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He's not a CEO any more, but Bill Gates is on a mission to die a mere millionaire, and I think has already given away more than half his net worth.
Bill Gates is a massive piece of shit. Don't let all the propaganda he puts out there fool you. When you start looking closer at his so-called charity work it's not nearly as pretty as you might think.
I personally prefer all billionaires follow his path.
I've looked at his charities too over the last few years and didn't see anything that was questionable.
Anything you want to call out?
Bill Gates fucked the public school systems pretty hard.
Something I think is extremely fucked up in general is that if you have millions to throw at a pet cause, you will disproportionately benefit your cause over other causes in a non-democratic manner. That means that every individual and organization involved in fields related to your pet projects are incentivized to focus on your pet projects over others. Because you have so much money, you basically individually shape public policy.
Look at the WHO (source):
...over 80 per cent of WHO’s funding relies on “voluntary contributions,” meaning any amount of money given freely by donors, whether member states, NGOs, philanthropic organisations or other private entities.
The Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation alone is responsible for over 88 per cent of the total amount donated by philanthropic foundations to the WHO. Other contributors include the Bloomberg Family Foundation (3.5 per cent), the Wellcome Trust (1.1 per cent) and the Rockefeller Foundation (0.8 per cent).
So yeah, it's great that they donate so much... but that also means they can stop donating... so they have control.
Didn't know about the charter school thing. Charter schools are such bullshit. The idea is that we're going to get kids from public schools in impoverished areas into better schools... by causing the public schools to get LESS money?
The number one thing hurting education since the beginning of the system is the way it is funded. It is funded from property taxes collected in the school's district. So inevitably, poor areas get shit schools and rich areas get nice schools. It should instead all get pooled together nationwide and then handed out based on the number of students at each school.
Charter schools and private schools do nothing but hurt. Anyone feel differently? I'm usually open to having my mind changed.
Enthusiastically in agreement that funding of school districts and regional equity is a major problem. Funding is likely problem #1, but I think the problems with funding are more complex than just property taxes.
Concentrating poverty also creates poor areas and exacerbates the problem. It's so frustrating that there are so many NIMBY assholes that don't want affordable housing near them.
Could you be a little bit more specific with your criticisms of his charity?
He basically gave $54BN to the "Gates and Melinda Charity".
Guess who controls the charity?
Guess if the "Charity" pays taxes?
It's crazy how fast people simp for billionaires, old evil shitty hated-by-all billionaires too, just because they spend some publicities around.
Does control mean he can use the funds for personal things? Genuine question
No, it doesn't. And I'd guess that foundation is far more efficient with it's funds than most, given it doesn't need to advertise or ask for money.
People here are just desperate to find some reason to hate the guy.
And you to simp for his tax avoidance schemes lol.
There are far easier ways to avoid tax than this.
And better people to simp for
I get that you don't like billionaires, and that's understandable, but this is just sad.
I think that you don't understand the value of billions of dollars. He can do whatever he wants "for himself" with just $0.1BN. The rest is just a mental hoarding disease IMO.
They love buying companies, patents and so on, just because. Maybe they miss thst rush when they "earned" their first billion or something and, like a junkie, wants to feel it again.
I don't see how that's an answer to
Paul McGann'sthe question though.So you don't think he should give away any money or what?.
Where on earth did you read he's giving away money?
For example, researchers don't want "his money" because there are so many strings attached that whatever you discover, now it's under Bill Gates ownership.
I definitely don't have much love for the guy but my understanding is the money he put up to fight malaria has saved a bunch of lives.
The current situation as I understand it is that he makes more money from his investments than he gives away each year. If he was committed to giving all his money away like he said, wouldn't he... get on that? He's not getting any younger, why isn't he throwing cash at any good cause?
To be clear, I'm not "simping" for Bill Gates. No one becomes a billionaire ethically and I don't feel the need to defend him as a person. But I also don't just read a random comment on a website from some nobody without any evidence backing up their claim spouting any such nonsense they want, so I simply asked you to be more specific with your criticisms.
For what it's worth, replying to such a request with the kind of hostility you showed doesn't make me any more likely to take you at your word. You don't come off as knowing what you're talking about, so I don't think you're going to convince many people. Have a good day.
Lol, "I don't want to believe you because I don't like you".
How grown up!
Have a nice day you too!
That's not at all what I said. I don't even know you and have no opinion of you.
Yeah let's hear it. Please elaborate on your accusations and don't be so vague.
Some of that propaganda is in the form of material help to people around the world. Like sure, he's not great, no question. But if every other CEO funded global healthcare to the extent he did to whitewash their own problems, I wouldn't complain. Sure his charity work is by no means ideal, but even the ugly charity he does actually winds up saving lives.
The question was “are there any CEOs we should save” and the answer is still “not Bill Gates” in this context.
Which is why I responded to a sub comment and not the top question.
[citation needed]
At least he helped more people than you. So where does that put YOU?
False equivalence
That's some very sweet copium you have over there.
"You don't have the means and you don't help people, curious"
In camp "BG still has 4240000x times more money than me".
Not to mention he executed the "trolley problem meme" by killing a million to save a million. Now, he did not literally kill people (unlike some other CEOs I've heard about), but he did fuck over a ton of people, all in the name of "Business" (which is PR/propaganda for "greed").
He’s also harmed far more people than me, and the negative positive aspect is still net negative.
Bill Gates' net worth has grown substantially despite his philanthropy, rising from $126.8 billion in early 2023 to $156 billion in December 2024.
Regarding COVID-19 vaccines, Gates actively opposed patent waivers and influenced Oxford University to privatize its vaccine through AstraZeneca rather than keep it open-source. He pushed for maintaining intellectual property rights through COVAX, despite public funding supporting vaccine development.
Not a good guy by any metric.
Thats a good criticism but the CEO he put in charge of the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation went against him and supported waiving the patents anyways, which Biden and the WTO went ahead and did regardless.
His argument against the TRIPS terms was that it wouldn't actually increase production, that every facility capable of producing vaccines was doing so regardless of the patent's costs especially given that they only had to worry about intellectual properties when importing to countries where the patent is held.
He was wrong, I give you that, I think there is no room to be penny pinching and arguing when even 1 more vaccine could have saved lives. However, that doesn't even come close to offsetting the number of lives he has saved or improved by handing out vaccines and medicines for free across Africa. The vast majority of Gates' opponents are generally not fond of Dark Skinned people.
Watching people totally fall for Gates’s incredibly shallow face value self image propaganda bullshit is wild to me. FUCK that guy, so hard. One of the biggest reasons we have enshittification today is this one man.
My boss checks in on me occasionally with directness, and did so the other day:
"viva, how's it going?"
"I want to fight Bill Gates."This is understood to mean, "windows is fucked. My computer is fucked. All of this massive, utterly brutal buttfucking inconvenience could have been avoided at some point, and now isn't, because [our company] bought so hard into Microsoft's "business solutions" that there's no turning back, and because of the nuances of the problems you've asked me to solve, I am facing said brutal buttfucking inconvenience, and I'm mad about it."
Apologies for detailing the conversation, but I have noticed the implementation and configuration of MS products (something MS has no control over) really impacts their usability. For example, I worked at a soulless corporation that managed to set up PBI and ADO so there was no live feed of data (and they only allowed for the web version of PBI, which reduces functionality substantially). They were also so far behind on Office versions that the employees didn't know more than one person could update a file at a time. There are all sorts of very real reasons to dislike MS, but I do wonder how many people dislike them because of a stupid configuration.
incredibly shallow face value self image propaganda bullshit is wild to me.
He's given away billions of dollars, and that's face value to you? Besides, he hasn't been in control at Microsoft for decades at this point.
Also I don’t understand how you can defend a man who convinced a bunch of people to not give away the COVID vaccines for free. This is not the actions of a humanitarian. It’s the actions of a monster.
What is your source for that exactly?
A paywalled opinion piece. Really?
Can't search for shit yourself, really?
https://newrepublic.com/article/162000/bill-gates-impeded-global-access-covid-vaccines
Behind the bastards did a series on Bill Gates. It was a pretty big eye opener for me. All their sources are cited on their podcast. The info is out there if you want it.
We wouldn’t need him to make these donations if he actually paid his fucking taxes is the thing though. And it’s significantly less.
Eh? Even if he paid a 50% tax rate throughout his life, he'd still be a multi billionaire.
And taxes in the US don't typically end up in the developing world.
“In fiscal year 2020 (October 1, 2019 - September 30, 2020), the US government allocated $51.05 billion US dollars in economic and military assistance to foreign countries. Of this total, $39.41 billion dollars was spent on economic assistance, $25.64 billion of which was dispersed by USAID.”
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_foreign_aid
To say that the US doesn’t do foreign aid is just disingenuous. Also to assume that Gates only pays taxes in the US is also disingenuous.
He paid all the taxes he had to. And they just went to America's favourite pass times: war and proxy genocides.
“He paid all the taxes he had to” is such a ridiculous statement that I won’t be able to bring myself to take you seriously as a person anymore.
Do you know something IRS doesn't?
Yes, that there's no such thing as an ethical billionaire. I wonder what the computing landscape would look like if M$ hadn't spent three decades buying and closing every up and coming competitor they had.
And doing everything in their power to ensure that open source technology wasn’t the standard anymore.
Well, raise that question with IRS then, because right now he's fair and square and you're talking bull shit.
and that’s face value to you?
It is face value. How did he gain those billion? "Embrace, extend, and extinguish". Never forget.
Yeah how dare he run a tax scheme by
*checks notes
Saving millions of people across all of Africa by providing free healthcare for treatable diseases and potential pandemics?
I've noticed that some people really don't like Africans. I believe there's even a word for such behaviour, don't remember which one right now though...
“Not liking Bill Gates is racist” is such a stupid take that I don’t even know where to begin man.
Well, maybe you need to think twice next time you want to post dumb shit.
You’re an idiot.
What a comeback! Your argument skills are beyond imagination! Well done!
He was kind of a prick becoming a billionaire, so his is more of a redemption arc than a hero's journey.
Possibly, but still better than most.
Sure. I support him becoming a better person, or at least acting like it for the publicity, as long as we all understand what's going on.
Another bait?