Elon Musk is responsible for “killing the world’s poorest children,” says Bill Gates
Elon Musk is responsible for “killing the world’s poorest children,” says Bill Gates
Remember there are no good billionaires. No amount of "good" they do will ever be enough.
Yeah, but that's why it's great to see them fighting each other. Nobody else seems able to do it better.
Fighting lol.......
Why can't we be better?
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.
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.
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.
I got downvoted on Lemmy the other day because I said that I prefer Bill Gates to Musk.
Maybe there are things about Gates I don't know. Maybe he is actually quite an evil person; I don't know. But he does at least spend billions of dollars helping vulnerable people, right? And Bill's stances on global politics are far more sensible than those of Musk.
There are no good billionaires. But I must agree that Bill Gates cannot be compared to Elon Musk. Bill has done evil, but his evil doesn't compare to what Elon Musk is doing right now
The massive cock slobbering that Warren Buffet got at his Woodstock of Capitalism last week was nauseating. All the media were fawning over how he’s still a small-town Nebraska bumpkin. I have to hand it to him he crafted his image perfectly as a “good billionaire” too.
I think it's a silly to waste one's time struggling over deciding which one is worse. They're both billionaires who spend hundreds of millions of dollars undermining the public interest. Gates just cares more about his PR than Musk.
He absolutely can be compared to Musk -- he's better than musk.
Yep well said
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Nuance is lost on a lot of people on here. All billionaires bad therefore no billionaire is preferred. While I agree there's no good billionaire there's a spectrum of bad. Like would I rather break my pelvis or break my legs? Both are bad but one is preferable.
I mean Gates donated his own money to help the poorest people in the world. Elon spent his money to become president so he could steal money from the poor at people in the world.
Gates donated his money to avoid taxes and start a big pharma company.
Also Bill Gates comment is about USAID an imperialistic tool which has killed many millions of children. The irony of this statement is palpable.
Well yes, but no. If you see capitalism, which includes billionaires having a right to exist, as a set standard, I would 100% agree with you. But billionaires shouldn't even exist in the first place. You only become a billionaire, by either massively exploiting your workerforce, capitalising every single aspect of your product/customer and not redirecting your profits back to society. We shouldn't live in a world, where we are cheering for people giving away their money, that they shouldn't own in the first place. There is no ethic way to be a billionaire.
To prevent misunderstandings: I 100% agree, that this is actually a good thing, but we still have to raise awareness about the societal and political problems of billionaires existing in the first place.
I agree it should be illegal and it is immoral, but these are the current rules of the game. It's not that Bill Gates is necessarily evil, the problem is how modern states and societies distribute wealth, which is based on a credit system where small incomes are dominated by large incomes (owners get most of the credit). The guise is that they also assume the risk but we know that very rich people eventually gain political power to mitigate that risk on the many not rich people. The problem then is that there is no easy way for not rich people to self organize and distribute credit more fairly, which also needs to distribute risk as well. Cause at the end of the day, it is about two things: people wanting to avoid risk and yielding credit and people accumulating wealth and gaining political power, over many generations. That said, Musk is a very twisted and malicious personality while Bill Gates is more of a typical rich entitled person with a savior complex.
I would like to recommend listening to the Behind the Bastards episodes on Bill Gates. He's a piece of shit. Not as bad as Elon, but that's not really the point.
Down to the wire, though, if Elon is responsible for killing the world's poorest children of today then that logic should translate to Bill Gate's being responsible for killing the world's poorest children of yesterday.
It's pot and kettle. Gate's might have used his position of great wealth for some good things but there are also some... questionable things. According to him his conversations with Epstein were 'huge mistakes'... this is, of course, referring to Gate's relationship with Epstein - something that took place after Epstein was convicted of sex crimes.
Idk, something for your brain to chew on.
Didn't some nations in Africa ask Gates to stop helping?
I will wager that some people from some nations asked him to stop helping based solely on the fact that we can't get millions of people to reliably agree on anything.
People on lemmy know that "A is better than B" means "A is good." You have to learn to speak the language.
I cannot be the only one here who sees tiny hands.
Fuck, I can't unsee it now.
They look like team america world police puppet hands
So are you Bill. You utter piece of shit.
Fuck all Billionaires
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/
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.
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.
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?
Not just the poorest and not just children.
Not just Musk. https://bdsmovement.net/microsoft
How many children died because Bill Gates lobbied for the Oxford Covid-19 vaccine to be patented?
This. Thank you.
That was a villain level move from Gates. The behaviour of the rich nations towards the LICs over covid vaccines was absolutely shameful and destroyed the illusion of Gates' benevolence.
Idk how many people have died from Covid 19 vax? I keep taking it and my cock is huge, no other side effects
Gates is always whitewashing his own future or past actions when he does something philanthropic tbh
Your claim seems a bit BS. It was apparently to have a better distribution and quality.
AstraZeneca claimed not to get profits from the vaccine sales. This seems kind of fair knowing that doses were sold at about $4 USD (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Oxford%E2%80%93AstraZeneca_COVID-19_vaccine#Early_development - https://reliefweb.int/report/world/uk-donates-20-million-more-oxford-astrazeneca-vaccines-countries-need)
Unless you're talking about the side effects?
4$ per dose is quite a lot of money for African countries. Not patenting it would allow them to create their own, which he blocked based on bullshit reasoning.
It was apparently to have a better distribution and quality.
This is bullshit. The Oxford vaccine was specifically designed to be manufactured using existing processes and distribution channels.
AstraZeneca claimed not to get profits from the vaccine sales.
If the whole world got effective covid vaccines at cost of production then no-one would pay Pfizer for their novel (and expensive) technology. Gates Foundation secured a return of over 15 times more than its initial investment in BioNTech.
Given that the Gates Foundation backpedaled that stance shortly after:
0
Sorry? Exactly when did Oxford open source it's vaccine and allow manufacturing by companies other than Astrazeneca?
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i heard about that, he advocated for expensive equipment, medicaiton only produced by the us.
I was promised Bill Gates would give me 5G’s with a vaccine.
I really do think it would be fun to compile all of the billionaires in the world and just have them fight to the death in a gladiator kind of rig. Would be awesome.
Kat and Kropp get in an argument over the war as they rest from an hour’s worth of drill (occasioned by Tjaden’s not saluting a major properly). Kat believes the war would be over if leaders gave all the participants “the same grub and the same pay,” as he says in a rhyme. Kropp believes the leaders of each country should fight each other in an arena to settle the war; the “wrong” people currently do the fighting.
Erich Maria Remarque - All Quiet on the Western Front 1929
I feel like the only way it would work is if they got to keep the money of whoever they killed as long as that person had over a billion dollars... and I would almost be OK with that.
I like to imagine it would reduce the collateral damage the rest of society faces when these people have a dick waving contest.
Roided out billionaires with their hearts exploding out their chests from experimental steroids would really mix things up in a good way. He'll maybe we'd get some truly sick cybernetic out of it too.
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.
Gates does own 80 percent of US farmland, for anyone interested
so this is what he meant by eliminated world hunger, by killing them directly or indirectly.
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.
The only way to get rid of poverty is to get rid of the poor.
Shit pot, meet turd kettle.
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...
Credit where credit is due, Bill Gates has been putting his money where his mouth is for decades now.
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.
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.
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.
Pretty sure he doesn't care
Or he considers that a good thing. It's more likely that you think.
He's a breeder and a eugenicist. He believes the strong/successful should reproduce (how many kids does he have now?) and those less fortunate should die off.
Which makes him a darkest evil soul
Bill gates is always spending his money eradicating diseases. Maybe he can eradicate this musk disease too
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.
They are way poorer than the ones I'm responsible for - Bill Gates
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.
I mean... Bill Gates was on the eugenics hobby horse of "Brown countries are having too many children" for decades before this. His original foray into West Africa was about forcing contraception on people in order to curb their population growth. The revelation that vaccination reduced infant mortality and lead to local women no longer feeling like they needed to have six kids and hope two survived was a happy little accident of history.
The irony is in how Elon and RFK Jr's war on vaccinations is a Dark MAGA Reflection of this philosophy. They've embraced eugenics from the white side of things, by buying into revanchist Alpha Male / Survival of the Fittest pseudo-science and concluding high infant mortality is some kind of longtermist beneficial genetic selection scheme.
But it bares remembering that both of these billionaire personality cults came out of the Jeffery Epstein / Steven Pinker influence peddling project. The Gates Foundation is ultimately focused on patenting and rent-seeking high end medical technologies to state governments in exchange for lower mortality rates - effectively ruling the Global South through economic extortion. The Musk/Thiel Network State project is focused on explicitly segregating the population into In-Groups and Out-Groups, with the intention of forcibly breeding Alpha Male Humans to dominate the Global South militarily.
Neither of these two groups is benefiting The World's Poorest Children. They're just arguing how to force poor people into subsistence level wages on industrial plantations - via the Velvet Glove or the Iron Fist.
And yet that’s also not the same. Yes, many impoverished countries are stuck in a cycle of poverty by overpopulation and too high a birth rate. Yes, helping them control that goes a long way toward helping them to help themselves. No, not eugenics
impoverished countries are stuck in a cycle of poverty by overpopulation
That's simply not true. Countries with large populations regularly produce enormous quantities of materials and offer professional services that post-industrial consumers pay high prices to access.
The problem isn't the size of the population but the share of revenue received by the people doing the work.
Diamond miners in Nigeria and Congo and South Africa aren't getting anywhere near the face value of the rocks they dig up. Call center workers and IT professionals in the Philippines and India are getting a tiny fraction of the rate their employers charge. Textile workers seeing pennies on the $100 when they output luxury apparel.
Yes, helping them control that goes a long way toward helping them to help themselves.
No. Charging them through the nose for medical technology is what's hurting them.
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
I bet they both taste bad.
I’ll try anything tho.
Uh oh! That's TERRORISM! if Bill Gates DOESNT want to be a Terrorist MAYBE he should Shoot up a School INSTEAD!
Dang Gates looks old.
[narrator]: bill gates did not GET ReST.
like that time bill gave mone to warren buffet for "investment". warren buy cheap food in africa, food price soar, kids die, melinda foundation to the help, bill begging for nobel peace award.
anyway, americans are just greedy pigs no matter what. even if they drown in money to hang out with epstein to abuse children they scumbag as much as possible.
bill gates maxed out the harm to children; starving them in africa, abusing them on epstein island.
get fucked americans!
Bill Gates seeks redemption by giving away blood money and blackmailing younger fellow satan worshipers. What a jerk. Fuck him.
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.
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.
https://www.forbes.com/sites/carlieporterfield/2022/11/17/bill-gates-foundation-pledges-7-billion-to-support-africa-health-and-agriculture/
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.
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.
Philanthropists hoarding wealth and resources and then getting to choose which of the poors to allow to have any is actually part of the problem, even if it makes you feel good.
We saw that when Gates leveraged his contributions to force a vaccine that had been developed with public money for the benefit of humankind, to become patent locked and hard for the Third World to access or afford.
The 7 billion to Africa isn't as nice as it first seems either; it's investments into venture capitalist solutions, much more restrictive that aid and the profits are not realized by the locals
https://www.commondreams.org/views/2022/12/02/perhaps-bill-gates-not-best-expert-hunger-africa
https://www.commondreams.org/views/2022/11/10/open-letter-bill-gates-food-farming-and-africa
I resist the urge to become a billionaire every day.
I’ve allowed trillions of dollars to continue circulating in the global economy, undisturbed by my whims.
I’m a goddamn philanthropic hero compared to Gates.
And you can tell I’m better than him, cuz I didn’t have to slap my name on a “Foundation For Leaving People The Fuck Alone” to do it.
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
Never would have guessed world hunger and disease are because countries spent all their money on Windows licenses, great take
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
Nah, I saw a year or two back that Bill was pulling back from his climate and disease philanthropy. I think this is just him jumping on a chance to do some PR by dunking on Musk.
Yeah this asshole is a total hypocrite.
https://www.wired.com/story/opinion-the-world-loses-under-bill-gates-vaccine-colonialism/
https://archive.ph/2024.10.22-141139/https://www.wired.com/story/opinion-the-world-loses-under-bill-gates-vaccine-colonialism/
Surprised I had to scroll so long for this article. This is probably the best example (recent history too) of Bill's actions killing kids.
I'm still glad he called Elon out. Let them fight.
Cool story, Soup. Who did you donate to?
Nobody, but I voted for Harris. Last I saw, Gates was cutting back on donating to his foundation that fights infectious diseases in the developing world.
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Mmm yes. This is why I Lemmy. This article had so many bots praising him on Reddit. Refreshing to hear something other than boot licking