I do feel for people dying of Polio in third world countries. But it is just silly to think that Gates style philanthropy of saving those people is going to change the world, though. It just means a few more people in third world countries will live who might not, and those countries might perform a little better GDP wise and take care of their people a little bit better, and a microscopic few of those people may someday make a change in the world by inventing something or creating some huge company or something.
Meanwhile, getting everyone in the US to use electric vehicles instead of gas would make a huge difference in the world. A society where transportation costs are much lower will be a very different society. Throw in Google self driving cars and we may not be mostly jammed into crime ridden cities any more, for example, since commuting would be a few pennies of electricity sitting in a cabin sleeping or working on a laptop instead of driving.
Polio eradication is only one of many health initiatives funded by the Gates Foundation. It is an outlier in terms of total lives saved and was selected because the funding could leverage several generations of polio mortality reduction initiatives (iron-lungs, Saulk vaccine, Rotary PolioPlus) over into complete eradication.
Sure, you probably don't know any of those people. They don't have laptops or cars or spare cabins in the woods. And they certainly don't hang out at libertarian circle jerks.
Gates-style philanthropy is on a course to eradicate polio. That's a potentially huge impact. Sure, the effects of polio are limited to a few poor people right now (mostly because herculean effort was already exerted to get it there), but if we can eradicate it, it means that not only is the current suffering eased, but we will never again have to spend any resources on polio, nor have people suffer from it.
Gates style philanthropy is like compound interest, it is small in the beginning but has outsized returns over decades. Having a few more percent of the population surviving childhood each year does not have a "little better GDP" results, it changes a country from China 1964 to China 2014.
Meanwhile, getting everyone in the US to use electric vehicles instead of gas would make a huge difference in the world. A society where transportation costs are much lower will be a very different society. Throw in Google self driving cars and we may not be mostly jammed into crime ridden cities any more, for example, since commuting would be a few pennies of electricity sitting in a cabin sleeping or working on a laptop instead of driving.