&gt; The letter to our daughter works pretty well as comedy, e.g., “<i>Medicine</i> has only been a <i>real science</i>…” (emphasis added).<p>I&#x27;m not sure what the author is trying to say here. He cut out important context. The &quot;...&quot; was &quot;for less than 100 years&quot;. While one might quibble with the exact number, Zuckerberg was reasonably in the ballpark.<p>&gt; It also works pretty well as a dictionary example of “optimism”, with Zuckerberg imagining that a $1 billion annual budget is going to move the needle (NIH spent $31 billion in 2010, according to Wikipedia, and the drug companies keep telling us that they are spending some of their Irish dough on research)<p>The Gates Foundation spends about $4 billion a year, spread over many different kinds of initiatives. Their health spending is &quot;only&quot; about $1 billion a year, and they move the needle there. I see no reason the Zuckerbergs can&#x27;t move the needle at $1 billion per year as long as they don&#x27;t spend in too many disparate areas.<p>Here&#x27;s an article from NPR that explains why it can be more effective to do charity and activism through an LLC instead of through a non-profit foundation: <a href="http:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.npr.org&#x2F;2015&#x2F;12&#x2F;03&#x2F;458276386&#x2F;facebook-founder-to-give-away-his-fortune-through-for-profit-company" rel="nofollow">http:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.npr.org&#x2F;2015&#x2F;12&#x2F;03&#x2F;458276386&#x2F;facebook-founder-to-...</a><p>Some excerpts:<p><pre><code>    &quot;A foundation itself is not allowed to do what the
    Internal Revenue Code defines as lobbying,&quot; he says.
    &quot;If you&#x27;re trying to achieve a social end through
    advocacy, you&#x27;re going to find yourself very
    constrained, whereas if you&#x27;re just paying it out of
    your own pocket if you&#x27;re a company or an LLC, there
    are really no constraints at all, at least imposed
    by the tax code.&quot;

    In a public letter to their newborn daughter, Chan
    and Zuckerberg said about their philanthropic goals,
    &quot;We must participate in policy and advocacy to shape
    debates.&quot;
</code></pre>
and<p><pre><code>    Mollie Cullinane, who runs a law firm that
    specializes in philanthropic giving, says creating
    an LLC instead of a nonprofit looks like a move by
    Chan and Zuckerberg &quot;to get more deeply involved in
    advocacy and promotion of certain causes that other
    charities and foundations can&#x27;t speak out about as
    loudly.&quot;
</code></pre>
and<p><pre><code>    But beyond politics, there are other ways an LLC
    will give the couple philanthropic flexibility.

    &quot;There&#x27;s a whole new area opening up, so-called
    impact investing, where you invest in a for-profit
    organization that has a social mission,&quot; Brest says.

    So the couple might invest in clean energy
    companies, for example, and could make money off
    those investments. Foundations can do some of that.
    But, Brest says, &quot;you are freer from any
    restrictions if you simply do it through a private
    company.&quot;</code></pre>