Chainsaw Massacre

Bill Gates plans to accelerate his foundation’s distribution of funds worldwide over the next 20 years. One reason for the urgency is that many of the programs that have been successful are being reversed by the new administration, with a lot of help from Elon Musk. “You could say this announcement is not very timely. Over the last 25 years, we achieved far more than I — or I think anyone — expected. The world invented new tools, we made them cheap, we got them out. We went from 10 million childhood deaths to five million. Over the next 20 years, can you cut that in half again? The answer is: Absolutely. But then you have this weird thing: In the next four years — or eight years, I don’t know — the actual money going into these causes is reduced, and reduced way beyond what I would have expected. On childhood deaths, which over the next few years should have gone from five million to four million — now, unless there’s a big reversal, we’ll probably go from five million to six million.” David Wallace-Wells in the NYT Magazine (Gift Article): The $200 Billion Gamble: Bill Gates’s Plan to Wind Down His Foundation. “You have to go to Africa and see a malaria ward at the height of the malaria season. Or you have to see kids who are stunted. And weirdly, the incredible success of the last 25 years is not as visible to people as it should be. But that also means that when people cut these things, will they notice? They cut the money to Gaza Province in Mozambique. That is really for drugs, so mothers don’t give their babies H.I.V. But the people doing the cutting are so geographically illiterate, they think it’s Gaza and condoms. Will they go meet those babies who got H.I.V. because that money was cut? Probably not. And so you say, OK, it’s going to be millions — Because of these cuts, millions of additional deaths of kids.”

+ Gates on Musk and his own philanthropy, or lack thereof. “Well, he’s the one who cut the U.S.A.I.D. budget. He put it in the wood chipper, because he didn’t go to a party that weekend … Who knows? He could go on to be a great philanthropist. In the meantime, the world’s richest man has been involved in the deaths of the world’s poorest children.” Maybe swinging around that chainsaw isn’t so cute after all.