What will Mark Zuckerberg’s virtue signaling accomplish? Nothing productive that’s for certain. A good share of that 44 Billion will no doubt go to pay the generous salaries of the worthy people selected to administer this charitable giving. Probably as much as 90 cents on the dollar.
If you were wealthy and your first child was just born, what would be the first thing you would do? Give away all your money so your child would get almost nothing, right? Well, that's the decent parental instincts of Facebook's Mark Zuckerberg, who penned an open letter to his newly born daughter telling her that she would never, ever see 99% of the 45 Facebook billion dollars he had made. His daughter Max will surely appreciate his noble gesture.
Instead, he plans to give it all to his charitable foundation, I mean his LLC, the Chan Zuckerberg Initiative.
In case you are worried that the money will be spent on something useful, you needn't be concerned. If the Zuckerberg's past charitable expenses are any guide, it will be about as impactful as President Obama's 1 trillion dollar stimulus.
For example, In 2010 Zuckerberg gave a hundred million dollars to the corrupt and inept Newark school system. The result?
Watching the $200 million iceberg (Mr. Zuckerberg’s $100 million donation was contingent on raising a matching amount) slowly melt into an ocean of recrimination over the course of 256 brisk pages can be a sometimes painful exercise. The union boss, Joe Del Grosso, demanded a ransom of $31 million to compensate for what he felt members should have received in previous years — before agreeing to discuss any labor reforms. The superintendent, Cami Anderson, demanded accountability from schools but set her own performance goals only after the academic year was largely over and relied on expensive consultants — whose total bill ultimately exceeded $20 million — without clear objectives long after she had promised to recruit a permanent leadership team.
Money poured down a rathole. What else has Zuck wasted money on?
Facebook partnered with teachers at Summit Public Schools (also a grantee of Startup:Education) to help students reach their full potential through an approach known as personalized learning, which allows students to become active participants in their education.
This was the first time in history that students were participants in their education. Before that, it was an out-of-body experience as they watched themselves being educated from another plane of existence.
As part of our commitment to personalized learning, we invested $5 million in MasteryConnect to support K-12 educators as they adopt competency-based learning in the classroom.
Did the competency-based learning replace incompetency-based learning? I hope so!
“We must build technology to make change. Many institutions invest money in these challenges, but most progress comes from productivity gains through innovation,” they wrote in the letter to their daughter. “We must participate in policy and advocacy to shape debates. Many institutions are unwilling to do this, but progress must be supported by movements to be sustainable.”
That last part sounds like a euphamism for fighting constipation.
This week, Mr. Zuckerberg was also one of the billionaires who signed on to the Breakthrough Energy Coalition, a group organized by the Microsoft co-founder Bill Gates to contribute toward a multibillion-dollar clean energy fund.
We already have breakthrough energy sources. They are called coal, oil, and natural gas. They work so well that they are ten times cheaper than solar and wind energy.
Instead of doing nutty, faddy, wasteful things with their money, why don't they do the ultimate thing that will improve tens of thousands of lives: create more companies and more employment. The more businesses there are creating things, the more people are employed, the more families are self supporting, the better off every one is. Capitalism is one of the greatest sources of improvement of mankind.
Or, alternatively, why doesn't Zuckerberg take that 44 billion dollars and burn it. By taking 44 billion dollars out of the money supply Zuckerberg will contribute to a dramatic strengthening of the dollar. It may not be much against the 24/7 printing presses of the Federal Reserve, but it will make more of a contribution than the dopey causes the Chan Zuckerbergs plan to waste their money on.
This article was written by Ed Straker, senior writer of NewsMachete.com, the conservative news site.
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