I was promised Bill Gates would give me 5G’s with a vaccine.
Remember there are no good billionaires. No amount of “good” they do will ever be enough.
Yeah, but that’s why it’s great to see them fighting each other. Nobody else seems able to do it better.
Fighting lol…
Chuck Feeney is the closest we will ever get to a “good” billionaire. Donated over 99% of his wealth and spent his retirement being only worth $2 million.
Sure, but Bill Gates is as benign as it gets.
He made windows
He’s an Edison, he’s a Carnegie, he’s a Rockefeller. He’s a robber baron like countless before and that on its own is enough of a condemnation.
Dude single-handedly ruined many, many foss and other software projects because he couldn’t buy, bully, or otherwise get obscenely rich from. He would use windows’ reach to kill projects. “Windows ain’t done until wordperfect won’t run”
He played dirty to get his money and now that he’s “won” and has enough money for his family to be generationally wealthy for ever he’s donating amounts that don’t cut into his oligarch lifestyle. Guess he hired a good PR team, though cuz everyone seems to forget what he did to get so filthy rich.
You’re exhausting.
Yes, all billionaires are bad, just like all cops are bad. But some are worse than others. Idiot.
👅👢
They said “as benign as it gets” which is not the same thing as “benign.” To give evidence to the contrary, you must find a more benign billionaire than Bill Gates.
Tata (volume), Scott(uncontrolled), Carnegie (proportional) all beat Gates.
Your evidence that he is bad is that windows is bad.
Our evidence that Bill Gates isn’t that bad is that Bill Gates has directly saved millions of lives by donating the vast majority of his wealth to an organization he created to supply medicine, food, and water to the world’s poorest regions namely Africa.
I feel like we’re not on the same intellectual playing fields.
This is a bot
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what about the numerous sexual harassment lawsuits, decades long friendship with Epstein including numerous trips on the lollita express and his longstanding board membership of Berkshire Hathaway which has presided over numerous ethics violations?
The flight logs do not show that Bill Gates has ever visited the island on any plane. The most that has been confirmed is that Bill Gates flew from New Jersey to Florida on a private plane owned by Epstein once and that he had dinner with Epstain exactly once, which in interviews he expressed as a major mistake. I remind you that before 2006 Epstein was a public figure as a professional financier and broker and even until 2019 him and Ghislaine participated in major fundraisers.
Furthermore, your claim is one that gets constantly circulated by right wing nutjobs after a particularly viral tweet in 2023.
What friendship. He was never at the island according to records. Unless you have some proof.
Evil isn’t graded on a scale, bud.
This thread is so embarrassing.
The real world isn’t binary, bud.
So Bill Gates is as bad as Hitler?
Bill Gates is as bad as Bill Gates. You’re trying to get a gotcha without understanding what I said.
Genius.
if you can’t compare evils then there is no reason for someone to try to become less evil.
What?
Lol, dude thinks any of these billionaires give an iota of a fuck how we plebs rank them 🤣
Why does society need to have billionaires? Why can’t (e.g.) Bill Gates just participate in society based on his own merits like the rest of us?
Why does society need to have billionaires?
It doesn’t. In an ideal utopian society there wouldn’t be billionaires.
But, given the reality that billionaires do exist, I’d rather have them using their accumulated wealth on disease curing/prevention than them just sitting on the money or using it to actively fuck over entire populations (like Musk has been doing).
That doesn’t mean Gatws or Buffet are *good billionaires *, it means they are less bad.
Shades of grey exist. Nuance is a real auseful ful thing.
I’ll reiterate the point from my other comment. Value judgements are a waste of time, energy, and our voices.
Whether or not Bill Gates is worse than Elon Musk is just as important as to whether Tom Cruise is a better actor than Leonardo DiCaprio. Neither value judgement is worth my breath. It’s a pointless exercise.
We are reaching a critical junction in our timeline where these billionaires can not and should not exist any longer. We’ve learned our lessons, their benefit and merit is irrelevant because even the best billionaires sit silently and are complicit. They have power, influence, and wealth - all the ingredients needed to directly affect change.
At best, they throw around pennies that don’t address root causes and play the PR game, or play the blame game by focusing on individuals who are absolutely not responsible for the root causes of various issues that plague our societies.
I would personally gleefully murder every billionaire, you dumb piece of shit. Who said society needs billionaires? You ideological-purity testing MAGA-resembling turd muncher.
I’m not suggesting that they be murdered. You’re saying some are worse than others, I’m just saying the concept should die.
Thanks for agreeing with my sentiment loosely, sorry to trigger you.
Wow. Deep.
He was until he forced patents onto a vaccine that was supposed to be free to the entire world.
Gates is responsible for millions of people in the Third World dying or getting long covid.
His foundation has done a lot of good, for sure, and he’s actively giving away his billions. I think a lot of people just object to billionaires on principle, I do too TBH
Just not being as bad as Elon doesn’t mean he isn’t bad. It’s like saying that alcoholic drunk asshole husband who beats his wife and kids isn’t as bad as Ted Bundy. It isn’t contest.
Why can’t we be better?
so this is what he meant by eliminated world hunger, by killing them directly or indirectly.
The only way to get rid of poverty is to get rid of the poor.
It’s logical: no people -> no hunger.
and that’s how you know it didn’t even occur to him. he just did it for the sake of cruelty.
I really do think it would be fun to compile all of the billionaires in the world and just have them fight to the death in a gladiator kind of rig. Would be awesome.
I feel like the only way it would work is if they got to keep the money of whoever they killed as long as that person had over a billion dollars… and I would almost be OK with that.
I like to imagine it would reduce the collateral damage the rest of society faces when these people have a dick waving contest.
Roided out billionaires with their hearts exploding out their chests from experimental steroids would really mix things up in a good way. He’ll maybe we’d get some truly sick cybernetic out of it too.
Wealth concentration is bad, so multiple billionaires is better than one super-duper-billionaire.
Y…yeah … sure. Yeah totally. The last one standing totally gets to keep everything and will absolutely be leaving the arena alive. Yup. That’s how we’ll do it.
This guy gets it.
Kat and Kropp get in an argument over the war as they rest from an hour’s worth of drill (occasioned by Tjaden’s not saluting a major properly). Kat believes the war would be over if leaders gave all the participants “the same grub and the same pay,” as he says in a rhyme. Kropp believes the leaders of each country should fight each other in an arena to settle the war; the “wrong” people currently do the fighting.
Erich Maria Remarque - All Quiet on the Western Front 1929
Bill Gates seeks redemption by giving away blood money and blackmailing younger fellow satan worshipers. What a jerk. Fuck him.
I got downvoted on Lemmy the other day because I said that I prefer Bill Gates to Musk.
Maybe there are things about Gates I don’t know. Maybe he is actually quite an evil person; I don’t know. But he does at least spend billions of dollars helping vulnerable people, right? And Bill’s stances on global politics are far more sensible than those of Musk.
Nuance is lost on a lot of people on here. All billionaires bad therefore no billionaire is preferred. While I agree there’s no good billionaire there’s a spectrum of bad. Like would I rather break my pelvis or break my legs? Both are bad but one is preferable.
None are preferable. Nobody should have that much wealth, power, and influence.
None are preferable.
Yes, that is accepted.
But, given the reality that billionaires do exist, one that spends his money curing diseases is less bad than one who is closing hospitals serving war round populations or actively starving people.
I think making value judgements on individuals is a counterproductive use of our time, energy, and voice. That’s what I’m trying to point out.
If we focused on root causes and the change we’d like to see to solve those problems, we’d be smooth sailing as a world already.
Thanks for proving my point.
The nuance is less important, it’s not worth wasting your breath on - and if people focused on root causes of the dysfunction and the change needed to solve the issues plaguing our societies - we’d be much better off.
The nuance isn’t lost to me, I just don’t care to quantify it and then shout it to the heavens. It makes no difference to me whether Elon Musk is worse than Bill Gates. They can duke that battle out themselves if they care to.
Didn’t some nations in Africa ask Gates to stop helping?
I will wager that some people from some nations asked him to stop helping based solely on the fact that we can’t get millions of people to reliably agree on anything.
There are no good billionaires. But I must agree that Bill Gates cannot be compared to Elon Musk. Bill has done evil, but his evil doesn’t compare to what Elon Musk is doing right now
Not sure. Bill gates ex-wife told his relation with Eipstein was the reason of its divorce.
Which is bad. Bad that motherfucker also made windows, which is worst. I hate Elon but he didn’t make my computer BSOD every half an hour
He absolutely can be compared to Musk – he’s better than musk.
I think it’s a silly to waste one’s time struggling over deciding which one is worse. They’re both billionaires who spend hundreds of millions of dollars undermining the public interest. Gates just cares more about his PR than Musk.
I get what you’re saying 100%, but it’s really not a struggle to decide which one is worse.
The massive cock slobbering that Warren Buffet got at his Woodstock of Capitalism last week was nauseating. All the media were fawning over how he’s still a small-town Nebraska bumpkin. I have to hand it to him he crafted his image perfectly as a “good billionaire” too.
Oh but I heard he lives in a humble little house in Omaha!
“Humble Little House in Omaha”----->
Yeah i agree with the point you’re trying to make but I know some people with a bigger house and they’re office goons, not rich people
They’re tone deaf. Comparatively that property IS humble in the world of billionaires. But that ain’t no roach infested bachelor.
That is his house? It is far from a simple house. It looks quite fancy.
It’s a ship of Theseus situation. Apparently it’s the “same” house he bought in 1953… at this point though it’s just the same property.
Gates was born in 1955 though… Spooky music
For the wealthiest man in the world, this is a pretty modest house.
Yep well said
You obviously never had a blue screen of death after a night of unsaved work the day before your thesis presentation
People on lemmy know that “A is better than B” means “A is good.” You have to learn to speak the language.
Down to the wire, though, if Elon is responsible for killing the world’s poorest children of today then that logic should translate to Bill Gate’s being responsible for killing the world’s poorest children of yesterday.
It’s pot and kettle. Gate’s might have used his position of great wealth for some good things but there are also some… questionable things. According to him his conversations with Epstein were ‘huge mistakes’… this is, of course, referring to Gate’s relationship with Epstein - something that took place after Epstein was convicted of sex crimes.
Idk, something for your brain to chew on.
Well yes, but no. If you see capitalism, which includes billionaires having a right to exist, as a set standard, I would 100% agree with you. But billionaires shouldn’t even exist in the first place. You only become a billionaire, by either massively exploiting your workerforce, capitalising every single aspect of your product/customer and not redirecting your profits back to society. We shouldn’t live in a world, where we are cheering for people giving away their money, that they shouldn’t own in the first place. There is no ethic way to be a billionaire.
To prevent misunderstandings: I 100% agree, that this is actually a good thing, but we still have to raise awareness about the societal and political problems of billionaires existing in the first place.
I agree it should be illegal and it is immoral, but these are the current rules of the game. It’s not that Bill Gates is necessarily evil, the problem is how modern states and societies distribute wealth, which is based on a credit system where small incomes are dominated by large incomes (owners get most of the credit). The guise is that they also assume the risk but we know that very rich people eventually gain political power to mitigate that risk on the many not rich people. The problem then is that there is no easy way for not rich people to self organize and distribute credit more fairly, which also needs to distribute risk as well. Cause at the end of the day, it is about two things: people wanting to avoid risk and yielding credit and people accumulating wealth and gaining political power, over many generations. That said, Musk is a very twisted and malicious personality while Bill Gates is more of a typical rich entitled person with a savior complex.
. It’s not that Bill Gates is necessarily evil
he made everybody pay 50 bucks on their computer just to have the privilege to have a blue screen of death right before saving your master thesis.
I would like to recommend listening to the Behind the Bastards episodes on Bill Gates. He’s a piece of shit. Not as bad as Elon, but that’s not really the point.
Yeah maybe there’s stuff I’m not aware of. I’ve seen some people on Lemmy point out that Bill Gates lobbied for the University of Oxford to not open source their Covid vaccine. I suppose that seems shitty on the face of it.
Yeah, he’s a bit of a shit. That would not surprise me in the least.
Musk is a shitturd but he didn’t make windows.
I mean Gates donated his own money to help the poorest people in the world. Elon spent his money to become president so he could steal money from the poor at people in the world.
Gates donated his money to avoid taxes and start a big pharma company.
He’s right
In the sense that it’s two Spider-Men pointing at each other
So are you Bill. You utter piece of shit.
Fuck all Billionaires
“I haven’t killed as many kids in so short a timeframe,” is the implication here.
Bill Gates might hold the record for number of starving babies saved and illnesses cured, though.
Even if you think his wealth is stolen, can you prove the average american would have done more good with it?
But plenty of Americans are still dying of malnutrition, dehydration, heat stroke, hypothermia, and many other preventable diseases. You think we’d be worse off if the average American had more money?
And nothing against helping starving children in foreign countries or whatnot, but if we’re so bad off that people think more police and prisons are the answer we’re clearly underinvesting in our own well-being.
Dehydration is a major cause of pediatric illness and death worldwide, some number between 14% and 30% of fatalities in infants and toddlers.
In the USA it does not even make the top 10, with some number lower than 1.6% according to the CDC.
You’re actually required by law to provide drinkable water to people who ask in some states, though there is no federal recognition. There are also many programs to assist with heating and cooling for those who cannot afford it.
You don’t deserve an extra side of fries more than a starving child in Afghanistan. Get over yourself.
Side of fries? How about a side of affordable housing, affordable health care, and free quality education?
Assume Bill Gates is worth 102,200,000,000 according to Forbes
That could be split evenly among 340 Million americans as $300 each.
Can you afford housing and education with an extra $300?
Not all of us need $300. I don’t and I’m not asking for it. I’m asking for more help for the people that will die or turn to crime because their needs aren’t met.
I’m out of the loop.
I’m not down with hoarding of wealth or the shit software he’s made, but what are the allegations against Gates? (The legit ones, not the “he’s putting microchips in Covid vaccines” shit)
I must have missed those, thanks for reminding me. Btw can u recommed podcast similiar to behind the bastards.
Well, if you like BtB, you’ll probably enjoy any and all Cool Zone Media pods.
But if I take similar here to mean: Episodic true history that is partly educational, partly comedic, with an air of “How the fuck did this ever happen?”
There are a few that fit:
- Sawbones: A Marital Tour of Misguided Medicine
- Darknet Diaries
- Sixteenth Minute (of Fame)
- If Books Could Kill
- You’re Wrong About
- Build For Tomorrow
Some other ones that I always recommend:
- You Are Not So Smart
- Team Human
- Cory Doctorow’s Craphound
- Molly White’s Citation Needed
- Very Bad Wizards
- Knifepoint Horror
Cory Doctorow’s Craphound
Oh, I didn’t know he had a podcast! Added, thanks
Thanks for the list! I have started to “You Are Not So Smart” and I already like it.
Motherfucker met with Epstein multiple times. That should be enough to say he is just as bad as Elon.
He is also buying up farm land for pennies on the dollar for himself. His education reform was such a painful failure we continue to pay for it. The gates foundation thought they knew mkre than educators and spent a shit ton of money to run an experiment.“aimed at making teachers more effective” my ass. How do you make people more effective when you don’t listen to their needs? Time and time again bill turned educators away or straight up didn’t listen to them when they expressed concerns. Kinda reminds me of doge raiding the department of education now that I think about it. Bill just fucked shit up in a more clean non obvious manner.
He continues to hoard his wealth and placate everyone with his “i am going to donate a lot, don’t worry fellas” statements. Bill why are you waiting til 2045 to donate $200 billion? Why not fight elon now if you are so worried? Because he isn’t.
He is evil just like the rest of them. He has just done a better job at reorganizing the skeletons in the closet over the years to stop people questioning.
Yeah this just seems like a troll or argument for the sake of argument. It’s just too preposterous an argument
Did Melon discover Lemmy?
Gates has history of lawsuits against open source projects. And he actively donates against any real systemic change. For example he has invested heavily in carbon capture technology which is useless to making impact to climate change.
During the pandemic, he crippled COVID-19 vaccination efforts in the global south by pressuring Oxford not to open source their vaccine.
https://www.wired.com/story/opinion-the-world-loses-under-bill-gates-vaccine-colonialism/
Question is, how many vaccines would those countries have got if it wasn’t patented?
AstraZeneca sold the vaccines without making a profit
The Gates Foundation backpedaled that stance shortly after. Their initial objection was over quality assurance.
The Gates Foundation backpedaled that stance shortly after
can you provide a source for this?
Their initial objection was over quality assurance
Who is he to decide this? He is not an epidemiologist or a public health expert or a leader of a low-resource nation or even a health professional. He’s a tech billionaire. This is exactly the problem.
Many large US companies, including pharmaceutical drug retailers, directly invest in the Gates Foundation Trust, creating a massive conflict of interest which is rarely talked about.
The Gates Foundation backpedaled that stance shortly after
can you provide a source for this?
Literally the first search result LINK
Who is he to decide this?
He was cohosting the multinational committee event for Gavi, a vaccine alliance which includes the WHO ans UNICEFF. He is widely respected there because he runs an organization which spent decades of providing medicines and vaccines across the globe.
Literally the first search result LINK
This appears to be just a statement of support for “narrow” patent waviers during the pandemic. This is not the same as open licensing the Oxford vaccine and calling this “backpedaling” is misleading at best.
Goalpost successfully shifted, gj team
Just imagine a World where ALL governments, ALL schools of all countries did not have to pay a fee to the then world richest man.
Imagine if a fraction of those governments invested instead on infrastructure, both physical (imagine literal bridges going to schools) and software (as some are doing now) or better paid teachers. Imagine that some of that money would be invested in Linux, gcompris, etc.
That’s the genuine cost of Gates wealth.
Think I’m a “communist” for thinking that? Well I guess then the American DoJ is on that boat too because the 2001 antitrust law case was a landmark, not a matter of my opinion.
So… yes, he’s a billionaire who did donate a lot of money, but how did he get that money in the first place? It wasn’t his to donate to.
Bonus : as others also highlighted Gates isn’t sadly just about software, he’s also, unfortunately, about intellectual property more broadly (because that is how he made his fortune) in health business (not health care) cf e.g. https://www.wired.com/story/opinion-the-world-loses-under-bill-gates-vaccine-colonialism/
If he stole tens of billions from the Americans then donated it to starving children in the poorest region, isn’t that still a net possitive? It’s like the tech dystopian Robin Hood.
In your analogy that’d still be Robin Hood coming from a very rich family, accumulating more wealth that anybody he knows around him, fighting with his best friends to keep more, getting indicted by the most powerful government on Earth because he abused his power… then giving only a very small fraction of his wealth to some starving children while still sitting in his mansions, accumulating still more money without working.
That’s not the Robin Hood of my childhood to say the least. To me that’s clearly not a net positive.
I do recommend listening to the episode of Behind the Bastards to get a clearer view of the entire process, not “just” imagining a “net positive” outcome regardless of the path that lead to it.
Edit : sorry but while re-reading what I wrote, somehow confabulating the richest man on Earth for years to Robin Hood shows how excellent his PR work was. Like… what the fuck?!
Small Fraction?! It’s been over 90% of income for decades, recently he’s vowed to distribute 99% of not just income but total wealth.
“Forbes magazine ranked him as the world’s wealthiest person for 18 out of 24 years between 1995 and 2017, including 13 years consecutively from 1995 to 2007. He became the first centibillionaire in 1999, when his net worth briefly surpassed $100 billion. According to Forbes, as of May 2025, his net worth stood at US$113 billion, making him the thirteenth-richest individual in the world.”
Wake up. Not Robin Hood.
That doesn’t argue any of the things that I said.
He’s the lesser of two weevils, though.
Let him out his money where his mouth is
The lesser of two evils are still evil
Yep. Equally evil.
- One guy already donates $100B and pledging most of his fortune
- other guy a Nazi who not only makes no donations despite being at times richest person on the planet, but leveraged his wealth to end government programs assisting the less fortunate both in the us and globally
I can see how these look the same. /s
Woosh
He kinda already has. Supposedly already over 100B in charitable donations and has pledged another 100B (basically all of his fortune at) over the next 20 years
Cool story, Bill. Who did you donate to? Why did you cut your philanthropic efforts to fight climate change and disease? Why have you and your buddies fought for minimizing and coopting government for years? Bill isn’t innocent in all this, it’s just a good time to blame Elon. Don’t get me wrong, Elon 100% deserves it, but that doesn’t mean that Bill isn’t playing the PR game here.
Wrong place for “both sides the same”. Sure, any of us could do more, and billionaires could do a lot more, but you’re equating a Nazi cutting entire government programs to aid the most vulnerable here and abroad, with a billionaire who has donated a significant portion of his personal wealth to aid humanity, including eradicating diseases
He made windows. For that alone we should luigi him
Nah, I saw a year or two back that Bill was pulling back from his climate and disease philanthropy. I think this is just him jumping on a chance to do some PR by dunking on Musk.
There was a recent announcement where he reiterated a goal of giving away 99% of his wealth! Of course you could quibble about his choices of charity and how he built his wealth, but the formerly wealthiest person in the US giving away 99% is a huge deal, and we can not dream of other billionaires following suit.
While Musk isn’t retired yet, how much has he donated to any cause? Yes, Musk deserves this PR dunk
What purpose does he need PR work done?
Well, a few things:
-
they say the only bad press is no press.
-
We’re at a moment where anger against the wealthiest people on the planet has never been higher, except maybe during a revolution. Bill is among this group, and he’s likely cognizant that Dingus and Doofus up in DC are exacerbating that sentiment. Maybe he’s hedging his bets to keep from getting put against the wall.
-
Didn’t he fly to Epstein Island? Wasn’t it shortly after we found out about that that Melinda divorced him? Probably not the most recent thing he’d like to be remembered for.
-
Do you have a source? The only thing I can see is much more recent, and isn’t philanthropy, but lobbying.
He’s apparently reduced his climate change related lobbying under the new administration… which sounds like a rational response, because this administration is actively hostile to any and all climate change initiatives.
What’s the point in donating to lobby for windmills when Don
QuixoteCheeto is in charge?Frankly, I don’t. I read something about it a while back, and I remember being really disappointed that he was stepping back from that.
Cool story bro.
Why did Bill fly on Epstein’s Lolita Express?
Mmm yes. This is why I Lemmy. This article had so many bots praising him on Reddit. Refreshing to hear something other than boot licking
Imagine how much extra money the countries of the world would have if they didnt have to pay for microsoft licenses and stuff like dat
Never would have guessed world hunger and disease are because countries spent all their money on Windows licenses, great take
Lmao. Not windows alone, but i think there is a larger point to be made about recurring costs to governments from licenses, patents, monopolies, unrepairability, etc. Military spending is one that that is heavily affected by all of those and famously the world spends trillions on military, so there should be many billions of dollars that can be saved.
It’s their fault also, they could have switch to other systems
Yes, but Gates personally has been lobbying leaders all over the world for decades whenever there was any sort of momentum of governments switching to Linux. Sadly politicians are often corrupt or at least easy to manipulate.
Why did you cut your philanthropic efforts to fight climate change and disease? Why have you and your buddies fought for minimizing
The problem is that billionaires should not exist but come on. $80 billion already donated. $7 Billion more just for Africa. Hundreds of millions in malaria research.
Could he do more? Sure. But attacking someone who is doing a little because he isn’t doing more doesn’t seem fair.
Years ago Elon said he was disappointed when he met Bill Gates because Gates only wanted to talk about philanthropy and climate.
The problem is that billionaires should not exist but come on. $80 billion already donated. $7 Billion more just for Africa. Hundreds of millions in malaria research.
Philanthropists hoarding wealth and resources and then getting to choose which of the poors to allow to have any is actually part of the problem, even if it makes you feel good.
We saw that when Gates leveraged his contributions to force a vaccine that had been developed with public money for the benefit of humankind, to become patent locked and hard for the Third World to access or afford.
The problem is that the theft begins by simply becoming a billionaire in the first place. You don’t get to be one by playing nice and not exploiting a lot of people and rules along the way. Sure the government could be blamed some for not having enough regulations in place to prevent/stop that, but capitalism ensures that businesses exploit any available loophole possible to maximize profit, otherwise you’re a bad business.
While I can respect a lot of those philanthropic efforts, those should not be his decisions alone to make. That money should’ve been paid into taxes and distributed in agreed upon ways. $7 Billion dollars to Africa is just great, but it could do a lot of help here, too. I have no issues with sending $7B to Africa, but that sure seems like something the people should agree upon first, through some sort of national aid, and not as an effort to spare the conscience of an aging billionaire.
Fuck all billionaires. Every. Last. One. Forever.
The problem is that the theft begins by simply becoming a billionaire in the first place.
That’s why that was my first sentence!
The problem is that billionaires should not exist but come on.
Was your first point. I expanded on it by calling out that it is specifically theft and then going further to illustrate that he was using that theft to make personal choices about how that money should be spent, compounding the reasons I find this distasteful.
Forgiving it simply because it’s philanthropy plays exactly into their narrative. Don’t buy it! Don’t defend billionaires to any extent.
theft implies violating laws, which few billionaires explicitly do, because other billionaires made the laws and intentionally provide legal methods to extract wealth from the poor.
He DID violate the law.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bundling_of_Microsoft_Windows
Also those antitrust trials
while i don’t think it should be a moral issue, i think we need to stop trying to make this a fair argument out of some desire to be on some high ground here. what you described is fucked up and we should give them no latitude. it is theft even if they made the laws. the staggering level of difference in energy put forth versus compensation is ridiculous. When someone makes more in an hour than their least paid employee will gross over their entire lifetime…there should be no justification for the billionaire’s existence.
Still the wrong conversation. Yes he was appropriately villainized for anticompetitive behavior running Microsoft, accumulating excessive wealth at the expense of many others, but come on ……
I have no issues with sending $7B to Africa, but that sure seems like something the people should agree upon first,
Just no. His philanthropy, his wealth. His choice.
But I’m with you on inadequate taxation for the wealthy, and that we have a responsibility as a country to help the less privileged of humanity, and should not just assume someone’s personal largesse.
Not his wealth. That’s my point.
While I can respect a lot of those philanthropic efforts, those should not be his decisions alone to make. That money should’ve been paid into taxes and distributed in agreed upon ways.
As a capitalist, all of his solutions are capitalist. His efforts to slow climate change are primarily technological, with a focus on unproven horseshit like carbon capture rather than proven improvements like better, less car centric urban planning and reducing meat intake. He would never even consider an strategy of economic degrowth to fight climate change even though available evidence shows that that is exactly what we need.
I think we’re well past the chance of urban designing our way out of the climate collapse.
We need to make major changes in our consumption to even make a dent, but I say our best shot is cold fusion and carbon capture. Those are obvious longshots.
We’ve created a runaway greenhouse gas effect. Even if we cut emissions to 0 temperatures will continue to climb.
Obviously cutting emissions to 0 would give us more time to fix this mess though
We need to make major changes in our consumption to even make a dent, but I say our best shot is cold fusion and carbon capture. Those are obvious longshots.
I would argue for extensive rewilding as an alternative
Both are good. I’m not convinced it’ll be enough to stop things, but a massive help still
yeah we need every tool at our disposal fs
Well now no US tax money is going to Africa, since people voted for Trump. Most Americans would rather see Africans exploited, starve and die than pay a bit more in taxes.
Gates has history of lawsuits against open source projects. And he actively donates against any real systemic change. For example he has invested heavily in carbon capture technology which is useless to making impact to climate change.
I resist the urge to become a billionaire every day.
I’ve allowed trillions of dollars to continue circulating in the global economy, undisturbed by my whims.
I’m a goddamn philanthropic hero compared to Gates.
And you can tell I’m better than him, cuz I didn’t have to slap my name on a “Foundation For Leaving People The Fuck Alone” to do it.
At least your ego is bigger than a billionaires fortune
This is the way. Thank you for your forward-thinking, non-reactionary contribution.
If classical conditioning reliably alters human behavior, we know negative conditioning like existential threats to 0.1% will indeed work, but never as well as positive reinforcement. It’s only for lack of opportunity to reward the good that we resort to punishing the bad, so when opportunities to use positive reinforcement present themselves, jump on them!
Concretely, if tomorrow the wealthiest of the world became avid philanthropists like Gates and divested as much as he has, the impact would be singular. It would feel like the first daybreak in human history. We’d still need to fix the systems that gave us monsters, but the friction preventing necessary reform would vanish.
Microsoft is perhaps the most complicit tech company in Israel’s illegal apartheid regime and ongoing genocide against 2.3 million Palestinians in Gaza. Microsoft’s complicity in Israel’s apartheid and genocide is well documented, exposing its strong ties to the Israeli military, its collaboration with Israeli government ministries, and its involvement in the Israeli prison system, which is notorious for systematic torture and abuse of Palestinians. Microsoft knowingly provides Israel with technology, including artificial intelligence (AI), that is deployed to facilitate grave human rights violations, war crimes, crimes against humanity (including apartheid), as well as genocide. In light of the International Court of Justice’s legally-binding rulings to prevent Israel’s plausible genocide in Gaza, as well as its July 19 Advisory Opinion affirming Israel’s illegal occupation and apartheid system, Microsoft has failed its corporate obligation to prevent genocide, war crimes and crimes against humanity. Microsoft, as well as its boards of directors and executives, may face criminal liability for this complicity.
Microsoft provides the Israeli military with Azure cloud and AI services that are crucial in empowering and accelerating Israel’s genocidal war on 2.3 million Palestinians in the illegally occupied Gaza Strip. Microsoft’s extensive ties with Israel’s military are revealed in investigations by The Guardian with the Israeli-Palestinian publication +972 Magazine, demonstrating how the Israeli military turned to Microsoft to meet the technological demands of genocide.
The 7 billion to Africa isn’t as nice as it first seems either; it’s investments into venture capitalist solutions, much more restrictive that aid and the profits are not realized by the locals
https://www.commondreams.org/views/2022/12/02/perhaps-bill-gates-not-best-expert-hunger-africa
https://www.commondreams.org/views/2022/11/10/open-letter-bill-gates-food-farming-and-africa
Bill Gates hasn’t been CEO of Microsoft in 25 years. He left completely in 2008.
He didn’t completely leave, he’s literally the technical advisor listed under “key people” for Microsoft
Saytalla seeking advice doesn’t mean Gates is making the business decisions.
And claiming Microsoft cloud services are worse than RTX’s actual bombs that kill children is a stretch.
And claiming Microsoft cloud services are worse than RTX’s actual bombs that kill children is a stretch.
They all kill children and I boycott them all. You’re the only one running defense by minimizing Microsoft’s role here.
For example, Amazon, Google and Microsoft have all launched major cloud computing centres in Israel, offering businesses infrastructure critical to data-driven products and services. Intel is the largest private employer in the country, having commenced operations in 1974.
Along with hundreds of other multinationals, Microsoft hosts its own research and development (R&D) centre in Israel, and it launched a chip development centre in Haifa. Nvidia, the trillion-dollar chip behemoth powering the AI revolution, has also announced it is expanding its already large R&D operations in Israel. The list goes on
Gates’ advice is reportedly treated as gospel, and he also played a crucial role in fostering Microsoft and OpenAI’s partnership, and consequently, the success witnessed in the category.
Claiming Gates isn’t heavily involved and influential in the business decisions is just straight up untrue, stop whitewashing his contributions to genocide.
In summary, Bill Gates’s relationship with Israel is characterized by his admiration for the country’s technological innovation and his significant investments through Microsoft and the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation. While he has not publicly engaged in the political aspects of the Israel/Palestine conflict, his actions and statements suggest a supportive stance toward Israel’s role in global technology. This support is evident in his continued investments and public recognition of Israel’s achievements in digital security and biotechnology.
They all kill children and I boycott them all.
You know what actually supports Israel? Food imports. You should be boycotting American, Swiss, German and Dutch farm produce. Cut off their food and they can’t bomb.
Along with hundreds of other multinationals, Microsoft hosts its own research and development (R&D) centre in Israel,
Any company with an office in Israel? You boycott every large business? EVERY ONE? Apple, AMD, Intel, ARM? They are all in Israel. How are you even replying to this post without uses the CPU’s that you claim to boycott?
and he also played a crucial role in fostering Microsoft and OpenAI’s partnership
AI isn’t killing children. Israeli leaders are killing children. OpenAI is super charged spell checker. Have you even used it? It fixes the grammar. It helps write software. But so did autocomplete before LLM’s.
Claiming Gates isn’t heavily involved
Are you an executive at Microsoft? Because if you aren’t YOU DON’T KNOW THAT.
https://www.techspot.com/news/107724-sources-detail-growing-rift-between-sam-altman-satya.html
Cool story, Soup. Who did you donate to?
“Donate” = tax evasion
Oh no, millions of human lives saved by “tax evasion”, let me clutch my pearls closer
Saved my ball. He’s using poor people it to trail untested vaccines
You have a generally submissive mindset, dont ya? I bet you tip your landlord
Nobody, but I voted for Harris. Last I saw, Gates was cutting back on donating to his foundation that fights infectious diseases in the developing world.
So you’re just whingeing online about someone who plans to spend 99% of their wealth on saving millions of lives, while you’ve done fuck-all.
Let me stop what I’m doing so I can clap for you and your moral high ground.
Oh no, not my ego!
It’s not his wealth. It’s ours. Heard of the windows tax?
Surprised I had to scroll so long for this article. This is probably the best example (recent history too) of Bill’s actions killing kids.
I’m still glad he called Elon out. Let them fight.
This isn’t Bill’s action, it’s Bill’s inaction. As per those articles, all he did was not support the waiver of patents, which ultimately wasn’t his decision anyway? He claimed that it would not significantly change production, or at least not quickly enough to matter.
It still seems shitty, but comparing to Elon? Who is actively cutting off the flow of medication that has already been manufactured and paid for - to dying children?
Allowing tuberculosis patients to lapse partway through treatment, thereby allowing drug resistant TB to skyrocket in impoverished communities and by extension the entite world?
Effectively guaranteeing a death sentence for infected children, who will experience a relapse of a horrifying but completely curable disease? Children who will not be able to afford the diagnostics and treatments for a second round because they are orders of magnitude more expensive for drug-resistant TB?
This isn’t Bill’s action, it’s Bill’s inaction.
If you had read the article, you would know that he very actively pressured Oxford not to open license the vaccine, leveraging his $750 million donation to the university for vaccine research.
Really? Show me where.
It claims that he bragged about doing so, and links to another article.
But that other article doesn’t support that claim with any evidence that he pressured them to keep their patent, that he bragged about it, or had any say in the final decision.
We went to Oxford and said, Hey, you’re doing brilliant work,” Bill Gates told reporters on June 3, a transcript shows. “But … you really need to team up.” The comments were first reported by Bloomberg.
AstraZeneca, one of the U.K.’s two major pharma companies, may have demanded an exclusive license in return for doing a deal, said Ken Shadlen, a professor at the London School of Economics and an authority on pharma patents—a theory supported by comments from CEO Soriot.
"We simply don’t know what’s in these deals,” he said. “The biopharma industry is applying old rules of commercial confidentiality in a situation that is unprecedented.”
Really? Show me where.
It claims that he bragged about doing so
The sentence after where it says that… You have ctrl f. Use it.
that other article doesn’t support that claim with any evidence that he pressured them to keep their patent, that he bragged about it, or had any say in the final decision.
Not sure what “evidence” you want… Bill Gates said it was true himself and did multiple interviews talking about it which are not hard to find. Every article I can find online says the same story - that Oxford initially planned to open license the vaccine and then Gates pressured them to change course.
I agree. The difference between the two is stark.
Musk is doing other things. He’s a mass polluter having launched thousands of rockets each burning a shit load of fuel, distributing heavy mentals into the statosphere, q and punching holes in the Ozone layer.
No need for envy. He owns enough farmland that he can easily top Musk by rising prices to let many more children starve to death.
Gates does own 80 percent of US farmland, for anyone interested
Not just the poorest and not just children.
Not just Musk. https://bdsmovement.net/microsoft
Bill gates is always spending his money eradicating diseases. Maybe he can eradicate this musk disease too
Shit pot, meet turd kettle.
The guys made windows
Is that a defence or something else?
If it’s a defence, bear in mind that Windows is dogshit.
He should have just raped kids like the others.
I personally sent an email to him at 12 saying his software was shit.
He never answered
Dang Gates looks old.
