Columnists
The Case for Impatient Optimists
I didn’t give the subject of Bill Gates much thought until I heard his wife Melinda Gates interviewed on the radio earlier this year, which prompted me to read her 2019 book The Moment of Lift; which in turn led me to watch the three-part documentary series now showing on Netflix, entitled Inside Bill’s Brain.
Bill Gates is, of course, the founder and former chief executive of Microsoft, who gave up corporate life to run the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation. He has put, according to one estimate, at least $45 billion into the Foundation, and he has received a pledge from his bridge partner, 89-year-old Warren Buffett, of some $37 billion. So the Foundation has, and will continue to have, a lot of money to give away.
Mr. Gates also still has a sizeable fortune stuffed in his pockets—over $100 billion by some counts, and perhaps even more when converted to Canadian funds.
The Foundation states that its core belief is that “all lives have equal value,” and styles itself as a group of “impatient optimists working to reduce inequity.” It seeks to eradicate poverty by improving access to health care and education, and by delivering the latest innovations in technology to those with the greatest need for it.
All of which sounds pretty good. But is Bill Gates just another billionaire with a vanity project, or is he making a difference? The interview, book and documentary—superficial sources it’s true, but enough for this column— have me believing they are going about their business in a disciplined fashion and doing a lot of good.
The documentary tries to do three things simultaneously, which requires some patience on the viewer’s part. First, It looks at Bill Gates, the person, and his abilities—to drill down and concentrate on technical detail, to recall that detail easily, to face obstacles squarely, and to come up with the big-picture idea. Yet the documentary never analyzes his brain in a forensic sense: you are left to conclude it’s just like yours and mine, only better. Second, it covers the history of Microsoft in a sketchy way. And third, each episode looks at a particular Gates Foundation project: the toilet project, the polio project and the nuclear project.
The toilet project recognized that many thousands of deaths were preventable if people didn’t come into close contact with human waste and suffer from diarrhea. This entailed designing a brand new form of toilet that could be used in places where there were no sewage systems. And they did it, albeit not as cost-effectively as hoped.
The polio project attempted to eradicate polio by immunizing people in vast parts of Africa. They came close to their goal, after having to make satellite maps of every remote settlement in Uganda in order to ensure that no-one was overlooked. Outright eradication remains elusive.
The nuclear project was started after Mr. Gates concluded that nuclear power plant design suffered from “slide rule era” technologies and that better technology would make nuclear power more attractive as a fossil fuel alternative. He assembled a team that came up with a “travelling wave reactor” that radically reduces the risk of meltdown and the length and amount of waste storage. His company had signed a deal with the Chinese government to develop a prototype, but it ran afoul of US technology protection policy and the project is sidelined.
And then there’s Melinda Gates. In her book, she describes how she had to reconcile her own Catholic faith with the support of contraception as a means for women to improve their lot. She shows a determination to understand, without worrying about getting her hands dirty, why assistance sometimes works and sometimes doesn’t. She makes a strong case for the empowerment of women as the key to reducing inequity and lifting living standards. And she shows she can stand up to her husband, and bring more equality into their relationship (they are co-chairs of the Foundation, which bears both their names).
So what are we to make of the Gateses? Could government do a better job with the same resources? Ms. Gates makes the case that there is always a role for private funders, because they are freer to take risks with their granting, thereby opening up the prospects of higher rewards and paving the way for government assistance that is more certain of success.
Somebody like Donald Trump would scoff at the Gates Foundation’s philosophy that that all lives are of equal value, because it will take a mighty effort to overcome inequity in the world, particularly the inequity of the place of birth. Mr. Trump would settle for “Make America Great Again…and forget about everyone else.” I prefer the Gateses’ philosophy. I see nothing wrong with hatching big plans to deal with big problems. And we need impatient optimists.
Having said that, I don’t want to let the Gateses off scot free. Even without the Foundation’s assets, they are sitting on at least $100 billion, an amount that just keeps growing, That is a powerful argument for a wealth tax, although I’m patiently pessimistic that we’ll ever see one.
Comments (0)