The TED Interview
How Bill Gates spends $9 billion a year
March 21, 2024
[00:00:00] Chris Anderson:
Hello everyone, Chris Anderson here. Welcome to a brand new season of The TED Interview. This is where we dive into issues in much greater depth and is possible in a TED Talk. And, this whole season we're going to be diving into the idea of infectious generosity: the ultimate idea we're spreading. The cast of characters that I've connected with in producing this podcast series collectively give us the playbook to show that acts of kindness and other forms of goodness can spread virally across the internet more powerfully than the anger and divide that is currently framing our narrative.
I am hoping that by now you've read or listened to my book, Infectious Generosity. If not, the trailer that preceded this episode tells you exactly how you can claim your free copy. The podcast series is designed to mesh in with the book in a beautiful way, but if you haven't read it yet, don't worry. What you're about to hear will still make perfect sense because our first guest is none other than Bill Gates. Yup! The Bill Gates. The man who for years held the title of the world's richest person and who would probably still be the world's richest person if he hadn't given away so much money: 60 billion dollars and counting.
The conversation you're about to hear is pretty remarkable. You've probably heard Bill interviewed before, but this time it felt like we went deeper. I really tried to push him on some of the issues I've often wondered about with him, like his initial motivation to get into philanthropy. Was that in part a desire to bolster his reputation at a time when he and Microsoft were under attack?
And, what he makes of some of the criticisms of the Gates Foundation work, like are the amazing efforts he's made to transform how drugs and vaccines are distributed across the world all they're made out to be? Or, has he been used to some extent by Big Pharma? Or, take The Giving Pledge in which he's sought to persuade other billionaires to give away the majority of their wealth, is it really working? Also, what does it feel like to be hit with so many conspiracy theories? I have to say I was excited and impressed by his answers. See what you think.
Without further ado, here's Bill Gates. So, Bill Gates, welcome to The TED Interview.
[00:02:49] Bill Gates:
Hi Chris. Great to talk to you.
[00:02:52] Chris Anderson:
Bill, as I think you know, I've become obsessed with this idea of infectious generosity and that's why you're the perfect person to open this new series of The TED Interview. By so many measures, whether you look at the lives impacted, the reshaping of so many areas of philanthropy, I mean, the ripple effects from what you've done are astonishing. So, I think you can legitimately be called the typhoid Mary of infectious generosity. I have so many questions for you, but I would love to start with your own generosity journey and how that began. Take us back to the 90’s and what got you into all this in the first place.
[00:03:31] Bill Gates:
Yeah. I had, you know, great upbringing where my parents would volunteer quite a bit and were involved in things like United Way or Planned Parenthood, and so I had that example, but I sort of ignored that as I went off and became obsessed with the magic of software, and my role at Microsoft and really didn't let myself read even things like different sciences, like biology, what was advancing. Only as I stepped down as CEO, then I got extra time. You know, I was going out with Melinda. We got engaged and we were talking about, okay, what would happen to the gigantic wealth that the success of Microsoft had created and how should that go back to society? What are some causes where it could have high impact?
Sort of thinking that, you know, all the really high impact stuff would've been taken, and so we'd have to define things that were, kind of, marginal. And, then to our shock, we found a variety of things that are super dramatic in their impact per dollar. And, so we built the foundation. The big gift that made it the largest foundation was in the year 2000. And, then I retired from my full time work at Microsoft and went to the foundation full time in 2008. So, I'm 15 years in to having that be my primary focus and it's been unbelievably fulfilling and, certainly in global health, the impact is even far beyond what we would've dreamed of.
[00:05:08] Chris Anderson:
I'm so interested in the motivation of what makes someone make a, a shift like this.
From what you said and from what I've assumed, is just trying to put myself in your shoes, I could see a different, sort of, contributing motivations to wanting to do this. In the 90’s, you were under intense criticism from people for Microsoft being monopolistic, predatory, whatever. Surely, maybe, part of it was a desire to show that there was a different side of you and that reputational thing mattered.
Is it legitimate to say that played some factor? Would you discount some of them completely?
[00:05:46] Bill Gates:
Well, obviously I'm not an objective observer of my own motivations. I don't think the reputational thing was there because, even though, there were lots of criticisms of Microsoft, I was still polling and to this day, you know, as you know, most admired business person and a variety of things.
So, you have tons of people who like you more than you deserve and then you have tons of people who dislike you, some of whom for good reasons. You know, like their software crashed or something. And many, you know, it's more about, okay this person is rich and powerful. Should there be people like that? Even some jealousy or resentment.
But, overall, my reputation was extremely positive because that American dream, particularly outside America in India and China, you know, the American dream of somebody creating a company and making lots of money and not coming from a powerful family or anything like that is still extremely vaunted, so I don't think it was reputation.
The thing that I think some people miss is that my day-to-day work where, like, we spent three hours yesterday talking about making gene therapy super cheap so we can cure HIV and cure sickle cell. The kind of brainstorming session with innovators that I do in my foundation work is, it's the kind of stuff I love doing at Microsoft, and, although, yes, I need to know some immunology and biology, on a daily basis, the people I get to work with
are just unbelievable. Whether it's people in the field, you know, where I go out to Africa to see it, or the scientists in the lab, or the people who are convincing government that helping poor countries is still a priority, this is really fun work. You know, obviously I don't take a salary. I don't need to work, but I choose to work, still, pretty long hours.
I really do love it on a daily basis. And, you know, the fact it has this kind of profound impact is just icing on the cake.
[00:07:54] Chris Anderson:
Part of the reason I'm interested in motivation is that I've just noticed how cynical so many people are in trying to use any kind of possible motivation other than absolutely pure generosity to try to nitpick, uh, acts of kindness just across the board, actually, but certainly in big philanthropy and I've sought to argue that's just unbelievably counterproductive.
So, so if you told me that half the motivation was to improve your reputation, I'd actually have been great with that. Other people may be in that situation should consider the same thing.
But, what I heard instead, another surprising motivation, that I think isn't what most people have in mind when they think about philanthropy, I think a lot of people think, oh, I've got to do some generous giving. It feels like a, sort of, a moral obligation. It's going to be hard work and worthy. What I heard from you was excitement that you got to dig into the issues and the process of doing that felt just as cool and interesting as some of the other brainstorming you'd done.
Talk a bit more about that 'cause I've always observed you to be just hungrily curious. You read like no one I know, and that seems, in this case, to have allowed you to shift looking at a problem from just being, oh, this is awful and overwhelming to, actually, this is really interesting.
[00:09:10] Bill Gates:
Well, definitely, you know, when it comes to giving, there are things that are tricky because you have people telling you various things that they think you should give to, and you have to think about, you know, how long you're going to live and how you involve your kids, or you don't. And, it is terrible if giving is sort of this, oh god, I have to think about that type thing, you know?
And, so helping people on their journey of, of generosity, particularly if they're lucky enough to be successful till they get to a point where they can say, no. This is, this fun is making the fortune is giving it away. The start of our foundation, over 10 million children a year are dying. And, although it's broadly known that diarrhea, pneumonia, malaria are the majority of that, what's causing the pneumonia, or the diarrhea, or which tools we should make for malaria, it's not well known. And, I'm, you know, I thought, my god! From a moral or human condition point of view, these questions are so interesting and because of rich world diseases where there's a market to do gene sequencing and come up with things, the tools of biology have been advancing during this 23 year period incredibly.
And, so we can take those tools and apply them to malaria and diarrhea, and so we've been able to make unbelievable progress. You know, we've cut that number down to under 5 million now. So yes, everybody, ideally you get to a point where your morally driven work is even more fulfilling than the other things you did in your life. And, just like I was super lucky with Microsoft, I was very lucky to find these causes.
[00:10:51] Chris Anderson:
I mean, I think there's something here that a lot of us could take away. Come to think of it, we, at TED, when someone comes to the conference wanting to present a, a really difficult issue, often their temptation is to come in and say, “Look at this.
Isn't this awful?” And, our advice often is to them, say, that's not a way to win people's attention and get them engaged with you. That's too hard. Start with, “Hey, I want to show you something that is really amazingly interesting.”
For a lot of us, that can take us where empathy in its sort of most heavily expressed form is too much. I mean, I, I love that you've expressed that. And, I suspect that's been very effective in terms of bringing others along with you on that journey. Am I right in assuming that?
[00:11:34] Bill Gates:
Yeah, absolutely. How you mix in the fact that in poor countries, there's these grim things like kids who are malnourished or kids who die for the lack of a bed net.
How you mix that in the message is very important. You know, I got a chance to read your book this week and I thought it was fantastic. It, reminding us that how you balance that message in one of hope, and, you know, as you say in the book, if you tell people they can save millions of lives, it's less powerful than just handing them a picture of one kid and saying, do you wanna save this kid's life?
When I showed my daughter a movie about polio and how we've made all this progress that, you know, we've gone from a quarter million kids being paralyzed every year now down to less than a hundred. At the end of the video, there was a kid limping along. And, so the video was over and I thought, okay, what do you think?
And she said, “Are you helping her?” And I said, “Who?” And she said, “That girl at the end of the video who's limping along.” And, I'm like, wow, you are really retail. I mean, my mindset is so wholesale, that didn't even occur to me. So, but you can be sure I made sure that girl has really good crutches and good care. Uh, you know, so I could tell my daughter that her impulse that, hey, if you're gonna make her feel bad about the girl, let's do something about it, was fulfilled.
[00:12:57] Chris Anderson:
Shame on you, dad. You got 249,990, uh, but that last 10.
But, this is it. So, this dance between head and heart, I think we'll return to 'cause it's so important to try and figure it out. Tell me, Bill, when was the moment when you really felt, wait a sec, there actually is something big that our foundation could do? It's not just small pieces on the side. What was the big aha?
[00:13:25] Bill Gates:
Well, you go to Africa and you see the great energy and the great beauty and, but people literally without shoes and are without enough food. And, you're like, wow, these are humans and we should be helping them get to self-sufficiency.
And, then there was a Nick Christophe article about kids dying of rotavirus, which is the majority of diarrheal deaths. And, there was a vaccine that protected against rotavirus, but it was only being given to rich kids. And, rich kids because they have a nice health system and good nutrition, their chance of dying of rotavirus is near zero.
Whereas in India alone, you had over a hundred thousand kids dying every year because they didn't have this vaccine. And, then I looked into the cost of making vaccines and saw that almost every vaccine, if you do the right things, you can get down to less than a dollar of cost. And, you know, then it just seems so horrific that
because the poor people don't have any money, their voice in the marketplace of innovation and products isn't adhered to. You know? And, so the market works for should we have Chinese restaurants or Thai restaurants, but for the health needs of the poorest, the market alone just doesn't work.
So, that insight and that we could use our philanthropic dollars to get that vaccine cost down and to invent new vaccines, get them out to kids, that, you know, became the, okay, we can go full speed ahead here. And, so every quarter I would have a meeting where we looked at what percentage of the world's children were getting rotavirus vaccine and what steps we were gonna take, you know?
And, now that number is up close to 90%, you know, up from about 10% when we got going. And, you know, that alone is the biggest single reason why so many fewer kids are dying before the age of five. So, what happened was we gave, Melinda and I gave some money in the, the late 90’s. We gave 125 million to what was called the Children Vaccine Program.
And, they had a dinner for us to be nice to us. And, I guess the people had been coached not to beg too much, but then I said, “Hey, what would you guys do if you had more money?” And, then, you know, so the rotavirus guy has his idea and the pneumo guy has his idea and they're all, you know, there's a cholera guy. So, there's at least six different people who are like, “Oh my god, thank you for asking.”
And, I was like, wow, this is crazy. Why isn't this getting done? And, in the US Foundation, you have a, a minimum payout of, of 5%, you know, so when I did that first gift in 2000, we were required to spend over a billion a year. But, I'd gotten the confidence that we'd have no problem spending that money for incredible impact.
[00:16:24] Chris Anderson:
Yeah, that was a hell of a first step. Donate 20 billion and have to figure out how to give away a billion. I mean, giving away money is a theme we may return to, but it's one of the problems is, it's actually quite hard to do it well. I mean, so-sometimes people get blamed for not giving enough. Would, would you agree that, that that is a part that's missed that it takes...
[00:16:42] Bill Gates:
No, absolutely. The US has a, a very thriving nonprofit sector, but if you go into countries where philanthropy hasn't been a great tradition, then there's not just a lack of money to be given, there's a lack of organizations. If you wanna give in that country, you have to build up that side as well. And, so pick a measure like lives saved or getting rid of malnutrition and try to make sure you're good about that, but you don't have that same feedback that the private sector does. If a foundation is giving money inefficiently, it's not driven outta business. And, you know, of course, the recipients of your grants are always like, this is such a brilliant grant that you're giving me. Uh, you know, just, just keep it up. And, you know, so saying, did I explore things as much as I should have?
It's less clear than in the place where you made money.
[00:17:38] Chris Anderson:
Right, right. The Gates Foundation, obviously, is, is involved in so many areas now. You're now giving away as much as $9 billion a year, which I think is about at least five times more than what anyone else is doing. I mean, it's, it's pretty amazing.
I'd like to focus on one area, especially so that we just get a picture of you and the foundation at work making change.
So, you've mentioned vaccines. Let's go there. I mean, for one thing, there's a beautiful analog, right, with the software business model that you've had, which is you've spent a huge amount of money building something and then when you've built it, you can reel off units of it at very little cost and, and it's a very powerful thing that you are reeling off. And, I'm, I'm guessing that, that's part of what drew you to vaccines as, wow, this could be amazing if you really got behind these.
[00:18:26] Bill Gates:
Yeah, it's quite magical that you know, this dollar shot, you know, it's a metal needle and, you know, the infant cries and, so it's very non-intuitive in terms of saving that child's life.
That's the best thing you can do. But, you know, we got rid of smallpox altogether by getting vaccination up and it's gone. We're very close to achieving that with polio. And, so not only won't any child be paralyzed, but you won't have to vaccinate anyone once it's certified as, as having been eradicated.
You know, we'll often go to drug companies and we'll say, “Hey, we'll help you support this work, but we need to know that for the 90 poorest countries that you won't charge anything but your cost, you know, and that all the rights and everything will be available at no cost for the poorest countries.” And, and so that model has worked for us to tap in to getting these drug companies as partners.
[00:19:23] Chris Anderson:
Because for, for them, for a drug company, in many ways, the economics of vaccines aren't ideal. You know, they're take once, your life has changed. There's, there's not, in most cases, recurring customers as it were, and so left to their own devices, drug companies, kind of, prefer to develop drugs for chronic diseases that they can make you take every day. To, to that extent, the market's perhaps a little bit broken and, and did you see that a key role of the foundation was to make the market work where it was needed most?
[00:19:56] Bill Gates:
Yeah. Well, you, for a disease like malaria, that doesn't exist in rich countries, we're giving grants to get private companies involved, to get the resources allocated the way they should be. With diseases that exist both in rich world and poor world like HIV, Gilead, who's very generous in their licensing for poor countries, we can help fund projects knowing that for every project they sign that they've agreed not to make any money for the use of their breakthroughs in poor countries.
[00:20:29] Chris Anderson:
And, yet some critics have questioned whether all is, all is healthy yet, that you've been accused, including by people like, um Médecins Sans Frontières, of, kind of, kowtowing to the economic demands of big pharma and uh, actually, not fully being on the side of the poor who actually need these vaccines. I'm guessing you, you're not a fan of these criticisms. What are the critics missing?
[00:20:57] Bill Gates:
Well, it's fair that every time we work with private companies, did we strike the best deal we could on behalf of the poorest? You know, it's great that people look at what we do there and say, “No, you should have done better. You should have done this.
You should have done this other thing.” You know, as you look into those, most of them are wrong. But, because you don't have market feedback, you better listen to your critics 'cause sometimes they will be right about those things. There is a perverse thing that can happen, though, which is that for the companies who actually work on infectious disease, they get asked to give the stuff away and lose money.
And, so what you've seen is that the many pharma companies don't work on these issues at all because it involves some of the moral dilemma. You know, it's like you say in your book, is this a sticky wicket, you know, asking private companies to just give these things away. That is probably not scalable as we need more vaccines. We need to engage them.
[00:21:58] Chris Anderson:
Mm-Hmm. Have you personally been involved in some of the negotiations with, say, the CEO of, of a pharma company? And without necessarily naming names, can you just tell us a story of what it feels like and, and what is going on in your head? How are you deciding that this is a fair deal and that you're excited about it?
[00:22:16] Bill Gates:
Well, we publish every year. We fund a group, which is called the Access to Medicines Index, which looks at all the drug companies and says, do they take some of their top R&D people and work on infectious disease?
There's a strong correlation that as pharma companies do well, they get more generous, and as they do less well, they get less generous. So, Eli Lilly and Nova Nordisk who are benefiting from their GLP-1 obesity drugs are, actually, both stepping up to help with global health things pretty fantastically. And, I give credit to the leadership of those organizations. You know, when I'm talking to a pharmacy CEO and I do a regular meeting with all those CEOs, clearly we can offer praise where they're giving away drugs, for example, for neglected diseases. Or, if somebody really lets us down, you know, we'll speak out. And, as you say in your book, you know, their employees are anxious to be at an enterprise that not only is bringing health to rich people, but bringing it to the world at large. And, so the sort of carrot stick there has been reasonably powerful.
[00:23:26] Chris Anderson:
I mean, trying to put myself in, in your shoes. I think, I think I'd be wrestling with this. You know, you over time, you, you form relationships, friendships with the heads of these companies because they're doing work that matters. And, I'm just curious whether in, in your own mind, are you willing if it comes to it, to say “Enough, you are not doing it this right,” to call, not necessarily call someone out, but to risk losing one of those friendships over what the needs of the vaccines, in this country that really needs it, demand.
[00:23:55] Bill Gates:
Yeah, there's companies who were high in our access to medicines index and fell very dramatically. You know, it often comes with the change of the CEO. You know, when you say, okay, what's making money, the global health stuff just doesn't make the cut.
[00:24:12] Chris Anderson:
Yeah.
[00:24:13] Bill Gates:
So, it's often when they go through tough times. And, I'm rarely criticized for not being hardcore enough.
And, so when a pharma CEO is on the phone with me, it's not about some friendship, although, some of these people are quite impressive. It's about, hey, come on! How come you know you didn't make enough rotavirus vaccine? Or, you have brought the HPV vaccine price down? You know, I'm gonna have to go to India and China to get it made.
We have, also, huge relationships with the developing world manufacturers: Indonesia, India, and China. And, over time, as we're getting the prices down, the volumes do tend to shift because they are more focused on low cost manufacturing than the Western companies.
[00:24:58] Chris Anderson:
So, give us a sense of scale here, Bill, like over the years, at least, plausibly as a result of Gates Foundation work,
how many vaccines have been delivered to the developing world. And, how many lives do you believe have been saved as a result?
[00:25:14] Bill Gates:
So, deaths under five, we're over ten million a year, and now we're down below five million a year. You know, the majority of the reduction is due to vaccines. So, these are incredible numbers.
[00:25:27] Chris Anderson:
Yeah, it's, I find this so amazing and it's so frustrating to me that so many of us walk around under a cloud of misery at how bad the world is, and we think about all these terrible deaths that are in the news. And I, I just think that we'd feel better about ourselves, better about humanity overall, better about the future, if we somehow found a way of holding those numbers in mind and being able to picture it.
[00:25:50] Bill Gates:
Yeah. You and I are in total agreement about this that, you know, when people say, you know, we should throw out our current system or change it radically, people should understand that our system, in many ways, is working well. I admit that income equality is still not great and that access to great education is still not great, but it's better today than at any time in the past.
There are a few negative trends like opioid use and polarization, and we should particularly take our innovative powers, our generous thinking, and apply to those things, but most things are improving. And, it's sad that because of the nature of bad news, which you talk about, that people are far more gloomy about where we are than they should be, and then their motivation to do more of the good stuff is definitely reduced because of that.
[00:26:48] Chris Anderson:
Yes.
Often the good news is not, it's not like a sort of soothing Band-Aid on reality. It's the opposite. It's, actually, opening people's eyes up to what the data actually show. Let's talk about this Bill 'cause this is amazing to be on. You, you've been, because of your deep involvement in vaccines and because the issue of vaccination itself has somehow, god knows how, become politicized, you've been the subject of the most bizarre conspiracy theories, which would be comical were, were it not for the viciousness with which some of them are pursued. The theory that you engineered this thing so that you can make money from your vaccines is probably the most extreme and obnoxious thing out there. I'm curious how you, how you cope with it, honestly.
[00:27:51] Bill Gates:
Yeah. I mean, there's some people who say that, you know, I, I gave the TED Talk warning about the risk of a pandemic, and then, you know, years go by and it's not coming true. So, I felt I had to do something to validate my prediction, otherwise I was gonna look foolish.
And, it's pretty bizarre that you have a, you know, candidate running for the US presidency who writes a book, you know, with my name in the subtitle saying that I'm using vaccines to kill millions of children and making billions of dollars.
[00:28:23] Chris Anderson:
We're talking, we're talking there about Robert Kennedy, right?
[00:28:25] Bill Gates:
Yes.
[00:28:25] Chris Anderson:
Yeah.
[00:28:26] Bill Gates:
You know, the bizarreness is strong. I certainly have no complaint. I mean, my life is fantastic, and wonderful, and the fact that some people have crazy views that, you know, I've even had people come up and yell at me on the street. At least, you know, they didn't physically attack me, they just were saying, why am I tracking them?
And, the idea of why I would wanna track that particular person, you know, it never occurred to them that it really doesn't make sense. The scale of misinformation during the pandemic blew my mind. So, the fact that the reputation of vaccines has been really damaged, that is tragic. And, I would've thought a pandemic would get us to rededicate ourselves to global health, but, sadly, it's almost done the opposite where people talk about, “Oh, let's not fund the WHO,” or “Let's, you know, not do any new vaccine work. And, somebody who put their life into this kind of work, like Tony Fauci, let's attack him as, as a villain.”
[00:29:26] Chris Anderson:
It's amazing to me. I want to ask you about whether there are some unintended consequences about, because of the vast size of the foundation. Unquestionably, by any objective measure, you are the gorilla in the room in, in many discussions about public health and how to make it better.
I, I guess I've heard some people wonder whether there is a risk of a kind of chilling effect that you are so powerful that other ideas struggle to get a look in somehow because the foundation is so confident in what it's doing. Do you worry about this? And, when you talk to your people out there in the field, is there any kind of instruction that says, you know, you guys are, are the source of the main money and that, that gives you a lot of power? Is, is there any issue here that you think is real?
[00:30:17] Bill Gates:
Oh, yeah. It's a big issue that, you know, just take malaria an example.
It's tragic that there's not more funders of work on malaria and because, other than the US government, we are so much the biggest funder that if we make a mistake, if we miss a vaccine effort, or a drug effort, or some new tool, the chance of somebody else coming in and, and picking that up is actually very low.
So, I don't think that's a good argument for saying that we shouldn't work on malaria at all. But, it does mean that our care in terms of doing open solicitations and finding ideas out there that the normal people that we engage with might have. You know, it's very incumbent upon us to stay incredibly open-minded.
We need more independent thinkers in global health and we're large, but governments are also very large in this space. And, you know, we're trying to draw more funders in and more government money in. You know, in the same way that a good idea can really be phenomenal, if we miss good ideas, that's super, super bad.
[00:31:33] Chris Anderson:
Yeah. So, that, that, that feels powerful to me, actually. If you can instill that value throughout the org that we've got these resources, uh, but we know we're not always right, and it's so that other people can contribute to the conversation, I think that's powerful. Bill, I, I, I'm interested in Infectious Generosity, and I, I want to ask you about what I, strikes me as one of the most consequential examples of infectious generosity, namely The Giving Pledge.
There are many billionaires in the world. The pledge is that they give away the majority of their wealth in their lifetime or in their will. You and Melinda and Warren took it upon yourselves to persuade as many of them as possible to sign this pledge. I mean, there are trillions of dollars owned collectively by billionaires.
That's a potential difference of, yeah, literally trillions of dollars to the public good. What do you feel about the pledge? Like, you must be deeply proud of it at some level and I'm guessing you also have some frustrations with it.
[00:32:29] Bill Gates:
Well, it was Warren's idea to get together people who were doing serious philanthropy and, kind of, talk about why they were doing it and what role could any of us play in facilitating people's philanthropic journey.
You know, so we learned a lot about the barriers to giving and they, dilemma you talk about in your book of, okay, should you be very visible in your giving or should you be very invisible, you know, where there's, there's strong arguments for both of those things.
So, I spend a lot of time every year doing dinners with people who are lucky enough to have significant wealth and not necessarily, just promoting The Giving Pledge, but chatting with them about how they think about things and sharing examples of, say, how the family gets engaged or how you pick different causes. And, some of those people choose to join the pledge.
The pledge in no way will ever take credit for the member's generosity. You know, that entirely goes to them. So, you know, we haven't gotten even half of the world's billionaires signed up, but I think we've had a significant effect on getting people to pick causes connected to inequity and getting them to accelerate their giving journey partly by meeting other people who are further along in that journey or may share a common cause.
[00:33:52] Chris Anderson:
Bill, there's one riddle about the pledge that I wonder if you could help me with, um, which is I've been puzzled what it actually means. Like when you say give away 50% of your wealth, the thing is that someone's wealth is a moving feast. Like, a typical billionaire who's in their, say they're 30 years old, or you know, one of the youngest billionaires, by the time they're 50, they may well own 4x the wealth that they had when they were 30, just from the accumulation of value through investing or through the rise of the, their company stock or whatever. Is the pledge to give away 50% of what you have at the time you make the pledge, 50% of your peak wealth?
[00:34:29] Bill Gates:
Yeah, so there's no enforcement of the pledge.
It's a moral commitment to the public, which is why the one requirement we have is that your name is posted as having taken the pledge. Ideally, you write a pledge letter that talks about why you're engaged and what you're trying to do. Philanthropically, I think about 80% of the pledgers have letters up on the, The Giving Pledge website, but there's no anonymous members, so that exact definition is, is not black and white.
We are trying to get people to give more sooner, and so the idea that you have, going back to zakat of, okay above a certain level, you should give 1/40 every year.
[00:35:15] Chris Anderson:
Zakat is the, Is-Islamic tradition of giving a 40th of your wealth every year. Yeah.
[00:35:19] Bill Gates:
And, when people are in a big accumulation phase, you know, like Warren Buffet who's mind blowingly generous, he was criticized by Ted Turner 'cause when Berkshire was, in its early years, he chose to be doing more accumulation than giving. And, now he's in a phase where he is doing massive giving. And, so there's a certain personal element in that, particularly if you wanna have your time available to engage in it. You know, the sooner you do it, the better.
But, at first you have to get started and often you'll get started with pretty small gifts or doing it collaboratively. So, we, you know, we're trying different formats that draw people in.
[00:36:01] Chris Anderson:
I mean, I've, I've spoken, obviously, to quite a few members who have signed the giving pledge, and I've been struck about their serious determination to give back.
Um, they, they want to do it. Um, many of them confess that it's, it's quite hard to do. The numbers are, are a little troubling. I mean, I spoke with Steve Levitt at the University of Chicago. I don’t know whether his study is right. He claims that the average Giving Pledge member is still giving well under half a percent of their net worth each year and that it hasn't really budged much since they signed the pledge.
But, it's very, very hard because people are so busy and because understanding the smart way to do philanthropy is, is really hard. I guess I argued that there is a case to try and turn that into an annual pledge of at least a percentage. It's not necessarily, two and a half percent of your net worth, but start somewhere and step it up precisely because money makes money.
Wealth is accumulating. At some point, if someone's serious about giving away half of their worth, by the time they're in their seventies or eighties, surely they need to be hoping to get to 10% plus of their net worth a year to have a chance to get down. People are a long way from that still. I'm just wondering if there's anything more to do to persuade people to take it seriously on an annual basis.
[00:37:18] Bill Gates:
No, and it that, that's, you know, we are really saying to ourselves, how do we help people make that transition? The giving level of The Giving Pledge people has gone up versus what they were doing beforehand, but not as much as we'd like to see. You know? So, you almost think, okay, could there be a category called activated giving pledge member, you know, where they're hitting the, the two point a half percent or above. We don't wanna make things too complicated. And, as you say, the math on your wealth varies. And, also, I disagree with you. Wealth doesn't always go up. There, there…
[00:37:50] Chris Anderson:
Not always.
[00:37:50] Bill Gates:
…there could be significant periods wealth isn’t accumulating. Yes, the US tech sector, many people's wealth has gone up a mind-blowing amount.
But, you know, we will reach limits in terms of that and other fortunes. I even had a giving pledge member who at one point was worth 15 billion and then they were worth 10 billion. And, I was saying to them, “Come on, you have to give more. Come on.” And he's like, “No, no, no! Until I get back. You know, I'm poor right now. Until I get back to 15, I don't wanna give.” And I'm like, “Oh no, you know, they've adjusted.”
It is nice that people don't raise their spend, your spending habits are largely set, you know, when you're young and not that wealthy. And, yet for people they still think of a million dollars as a big gift. But, if you're, you know, worth several billion, you have to change your mindset.
And, although you can start off with gifts like that, you really have to learn to give gifts of 10 million, 20 million, 30 million, you know, and, and it takes time for people to wrap their mind around it and get that. But, we, we need to do better at helping people accelerate because a lot of them want to, and, and the needs are unbelievable, and
the examples where it's worked are, are so compelling.
[00:39:06] Chris Anderson:
I mean, it feels to me like just the simple metric of asking people, is there a percentage of your net worth that you plan to give away each year? Any percentage? Like, just shifting it to that way of measuring it gets you past the, oh, a million is a lot, to actually a million is a tiny percentage.
I want to ask you about the Forbes list and whether it is actually playing a weird role here. Most of the people who are really wealthy, especially those who've made it, entrepreneurs or whatever, you know, they're super competitive people. And, you've got this list out, the world's wealthiest. I worry that it's possibly, even though no one might admit to it, acting as a kind of drag on people's willingness to give away really large sums because in, in doing so, you knock yourself down that list. Do you think that's a possibility?
[00:39:55] Bill Gates:
Maybe a tiny bit, but I, I think the idea of the Forbes list is a very positive thing because for society to know, you know, where these great wealth accumulations are and think, okay, that affecting political influence or you know, what does it say about the competitive nature of the economy?
I remember, you know, as a young person, when that list first came out, I found it fascinating that, okay, here's a real estate fortune. Why do these Wall Street guys do so well?
[00:40:23] Chris Anderson:
Mm-Hmm.
[00:40:23] Bill Gates:
And, you know, thinking, would I ever be on that list and thinking that I wouldn't be, which turned out to be stupid. So, I think that transparency is good.
I'd be higher on the list if I didn't give money away, and I'm proud that I’ll be dropping down over time.
[00:40:39] Chris Anderson:
I know Randall Lane, the editor of Forbes, he's a, I think, he's a wonderful journalist and, and, uh, I agree with you that the list is a net positive. But, I've argued with him that it would be super cool if the definition of wealth could somehow be extended to lifetime financial footprint.
I mean, that the wealth that matters is the wealth you've accumulated and what you've done with it. And, um…
[00:41:00] Bill Gates:
No, absolutely.
I, I agree with you. You, they, and they're doing better on this mostly with side articles, but you're right. They always do, there's a lack of transparency. So, the, you know, the more they try and report, they're gonna have to, in some cases guess or, but your point's a good one.
[00:41:17] Chris Anderson:
I think given the psychology of everyone involved, if you could, if you could involve a different kind of competitiveness to be at the top of the footprint of, you know, who's given the most away, I, I think that would be thrilling.
[00:41:26] Bill Gates:
Compete on percentage, compete on absolute amount, all those things should be figures of merit.
[00:41:32] Chris Anderson:
Good. Well, we'll, we'll continue that discussion with him. And, your own situation is pretty remarkable. I mean, I think when you, just from a cursory look, uh, online, and you, you can correct me if I'm wrong here, but it looks like at the time you originally made the giving pledge, you were worth about a hundred billion dollars. And, you've on the numbers I saw, you've given away like 60 billion and counting.
So, in a way, you've already met the pledge viewed one way, and yet your total wealth now is like 120 or something. It's, it's continued to, to rise and so it's, kind of, amazing.
[00:42:01] Bill Gates:
Yeah, no, I, I'd love to see more people doing what Chuck Feeney did, where you really are giving it a rate that it all can be given away in your lifetime.
You know, Carnegie said to die rich is to die disgraced. That goes a little bit too far because, you know, you don't know when you're going to die.
But if you live out, if you live to say your late 80’s, ideally you would have a plan that, in my view, the money's given away. A few people will try and do in perpetuity foundations, but overall, I think most people should have a plan that during their natural lifespan, they will give it all away.
[00:42:38] Chris Anderson:
I love that. So, we've been talking about the big money. Let's, let's end this by just, those people listening here are fascinated by what billionaires are doing and can do and are probably cynical about them, many of them. I, you know, one, one of my goals with the book, Bill, is to say that, actually, there's a different conversation to have, which is to accept that giving big is really hard, and that if instead we could collectively get excited about the possibility of philanthropy, we'd, we'd feel differently. So, I guess, that, that's almost my question to you is can you picture a way in which we engage more people in the world in discussions about how, how big philanthropy can be done?
I think the single most annoying question that people have or the, the question that annoys them the most is why should these people get to choose, you know, how, how the world gets better? How, how can we do this? How can we engage more people into the process of contributing to the ideation of big dreams about what philanthropy can achieve so that we can take pride in it together? It's all of us and not just, uh, the less rich being annoyed at the very rich.
[00:43:50] Bill Gates:
Well, the idea of scaling up philanthropy pretty substantially, you know, saved by at least tripling it both from the very rich and the well off, I'm completely in line with your goal. I'm reminded when I first got into this, thinking, boy, we can activate people because they do want a moral purpose beyond just their net worth or even their immediate family, you know, if they've taken care of those needs.
And, so I think, god, we should be able to use digital to make the world a smaller place and to have common human desire, providing basics and activate more philanthropy.
There are days when I think, god, that's so naive of me because, in fact, digital giving, although there's some good examples, you know, like supporting teachers and things, the actual amount hasn't gone up that much. And, your book is such a reminder that we have to be smarter about this and we have to create a movement around it and not let the difficulty of it discourage us. You know, and the idea that it even connects to the kind of depression and polarization that the internet's been part of accelerating and that this is a pushback against that, by defining generosity in the very broad way you do, I-I'm re-energized to be, you know, one of the people who's trying to help.
And, that's, you know, I love GivingTuesday. The foundation's been helpful to that. You know, I love Audacious. The foundations help support some of that. But, you know, we need to, to go way beyond those activities, you know, and to learn from what's worked in those things, uh, but set a much, much higher goal.
[00:45:34] Chris Anderson:
Okay, last Q. Someone's starting a generosity journey or wants to. Any advice for them?
[00:45:40] Bill Gates:
Well, I think the, you know, your early giving, a lot of it will be local where you can kind of get your hands on the local food bank or training center and be reminded, wow, these are basic human needs. And, the volunteers here are such wonderful people. So, getting behind them.
You know, and then collaborative giving where you find a group that, you know, whether it's domestically like a, a Blue Meridian or globally like Co-Impact, where other people who are further along in their philanthropic learning, you get to work with them and learn from them. And, then eventually you pick, you know, your causes that you go directly into. The best tactic we've ever found is getting people to go to Africa and see the work on the ground and meet the people. That's not always easy to do, but, you know, nothing is close.
The sad thing about digital is it's too easy to click away. You know, if I know I have you for five minutes, I'm allowed one minute of telling you these deaths are awful and, then four minutes of saying all the progress you've made and how you're getting involved that my money is not enough and that your money will really be responsible for great things happening there. And, you can either see that digitally or go see it on the ground. Digital has meant that your engagement can be very light. You know, it's not like getting on a bus to go do civil rights, you know, in the south where you're chosen to put your life at risk there.
And, so how can the light nature of it get those next stages going? You know? And do we have the, the most creative people helping us in this endeavor.
[00:47:23] Chris Anderson:
Despite all the challenges, I think I've heard you say, “Ultimately it is, it's worth doing this journey.”
[00:47:31] Bill Gates:
Oh, I'd, yeah, absolutely. You know, I wish other people could know how much fun and how much progress they can be a part of pushing forward. Their whole view of the world, and of human nature will be greatly improved by getting hands-on on one of these causes that, although still far to go, what is a great news story that's not well known.
[00:47:56] Chris Anderson:
Bill, that's a great place to end on.
I've heard someone excited about what they're doing, someone who's willing to listen to critics, not defensive. And, when I think back on the impact you've had, I mean, really you've changed the whole conversation there is about what generosity can look like, the scale at which it can happen. So, thank you for your inspiration and leadership in this whole area.
It's been, really been a delight to talk with you. Thank you.
[00:48:23] Bill Gates:
Well, thanks. Your book reminds me that we need to set even more aspirational goals in this area, so I look forward to working on that together.
[00:48:32] Chris Anderson:
All right. Let's do that. Thank you.
[00:48:34] Bill Gates:
Thanks.
[00:48:37] Chris Anderson:
Okay. That's pretty much it for this week. If you'd like to dig into this subject more, check out my book, Infectious Generosity. You can get a free copy of either the digital book or the audio book by going to ted.com/generosity. If you were struck by The Giving Pledge and feel like you'd be interested in making your own kind of pledge, I recommend that you take a visit to the givingwhatwecan.org website. So, it's givingwhatwecan.org. They allow you to do a customized pledge. It might be 10% of income at the top end, two and a half percent of net wealth, but you can customize it to what makes sense to you. And, as I argue in the book, and as you may have gathered from this conversation just now, that is a beautiful thing to do.
But, next week we're shifting more to non-financial ways of giving. We're gonna meet an amazing woman who posted a picture on Facebook, and in so doing, just sparked a hurricane of kindness across the planet.
If you like the show, please leave us a review. Honestly, it really makes a difference. It helps others find us. We will read every one.
This interview is part of the TED Audio Collective, a collection of podcasts dedicated to sparking curiosity and sharing ideas that matter. This episode was produced by Jess Shane. Our team includes Constanza Gallardo, Grace Rubenstein, Michelle Quint, Roxanne Hai Lash, Daniella Balarezo. Thanks so much for listening. I'll catch you next time.