Jack Dorsey Calls

His "fund" is totally different from Zuckerberg's. He did not do it for tax advantages. Jack said there were no tax advantages. And he draws no salary from either Twitter or Square anyway.

You see the way most billionaires do it is they give the money to a foundation they control, getting a huge tax advantage, and then dole out the money as they see fit, as opposed to giving it directly to third party charities.

So, Jack put a billion dollars worth of Square stock into an LLC. And since it's stock, if the value of Square goes up, so does the stock in the LLC. The value of the stock Jack originally gave has already increased to $1.2 billion.

Jack wanted to give $2 billion worth of stock, but that would have affected his "power" at Square.

Now the LLC, run by two people, gives money to a donor-advised, 501(c)(3), fund at Fidelity.

If the LLC were to give money to a non-501(c)(3), there would be taxes on that exchange, but if the money is given to a 501(c)(3), there is not.

Furthermore, the press got it wrong, it wasn't a billion dollars worth of stock just to assist in the fight of the Covid-19 pandemic. If the pandemic continues, maybe the entire billion will be used for that, but if not, Jack's primary interests are health, education and universal basic income, that's where the money will be distributed.

And diving deeper into the details, all of the stock can't be sold at one time, because that would affect the value of all Square stock.

So, some decisions have already been made, where the money is to go. I'll let Jack announce it, but he's speaking to issues in the penumbra of Covid-19, like domestic abuse and prisons and areas that are severely underfunded right now.

Jack assures me there are no personal tax advantages to any "gift."

He also told me it took two and a half weeks to set up the structure.

And Jack also said starting and running a company has huge Wall Street consequences. He said if he started another company he would do it open source, for the good of the people as opposed to being focused primarily on money.

So, to clarify, I was wrong to lump Jack Dorsey's charitable efforts in with those of Mark Zuckerberg and the other billionaires mentioned in the Hasan Minhaj episode.

But let me be clear, Jack did not call me to get me to make a correction, anything but, I'm doing it because I want you to trust ME. I can get it wrong, I can make mistakes.

Jack said unlike other people giving money away, he was focused on transparency.

He has chronicled the entire process on Twitter and you can read it here: https://twitter.com/jack/status/1247616214769086465

Also, he plans to continue being transparent, making public all the donations.

Jack does not want to start a foundation, he just wants to get the money where it is needed.

And the world is broken into two kinds of people, those on Twitter and those who are not. Twitter got a bad name because it was seen as a social network, just like Facebook, Instagram or Snap, but the truth is it's an information network. Sure, there are those fighting for attention on Twitter, those starting petty wars, but they're very easily ignored, Twitter is democratic, if you've got very few followers, you're voice has little reach.

Twitter is where you go for breaking news, where you go to take the temperature of the nation/world. What you read in the papers, what you see on TV, has already been filtered. And one thing we've learned is filtration leads to bias. If you're interested in what's happening in any field, you should be on Twitter.

I'm a user. I check in constantly. It eats up time, but no one would say it's a waste, Twitter is anything but mindless activity, it's where information flows, where ideas are discussed, where movers and shakers are influenced.

And I felt that way when Jack was on "hiatus" and I still feel that way now that he's been back.

Once again, the press is frequently bad. We keep hearing the people on Twitter are not representative of the nation. This take is wrong. Because the nation gets its ideas and is influenced by what is said on Twitter. Just like the anti-screen press is now going all mea culpa, they've got it wrong on Twitter. I don't do Facebook, I don't do Instagram, I don't do Snap... Oh, I've got accounts to check in, but I spend little time at these sites. But I spend a lot of time on Twitter, the information is extremely helpful, it makes me think.

P.S. The Twitter app is much easier to use for newbies, it's been upgraded. However, the learning curve is still steeper than it should be. I told Jack there should be a page that explains the basics, that new users, or returning users, can employ to get up to speed.


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