Summary
Bill Gates criticized Elon Musk for his support of far-right politicians, including the UK’s Tommy Robinson and Germany’s AfD party, calling it “insane shit” and accusing Musk of destabilizing political systems.
Gates questioned Musk’s focus on divisive politics while managing global businesses like Tesla and SpaceX.
Gates also expressed concern about wealthy individuals influencing foreign elections.
Musk has faced backlash for controversial actions, including a Nazi salute.
I always forget Gates is one of the elite. Then I remember how ruthless and savage he was in the 80s.
Then I remember.
Didn’t he short Tesla?
And how he fought tooth and nail against generic versions of the covid vaccines being allowed, likely leading to thousands if not millions of deaths and many more getting sick in poorer countries where most people can’t afford name brand drugs.
had he actually cared, he should have demanded and funded research into them to either prove his point or fix the problem.
Further proof that Capitalism is a religion.
not religion. a disease of society
80s, 90s, and a few years into early 2000s. Gates ruthlessness lasted decades, destroyed many businesses and lives, and is mostly whitewashed thanks to his philanthropic efforts and a few reddit amas and some secret santa participation
Not to mention the destruction he did to computing as a whole. The nightmare of proprietary bullshit is something that he did not architect but he pushed heavily and lobbied for constantly. He had the position to push for interoperability from an early stake in computing, to set the stage for computers to have a strong precedent to work together. Instead he and microsoft made every effort to work against open standards. They would adopt open standards and extend them with proprietary extensions to intentionally ruin them. A lot of what is infuriating about modern tech can be traced back to precedent that microsoft set at his direction
Reminder despite every donation he has made his net worth is higher now than it ever was and this has essentially always been the case. His philanthropy, while objectively good, is a measured pr effort that does not impact his overall obscene wealth and basically never has
He’s still pushing ‘intellectual property’ as part of his philanthropy. The creators of the Oxford vaccine wanted to open source it and give it away for free. Gates opposed that and he got his way (partly because of the influence of the Gates Foundation). The delays this caused probably killed millions of extra people in the Global South (not sure if anyone ever did the maths on this).
Not shocking to hear, he’s a scumbag at heart. But now if you say that people will be like “uhhh how can you say that he’s donated so much money”
Then when you point out he’s donated literally 0% of his overall current net worth, his past (and current, apparently) behavior has arguably as much humanity if not more than he has offset, etc you’ll get whataboutism. “What have you done??”
I don’t want philanthropy to be contingent on the whims of billionaires. Gates has done a lot but it still has major issues, there is no real transparency, and it’s still authoritatively controlled because he has a great deal of influence over his foundation. The even bigger issue is that he is by far the exception. Other billionaires donate minimally only to maximize tax benefits and only to issues they have been personally impacted by.
The other day I was with people who were watching a football game. The eagles won and I asked why the owner gets to speak first at the trophy ceremony, let alone at all, given it was the teams effort. This led to a whole discussion but one thing that came up was how he donates so much money to autism research because he has a grandson with autism. This was meant to appeal to me because I have a background working in autism research and I work with people with autism a lot.
all I could think is “how fucked up is it that we have to hope that an obscenely rich person personally experiences the issue for them to decide to bequeath funding?” This inherently means that things with a much higher rate of prevalence, like autism (1 in 36, roughly) or dementia (prevalence varies widely by age range (2% to 13%) but ~10 million cases per year), will get tons of money. But what about far less common things? I’ve worked with people who have extremely rare conditions. Angelmans syndrome, prader willi, chromosomal deletions, (rates of 1-2 per 10,000) or extremely rare things like hellers syndrome (rates of 1-2 per 100,000).
This is why we fund things like NIMH, so that money can be fairly dispersed to ensure that all things are researched. Teams of people research what needs to be researched. This isn’t even just about equity; sometimes researching lesser known disorders leads to discoveries that are applicable in a broader context
But instead we let a few oligarchs hoard money. Most of them don’t bother to fund this stuff at all and they few that do only bother to do so when it’s something personally relevant to them. We have no say in the matter.
The biggest argument against philanthropy is that they get to deduct it from their taxes, so instead of us as a society collectively deciding what to do with that money (provided you had a working democracy, of course), the billionaire gets to decide that. And some of that philanthropy money actually goes to causes that further undermine democracy. Just because something is a charity doesn’t mean it does good. You can deduct donations to the federalist society or the heritage foundation, for example.
Yeah, he was a real asshole 44 years ago. Glad people never change at all.
TIL that his blocking generic versions of the covid vaccines which led to the deaths of thousands if not millions in poorer countries where most people can’t afford name brand drugs happened 44 years ago 🙄
I can only repeat what I said before I anther comment. I’m not defending Gates. Of course there are things he should be criticised for. You bring up one example here.
What I am saying is, that you should not judge him on what he did four decades ago, but how he is acting today.
Buying up as much arable American land as possible?
Yea he’s still sketchy af
An example with a body count exceeding that of almost all other people on earth. That’s worthy of far more than just “criticism”.
If he had been poor and responsible for the same number of avoidable deaths, he would be rightly considered one of history’s greatest monsters.
And today he’s acting like a goddamn monster who values property and profits over thousands if not millions of human lives. That’s what I’m judging him for today.
I would call 2020 close enough to today to call it the modern era. So he IS being judged for who he’s recently shown himself to be
Sarcasm ?
Yes. I don’t want to judge people by who they were four decades ago, but who they have become. I believe that every human has the potential to grow and learn.
Mind you, I’m not saying Mr. Gates is an angel now, or shouldn’t be judged. But I’d rather base ma judgement on the person he is now that on the person he was long ago.
I bet Elon can’t jump over a chair.
Maybe Elon’s mommy will allow him and Zuck to have a chair jumping contest in the octagon.
I’d put money on Zuck, he seems like he might be able to jump a chair.
Shitty Person, but possibly good chair jumper. Maybe Zuck will do a Philanthropy run later in life like Bill?
If Zuckerberg ever does philanthropy, it will be in a dystopian format where you need to hand over all your personal data to receive the benefits
Bill Gates became friends with Epstein AFTER he was convicted.
Source?
I mean, if he means any of what he said here then we could use some of that right about now.