used to support this form of cause within their lifetime (or willed at the time of their deaths). The pledge originally started with U.S. billionaires or those whose wealth plus previous donations exceeded a billion dollars. While a small group of U.S. citizens, these individuals and families have the potential resources to make powerful differences in improving the life of others, and the hope is that these public commitments from the wealthiest people in the United States will encourage more individuals to similarly become involved in philanthropy and charities, not just now but for many generations into the future.

  Of particular note is that the Giving Pledge is entirely separate from the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation or any other charity, foundation, or organization. Each individual or family member making the pledge maintains complete control over how his or her pledge will be used to improve the world, and the Gates family asks for no contributions to the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation (although these can be offered). The only requirement of pledgers is to allocate a majority of their wealth to improving a lot of others. Each pledger publishes a statement that described the reason to become involved in the Giving Pledge, and these individuals meet annually in an effort to share ideas. Furthermore, Buffett and the Gates family have met with international philanthropists to learn about global perspectives as well as share ideas of what has been effective in the United States, with some non-U.S. pledgers such as Richard Branson of the Virgin Group.43

  In Bill and Melinda’s pledge letter to the Giving Pledge, they discuss the good fortune they have encountered but also the reasons for being involved in the giving pledge. Like many philanthropists before, Bill and Melinda Gates had multiple aims in their personal philanthropic efforts. One of those initiatives was education in the United States, which had been a subject of philanthropy among other business magnates like Carnegie, Rockefeller, and Vanderbilt in their own days. As they write, “We have visited schools that are breaking down old barriers and preparing every child for college and life. These are great schools—but there are not nearly enough of them. Now the task is to make sure that every student gets the same opportunity to succeed in college and life.”44

  For Bill Gates, the focus on college and postsecondary education is noteworthy: a highly intelligent and driven college dropout—who never returned to complete college—recognizing the value of this experience for workers in the current economy. The Gates family actively seeks educational reforms, both for the entire educational system and for training students for advanced careers in STEM disciplines (science, technology, engineering, and mathematics). Graduates in STEM disciplines are necessary to continue innovation and have been a subject Gates has often spoken about in the past.

  The second major initiative within the Gates pledge letter is that of global public health, especially in regards to preventable diseases. The family wrote of reading about a preventable disease called rotavirus, which was killing 500,000 children worldwide every year and found this statistic unacceptable. Not only were the goals to help stop preventable deaths but also to ensure that proper health and education would allow children worldwide to grow to adulthood and have the opportunity to accomplish their own goals.

  At the beginning of the year 2014, there were 115 billionaire individuals or families who had made a public commitment through the Giving Pledge, including familiar names such as:

  Paul G. Allen—Microsoft cofounder, with Bill Gates

  Sara Blakely—Spanx founder

  Arthur M. Blank—Home Depot cofounder and owner of the Atlanta Falcons

  Joan and Richard Branson—Founder of the Virgin Group

  Warren Buffett—Berkshire Hathaway chairman and CEO

  Jean and Steve Case—Former AOL CEO and Chairman

  Larry Ellison—Oracle CEO

  Reed Hastings and Patty Quinlan—Founder of LinkedIn

  Carl Icahn—Investor and businessman

  George Lucas—Producer /Director of Star Wars and Indiana Jones series

  Dustin Moscovitz and Cari Tuna—Cofounder of Facebook

  Elon Musk—Former CEO of PayPal, current CEO of Tesla Motors and SpaceX

  Jeff Skoll—First president of eBay

  Ted Turner—Founder of WTBS, CNN, and owner of the Atlanta Braves

  Mark Zuckerberg—Cofounder and CEO of Facebook45

  GLOBAL IMPROVEMENT

  Through the combination of the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation and the Giving Pledge, the Gates family has shown a clear effort to use wealth and influence not to simply become more influential, but to derive solutions that will benefit society. Although the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation is expected to be extinguished shortly after the deaths of the couple, the Giving Pledge is designed to allow future billionaires to make the same commitment toward those who are less fortunate, for the projects that speak most to the ambitions of the donor. These programs are all voluntary, but the donors are making a difference like the wealthiest a century ago, much as Carnegie had when he funded the construction of what became almost half of the libraries in existence in the United States. In the case of the Gates family, their wealth is dedicated to the improvement of lives of others throughout the globe, either by promoting educational opportunity or by innovating and providing life-saving opportunities at the lowest cost, to simply provide the most good.

  CONCLUSION

  The story of Bill Gates is far from finished. Leading Microsoft as CEO from the earliest days of the micro-computing era until 2000, he reshaped the way computers could be used by the average citizen—those without the technical sophistication he possesses—often calling for additional simplicity in the products that his firm developed. Leaving full-time work at Microsoft in 2008, thirty-three years into the company’s history yet he was still just 52, he was able to commit his wealth in a meaningful attempt to save lives throughout the world. Even still, he was able to collaborate with Warren Buffett to have over 100 other billionaires commit to using more than half of their wealth for a philanthropic initiative of that donor’s choosing.

  Gates’s success was not without challenges and controversy, and he was gifted at overcoming a number of potential hazards through an ability to reshape himself from an exceptionally brilliant early programmer to an astute businessman who understood the potential of his staff to revolutionize computing. Life was not easy for his staff, and Gates has flaws and a drive that were sometimes to the detriment of his organization. He was able to lead Microsoft through a phase of tremendous growth and reach the pinnacle of the software market yet consistently believed his firm could fail. He was an early advocate for strong copyright rights for computer programs and understood that the market would pick the winner, simultaneously working on multiple similar projects before knowing which way the market would lead.

  Once Windows 3.0 was released and sales quickly outpaced OS/2, he knew the path for operating systems was set, and the firm was free to focus on applications, such as Microsoft Office. His evolving relationship with Steve Jobs was one of admiration and friendship, despite times of friction with Apple (and even once being sued by Apple). In the post-Microsoft era, he’s pursued various other business interests that help support his need for engagement as well as provide additional wealth to be donated through the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation.

  In the decades to come, Gates will once again find a way to surprise us all, whether through ideas generated at Microsoft, major breakthroughs made by the Foundation, or a new initiative of his choosing. The announcement in February 2014 that he would once again spend more time at Microsoft to mentor the new CEO of the firm, Satya Nadella, means that he is entering a new era of shaping a firm founded back in 1975, when he was just 19. Yet the work of the Foundation continues. As he once stated, if he were a teenager again, he would probably be “biology hacking” to solve problems throughout the world. Don’t be surprised if a Gates protégé does this very thing one day during our lifetimes.

>   NOTES

  CHAPTER 1

  1. CNBC Town Hall Event: Warren Buffett and Bill Gates: Keeping America Great, November 12, 2009, at Columbia University.

  2. Bill Gates Sr. and Mary Ann Mackin (2009). Showing Up for Life: Thoughts on the Gifts of a Lifetime. Broadway Books.

  3. Andy Serwer (June 22, 2009). Fortune. Best Advice: Gates on Gates.

  4. University of Washington (September 1995). Son Gives UW $10 Million in Honor of Mary Gates; Old Physics Building Renamed Mary Gates Hall. http://www.washington.edu/alumni/columns/sept95/gates_hall.html

  5. New York Times (June 11, 1994). Mary Gates, 64; Helped Her Son Start Microsoft.

  6. Bill Gates Sr. and Mary Ann Mackin (2009). Showing Up for Life: Thoughts on the Gifts of a Lifetime. Broadway Books.

  7. Robert Guth (April 25, 2009). Wall Street Journal. Raising Bill Gates.

  8. Bill Gates Sr. and Mary Ann Mackin (2009). Showing Up for Life: Thoughts on the Gifts of a Lifetime. Broadway Books.

  9. Andy Serwer (June 22, 2009). Fortune. Best Advice: Gates on Gates.

  10. Robert Guth (April 25, 2009). Wall Street Journal. Raising Bill Gates.

  11. Walter Isaacson (June 24, 2001). Time. In Search of the Real Bill Gates.

  12. Robert Guth (April 25, 2009). Wall Street Journal. Raising Bill Gates.

  13. Bill Gates Sr. and Mary Ann Mackin (2009). Showing Up for Life: Thoughts on the Gifts of a Lifetime. Broadway Books.

  14. PBS NOW: Bill Moyer Interviews Bill Gates. http://www.pbs.org/now/printable/transcript_gates_print.html.

  15. Kristianne Blake—Forbes. http://www.forbes.com/profile/kristianne-blake/.

  16. Stuart Glascock (June 2013). Columns: The University of Washington Alumni Magazine. Mighty Is the Man Who Wears the Purple and Gold: The Immense Impact of Bill Gates Sr.