Facebook chief executive officer Mark Zuckerberg and his wife, Priscilla, with their daughter, Maxima.Reuters
Oh, Mark. Oh, Priscilla. It's time for us to have a talk about this not-so-little bundle of joy you've dropped in our laps.
I'm referring, of course, to the huge and unexpected commitment that you, as the first family of Facebook, just made to your new philanthropic foundation, the eponymous Chan Zuckerberg Initiative LLC. In an open letter to your week-old daughter – the enchantingly named Maxima – you explain how you plan to eventually give away 99 per cent of your Facebook shares to the new organization.
At current share prices, that would work out to something like a $45-billion (U.S.) donation. The scale of the gift is dazzling, so let me start by applauding your generosity. Then let me explain why I find the mechanism for it so disturbing.
For starters, there's your new charity's stated mandate, which rivals Google's "Don't be evil" mantra for blissed-out Silicon Valley vacuity. According to your letter, the two guiding principles of your organization will be to advance human potential and promote equality.
Now I don't want to sound ungrateful – my own human potential could use a bit of work, goodness knows – but I'm suspicious of any initiative that passes off yoga-class slogans as deep philosophy. I mean, seriously: Does anybody out there actually trumpet their desire to do the opposite – to retard human potential and promote inequality? Your two guiding principles are so non-specific they could fit any organization from the Girl Guides to the Justice League of America.
In fact, the principles sound an awful lot like a placeholder for "we intend to do whatever we darn well please." Early priorities, you say, will include "personalized learning, curing disease, connecting people and building strong communities."
Silly me: I thought those tasks were mostly what we elect governments to do. Education, health care and community development are why we pay taxes, after all.
But that brings up another sore point. Your new endeavour will allow you to avoid paying taxes on nearly all of your Facebook fortune. Instead of a big chunk of money going to government coffers at some point, it will stay within the Chan Zuckerberg Initiative, where you'll be the dominant voices in determining how it's dispensed. With all due respect, that's not a structure that's about encouraging equality. It's about preserving your own privilege. Rather than paying taxes like a middle-class wage earner, and letting experts allocate funds, you'll get to set up your own authority that can allocate funds to projects as you see fit.
It's not clear this is a good thing. Every successful business executive likes to think that he or she can judge potential projects far better than any government bureaucrat or elected official. But doing good is surprisingly difficult.
A century ago, steelmaker Andrew Carnegie was able to bring a new light to many communities simply by endowing thousands of local libraries. But as economies have grown and public spending has swelled across the developed world, it's become more difficult for charitable foundations to find an obvious niche. The Carnegie Corp. of New York, which Mr. Carnegie set up to continue his charitable work, is now best known for helping bankroll development of the Sesame Street television show.
Some of the difficulties inherent in contemporary altruism were demonstrated by your own experiences in the Newark public school system, Mr. Zuckerberg. You donated $100-million back in 2010 to improve the quality of schools in the New Jersey city. So far, results have been scant.
That may speak to an inconvenient truth: With many social issues, unlike software, there's no brilliant hack that can result in a sudden leap in improvement. Devising a social-media platform is actually pretty straightforward, if not easy. Fixing a broken school system presents another, much higher level of difficulty because it means working with others whose interests may not overlap with your own.
One key in such cases is to demonstrate humility as well as a long-term commitment to making things better. Your generosity deserves praise, but doing good also involves carrying through on dreary, unspectacular obligations such as paying taxes and giving a voice to opposing points of view. Something to think about next time Maxima takes a nap.
The world's most generous people
Mark Zuckerberg and his wife, Priscilla Chan, said Tuesday that over the course of their lives they would give away 99 per cent of their Facebook shares, now valued at $45-billion.
1. Bill Gates
Co-founder of Microsoft
Lifetime donations: $27-billion
Net worth: $84.2-billion
Generosity Index*: 32%
2. Warren Buffett
Chairman and CEO of Berkshire Hathaway
Lifetime donations: $21.5-billion
Net worth: $61-billion
Generosity Index: 35%
3. George Soros
Retired founder of Soros Fund Management
Lifetime donations: $8-billion
Net worth: $24.4 billion
Generosity Index: 33%
4. Azim Premji
Chairman of Indian consulting and IT company Wipro
Lifetime donations: $8-billion
Net worth: $15.9-billion
Generosity Index: 50%
5. Charles Francis Feeney
Retail magnate
Lifetime donations: $6.3-billion
Net worth: $1.5-million
Generosity Index: 420,000%
6. Sulaiman bin Abdul
Aziz Al Rajhi
Co-founder of Al Rajhi Bank
Lifetime donations: $5.7-billion
Net worth: $590-million
Generosity Index: 966%
7. Gordon Moore
Co-founder of Intel
Lifetime donations: $5-billion
Net worth: $6.5-billion
Generosity Index: 77%
8. Carlos Slim Helú
Chairman of Grupo Carso
Lifetime donations: $4-billion
Net worth: $27.3 billion
Generosity Index: 15%
9. Eli Broad
Former CEO of SunAmerica
Lifetime donations: $3.3-billion
Net worth: $7.3-billion
Generosity Index: 45%
10. George Kaiser
Chairman of BOK Financial Corp.
Lifetime donations: $3.3-billion
Net worth: $9.3-billion
Generosity Index: 35%
13. Mark Zuckerberg*
Founder and CEO of Facebook
Lifetime donations: $1.6-billion
Net worth: $40.7-billion
Generosity Index: 4%
* Generosity Index: The ratio of lifetime donations to current net worth (dollar figures are U.S.).
Source: Business Insider
Ian McGugan