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Recently I read about the divorce of Bill Gates and how the Melinda & Bill Gates foundation will continue with business as usual despite Melinda´s spin-off (off the marriage). This foundation manages 49 billion in assets, mostly from donations from the uber-rich.

While Microsoft does not have a particular fame for mistreating employees, most of the large companies, to some extent, are benefiting from market monopolies, questionable tax exemptions and in some cases questionable Human Resources practices. Does it make sense to you to first "take" from society by paying little tax and then doing philanthropy to "give back"? Sound to me quite cynic.

Just add one thought - such funds are NEVER aimed at "buying and feeding", for example, the starving residents of a certain country. THIS IS SILLY. Such funds are aimed at systemic changes - for example, bring agricultural technologies, train those who wish, perhaps even become "with investors of a new agricultural", and give not a fish, but a fishing rod, as the Bible said :)
This is one of the options for the fund's work. As a rule, such funds are invested in solving fundamental problems - disease, lack of water, insufficient production, etc. People like Bill Gates have a different level of thinking ..

There are many studies published on charities. Some claim less than 5% of capital collected by individual charities are devoted towards legitimate charitable causes, with the rest being spent on luxury homes, automobiles, jewelry, expensive clothes, lavish parties and other indulgences. Charities have also been used as shell corporations to fund various political and social movements.

Corporations and charities are 100% identical in many respects. In terms of them being separate legal entities which can be used to defer blame and conceal illicit practices.

The traditional definition of charity may be an organization devoted towards helping the poor. In the modern day there are girls on onlyfans who found a charity for the sole purpose of donating less than 5% of funds collected to the poor. With the rest of the funds collected ending up in their back pocket.

It’s hard to tell really. On one hand, yes, there is something cynical in it, why pretend to be generous when you simply make huge money and don’t even bother with taxes? On the other hand, some companies don’t do even that, no kind of charity and still avoid taxes. So, on the contrary, these actions don’t seem to be that bad.

In addition, Microsoft creates numerous working spaces and opportunities for people, helps with career development (I should hope so), improving the life quality of many people. Taxes just go to the government and they know that, while foundations are aimed to help real people in need. So I personally don’t blame them.

What is called charity today is nothing more than a pathetic attempt to heal the conscience of ultra-rich individuals or families who have so much wealth that it is hard for the average person to imagine. @Hydrogen gave a good description of what is happening behind the scenes of all these charitable funds and organizations where money is spent on the luxury of those who should help others and then only crumbs reach those in need.

If Bill Gates and his ex-wife want to help the world, let them do something in their backyard first - it takes about $25 billion to feed hungry people in the US - but I doubt they care about that, as well as their government investing $700 + billions only in the military budget, while millions are starving.

I don't get how philanthropy is a paradox for the uber rich or the elite, I mean they love donating especially when their interests align with their donations like getting favors, tax write offs and influence. What they're scared of is the taxation and giving enough power to the working class becausse if they do so, the working class will be able to choose the jobs that they want because they know that the opportunity and reward is the same for any other companies.

How is this cynic?
They took what from society? Society paid for whatever service they wanted, be it windows licenses, be it toys from amazon, or cars from tesla.
There is no "take", the take is only when some feel the need to take in taxes from others and redistribute to the ones that have more voting power.
I always love the contradiction, especially on this forum, richer people should be taxed more while fees in bitcoin don't care about the amount but the size. The whole bitcoin thing is about being your own bank and keeping your money safe and without anyone knowing how much you have yet day after day after everyone is preoccupied with how much money others have.  :)


It takes even less. Actually zero!

Drop all the shitty taxes you have imposed because of the eco-movement, drop all stupid regulation about having to chant 12 sutras before you send a pig to the slaughterhouse and you could lower food prices and utilities easily. Rather than going about some rich money how about we stop wasting money on crap? California spent 5 billion on helping people to buy electric cars, help to build solar farms, taxing the shit out of other producers, and here we go, the most expensive energy in the US with rolling black-outs every month and people that can pay even that. Let's put limits on how much people can shower while other countries desalinate water 3 times cheaper and managed to turn a desert into agricultural land.


We've been sending food to Africa for ages, has this cured famine? No. Will the 25 billion spent on foods stamps cure anything? No, they will just raise prices as there is not enough cheap food, and when the money is going there is more expensive food and more people that can't afford it.

Following the link you've posted:

Zimbabwe 2.0, the war on the Kulaks.

Guess you trying to say they are not sacrificing much considering the privileges from government in form of monopolies, tax cut etc
 Poor people who earn their living without such privileges and still give more than 10% of their income to the needy actually sacrifice more than the privileged rich people who give less than 10%.   So, I believe the real personal sacrifice is more important. I guess we should pay more attention to that

Nobody can understand what's the actual motivation behind such philanthropic action. Maybe they really care and want to "make world a better place," but one sure effect is for a good image and less hate from the society (even though technically they own nothing to the society). Although they are rich, they still need other people for protection and stuff. They can be rich because stable society, so giving a little portion of their wealth is a wonderful investment for such stability.

Not only for the rich, I have found philanthropic institutions several times as a place to just carry out their duties, but in which there is a practice of individual profit.  In my country, philanthropic institutions are used as a place to distribute CSR but each company creates its own philanthropic institution so that their CSR is still managed by them.  It's like a manipulation business in the name of charity work for the poor.

Sure.  I think philanthropic charities can make much better use of their money than the government can if it were paid in taxes.  And I don't think people like Gates, Bezos, or all the other (mostly) men who've founded gigantic companies from nothing have "taken" more than is fair from society in general.  It's goddamn tough to grow a business the size of Amazon or Microsoft without trying to save money, whether it's through low wages, lower taxes, or what have you.

I don't begrudge any of these people their wealth, and I sure as hell won't criticize their philanthropic endeavors.  At least they're doing something noble with their riches instead of just leaving it to their children, who'd no doubt squander it.

Bill and Melinda Gates foundation have donated more than $50 billion in charity for all the noble causes and it is good and supportive move on their part.The most of major companies have social causes include in the management working and business strategies also because of some reasons like it improves the image of company and tax rebates are given by the government.But there is nothing wrong in this case because the government funds flow in different directions for charity and donations and the problem is with corruption at root levels and people don't get full aid and utilities of funds allocated but if some philanthropist is dedicated to such cause there are no chances of any corruption.They have setup  Giving Pledge (https://givingpledge.org/) organization for charity cause along with warren Buffett which now has 223 pledgers donating for different noble causes coming from 27 countries and donating to all the poor people and lending them a helping hand.

They are businessman and setup MNC's from scratch and build their empire and network over all those years and we are utilising their services and we can't say they are exploiting any natural resources for personal cause but they are working towards betterment of the company and caters to the need of employees and their families as whole and we pay for what we use as said by stompix so there is nothing wrong with it.

Bill gates donations (https://www.google.com/amp/s/amp.usatoday.com/amp/3169864001)

Bill gates 12 major donations (https://www.google.com/amp/s/www.spearswms.com/the-12-biggest-bill-gates-donations/amp/)

I found them completely reliable and if you are having your name on fortune 500 or Forbes rich list then giving it out to charity and betterment of humanity requires some kind hearted feeling and gut feelings for help because there are many who have made enough but still prefer to Store them for coming generations.You can't evade poverty or end up problems of mankind but can be reason or contribute to reduce them at some levels.

It's rare to find a philanthropic institution that's truly altruist, I haven't seen any selfless one so I don't really buy these people, most of the time, these people just wants their ego stroked. And I doubt that a rich man would help a poor man without any condition.

A fundamental attribute of a socialist ideology is that in a capitalistic society, voluntary commerce does not exist, and that every business is operated on slave wagers by taking advantage of the employees. Bill Gates didn't take anything from anyone, he created something valuable and engaged in voluntary commerce with consumers.

Everyone "under" him, aka the employees of Microsoft, are paid a salary and can leave if they wanted to. In fact, if they feel like they're being stolen from, they can go and create their own business! That's the beauty of capitalism.

Most of the facts you state are simply not true. Some of them are just pure propaganda (chanting sutras makes food more expensive or the black outs are somehow related clean power).

I do not know where you live, but I really hope for the day in which excreting NOx, CO, CO2 right in the same place where I breath is simply forbidden. It has already shortened my life by many years, but I hope that it stops before it does the same to the young.

Let me put it in the clearest way possible: You do not have "the natural right" to be richer than others, that is a privilege that is being granted to you by a state that protects you. You do have to pay more because you do have more privileges than others, and, sorry to inform you, but all modern states of a certain size have taxes because they have costs. You want to have a "movement" to change that, go for it, it is called politics and yes, sorry, it is based on the number of people that you can convince of your views, not on how much money they own (at least in theory), because a country is owned by them in equal parts, not only by the richest (again, in theory).

It is very clear that large companies take a lot from society, the problem is that it is taken for granted: right to property is not given by nature, safety is not given by nature, having an army to defend your country and police to defend your privileges does not happen naturally either. Infrastructure, legal systems, patent protection,... none of that exists without taxes. So yes, if you have built a large company and are not paying the right taxes or are using the wrong labour practices you are "taking".

I am not worried about how much others have. I am very interested in understanding if I am going to be paying to support their privileges while they do not contribute as they should to the common expenses.
Lastly, charity is needed only when a society does not have the right processes to make it unnecessary.

The idea that companies are not paying enough taxes comes from twitter/reddit communists who think that companies should be taxed by 99% of their revenue so that the government could provide them with free healthcare and education.

In reality companies are paying exactly as much taxes as they are required by law, tax evasion is pretty rare among the largest companies, they would lose too much if they would get caught, and committing it on a large scale is much harder.

Many countries have tried to implement bigger and bigger taxes, the result is always the same - business flees the country, the country gets even less tax revenue, economy starts to struggle.

Excluding tax avoidance, following religious beliefs, gaining prestige and happiness, what is the purpose of real money for charity? To answer this question, we still have to return to the nature of wealth. The essence of wealth is human time, and the pursuit of wealth is to control more people's time. How can we buy more people's time? The premise is that more people's time is available for sale.

In other words, when physical capital corresponds to human time, the more human time each physical capital can correspond to, the higher the value of physical capital. When the super-rich retain their wealth, they are not thinking about maximizing the material but maximizing the human time that the material they hold can be exchanged for.

Aside from propaganda and talking about free healthcare as something that should be be avoided (I really never got why a modern country has to let people die when there is a cure available)...

I get your point, they are paying as much as the law tells them to, and laws are made so that it is nearly zero or that there are 1000 loopholes to avoid, only for them. That is held by strong lobbying around the legislative bodies.  However, even under that premise, there still people, mid-large fortunes that were in the Panama Papers, and all that was off-shore and illegal. In any case, even if a government were interested in finding out, it would probably be nearly impossible to audit one of the top 20 companies in the world and get something conclusive.

I was thinking that if Microsoft had to pay more taxes, the revenue would stay with the governments that receive those taxes.
Taxes can solve many problems such as infrastructure, improvements in technology that in turn create jobs and reduce unemployment and therefore reduce poverty rates.
On the other hand, philanthropy only benefits sectors at some specific points, it would be necessary to do a study and see the disadvantage.
I would incline that wealth should be better distributed to alleviate the problems of society and the planet.

Oh really? (https://edepot.wur.nl/507108)
Scroll down to Cognitive enrichment

Let's me ask you this, do you have a farm or anything that is related to food production in the EU?
Do you know even half of the stupid regulations we have to comply with nowadays? Call me when you and your family have done this for at least 30 years and then tell me it's an exaggeration, go through all those regulations when you're complaining why food prices soar then remember where 75% of the fucking costs come from.

Let me give you an example
By law we have to put straws or sawdust in every pigpen, no problem, that's what we have done for years.
But, new laws, now farms are getting tax reductions if they transform both the sawdust and straws into pellets and they are penalized if they don't. So in order for us to buy those now, we have to pay extra to compensate for both the credit costs and the subsidies. But do you think it stops here? No, the madness goes on. Now when we're disposing of the waste the straws are also counted in because they're saying straws emit gases when they decompose, so we're charged not only for the manure but for the quantity of straw we use in the process, while somebody who outright burns them it's not. How do you like this?

But no, still not stop here, in order to qualify and pass inspections every time we have to provide pigs under 1 year with straw or mushroom compost or peat or ropes in order to keep pigs welfare high, no problem, let's ignore that the ropes we use for that have been to certified 100% to be natural, but all this compost when it needs to be replaced goes to counting as waste, and again we're getting charged for it, we need to keep wast under limits even though you're forcing us to make waste.

Back to the power problem:
Let's see what countries have spent more on green energy in the EU per capita..
Germany and Denmark
https://ec.europa.eu/eurostat/statistics-explained/index.php?title=Electricity_price_statistics
Germany 30 cents per kWh, Denmark and the windmills 28.
Poland, not giving a f* word, 15 cents per kWh.

But let's look at the other pioneer in renewables, the one state that wants to shut down even its last nuclear reactor and go full green while facing blackouts every damn year.

https://talkimg.com/images/2023/06/12/AbYOP.png

So, you're free to try and debunk every single one of those numbers and graphs, but do it with data, not just pointing fingers.
Btw, how are electricity prices in Spain nowadays? I'm sure you're loving paying those carbon credits, right?


So we should cut all trees also because you know what happens when trees and leaves die? If you don't, then search for the carbon cycle in nature, you might find out some amazing facts there.


Let me put it in the clearest way possible. My money, my decision. My keys, my bitcoins.
Can't wait when all the no coiners will come with a new law that all the privileged who have bought coins at 100-1000$ must now relinquish ownership over them. I'm sure you're going to applaud this initiative, no? It's against the "privileged"!

To be honest, while the Gates foundation may do incredible work when it comes to things like vaccinations in Africa (which must be commended) it definitely feels like they are vastly under-utilizing the huge amounts of wealth that are available. I think they are hoarding far too much cash trying to hold out for some sort of miracle cure from one of their small scale research branches. They should be putting lots of money into things that help people more quickly - like renewable energy, more effective transportation links or creating well managed sovereign wealth funds that cannot be abused by politicians. At present it just looks like a vanity project for Bill to call home (and probably hit on the interns)

I have never heard a farmer or agriculturist saying "I had great crops this year". Most of the time I hear complaints similar to the ones you are making, although I can admit that yours are much more elaborate and I would not be able to assert how accurate they may be and what are the reasons for those regulations.

Of course, you keys, your money, your decisions... no problem for that, it is just that it is also my country, my vote, my decision, my laws... so you are free to create your own place if you dislike the arrangements or try to change these in your favour. As said, yes, you (or the top 10% of wealth owners, I do not know if you are included) are privileged in comparison with others and that has a cost.

I am personally in favour of free healthcare and free education up to secondary. That´s what makes a country great, not having charities.



So? Yes, that is right, green energy is more expensive IF you consider only the cost of production and not what happens afterwards. Carbon credits are putting a price on a negative externality (climate change) so Spain and any other country that is not keen on nuclear power have to pay the price for it.

The difference with nuclear energy is that the external negativity are the residues, which basically are each country´s own problem (unless you decide to dump them in the ocean). So that is fine, go for it, just make sure that your grand-grand-grand-grand children understand why are you leaving them with a bunch of shit they cannot get rid of. Oh, BTW, Fukushima and Chernobyl were producing very cheap energy... right?

Electricity prices in Spain are high precisely because draconian legislation on renewables. It is the perfect country for solar and wind, particularly for microgeneration, yet you have the most unbelievable laws and barriers around it. That is not due to the rich or the poor or the investment, that is simply due to the lobbying of the major energy producers. (e.g. ex-president Felipe Gonzalez being and advisor of Naturgy or Rajoy setting a "tax on the sun" as they called it a while ago.) that has left the country with an unbalanced energy mix.


Anyway, a decent post analysing the energy sector is beyond what I intend to do... ever. Politics are so strong on this that it is impossible to really have a sensible chat about it.



What I just do not get is why would you lobby to have the lowest taxes (nearly zero) and then do privately what those taxes should actually be doing, such as caring for the needy and call that philanthropy.

Uber rich people usually prefer to work for the public good our relationship with you can start with just one tap, but it deepens with cities. Their goal is to improve the quality of life by keeping it stable and to serve as a role model for others to build smarter, more efficient cities in the future they are carrying out their activities in harmony with the harmony of the people in every work. Easy to plan through Uber enables the rich to reward every lower class of people.

Well, that wouldn’t seem right to most people, because others have to pay that tax, so why are they being exempted from paying it? They should even be the ones to pay more than others.

But anyways, equality is very important, so everyone should pay the same level of tax with others, there shouldn’t be people being treated specially and others being forced to do that, it’s wrong. Then if they decide to do philanthropy, it’s in their pockets, they can decide to do it or they can go ahead and leave it. Anyways, that’s how we have seen it and this is not the first time that people are talking about this and it still hasn’t been fixed.

Bill Gates was an aggressive businessman in his young days and he battled anyone who he saw as a competitor and destroyed their business and mocked them. The most famous one was his fight against Netscape which is well documented and to drive them out of business he started giving away free browser with the OS.

When he started with his foundation i really thought that Bill Gates was doing that to change his image from an ruthless businessman to a different one and i still stand by my view  ;D, having said that i am not sure about the companies tax filings and whether they are getting any undue tax exemption.

It is a very tricky situation. The Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation did a lot of good work in the developing world, unfortunately at the expense of the American taxpayer. Since the shares were transferred to the Foundation, they will never be taxed. According to estimates, this has cost a loss of $20 billion to $30 billion to the American treasury. You can say that the African and Asian nations need the aid, but then there are many in the US also who deserves the aid. Microsoft made most of its profits in the US, and that's why I think that what they did was not fair to the Americans.

I've heard it a hundred of times, but there is a problem.
When you have record production, so do others. Then demand and offer kicks in, with huge crops and costly storage everyone wants to get a better price before the others hit the market, so the prices go down. And then there is simple math, you harvest 3 tons that sell at 1$/kilo, 2 tons that sell at 1.5/kilo or it was a drought and you harvest 1 tonn but you sell it at 3$ per kilo.

You said you've never seen happy farmers, but you know how many have gone out of business? From the Netherlands to Hungary I can show you the remains of hundreds of farms that are abandoned, after being seized for unpaid debts they just sat there, rotting away, not worth being sold even for free. If agriculture would be that profitable and risk-free, don't you think everyone would be doing it?


So being your own back, keeping your bitcoins safe from being seized as it happened with fiat in Cyprus is just a myth, right?
Tomorrow you and your friends, outnumbering us 47881 to 47880 can decide that our keys but your money!


How was that....my decisions, my laws...my karma?  ;D
Besides, how do you fit those draconian laws with this?


Btw, serious advice, save some money for the winter bills, trust me! I've seen there times what a dunkelflaute can do, prepare a few extra satoshis to pay for your green energy.  ;D

I would definitely say this is what *business manipulation of the rich class sounds like* people have power and tend to abuse it, I would say since at the end they should be the ones paying taxes at a reasonable price for sure. I do think that what they are doing is reasonable for sure, at least they are bothering to do it. Most of them don't even understand the impact of the heir actions and ends up doing nothing.
But there is also another low point that the governmental policies are a bit loose when I comes to stuff like that, I think there should be better governmental policies and at the same time it's the issue of morals and integrity which is essentially personal.

Yep, that is exactly what I am saying, although I would not say "me and my friends", I would say that any qualified majority that may or may not include me and people and I friend with.

However there is a catch on this: a Democracy has to respect individual rights and, as of today, private property is one of them. Unless there is a national emergency you cannot size people´s assets, so you are reasonably safe against confiscation, but you do live in a country and countries do have laws (most anyway) and taxes. If those are made in some short of democratic way you will get taxed according to your income and that is the way it should be. That is how it works since most Europe got rid of nobility privileges and USA decided to spin-off the UK.

RE agriculture: Farming and agriculture in most Europe is just not competitive and only lives thanks to the PAC aid. Someone like you who seem to dislike any tax and like "self sovereignty" above all should go into a different business.

At the end of the day, they can't bring all their riches under their grave. Their situation is done many times over in other countries or other personalities. People will remember what you've done to humanity, how you do it sometimes doesn't matter. As long as they can change someone's life, that's the important thing for me. And let's admit that some big corporations are really hiding their wealth thru their charitable foundations, and that I believe, won't be changing anytime soon.

I quite enjoyed the debate between stompix and paxmao. In general I tend to agree more with stompix but just to point out one thing:


The population of Africa was about 100,000 in 1900. Today is 1.4 billion people and is projected to be 4.3 billion by 2100. That has not happened because people in Africa are starving. Without denying that there is still hunger in some parts of Africa, the continent has seen a dramatic reduction in hunger over the last 100 years, as has the world in general.

Regarding the OP's point, I don't see such a paradox. Entrepreneurs today are not like the slaveholders of earlier times. If Microsoft has a quasi-monopoly position it is because it has earned it, not because some political power has forbidden anyone to compete with it. You say that Microsoft does not have a bad reputation for treating its employees badly, I can tell you another one that has a pretty good reputation for treating them well: Google. That's why I was coming to say that I don't buy the story that businessmen are all exploiters who would dream of being the slavers who beat the slave with the whip if they saw that he didn't perform. Many companies have realized that the best way for their employees to be productive and perform is to treat them well. There are also companies and employers that are scum, of course, but it is far from the general rule.

Then I have already seen that the debate has drifted to left (more taxes, more regulations) or right (less taxes, less regulations). In general, I don't trust politicians. None of them. So I prefer less taxes and less regulations because then my progress depends more on me and less on what the politician does.

Then, I don't want to get long, I have seen some clichés:


Here I have to remember that it is never free. Calling it "free" is inaccurate to say the least.

And I say this despite the fact that I am very much in favor of the state providing public health and education, and also despite the fact that I believe that the best way for an economy to function is with reduced state intervention. 

Imagine being a fake philanthropist like Bill Gates while in the same time openly talking about population reduction, trying to block the sun, experimenting and sponsoring all research in this field.
We know that Gates is against Bitcoin according to his won statement, because he obviously can't control it, and all his charities are one big money laundering and tax evasion operation.
He invested a lot of money sponsoring mainstream media and creating this fake image of himself but it won't last forever, and I don't trust any words coming out from his mouth.

That is fine, instead of "free" you may call it anyway you like, but at the end it means that the state is responsible for providing education and healthcare or guarantee that it is somehow given to its citizens regardless of their means, at least to a certain level.

There is an eternal debate on how big a state should be. Usually, large states tend to be inefficient but tend to let fewer people behind, while more liberal economies are more competitive but tend to not care for the weaker members. What you consider best is always best for some, worse for others. I am in favour of state provided minimum public services including a level of healthcare, a level of education, a level of safety and a level of basic needs covered. We can argue about those levels and how (who will) to pay for it. Personally, I never had to make use of state aid, but I think they should be there - but only to provide opportunities, not to place people under a permanent subsidized existence.

There are a few reason why I think this is best:

- If you leave too many people behind in a Democracy, populist parties and extreme wing candidates tend to appear. These tend to endanger the democratic regime itself (US is a recent example, but there is pretty much the same across Europe after 2008).

- For me, it just does not feel right to live in luxury while your neighbour cannot buy a can of beans. That is just me.

- I believe that part of being a great place to live is to live in safety. Safety is compromised when too many people are left behind - they are simply not going anywhere and they will try to eat and have a roof even if they have to steal. Sorry to use the US as example again, but having 7 million peopl (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Incarceration_in_the_United_States)e under some kind of probation, parole or in prison is just ridiculous. You can also consider Brazil as an example of a poorly ruled society in some ways.


Poll Amazon workers.

a lot of problems here right now there's a lot of people dying and there's hunger everywhere and the actual philanthropic funding is very small, most of the big countries they're just interested in getting big capital. In the military, according to statistics, most of the funds I find out are put into research into advanced military weapons and philanthropic funds are only a small part of that fund.

Good point. Still, while hunger will still exist, although only in certain areas, while diseases outbreak, diseases the westerners would ask "wasn't that eradicated?", this view on Africa, although now a bit incorrect, will remain.

---

And back to OP:
Taxes means leaving governments (in many countries) handle that money. In many countries this is done inefficiently, especially due to corruption.
So in certain cases it makes sense to optimize taxes and use money for "greater good" in a much better way. But it's only in certain cases...

Obviously, Draconian laws happen when there is a majority  that choose to have them, with support from lobbies and all that. I am surprised that I have to explain that again.

Why do you assume that I am Spanish and that I live in Spain? Please, note that renewables include hydroelectric, which in a mountainous country like Spain has been in full use more than 60 year ago. Still, solar and wind are low... I am writing this as I pass by a wind generator´s field...you would say that´s karma I guess.

I am zero worried about paying any of my bills. I am very worried about leaving behind a world full of shit. Money won´t buy you another planet.

 Furthermore, I have zero interest in discussing anything on personal terms because that is simply an emotional response to a perceived threat - I do not feel threatened by your views nor your opinion, I simply think these come from your experiences, the people you talk to and the information you access and do not seem to match or resist a check with the real world.

One of the main aims of that particular fund is population reduction of countries where large families are traditional.  Its a form of politics rather then just being generous and the fund brings with it influence and kudos that is not taxable like any normal use of the money.   True charity is a hard business because there is always fraud and if not that then costs sometimes large to distribute the money properly, its harder to do right then most realize.

The billionaires mostly earn money from some kind of efficiency gain and also benefitting from large gains via government bias towards the largest entities over the smallest unlike capitalism we have a system which favors the richest where plain capitalism favors the strongest growth from the smallest companies.  I dont blame the rich people themselves, in time they will pass away but the system is far larger then that.

I think the real question is: What is better, that a few rich people who have come to prosperity through ideas and entrepreneurship have the money and give this with foundations to charitable purposes or whether the state skims the money, e.g. through higher taxes, and distributes it according to its own ideas? I think both come out the same. It is a mistake that the state always makes the better decisions than private persons concerning charity and distribution.

It's difficult to say. On the one hand, there is a cynical element to it; why appear to be kind when you make a lot of money and don't pay taxes? On the other side, some businesses don't do anything at all, even charity, and still manage to avoid paying taxes. On the contrary, these behaviors do not appear to be very harmful.

For sure. You also have to consider the potential tax advantages that these foundations bring.

The intentions of the elite are very well veiled but this is one of the cases where an idiot can tell what is going on.

They are trying to cement a legacy through this play - it is completely hypocritical for them to establish a monopoly, perform anticompetitive behaviour, and proclaim that they are some sort of a saint. But people buy the narrative for some reason.