So I just read Bill Gates’ 1976 Open Letter To Hobbyists, in which he whines about not making more money from his software. You know, instead of being proud of making software that people wanted to use. And then the bastard went on and made proprietary licences for software the industry standard, holding back innovation and freedom for decades. What a douche canoe.
AstraZenica COVID vaccine was going to be opensource but he used with weight as a donor to pressure the university to sell it to a firm he had ownership instead
I read about that, yeah. All hail Mammon; money above all. Sometimes I think wealth changes something in a person’s brain, like psychologically or neurologically. It’s as if they get so detached from reality that they lose all empathy and sense of community. I’ve heard the term ‘affluenza’ used as a joke, but the more I think about it, the more it makes sense as a legitimate thing.
It takes a certain kind of personality to even become a billionaire. You don’t become a billionaire by being kind and ethical
Its any position of power in my experience. People get power, justifying in their mind that they and people like them should be in power. Even games about being in charge run into that problem. Maintaining power becomes a major part of the game at some part.
That’s a good point, as illustrated by things like the Stanford Prison Experiment.
That experiment was massively flawed to the point of uselessness.
That’s exactly what a rich and powerful squirrel would say.
I think there’s research to that effect.
Well, it would make sense. Rich people have always creeped me out, just instinctively.
I’m sure the threshold varies, but I would back research that attempts to pinpoint or at least narrow down what amount of wealth starts to change your brain chemistry for the worse.
I saw something recently that suggested their brain scans look similar to serial killers.
No, I don’t think that’s accurate. Oxford Unkversity was going to waive their rights to the vaccine, and Gates pressured them to instead partner with Astra-Zeneca. But to my knowledge Gates never profited from that deal. Now, was there still some shady backroom dealing going on? Very possibly.
who cares if he didnt profit? “I convinced this man to make money off of the sick and he did it and profited off of a global contamination, but at least I also didnt get a kickback right? He was just gonna give it away the fuckin idiot!”
such a swell dude. totally not a shitbag human
I care when someone claims that they did. It’s important to gets the facts straight imo. They commenter you’re replying to didn’t imply Gates was a good guy or something.
He, through his foundation, own a significant portion of AstraZenica.
Where do you see that? That isn’t anywhere in your link. The only reference to AZ is that they partnered with one of the companies that Gates invested in.
His foundation owns stocks in Immunocore who is an Astra partner.
Edit: immunocore does not own Astra that was a lazy read on my part
No they don’t dude. AZ doesn’t have a parent company. Immunocore has about 1 billion dollars in assets, AZ has about 100 billion. Stop making stuff up.
What?! No. I bet next you are gonna tell me lil Donnie Trump is a pedophile.
Wait till you know ol Billy could be one too
What!? Nooo. Who next? Prince Andrew. Come on, like the royals would ever be into something like that.
And for any of the people saying “he changed”.
One of his most recent “philanthropic” ventures was to partner with Nestle (good start) to “modernize and increase yields” of the dairy industries in impoverished countries.
The two organizations then sold modern (likely non-servicable) equipment and entrenched them in corporate supply chain systems geared towards export and making it much harder to trade locally (not sure how that part worked, but was in what I read).
For a grand total of… 1% increased dairy yields.
Then 3-4 years later they pulled out, leaving heavily indebted farmers without the corporate supply chains and delivery systems they were forced to switch to, and making it very difficult to switch back to the old ways of working, so they can’t sell nearly as much locally.
Who do you think will buy up those farms when the farmers go bankrupt and have to sell ar rock bottom prices.
Gates hides behind his psychopathic greed and thirst for maniacal influence and power behind charity, what few people know is that the Bill’s foundation is an excellent exercise of venture philanthropy, where seeking profits comes first over everything else, at the expense of you know, philanthropy. They admit this.
It is something a lot of billionaires do, the Zuck has one, many do. They are not charities at all, in the practical sense but they are tax shelters. Gates will say that he has no day to day control, but he does help lean it where he wants it to go, plus you know who does by proxy and by earmarking the major donations? The Gates and Melinda Trust Fund. Who controls that? Bill and Melinda Gates and until a few years ago, also Buffet.
Bill is smart. He wants to make a shitload of money on vaccine tech? Sure, have the foundation give earmarked donations to the WHO that can only be used for that, then GABI, his other arm of the foundation can serve as the middle man for that cash. That’s before he invested hundreds of millions in big pharma and then what? = Profit. He does the same on education? = Profit. He pushed fake meat, invest a bit on it --relatively speaking to him-- and then, on the side, becomes the largest if not second largest farm land owner in the USA who then leases that land back to farmers. = Profit.
How come most people do not know most of this, because he also “donates” hundreds of millions to big media, you know, out the kindness of his heart. You know, so why would they report or say or rpeort anything negative of the guy? Quite the opposite. Remember Covid, why is a billionare on the news telling you what to do? Why him? Why any billionaire? Luckily, the link below tells us who they bribe, I mean, help with generous donations to their yearly budgets. And this is a couple of year old but the trend continues.
Revealed: Documents Show Bill Gates Has Given $319 Million to Media Outlets](https://www.mintpressnews.com/documents-show-bill-gates-has-given-319-million-to-media-outlets/278943/)
You question any of this? How dare you you? You bigot, conspiracy theorist! Admittedly, that narrative keeps most people from looking at his BS critically.
Hey, remember when people cared about the environment? Nah, Gates said that we have to focus on Energy production instead now. Wait the guy who is now heavily investing billikns in AI and power hungry data centers wants more energy? You don’t say!
https://www.gatesnotes.com/home/home-page-topic/reader/three-tough-truths-about-climate
Luckily for us he already had created a seeding/funding program where such initiatives will be invested on and much profit will be had on this exact front, and most will fall for it, because they always do.
Billionaire being a selfish person? Who woulda known? But yes, even though he donates a lot of his wealth, becoming a billionaire is a sign of being a sociopath.
He’s also a thief of course, as that’s the only way to become a billionaire.
Yup. He stole a bunch of ideas and code, then got upset that people were stealing his ideas and code. Do as I say, not as I do.
Well yes.
Being a Billionaire should be criminalized
We all know that every billionaire is a horrible person. They can’t be anything else.
You don’t get to a billionn without exploiting people along the way.
Warren Buffet is ok in my book.
Would you care to elaborate why he is okay in your book? Do you believe that he can make money out of thin air, without harming other people (mostly those who have the least)? Do you believe that when he invests in Goldman Sachs during the economic crisis in 2008, that it was a good choice? That making money of people losing homes and lives is what a good, or even “ok” person does?
I’m a simple man. Ok is ok enough.
He is literally in the Epstein List no?
Even if he wasn’t he’s still a capitalist pig.
*oligarchical pig
Capitalism is just free competition, which is the opposite of what Bill Gates is for.
In a communist economy he would be the same pig.
Capitalism always lead to monopolies and a lack of competition. At some point one company will always get lucky and be able to use its money to completely destroy competition, especially small competition.
*Oligarchy always lead to monopolies and a lack of competition.
There have been many times when I thought to myself: “Hold on. Can I be absolutely sure that billionaires are scum? Maybe there’s a crucial part of the story I’m missing?”
Every single time I just found even more cases of them blatantly lying, manipulating data and taking advantage of everything and everyone around them for personal gain. And every one of those times, it got me more depressed about the current and future state of society and the world in general.
You can try this yourself. I highly recommend it, even though the outcome is obvious. We can very rarely, if ever, be 100% sure about anything, so it’s always a good idea to put your beliefs to the test. However, I find it fairly self-evident that anyone seriously arguing in favor of any billionaire has simply never critically examined this topic.
No matter where and how deeply you look, it’s just evidence upon evidence upon evidence that they are, in fact, the worst filth that has ever shared the air with us. Though at least this one thing is comming to an end. Soon, we’ll be breathing toxic waste while they’ll be enjoying clean air in their doomsday bunkers larger than entire neighborhoods.
There’s some 0.0001% theoretical possibility that a billionaire could be a non-sociopath. If they literally dedicated their life to extracting money from the wider economy or top crust, not spending any of it on themselves or their descendants, but instead solely redistributing to the most needing people in the world. Monetary wealth at the end of the day is just economic control - it doesn’t become evil until it’s actually used for your own benefit, i.e., the economy is being rewired for you to live in luxury.
Assuming of course (big fat assumption) that you don’t screw people over to get it in the first place - and, even if you are giving it all away, it’s questionable why you’d end up with a surplus of money that large, if your goal is to donate it, why would the rate coming in exceed the rate going out, unless the goal was to purchase some institution or something, i.e., purchase Walmart and turn it into a cooperative. Probably not to invest the money to grow it to have more to give, because the return on investment for the money also has to come from somewhere, i.e., has its own ethical ramifications.
But I mean, name a single person in the last century who fit that profile. I can’t name one. So. And at the end of the day the best situation for the society isn’t to have single people controlling things and hoping they use their power responsibly, it’s to democratize that power and have everyone use it responsibly.
I really don’t get how opinions on intellectual property and its “theft” turn 180 whenever AI is mentioned.
ai is the rich stealing from us, piracy is usually us taking it from the rich.
AI is theft in the same way that all private property theft. It isnt the piracy of media, it’s the alienation of labor from its product, and withholding it for profit.
All private property is theft? Lmao go back to your cave tankie
yes.
Sees an anarchist
“Tankie”
???
Clearly one of those horrible anarchotankapalists.
Anarchists believe that “all property is theft”? Lol
private property, distinct from personal property.
Yes
There is some disagreement between people who, for example, favor Proudhon versus those who favor Kropotkin over the ownership of personal tools that are involved in individual trade-craft. As with any ideology there are varying schools of thought but the common ideological baseline is that anything that requires capital investment should be collectively controlled and operated for the common good. A person’s personal possessions including their home and tools required for self sufficiency are not considered “property” or a “means of production” by almost anyone.
A good real world example is the FOSS community, most of us would be quite vexed to say the least if someone started changing stuff on our personal computers but we also actively share our code, experience, and knowledge with the world for free. Same goes for the open hardware folks, permacomputing community, and the open research community.
Yet none of that can be interpreted as “all property is theft” unless you redefine what “property” itself means which is a terrible strategy for advertising Anarchy.
quotes a concept about property from 1850s
Lmao sorry for not being able to take this seriously
You should recognise that meanings of words might not always match your inner dictionary. “Private Property” is used differently from “Personal Property” in a lot of places.
Bill Gates spent a lot of his pro years running a bad company quite well, and exploiting a dominant position in the market that any soulless biz guy would love to have.
He seemed to get a conscience around the time he stopped running the show, and seems to be different while not regretting his behavior in that phase.
I think we can decide he was a bit of a cock back then, while still noting he’s done some good work since. We are nuanced enough, right?
God you hit the nail on the head, and why I’m getting very annoyed here on Lemmy. People refuse to have nuanced takes and just comment incessantly about how people are evil and doing anything makes you a bad person. Turns out people are nuance, and we can judge them as such. You can say he did some terrible things to make Microsoft successful while also saying he has done some very good things with his fortune. It is not black and white.
In my dictionary “nuanced” has become synonymous with “childishly naive and misinformed” thanks to its use as a thought stopping cliche by people like you
And ad hominem attacks are empty and hollow to me.
Its not black and white to you but people have different values so him throwing billions of dollars at charity does not effect his choice to buy up farm land and potentially ruin innovation in the computing space.
These are not my opinions just saying why someone would act like it is black and white
Your take is more nuanced than most I see here and I appreciate that, see the other comment as a prime example.
I suppose I did see “ABAB” so I suppose you would be talking about those comments and I agree that is infuriating
It’s just every thread man, every one of them devolves into it and I’m so tired. It’s quite literally like the Good Place where even the act of buying a tomato will get people raging in the comments about how apparently you support climate change, slavery, and every other bad thing involved in the growing of it. Or, hear me out, I just bought a tomato. I’m just so tired of it here
It’s quite literally like the Good Place
LOL, just no.
Just hear me out guys, Hitler was a nature lover! You can’t be judging people by just their worst acts!
Again, no nuance and going right to black and white
