this post was submitted on 08 Dec 2024
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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.
Another bait?
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.
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!
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.
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.
It is face value. How did he gain those billion? "Embrace, extend, and extinguish". Never forget.
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?
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.
https://www.wired.com/story/opinion-the-world-loses-under-bill-gates-vaccine-colonialism/
A paywalled opinion piece. Really?
Can't search for shit yourself, really?
https://newrepublic.com/article/162000/bill-gates-impeded-global-access-covid-vaccines
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.
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.
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 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.