Post by Vincent Van Ghoul on Aug 6, 2016 18:18:32 GMT -6
Billionaires, however, are just greedy which is why they strive to become billionaires. They're not happy with what they've already got.
In 1996 Gates donates 6 Million Dollars to the Gates Computer Science Building, on the campus of Stanford University. The building contains the Computer Science Department (CSD) and the Computer Systems Laboratory (CSL) of Stanford's Engineering department.
In 1999 he donated $20 million to the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) for the construction of a computer laboratory.
On top of his personal philanthropy, he and his wife also manage the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, which as of December 31st 2014 had an endowment of over 44 Billion Dollars, at least 28 of which were personal donations from Gates himself.
Keep in mind he was still actively working at Microsoft until 2014, only recently taking a step back and focusing specifically on his philanthropic interests.
Still think he's greedy?
Bill and his wife have stated that they only intend on leaving their children 10$ Million each, 30$ Million total, in inheritance, the remainder of their fortune going to charity.
He and Warren Buffet (another greedy Billionaire) also started the Giving Pledge, en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Giving_Pledge , in which they along with many other greedy Billionaires from around the world pledge to donate half, or more, of their wealth to charity in their lifetimes or upon their deaths. The likes of Elon Musk are on that list.
And just for the sake of argument, lets look at Elon as well, by your definition a greedy Billionaire.
Elon Musk is a South African-born Canadian-American business magnate, engineer and inventor.
In 1995, Musk and his brother, Kimbal, started Zip2, a web software company, with US$28,000 of their father's (Errol Musk) money. Eventually the company was bought, leaving Musk with 22$ Million of his very own money.
He then went on to found PayPal, which I'm sure you're familiar with, and which eventually was also bought, with Musk receiving 165$ Million from the sale.
He then took 100$ Million of that money and founded SpaceX, a private space exploration company with the goal of eventually sending humans to Mars.
The project was a success and in 2006 NASA awarded SpaceX with a 1.6$ Billion contract to resupply the ISS, which they later completed.
These days he's still heavily involved with SpaceX, Tesla Motors (the leading electric car company in the world) and SolarCity, a solar panel producer. In the last few years he's also donated over 10$ Million personally to various philanthropic causes.
One final example that Billionaires are not, by association, greedy. Arnold Mærsk-McKinney Møller was a Danish shipping magnate, who along with his father built the Mærsk shipping company up since 1886. Mærsk served as chairman of his company until he was 90 years old, maintaining a leadership role until his death at 98 years old. At his death his wealth was valued at 142 Billion Danish Crowns (About 20$ Billion), and in 2001 he personally donated the Copenhagen Royal Opera House to the Danish state at a cost of over 500$ Million.
Additionally he also donated a helicopter landing pad to the largest hospital in Denmark.
All of these people works(ed) hard their entire lives, never striving just to become billionaires. Elon Musk in particular has stated he doesn't care about the money, evidenced by the fact that he nearly went bankrupt trying to get SpaceX off the ground, but he persevered because he still believes in the principles that drive that company, which also drove him to help found Tesla, proving that electric cars are a viable alternative to gas powered cars, and SolarCity to help reduce mankinds dependency on fossil fuels.