We really do have to hand it to The Guardian: they've managed to find a writer who insists that Mark Zuckerberg's (and his wife's) decision to give away 99% of their Facebook stock, currently worth some $45 billion, is not only a perpetuation of inequality but it's imperialism to boot. Said writer having entirely missed the economic points behind the accumulation of such riches in the first place. The most important of these economic points being that, as an entrepreneur, the only way that you can amass wealth (absent using the government to steal it for you, not something that is even remotely true of ) is if you provide value to other people. And as William Nordhaus has famously pointed out this is why this oddity called free market capitalism actually works: the value provided to consumers is vastly larger than any wealth that accumulates in the hands of the entrepreneur. On average, and this does not hold in every case of course, we the consumers get some 30 times what the billionaire does. 
 
 When framed this way it does seem a bit odd that people complain about said accumulations of wealth: because they're obviously a sign that we've all benefited enormously from the business activities. None of us, ever, get charged anything to use Facebook. And yet we now have free, 24/7, communications with a billion people around the world. This is of course something we value: that's why a billion and more people use the site. And there's a good reason why the system is set up so that people who deliver such value to us all get to keep some of it. You have heard of incentives? 
 
 Here's the Guardian piece: 
 
 But it also means that the rich are still effectively buying the future they’d like to see, no matter how selfless their intentions may be. International philanthropy and the western world’s desire to eradicate poverty and disease can’t ever truly rid themselves of their imperialist roots; as many critics have pointed out, the white savior industrial complex has never been more pervasive in global culture. 
 
 People with the resources to solve one or two of the world's problems decide to go and do so. This is imperialism in this new dispensation. Go figure. It's as if my neighbour the little old lady needs help in getting the shopping in: is this an expression of the patriarchy if I use my male musculature to aid her? Or should we just dismiss all of this as being the whinings of the ill-informed? 
 
 Well, no, we can't just dismiss it I'm afraid. Because there's a much deeper misunderstanding of the economics here: 
 
 Simply by creating and overseeing the world’s largest social network and one of the most influential corporations on Earth – by gathering and selling untold amounts of data under the protection of inscrutable legal jargon, by implementing shaky harassment and reporting policies that permit certain kinds of abuse, by employing 68% men and fewer than 50 black people in a company of more than 10,000 employees (to say nothing of the unholy spectre of gentrification) – Mark Zuckerberg himself continues to reproduce the inequality he and his wife are taking aim at with their pledge. 
 
 Zuckerberg and Facebook haven't increased inequality at all. They've hugely reduced it in fact. Precisely by providing that free communication to a billion and more noted above. Youngsters will not believe this but then they never do listen to the grey beards like me telling of their youth. But there was a time, when I was in my teens (I am somewhat under the age when it was all just cleft sticks), when communication was an expensive thing to do. There were no mobile phones (the first UK call on one came when I was in my 20s) and landlines were actually expensive. Long distance calls were kept limited in length because of the cost. Outside of universities there was almost no email at all. 
 
 OK, now Facebook is by no means responsible for all of this but now we can, effectively, communicate with anyone and everyone for nothing. This is an increase in inequality or a reduction in it? Obviously, it's a reduction in inequality in the only manner that matters, in consumption. You and I and Bill Gates all get to communicate for free, making Gates' wealth immaterial in the amount of communication that we can consume. And while Facebook isn't solely responsible for this it's most certainly true that the company has contributed. And then there's the Nordhaus point. 
 
 He studied the total value creation from entrepreneurial activity. And then looked at how much of that value was retained by the entrepreneur and how much flowed out to the wider society. And here's the paper: 
 
 Schumpeterian Profits in the American Economy: Theory and Measurement The present study examines the importance of Schumpeterian profits in the United States economy. Schumpeterian profits are defined as those profits that arise when firms are able to appropriate the returns from innovative activity. We first show the underlying equations for Schumpeterian profits. We then estimate the value of these profits for the non-farm business economy. We conclude that only a minuscule fraction of the social returns from technological advances over the 1948-2001 period was captured by producers, indicating that most of the benefits of technological change are passed on to consumers rather than captured by producers. 
 
 The actual number is that 97% of the value comes to us, the consumers, in the value that we place on these new things that we are able to do. It's only that 3% remnant that flows to the people who did the work. 
 
 No, that doesn't quite mean that if Zuckerberg has $45 billion then the rest of us have had 30 times that, $1.3 trillion, from the existence of Facebook because of course this is an average. But then again if there's a billion people using Facebook for 20 minutes each day then that's certainly a billion people who are placing some value on their ability to Facebook, isn't it? Some consumer surplus that needs to be considered. ||||| It’s refreshing to see two prominent billionaires even paying lip service to upending plutocracy. And of course, considering the dire state of the global wealth gap, it would be counterproductive to do anything that could discourage future extreme giving from the wealthy. 
 
 Mark Zuckerberg and Priscilla Chan welcomed their newborn daughter Max into the world on 1 December with a joint open letter on Facebook promising her all sorts of things and announcing a philanthropic initiative involving 99% of their shares going to worthy causes. 
 
 A beautifully worded tribute to mark the couple’s entrance into parenthood, it is filled with references to global inequality and the mounting challenges baby Max now faces as a member of the generation that will bear the brunt of its parents’ environmental and financial mistakes. 
 
 The letter also introduced the Chan Zuckerberg Initiative, a charitable organization in the mould of the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, through which the couple plan to donate 99% of their Facebook shares over their lifetimes. 
 
 At current share prices the initiative is valued at $45bn – roughly $1bn a year – with a mission to “advance human potential and promote equality in areas such as health, education, scientific research, and energy”. More than 350,000 people – including the social media teams of Arnold Schwarzenegger, Arianna Huffington, Katie Couric, Scooter Braun and Shakira – have already liked the Facebook post or left their glowing praise in the comments. 
 
 CZI’s messaging will no doubt be coming soon to an on-air NPR donor roster near you (it’s already on track for a $3bn valuation by 2018, provided Facebook Inc continues to thrive), and experts are predicting the gesture will inspire more one percenters to finally make good on their idealistic grandstanding and donate their own fortunes in the name of bettering humankind’s collective chances for survival. 
 
 Still, the announcement should prompt (or perhaps revive) a conversation about philanthropy as a viable solution: can it truly, effectively produce social change? If so, can it produce it for all? And most importantly, can it outweigh the impact its benefactors have, by definition, already made on global society, simply by amassing huge amounts of wealth, information and power through an inherently long-biased economic system? 
 
 
 
 The rich are still effectively buying the future they’d like to see, no matter how selfless their intentions may be 
 
 Philanthropy can produce social change, to an extent. The impact is often difficult to quantify, but philanthropic donations can obviously make a huge difference in whatever causes they aim to support, from the passing of the Affordable Care Act (or any election funded by a Super Pac, for that matter) to the private funding of cancer and other medical research. 
 
 
 
 Studies have shown that billionaire altruists like Zuckerberg are increasingly directing the course of American science, for example, and can supercharge research that has otherwise been bogged down in public sector and governmental bureaucracy – thus saving thousands if not millions of lives. 
 
 But it also means that the rich are still effectively buying the future they’d like to see, no matter how selfless their intentions may be. International philanthropy and the western world’s desire to eradicate poverty and disease can’t ever truly rid themselves of their imperialist roots; as many critics have pointed out, the white savior industrial complex has never been more pervasive in global culture. When you have an extra $45bn lying around, nothing you do with that money will come without strings, whether you craft those strings or not. 
 
 Simply by creating and overseeing the world’s largest social network and one of the most influential corporations on Earth – by gathering and selling untold amounts of data under the protection of inscrutable legal jargon, by implementing shaky harassment and reporting policies that permit certain kinds of abuse, by employing 68% men and fewer than 50 black people in a company of more than 10,000 employees (to say nothing of the unholy spectre of gentrification) – Mark Zuckerberg himself continues to reproduce the inequality he and his wife are taking aim at with their pledge. 
 
 As the critic Teju Cole puts it, power like theirs “supports brutal policies in the morning, founds charities in the afternoon, and receives awards in the evening”. And until that cycle changes, philanthropic initiatives can only go so far. 
 
 Much like the ongoing social justice conversation about conditional empathy being better than no empathy at all, if it took Max Chan Zuckerberg’s birth to give her parents the courage and determination to destroy their own ivory tower for the needs of the many, we should all be praying that she’ll get a few more siblings in the coming years. ||||| Dear Max, 
 
 Your mother and I don't yet have the words to describe the hope you give us for the future. Your new life is full of promise, and we hope you will be happy and healthy so you can explore it fully. You've already given us a reason to reflect on the world we hope you live in. 
 
 Like all parents, we want you to grow up in a world better than ours today. 
 
 While headlines often focus on what's wrong, in many ways the world is getting better. Health is improving. Poverty is shrinking. Knowledge is growing. People are connecting. Technological progress in every field means your life should be dramatically better than ours today. 
 
 We will do our part to make this happen, not only because we love you, but also because we have a moral responsibility to all children in the next generation. 
 
 We believe all lives have equal value, and that includes the many more people who will live in future generations than live today. Our society has an obligation to invest now to improve the lives of all those coming into this world, not just those already here. 
 
 But right now, we don't always collectively direct our resources at the biggest opportunities and problems your generation will face. 
 
 Consider disease. Today we spend about 50 times more as a society treating people who are sick than we invest in research so you won't get sick in the first place. 
 
 Medicine has only been a real science for less than 100 years, and we've already seen complete cures for some diseases and good progress for others. As technology accelerates, we have a real shot at preventing, curing or managing all or most of the rest in the next 100 years. 
 
 Today, most people die from five things -- heart disease, cancer, stroke, neurodegenerative and infectious diseases -- and we can make faster progress on these and other problems. 
 
 Once we recognize that your generation and your children's generation may not have to suffer from disease, we collectively have a responsibility to tilt our investments a bit more towards the future to make this reality. Your mother and I want to do our part. 
 
 Curing disease will take time. Over short periods of five or ten years, it may not seem like we're making much of a difference. But over the long term, seeds planted now will grow, and one day, you or your children will see what we can only imagine: a world without suffering from disease. 
 
 There are so many opportunities just like this. If society focuses more of its energy on these great challenges, we will leave your generation a much better world. 
 
 • • • 
 
 Our hopes for your generation focus on two ideas: advancing human potential and promoting equality . 
 
 Advancing human potential is about pushing the boundaries on how great a human life can be. 
 
 Can you learn and experience 100 times more than we do today? 
 
 Can our generation cure disease so you live much longer and healthier lives? 
 
 Can we connect the world so you have access to every idea, person and opportunity? 
 
 Can we harness more clean energy so you can invent things we can't conceive of today while protecting the environment? 
 
 Can we cultivate entrepreneurship so you can build any business and solve any challenge to grow peace and prosperity? 
 
 Promoting equality is about making sure everyone has access to these opportunities -- regardless of the nation, families or circumstances they are born into. 
 
 Our society must do this not only for justice or charity, but for the greatness of human progress. 
 
 Today we are robbed of the potential so many have to offer. The only way to achieve our full potential is to channel the talents, ideas and contributions of every person in the world. 
 
 Can our generation eliminate poverty and hunger? 
 
 Can we provide everyone with basic healthcare? 
 
 Can we build inclusive and welcoming communities? 
 
 Can we nurture peaceful and understanding relationships between people of all nations? 
 
 Can we truly empower everyone -- women, children, underrepresented minorities, immigrants and the unconnected? 
 
 If our generation makes the right investments, the answer to each of these questions can be yes -- and hopefully within your lifetime. 
 
 • • • 
 
 This mission -- advancing human potential and promoting equality -- will require a new approach for all working towards these goals. 
 
 We must make long term investments over 25, 50 or even 100 years. The greatest challenges require very long time horizons and cannot be solved by short term thinking. 
 
 We must engage directly with the people we serve. We can't empower people if we don't understand the needs and desires of their communities. 
 
 We must build technology to make change. Many institutions invest money in these challenges, but most progress comes from productivity gains through innovation. 
 
 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. 
 
 We must back the strongest and most independent leaders in each field. Partnering with experts is more effective for the mission than trying to lead efforts ourselves. 
 
 We must take risks today to learn lessons for tomorrow. We're early in our learning and many things we try won't work, but we'll listen and learn and keep improving. 
 
 • • • 
 
 Our experience with personalized learning, internet access, and community education and health has shaped our philosophy. 
 
 Our generation grew up in classrooms where we all learned the same things at the same pace regardless of our interests or needs. 
 
 Your generation will set goals for what you want to become -- like an engineer, health worker, writer or community leader. You'll have technology that understands how you learn best and where you need to focus. You'll advance quickly in subjects that interest you most, and get as much help as you need in your most challenging areas. You'll explore topics that aren't even offered in schools today. Your teachers will also have better tools and data to help you achieve your goals. 
 
 Even better, students around the world will be able to use personalized learning tools over the internet, even if they don't live near good schools. Of course it will take more than technology to give everyone a fair start in life, but personalized learning can be one scalable way to give all children a better education and more equal opportunity. 
 
 We're starting to build this technology now, and the results are already promising. Not only do students perform better on tests, but they gain the skills and confidence to learn anything they want. And this journey is just beginning. The technology and teaching will rapidly improve every year you're in school. 
 
 Your mother and I have both taught students and we've seen what it takes to make this work. It will take working with the strongest leaders in education to help schools around the world adopt personalized learning. It will take engaging with communities, which is why we're starting in our San Francisco Bay Area community. It will take building new technology and trying new ideas. And it will take making mistakes and learning many lessons before achieving these goals. 
 
 But once we understand the world we can create for your generation, we have a responsibility as a society to focus our investments on the future to make this reality. 
 
 Together, we can do this. And when we do, personalized learning will not only help students in good schools, it will help provide more equal opportunity to anyone with an internet connection. 
 
 • • • 
 
 Many of the greatest opportunities for your generation will come from giving everyone access to the internet. 
 
 People often think of the internet as just for entertainment or communication. But for the majority of people in the world, the internet can be a lifeline. 
 
 It provides education if you don't live near a good school. It provides health information on how to avoid diseases or raise healthy children if you don't live near a doctor. It provides financial services if you don't live near a bank. It provides access to jobs and opportunities if you don't live in a good economy. 
 
 The internet is so important that for every 10 people who gain internet access, about one person is lifted out of poverty and about one new job is created. 
 
 Yet still more than half of the world's population -- more than 4 billion people -- don't have access to the internet. 
 
 If our generation connects them, we can lift hundreds of millions of people out of poverty. We can also help hundreds of millions of children get an education and save millions of lives by helping people avoid disease. 
 
 This is another long term effort that can be advanced by technology and partnership. It will take inventing new technology to make the internet more affordable and bring access to unconnected areas. It will take partnering with governments, non-profits and companies. It will take engaging with communities to understand what they need. Good people will have different views on the best path forward, and we will try many efforts before we succeed. 
 
 But together we can succeed and create a more equal world. 
 
 • • • 
 
 Technology can't solve problems by itself. Building a better world starts with building strong and healthy communities. 
 
 Children have the best opportunities when they can learn. And they learn best when they're healthy. 
 
 Health starts early -- with loving family, good nutrition and a safe, stable environment. 
 
 Children who face traumatic experiences early in life often develop less healthy minds and bodies. Studies show physical changes in brain development leading to lower cognitive ability. 
 
 Your mother is a doctor and educator, and she has seen this firsthand. 
 
 If you have an unhealthy childhood, it's difficult to reach your full potential. 
 
 If you have to wonder whether you'll have food or rent, or worry about abuse or crime, then it's difficult to reach your full potential. 
 
 If you fear you'll go to prison rather than college because of the color of your skin, or that your family will be deported because of your legal status, or that you may be a victim of violence because of your religion, sexual orientation or gender identity, then it's difficult to reach your full potential. 
 
 We need institutions that understand these issues are all connected. That's the philosophy of the new type of school your mother is building. 
 
 By partnering with schools, health centers, parent groups and local governments, and by ensuring all children are well fed and cared for starting young, we can start to treat these inequities as connected. Only then can we collectively start to give everyone an equal opportunity. 
 
 It will take many years to fully develop this model. But it's another example of how advancing human potential and promoting equality are tightly linked. If we want either, we must first build inclusive and healthy communities. 
 
 • • • 
 
 For your generation to live in a better world, there is so much more our generation can do. 
 
 Today your mother and I are committing to spend our lives doing our small part to help solve these challenges. I will continue to serve as Facebook's CEO for many, many years to come, but these issues are too important to wait until you or we are older to begin this work. By starting at a young age, we hope to see compounding benefits throughout our lives. 
 
 As you begin the next generation of the Chan Zuckerberg family, we also begin the Chan Zuckerberg Initiative to join people across the world to advance human potential and promote equality for all children in the next generation. Our initial areas of focus will be personalized learning, curing disease, connecting people and building strong communities. 
 
 We will give 99% of our Facebook shares -- currently about $45 billion -- during our lives to advance this mission. We know this is a small contribution compared to all the resources and talents of those already working on these issues. But we want to do what we can, working alongside many others. 
 
 We'll share more details in the coming months once we settle into our new family rhythm and return from our maternity and paternity leaves. We understand you'll have many questions about why and how we're doing this. 
 
 As we become parents and enter this next chapter of our lives, we want to share our deep appreciation for everyone who makes this possible. 
 
 We can do this work only because we have a strong global community behind us. Building Facebook has created resources to improve the world for the next generation. Every member of the Facebook community is playing a part in this work. 
 
 We can make progress towards these opportunities only by standing on the shoulders of experts -- our mentors, partners and many incredible people whose contributions built these fields. 
 
 And we can only focus on serving this community and this mission because we are surrounded by loving family, supportive friends and amazing colleagues. We hope you will have such deep and inspiring relationships in your life too. 
 
 Max, we love you and feel a great responsibility to leave the world a better place for you and all children. We wish you a life filled with the same love, hope and joy you give us. We can't wait to see what you bring to this world. 
 
 Love, 
 
 Mom and Dad ||||| Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg and his wife Priscilla Chan celebrated the birth of their daughter Max with a promise to give 99 percent of their Facebook shares to a new charity. The couple announced the move in a letter addressed to their baby. (Reuters) 
 
 In 2010, Bill and Melinda Gates announced that they would commit 95 percent of their wealth to charitable work. Together with Warren Buffett, they also created the Giving Pledge, which asks the richest people in the world to devote half or more of their fortunes to philanthropy. 
 
 One of the earliest people to sign the pledge? Facebook’s Mark Zuckerberg and his wife Priscilla Chan. So it was not a complete surprise when Zuckerberg and Chan announced on Tuesday their plan to set aside 99 percent of their Facebook shares — “about $45 billion” — for charity. 
 
 The news is this: Taking a page from the Gates family, they will use the money to pump up their nonprofit, the Chan Zuckerberg Initiative. The private foundation is an especially American style of charitable giving. Nonprofit groups in the United States play a disproportionately large role in public life, in part because American tax laws make it attractive for the rich to donate. Much of their wealth could otherwise be captured by capital gains and estate taxes. 
 
 Private spending on social welfare in the United States is four times the average in advanced economies, according to the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development. The wealthiest countries, like France and Germany, are far more likely to use government resources to promote social good, and far less likely to use private resources. 
 
 This gap in national philosophies helps explain why the Giving Pledge has been popular with American billionaires, yet not quite as popular abroad. German shipping magnate Peter Krämer is one of the most vocal detractors of the pledge, and the American tradition of government-sponsored charity. Here's an excerpt from a 2010 interview with the German paper Der Spiegel, which asked him for his reaction to the plan. 
 
 Krämer: I find the US initiative highly problematic. You can write donations off in your taxes to a large degree in the USA. So the rich make a choice: Would I rather donate or pay taxes? The donors are taking the place of the state. That's unacceptable. SPIEGEL: But doesn't the money that is donated serve the common good? Krämer: It is all just a bad transfer of power from the state to billionaires. So it's not the state that determines what is good for the people, but rather the rich want to decide. That's a development that I find really bad. What legitimacy do these people have to decide where massive sums of money will flow? SPIEGEL: It is their money at the end of the day. Krämer: In this case, 40 superwealthy people want to decide what their money will be used for. That runs counter to the democratically legitimate state. In the end the billionaires are indulging in hobbies that might be in the common good, but are very personal. 
 
 Compared to the richest nations, the United States ranks near the bottom in terms of public spending on social support, according to the OECD. But that’s because a large chunk of the work is carried out by nonprofit organizations, or otherwise subsidized by the government through tax breaks. 
 
 On average in well-off countries, private social spending accounts for 2.6 percent of the gross domestic product. In the United States, private social spending is 11 percent. 
 
 Americans are some of the most charitable people in the world in part because there is a centuries-old tradition of private nonprofit groups helping people in lieu of the government. 
 
 Even Alexis de Tocqueville observed the trend in the 1830s, writing: “In every case, at the head of any new undertaking where in France you would find the government, or in England some great lord, in the United States you are sure to find an association." 
 
 There’s nothing necessarily wrong with the American system of tax-subsidized charity, of course. As de Tocqueville argued, promoting charity has the benefit of improving social cohesion. He wrote that when the government taxes and gives to the poor, people feel slighted. When people voluntarily give to the poor, they feel better about themselves. 
 
 The critique is that this system affords too much power to the rich, whose decisions may not align with what’s best for society. This is not to say that the government is a paragon of efficacy either, but it risks a lot to depend on a handful of mega-billionaires to be prudent, effective philanthropists. 
 
 The U.S. tax code "ends up subsidizing the gifts of high-income taxpayers the most, lower-income renters the least, and middle-class homeowners in the middle,” Duke University's Charles T. Clotfelter has written. "One of the most significant consequences of this tax treatment of charitable giving is to give to the wealthiest taxpayers a disproportionate role in allocating public resources and influencing the direction that institutions will take." 
 
 In his book "Capital in the Twenty-First Century," economist Thomas Piketty proposed a wealth tax as one way to address rising inequality — and transfer wealth from individuals to the state. In the United States, estate and gift taxes achieve some of that function by prodding people to donate their wealth instead of bequeathing it to their children. (Economists like Piketty tend to regard those measures as too modest.) 
 
 The debate is whether the money is better of in the hands of the government, or in service to private nonprofits. There's no denying the good intentions of the billionaire philanthropists, but it can be hard to know whether the decisions they make about how to use their money ultimately serve society in the best ways. 
 
 Gates has already given away more than $30 billion, and Buffett has parted with $22 billion of Berkshire Hathaway stock. In 2010, before the lion's share of those gifts, the Guardian described the impact of the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation on public health: 
 
 Precise effects of big charity projects can be hard to measure, especially over a relatively short period. But already two bodies that the foundation funds heavily, the Global Alliance for Vaccines and Immunisation (Gavi) and the Global Fund to Fight HIV/Aids, Tuberculosis and Malaria, have, according to the foundation, delivered vaccines to more than 250 million children in poor countries and prevented more than an estimated five million deaths. "The foundation has brought a new vigour," says Michael Edwards, a veteran charity commentator and usually a critic of billionaire philanthropists. "The charity sector can almost disempower itself; be too gloomy about things . . . Gates offers more of a positive story. He is a role model for other philanthropists, and he is the biggest." 
 
 What genre of philanthropy will Chan and Zuckerberg invest in? Possibly anything. Their letter Tuesday set two missions, both ambitiously vague: “advancing human potential” and “promoting equality." They mention curing diseases, improving clean energy, promoting entrepreneurship, fighting poverty and hunger, empowering women and minorities, and so on. 
 
 The pair do not have a sterling track record when it comes to effective charity. One of their previous efforts, a high-profile $100 million donation to fix the schools in Newark, N.J., has been widely criticized as a failure. 
 
 Chan and Zuckerberg write in their announcement that they have learned from their past experiences with philanthropy. For now, they will start with their own community in San Francisco, focusing on education, health and “connecting people.” ||||| Facebook 
 
 To mark the birth of their baby daughter Max, Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg and his wife, Dr. Priscilla Chan, announced Tuesday that they will give away 99 percent of their Facebook stock to philanthropic efforts over their lifetimes. At the moment, said stock is worth $45 billion. 
 
 
 
 Jordan Weissmann Jordan Weissmann is Slate’s senior business and economics correspondent. 
 
 This is admirable. Some of us might be a tad wary of megasized charitable gestures from billionaires because they a) tend to come at public expense via tax deductions; and b) often seem geared more toward satisfying the donor's ego that doing demonstrable good in the world. But I think that as a rule, we would all prefer that our modern overlords give away their riches rather than pass them on to their children. 
 
 Advertisement 
 
 
 
 But the move is a tiny bit worrisome, because Mark Zuckerberg's record with philanthropy is somewhat checkered—and has arguably fueled some political havoc in one major American city. So, let's discuss: Should we be optimistic here about how that $45 billion is about to be used? 
 
 To start, let's talk about what, precisely, the actual news is today. We already knew that Zuckerberg and Chan planned to give away most of their wealth. How? Because they signed onto the Warren Buffett's and Bill and Melinda Gates' "giving pledge," in which America's richest promise to donate most of their money to philanthropy. So the first story here is that Zuckerberg and Chan are, like Buffett, going to give away substantially all of their fortune, rather than just the majority of it. (Gates is aiming for a mere 95 percent, for some reason.) The second big story is how they're planning to distribute that money. Rather than, say, follow Buffett's footsteps and dole out their resources to other people's foundations, the couple is starting the Chan and Zuckerberg Initiative, an organization that will initially focus its efforts on “personalized learning, curing disease, connecting people and building strong communities.”1 The upshot is that the couple see themselves as philanthropists in the Gates/Mike Bloomberg mold, using their money to fund very specific causes close to their hearts. 
 
 Which is why it's worth recalling Zuckeberg's past charitable exploits. His first major philanthropic gesture, a $100 million gift in 2010 to help the city of Newark reform its public school system, has been described as something of a fiasco. As Dale Russakoff memorably reported in the New Yorker, Zuckerberg knew little to nothing about urban education policy before he met Newark Mayor Cory Booker at the Sun Valley Conference, an annual gathering for power brokers in tech, media, and finance. For that matter, he'd never been to Newark. But Booker impressed him and eventually talked the young billionaire into the nine-figure gift. In Silicon Valley, it's common for venture capitalists to invest in people, not business plans. And ultimately, that seemed to be Zuckerberg's approach. When he appeared on Oprah with Booker and New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie, he explained, “Newark is really just because I believe in these guys.” 
 
 What followed was a fairly messy political drama, as Booker and Christie attempted to push a reform plan that involved closing low-performing public schools and expanding charter schools while transitioning teachers to a pay-for-performance system. Regardless of its merits, the program brought on an angry public backlash that eventually helped elect one of the effort's loudest opponents, Ras Baraka, as mayor once Booker left for the U.S. Senate. All the while, the city spent tens of millions of dollars on expensive education consultants, leading Vivian Cox Fraser, the president of the Urban League of Essex County, to memorably quip, “Everybody’s getting paid, but Raheem still can’t read.” Five years later, the argument about how effective Newark's school reforms have been is still simmering. For his part Zuckerberg argued in a Facebook post this month that the gift was a success, noting that graduation rates were up and that teachers had moved on to a new contract that gave bonuses based on student results, paid for partly through his donation. 
 
 Stepping back from the question of whether Newark schools are better off today than they were half a decade ago, though, the entire story should make it pretty clear that blindly plopping $100 million onto an unfamiliar city to tinker with its public institutions because you generally trust the public officials in charge is probably not a recipe for repeated or sustainable philanthropic success. And insofar as Zuckerberg thinks that's a good way to spread his wealth, I'd be concerned. 
 
 That said, I'm feeling guardedly optimistic, because it seems like Zuckerberg and Chan might have learned a few lessons from their adventures in New Jersey. Last year, they made a similarly huge $120 million dollar donation to improve Bay Area schools but targeted the first installments at incremental changes like improved classroom technology and better teacher training. Meanwhile, his most high-profile public health move to date has been a $25 million donation to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention Foundation to fight Ebola, which seems like a fairly sober and smart way to spend your philanthropic dollars. 
 
 Judging by their announcement today, it seems as if Zuckerberg and Chan are moving further away from the helicopter-drop approach to charity. In their joint letter (addressed, a little awkwardly, to their daughter) they talk about spreading Internet access, helping develop better personalized education technology, and building a “new type of school” better connected to public health centers and government services. (It's a bit vague, but sounds an awful lot to me like Harlem Children's Zone.) And, of course, they want to funnel money into medical research. Again, these seem like the sorts of endeavors that aren't going to cause a lot collateral damage and may well do some actual good. 
 

– The announcement by Mark Zuckerberg and wife Priscilla Chan Zuckerberg that they'll donate 99% of their Facebook shares—$45 billion at today's value—to a foundation they created with the birth of their daughter isn't being met with universal praise. Some examples: 'Big waste': "It sounds angelic, but it will probably end up being, mostly, a big waste," writes Sam Biddle at Gawker. For one thing, the money is going to the Zuckerbergs' own foundation instead of, say, Oxfam, and the broad goals of "advancing human potential and promoting equality" are mushy. "Does anyone really want to experience '100 times more than we do today,' whatever that entails?" asks Biddle. "Do you want to be 'connected' to literally every 'idea' and 'person' in the world? This is a technocrat’s dream and an actual normal human being’s nightmare." It's emblematic of the code-fixes-all philosophy of Silicon Valley, "and Zuckerberg’s massive giveaway will clearly be predicated on that conceit." Here's the full piece, whose headline refers to Zuckerberg's "blinkered worldview." 'Imperial roots': This kind of giving perpetuates inequality and smacks of imperialism, writes Devon Maloney at the Guardian. The "rich are still effectively buying the future they’d like to see, no matter how selfless their intentions may be," she writes. "International philanthropy and the western world’s desire to eradicate poverty and disease can’t ever truly rid themselves of their imperialist roots." Maloney also cites the "white savior industrial complex" in the full piece. More on that: A writer at Forbes pushes back hard against the Guardian piece, calling it a "misunderstanding of economics," while the Washington Post recalls a German billionaire's argument that having the rich, and not the state, decide what people need is a "really bad" idea. Not a charity: It's not exactly a slam, but Alex Kantrowitz points out at BuzzFeed that the Chan Zuckerberg Initiative is structured as an LLC, not a charitable trust, as much coverage is suggesting. Meaning that not all of the money will go to charity; some will go into profit-generating private investment. 'Guardedly optimistic': Not all the reaction is skeptical, of course. At Slate, Jordan Weissmann calls the move "admirable," adding that "I think that as a rule, we would all prefer that our modern overlords give away their riches rather than pass them on to their children." Plus, he thinks the Zuckerbergs have learned lessons from previous charitable misfires, and so he is "guardedly optimistic," despite the still-vague goals. "These seem like the sorts of endeavors that aren't going to cause a lot collateral damage, and may well do some actual good." The full piece. Read the Zuckerbergs' announcement, in the form of a letter to their daughter.