So why is everyone already assuming Mark's charity is going to be one of the terrible ones? I don't see why he wouldn't give an honest shot at improving the world, as a young idealist. Maybe he won't do a great job at it, but people should reserve judgement til then.

Mark hasn't been improving the Internet so far (actually FB made it worse in numerous ways), so why do you think he has any incentive to improve the world as a whole ?

I'd say you're making the assumption that it will be used for good, when so many charities are indeed used for tax evasion (and other more nefarious purposes). When you condition these probabilities on how most charities actually operate, and on Zuckerberg's past behaviour, a high level of cynicism proves to be the rational position.

Facebook is abusive of people's personal privacy, even though it is generally an effective tool for improving people's (layperson's?) communication.

So, it's probably a better idea to approach it with a cynical perspective instead of an optimistic (naive?) one. It could turn out to not be estate-tax evasion... however it seems unlikely.

> No other developed country has such crazy laws regarding charity donations as the U.S.

Wrong. France has the "Association Loi 1901" law and it's pretty much the same thing, a money laundering scheme for most of the organizations benefiting from it - most of the time politicians using public money to finance such organizations where they put their friends and families in charge.

This kind of things has no borders.

I've wondered if the charity Claire Underwood works at in House of Cards was intended to be a commentary on this sort of thing. Claire takes a huge salary from donations by corporations, then Frank spends it. They seem to be intimately involved with San-Corp at every turn but there are lots of questions raised that never get answered. For example it's never explained why so much of the staff was rapidly cut, or why they pivoted to international work. I think they were even present in the whole Russo ordeal where the environmental initiative is replaced by natural gas after that bill fails. At the same time it is never directly implied that the CWI was an outright money laundering scheme.

Well, implicit in this discussion is also the notion that tax revenue is always a good thing. I think both assumptions are poor, but I'd sure take charity over tax revenue any day of the week.