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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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politics
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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'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.