1007
Elon Musk is responsible for “killing the world’s poorest children,” says Bill Gates
(arstechnica.com)
this post was submitted on 08 May 2025
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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)
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/
https://archive.ph/2024.10.22-141139/https://www.wired.com/story/opinion-the-world-loses-under-bill-gates-vaccine-colonialism/
The Gates Foundation backpedaled that stance shortly after. Their initial objection was over quality assurance.
can you provide a source for this?
Who is he to decide this? He is not an epidemiologist or a public health expert or a leader of a low-resource nation or even a health professional. He's a tech billionaire. This is exactly the problem.
Many large US companies, including pharmaceutical drug retailers, directly invest in the Gates Foundation Trust, creating a massive conflict of interest which is rarely talked about.
https://healthscienceandlaw.ca/wp-content/uploads/2017/01/Public-Interest-Position.WHO_.FENSAGates.Jan2017.pdf
https://www.nytimes.com/2008/02/16/science/16malaria.html
Literally the first search result LINK
He was cohosting the multinational committee event for Gavi, a vaccine alliance which includes the WHO ans UNICEFF. He is widely respected there because he runs an organization which spent decades of providing medicines and vaccines across the globe.
This appears to be just a statement of support for "narrow" patent waviers during the pandemic. This is not the same as open licensing the Oxford vaccine and calling this "backpedaling" is misleading at best.
Goalpost successfully shifted, gj team
Question is, how many vaccines would those countries have got if it wasn't patented?
AstraZeneca sold the vaccines without making a profit
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.
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.
Bonus : as others also highlighted Gates isn't sadly just about software, he's also, unfortunately, about intellectual property more broadly (because that is how he made his fortune) in health business (not health care) cf e.g. https://www.wired.com/story/opinion-the-world-loses-under-bill-gates-vaccine-colonialism/
If he stole tens of billions from the Americans then donated it to starving children in the poorest region, isn't that still a net possitive? It's like the tech dystopian Robin Hood.
In your analogy that'd still be Robin Hood coming from a very rich family, accumulating more wealth that anybody he knows around him, fighting with his best friends to keep more, getting indicted by the most powerful government on Earth because he abused his power... then giving only a very small fraction of his wealth to some starving children while still sitting in his mansions, accumulating still more money without working.
That's not the Robin Hood of my childhood to say the least. To me that's clearly not a net positive.
I do recommend listening to the episode of Behind the Bastards to get a clearer view of the entire process, not "just" imagining a "net positive" outcome regardless of the path that lead to it.
Edit : sorry but while re-reading what I wrote, somehow confabulating the richest man on Earth for years to Robin Hood shows how excellent his PR work was. Like... what the fuck?!
Edit2: oh yeah and Robin Hood would fight for Big Pharma during a worldwide pandemic, ... no, absolutely NOT Robin Hood.
Small Fraction?! It's been over 90% of income for decades, recently he's vowed to distribute 99% of not just income but total wealth.
"Forbes magazine ranked him as the world's wealthiest person for 18 out of 24 years between 1995 and 2017, including 13 years consecutively from 1995 to 2007. He became the first centibillionaire in 1999, when his net worth briefly surpassed $100 billion. According to Forbes, as of May 2025, his net worth stood at US$113 billion, making him the thirteenth-richest individual in the world."
Wake up. Not Robin Hood.
That doesn't argue any of the things that I said.
That's fine, you're missing the point as I clearly don't manage to explain it clearly enough for you so please document yourself anywhere else you want. I gave you few sources but feel free to search elsewhere. Take care.
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?