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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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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.
You’re exhausting.
Yes, all billionaires are bad, just like all mountains are big. But some mountains are bigger than others. Amazing concept, I know.
Why does society need to have billionaires? Why can't (e.g.) Bill Gates just participate in society based on his own merits like the rest of us?
It doesn't. In an ideal utopian society there wouldn't be billionaires.
But, given the reality that billionaires do exist, I'd rather have them using their accumulated wealth on disease curing/prevention than them just sitting on the money or using it to actively fuck over entire populations (like Musk has been doing).
That doesn't mean Gatws or Buffet are *good billionaires *, it means they are less bad.
Shades of grey exist. Nuance is a real auseful ful thing.
I'll reiterate the point from my other comment. Value judgements are a waste of time, energy, and our voices.
Whether or not Bill Gates is worse than Elon Musk is just as important as to whether Tom Cruise is a better actor than Leonardo DiCaprio. Neither value judgement is worth my breath. It's a pointless exercise.
We are reaching a critical junction in our timeline where these billionaires can not and should not exist any longer. We've learned our lessons, their benefit and merit is irrelevant because even the best billionaires sit silently and are complicit. They have power, influence, and wealth - all the ingredients needed to directly affect change.
At best, they throw around pennies that don't address root causes and play the PR game, or play the blame game by focusing on individuals who are absolutely not responsible for the root causes of various issues that plague our societies.
I would personally gleefully murder every billionaire. Who said society needs billionaires? You ideological-purity testing MAGA-resembling turd muncher.
I'm not suggesting that they be murdered. You're saying some are worse than others, I'm just saying the concept should die.
Thanks for agreeing with my sentiment loosely, sorry to trigger you.
Wow. Deep.
Yeah, I know.
👅👢
Calling a billionaire “benign” then getting pissy when I give evidence to the contrary is weak shit.
Also, so long as we’re trading insults i think ill go with “Fragile Ego Piss Baby who thinks some boots don’t taste that bad”
They said "as benign as it gets" which is not the same thing as "benign." To give evidence to the contrary, you must find a more benign billionaire than Bill Gates.
Tata (volume), Scott(uncontrolled), Carnegie (proportional) all beat Gates.
Your evidence that he is bad is that windows is bad.
Our evidence that Bill Gates isn't that bad is that Bill Gates has directly saved millions of lives by donating the vast majority of his wealth to an organization he created to supply medicine, food, and water to the world's poorest regions namely Africa.
I feel like we're not on the same intellectual playing fields.
what about the numerous sexual harassment lawsuits, decades long friendship with Epstein including numerous trips on the lollita express and his longstanding board membership of Berkshire Hathaway which has presided over numerous ethics violations?
The flight logs do not show that Bill Gates has ever visited the island on any plane. The most that has been confirmed is that Bill Gates flew from New Jersey to Florida on a private plane owned by Epstein once and that he had dinner with Epstain exactly once, which in interviews he expressed as a major mistake. I remind you that before 2006 Epstein was a public figure as a professional financier and broker and even until 2019 him and Ghislaine participated in major fundraisers.
Furthermore, your claim is one that gets constantly circulated by right wing nutjobs after a particularly viral tweet in 2023.
Bill Gates knowingly associated with a person involved with and convicted of some pretty crazy stuff. Bill knows it's crazy, that's why he's been spending out the ass on PR for many years. His wife divorced him, and Bill's relationship with Epstein was seemingly a big factor.
https://www.yahoo.com/entertainment/articles/melinda-gates-opens-divorce-betrayal-211513816.html
If even his former wife throws Bill under the bus, why are you defending him?
If you had rumours about you of being involved with a worldwide sex trafficking ring I think it would put a strain on your relationships too, pal.
So in the absence of evidence, let's defend Bill. Got it.
We could stay neutral, but still be concerned that this person still has power, wealth, and influence...but everybody loves billionaire philanthropists, am I right?
Saying Bill Gates is as bad as Elon Musk is not Neutral. You should not be Neutral about Musk, Zuckerberg, or Bezos, they are the enemy.
I'm personally saying that no person should be able to accumulate wealth, power, and influence to such a degree and also use his wealth to pay people to sing his praises and like him.
I'm not making value judgements on these two individuals. I'm simply stating that there is no merit to billionaires existing.
Okay but that stance in no way dictates that an individual in our actual reality, where there are no such idealist barriers, has already accumulated wealth and used it to do good things.
This is the value judgements discussion. Feel free to exit.
How much money has Bill put towards developing Africa and directly improving their living standards?
Has he addressed modern slavery and modern child slavery (which we rely on for our cocoa)?
Has he addressed colonialism and imperialism?
These countries are extracted for everything they are worth, they are exploited for their labor, resources, and goods, and they remain poor while wealth concentrates to the few in first-world countries.
His "philanthropy" surely helps him to be aware of the situations that these countries face. But let's just shift an important topic and reduce it to value judgements. Got it.
Only for their development program and only in Africa would be $92M USD SOURCE
Because $92 million is such a large number when you have so much wealth. What would that fund here? A handful of buildings and a few highways?
His total contributions alone are $100Bn, mate. You asked for a very specific metric and got it.
If you were to build, for example, a townhouse with USA labour costs it would be about $55,000 to $100,000, so you could build a couple thousand with that amount. Be a pretty dumb way to spend it, imo.
That's all I see Bill doing. Throwing coins at impoverished and exploited people does not properly address or solve the issues they are facing. Bill Gates surely knows of the exploitation that African countries face at the hands of western imperialism. He could use his influence to shine a light on modern atrocities.
If they were paid fairly for their labor and paid a fair price for their goods and exports; these countries would not be starving, they could afford their own vaccination programs on the back of the own economies, they would be able to provide everyone with access to clean water, and they would be able to develop their societies as they see fit, including providing education to their citizens.
You think 100Bn USD is coins compared to what he actually lives off of...?
If there is still slavery and these countries are largely poor, yet western society relies on them for their labor, natural resources, and goods/exports, his 100 billion dollars means nothing.
He could've spent that 100 billion a whole lot more effectively. Like shining a light on western companies supporting child slavery to harvest cocoa or enabling these countries to break free from western imperialism.
You're mad that Bill Gates isn't God?
I'm mad that he's silent and complicit while people suffer. Perhaps I'll work on my anger while he hopefully works on finding his voice and speaking the truth.
He pays regularly for media attention, why can't he pay to expose western atrocities?
He's literally in the headline speaking out and you're still criticizing him, lol
It seems like you're mad just for the sake of being mad.
He's acting like Elon Musk is solely responsible. He's diluting a very large issue (modern slavery) and watering it down to Elon Musk bad.
Bill Gates is educated and present in these countries. He knows what really is going on.
Can you blame me for being angry that there is mass suffering, death, and slavery, while everybody in the know acts dumb, and the truth is hidden from the masses?
Edit: Your downvotes have been noted. Thanks for providing your feedback finitebanjo.
What friendship. He was never at the island according to records. Unless you have some proof.
Ah, right. It was just Bill getting financial advice - purely business.
It's certainly normal to get financial advice from sex offenders and those convicted of prostitution, with multiple accusers in court against them.
Oh, so he just flew on the plane named after the pedophile book and was known to also have children on it for the sexual pleasure of whoever was there?
The island wasn't the only place kids were getting fucked, dude
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Evil isn't graded on a scale, bud.
The real world isn't binary, bud.
This thread is so embarrassing.
So Bill Gates is as bad as Hitler?
Bill Gates is as bad as Bill Gates. You're trying to get a gotcha without understanding what I said.
Genius.
if you can't compare evils then there is no reason for someone to try to become less evil.
What?
Lol, dude thinks any of these billionaires give an iota of a fuck how we plebs rank them 🤣
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.