| > what does another billion buy you, besides bragging rights? The only real way to look at wealth is through the lens of power and influence. In day-to-day life, is $250 million that much different than $1 billion? Probably not. But when it comes to power and influence, $1 billion (or more) is an incredibly better place to be. Once you get into this kind of wealth, you can attack global problems. The Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation is probably the crown jewel, publicly, of the kind of power this sort of multi-billion USD wealth can accomplish. We will see in the next few decades what the Chan-Zuckerberg Initiative can do for education, or what the Bezos Day One Fund can do for homelessness and poverty. Of course having huge endowments doesn't necessarily mean you will be successful in your mission, and plenty of these sorts of foundations are just set up to preserve wealth and establish political bastions of influence. Imagine also the effect that comments from other prominent billionaires have on politics in general, or the economy. Warren Buffet can swing intraday trading to the tune of billions of dollars just by commenting on individual stocks or sectors. Mere millionaires don't have this kind of influence. So sure... you make anywhere north of, what, $100 million? and you can retire comfortably. Maybe a couple hundred million more and you can have a trust that might stay solvent for a couple generations. But a billion dollars? Two billion dollars? You can now build your own rocket and send yourself to space, build towers and monuments, influence entire nations... With a billion dollars you have exclusive access to the only worldly things that are so luxurious that they cannot even be expressed in monetary value. The differences are staggering at that scale. |
Note that while I don't doubt that Zuckerberg will give away a big part of his wealth, Chan-Zuckerberg Initiative is an LLC and not a 501(c)(3) like a 'proper' foundation should be.
Another thing to note is that it has been investing in startups, and not really giving away money, although the startups themselves seem to be for good purposes. So it might be a way for that money to make more, while putting it in noble causes?
Or it just was made that way because he would still retain control over the shares even though he 'gave' it to the initiative.