Bloomberg Opinion reposted this
Bill Gates is an optimist. He believes the world will be a better place in 20 years, that diseases like polio, measles and malaria will be eradicated, and that there will be other rich people lining up to fill the void when, as he announced last week, his foundation shuts its doors in 2045. Of all these audacious goals and wishes, it’s the last that might be the furthest out of reach. Gates is right that there will be plenty of rich people in two decades. But what’s far less certain is just how willing they’ll be to give away their money with the abandon and largess shown by Gates. A new mental model is bubbling, one that is driven by a subset of the Silicon Valley elite. It goes something like this: Why donate your money when you’ve already given so much to society through the technology you’ve created? Gates felt he was returning something to a system that had allowed them to amass such wealth; the new guard believes it’s already contributed more to the system than it will ever get back in return. Plenty of these younger billionaires are still committing to giving away their money. But they’re thinking differently about their wealth and what they want to do with it. My latest for Bloomberg Opinion. https://lnkd.in/esM2uEud