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.
this post was submitted on 08 May 2025
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Elon Musk is responsible for “killing the world’s poorest children,” says Bill Gates
(arstechnica.com)
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 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.
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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
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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.
It is his wealth. We don't have to like it, but that's how the current system works.
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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.
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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
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 Bill fly on Epstein's Lolita Express?
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
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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.
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)
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/
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?
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.
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Remember there are no good billionaires. No amount of "good" they do will ever be enough.
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I was promised Bill Gates would give me 5G’s with a vaccine.
He's right
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.
Lmao Bill Gates ......you can save them you got 100s of billions as well
Gates, 69, on Thursday announced plans to spend virtually his entire fortune over the next 20 years, during which time he estimates his foundation will spend more than $200 billion on global health, development, and education against $100 billion over the previous 25 years. The Gates Foundation will close its doors in 2045, decades earlier than previously envisaged.
Yeah sounds like he's trying
Now the rest of the billionaires can jump in but the greedy fucking dragons won't.
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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...
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Got banned for saying this on Reddit . Also uhh fuck you Billy boy
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.
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