I was promised Bill Gates would give me 5G’s with a vaccine.
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.
Remember there are no good billionaires. No amount of “good” they do will ever be enough.
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.
Yeah, but that’s why it’s great to see them fighting each other. Nobody else seems able to do it better.
Fighting lol…
Sure, but Bill Gates is as benign as it gets.
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.
Not to jump down your throat over it - I just hate that he’s managed to erase the shitty things he’s done by donating the money he got by doing shitty things.
You’re exhausting.
Yes, all billionaires are bad, just like all mountains are big. But some mountains are bigger than others. Amazing concept, I know.
Evil isn’t graded on a scale, bud.
This thread is so embarrassing.
The real world isn’t binary, bud.
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 🤣
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.
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.
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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.
👅👢
Calling a billionaire “benign” then getting pissy when I give evidence to the contrary is weak shit.
Also, so long as we’re trading insults i think ill go with “Fragile Ego Piss Baby who thinks some boots don’t taste that bad”
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.
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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.
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.
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.
Well he can’t exactly kill the world 's richest, can he? Its a stronger indictment about the risks of wealth inequality than about the morality of the rich.
So are you Bill. You utter piece of shit.
Fuck all Billionaires
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
“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)
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
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
Thanks for the list! I have started to “You Are Not So Smart” and I already like it.
Cory Doctorow’s Craphound
Oh, I didn’t know he had a podcast! Added, thanks
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?!
Edit2: oh yeah and Robin Hood would fight for Big Pharma during a worldwide pandemic, … no, absolutely NOT Robin Hood.
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.
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?
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.
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.
Sounds more like someone has seen the world turning on the worthless shit that are billionaires NOT that someone has seen the light and wants to make the world a better place…
The Gates Foundation has been donating medicine, food, and water to the world’s poorest regions for over almost 30 years, Bill Gates alone has contributed over 100 Bn USD and intends to donated an additional 100 Bn in the next few years.
This isn’t just some 11th hour last minute PR stunt.
Credit where credit is due, Bill Gates has been putting his money where his mouth is for decades now.
Yeah, TBF that foundation has done a lot of good.
If he had done that, he wouldn’t be as wealthy as he is today. Billionaires being billionaires is a big part of the problem, and the only way to remedy that is for them to not be billionaires anymore.
Wealth is not money.
All wealth can be turned into money.
There’s a slight issue though - it can’t.
It can though.
Nope.
We don’t don’t need princes or kings doing PR. If we taxed billionaires out of existence we could fund that and so much more. This guy doesn’t get to make up for whatever he was doing on Epstein’s plane, at least not without coming clean first.
You can’t tax wealth. Wealth is not money.
It was on the Kamala Harris campaign website that she supported an unrealized gains tax for amounts over $1 Million USD.
Conservatives were freaking out that it might “destroy the economy which relies on foreign investors to prop up the value of USD” lmao.
Everyone should freak out, because it’s an utter lunacy.
Compared to the Republican Shitshow destroying the economy anyways and the infinitely stacking Billionnaire wealth hack it sounds like a dream come true.
The Chinese would figure out a way to get their stock market fix, the USA ended up loaning their gains from the transactions to struggling countries anyways so China divesting in the USA would just cut out the middleman.
We tax things that aren’t money all the time, see property taxes.
I have no clue who are “we” in your case, but we don’t tax property.
These are not actually property taxes. Stamp duty is like VAT, it’s a transaction tax and its rate is very low. You don’t pay stamp duty while owning a property. Council tax is a weird abomination and while it is linked to property value in theory, in practice you’ll pay the same amount if you live in a £1m house or £50m mansion. Business rates are for business, and property owners don’t pay them, only those who rent.
There are no property taxes in the UK. The current government is thinking about land tax, but we’ll see if it ever comes to fruition.
So if we tax them on wealth they doesn’t exist. Do we tax regular folk on the cost of their houses also? I mean they are worth billions but not till they sell.
If your wealth is enough to serve as security for a credit line that you use to fund your daily spending, it’s enough to be taxed.
I pay property taxes based on the value of my home, but what home is worth billions?
I think you can simultaneously be pro-tax and acknowledge Bill Gates is a good person in a sea of villains.
We could do so much more, but would we? USAID was just shuttered. There’s every chance that money would go into the military industrial complex or something equally unpleasant.
Not defending billionaires as a concept (they shouldn’t exist, and most aren’t as philanthropic as Bill), but I will acknowledge he’s doing a lot of good with his money.
If we had been taxing billionaires for the last 50 years, the education system wouldn’t be where it is now and USAID would have never been under threat. In fact USAID would have probably never had to operate within the US.
It’s also worth mentioning Gates has made our public education system worse by introducing us to the voucher system. Billionaires are part of why we don’t spend our tax dollars on things like universal healthcare or free college.
Bill gates is always spending his money eradicating diseases. Maybe he can eradicate this musk disease too
Dang Gates looks old.
Uh oh! That’s TERRORISM! if Bill Gates DOESNT want to be a Terrorist MAYBE he should Shoot up a School INSTEAD!
Shit pot, meet turd kettle.
At least this one follows the advice of his PR team. 🙄 but yeah.
Got banned for saying this on Reddit . Also uhh fuck you Billy boy
Not just the poorest and not just children.
Not just Musk. https://bdsmovement.net/microsoft
Elon is a Nazi
