Monday, June 26, 2006

Dynastic wealth

http://time.blogs.com/daily_dish/2006/06/gates_and_buffe.html

Warren Buffet's donation to the Gates foundation (i.e. not setting up a foundation in his own name) is truly gob-stopping (a Lancashire phrase with no US cognate).

Hey, Trey (one of my readers), given that Buffet has already (a/c the religious right) given up his soul because he funds abortion-rights organizations, this is an ulimate test of theories of the meaning of existence. He clearly wants a "near-life" effect (since Gates is 25 years younger, and really one of the people most immune to quotidien corruption in the world, and has to spend Buffet's money).

Even if the universe has no ultimate meaning (which I do not believe), Buffet has shown you can still insist that there is a meaning now.

1 comment:

Steve Muhlberger said...

One has to wonder what effect this much concentration of wealth will have.

As Turgot pointed out long ago, "foundations" tend naturally to be run in the interests of those who administer them, long after the founders are gone.

Who will administer this?

I'm inclined to think that Buffet did a good thing, at least his intentions are good.

However his intentions are not the end of the story.