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Cancel Bill Gates? New Book Paints Philanthropist as Billionaire Villain (msn.com) 176
The Washington Post reviews a new book about Microsoft's 68-year-old co-founder Bill Gates:
"He's not the Messiah, he's a very naughty boy." That immortal line from Monty Python's Life of Brian kept running through my head as I was reading "Billionaire, Nerd, Savior, King: Bill Gates and His Quest to Shape Our World," by Anupreeta Das, a reporter at the New York Times... which often feels like an extended list of all the major and minor complaints that Das could find not only about Gates but also about billionaires, nerds and the broader practice of philanthropy...
[T]he philanthropist who played a central role in the spectacularly successful fight against diseases like HIV/AIDS; the environmentalist whose net-zero vision has led him to create a multibillion-dollar nuclear-power company — that man barely makes an appearance in this book... Rather than weigh Gates's accomplishments against his failures, Das focuses on his personal weaknesses — his unpleasant management style, his extramarital affairs and, especially, his association with the convicted sex offender Jeffrey Epstein, who is featured extensively throughout, including in the beginning of the book's introduction and in a 12-page section that leads off the chapter titled "Cancel Bill." Frustratingly, Das sheds little new light on the Gates-Epstein relationship, beyond suggesting that Epstein first attracted the billionaire by indicating that he might be able to get Gates his coveted Nobel Peace Prize. While I and others have reported that a $2 million donation from Gates to the MIT Media Lab was thought of within MIT as being Epstein money, for instance, Das will go only so far as to say that "the donation may or may not have been at Epstein's recommendation."
The Guardian also notes that the Gates Foundation and the Gateses "have prevented millions of deaths, pumping billions of dollars into fighting Aids, tuberculosis and malaria around the world." They co-founded Gavi, the Vaccine Alliance, which vaccinated half the world's children... [During the pandemic] the Gates-backed Covax partnership was spearheading the global vaccination effort, procuring more than 1bn doses for people in poorer countries. But this doesn't seem to wash with Das, who reports that the foundation is "bigfooting", "neocolonial", "antidemocratic", and "top down", and sees it as an egotistical way for Bill to charity-wash his reputation... The penultimate chapter is titled Cancel Bill, and that's what the whole book feels like: an appeal to public opinion to write Gates off. As yet, and in the context of what other American billionaires do and get away with, it seems a little unfair.
[T]he philanthropist who played a central role in the spectacularly successful fight against diseases like HIV/AIDS; the environmentalist whose net-zero vision has led him to create a multibillion-dollar nuclear-power company — that man barely makes an appearance in this book... Rather than weigh Gates's accomplishments against his failures, Das focuses on his personal weaknesses — his unpleasant management style, his extramarital affairs and, especially, his association with the convicted sex offender Jeffrey Epstein, who is featured extensively throughout, including in the beginning of the book's introduction and in a 12-page section that leads off the chapter titled "Cancel Bill." Frustratingly, Das sheds little new light on the Gates-Epstein relationship, beyond suggesting that Epstein first attracted the billionaire by indicating that he might be able to get Gates his coveted Nobel Peace Prize. While I and others have reported that a $2 million donation from Gates to the MIT Media Lab was thought of within MIT as being Epstein money, for instance, Das will go only so far as to say that "the donation may or may not have been at Epstein's recommendation."
The Guardian also notes that the Gates Foundation and the Gateses "have prevented millions of deaths, pumping billions of dollars into fighting Aids, tuberculosis and malaria around the world." They co-founded Gavi, the Vaccine Alliance, which vaccinated half the world's children... [During the pandemic] the Gates-backed Covax partnership was spearheading the global vaccination effort, procuring more than 1bn doses for people in poorer countries. But this doesn't seem to wash with Das, who reports that the foundation is "bigfooting", "neocolonial", "antidemocratic", and "top down", and sees it as an egotistical way for Bill to charity-wash his reputation... The penultimate chapter is titled Cancel Bill, and that's what the whole book feels like: an appeal to public opinion to write Gates off. As yet, and in the context of what other American billionaires do and get away with, it seems a little unfair.
The MS founder a villain? (Score:4)
Let me say it. "Shocked!"
Re:The MS founder a villain? (Score:4, Informative)
He said he was going to give away most of money but since then his net worth has tripled.
The Gates Foundation has invested more than $10 Billion in companies whose practices run directly counter to the foundation’s supposed charitable goals and social mission.
In Africa, the Foundation has invested hundreds of millions of dollars in oil companies responsible for much of the pollution causing respiratory problems and other illness among the local population.
The Gates Foundation has investments in 69 of the worst polluting companies in the US and Canada.
It has investments in pharmaceutical companies and lobbies on behalf of those companies for "Intellectual property protection" that makes medicines more expensive.
Companies that the Gates Foundation has invested in have been accused of forcing thousands of people to lose their homes, supporting child labor and defrauding and neglecting patients in need of medical care.
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Billionaires setup charities in order to run interference with the idea that they're greedy, selfish bastards. How can they be greedy if they're giving millions to charity? Nevermind this is a tiny fraction of their total wealth... The charity is a effectively a rounding error in their total wealth.
That has never been more obvious than in the case of Gates. Still, most people are ignorant because they cannot see facts. And that is the one thing that made MS big: Total ignoring of obvious facts.
Re:The MS founder a villain? (Score:5, Insightful)
Well, he has his place in history. Primarily for holding back tech progress by at least a decade, probably two and may be even more. If that is not evil, I do not know what is. Basically all of Microsoft's wealth is from doing more damage than they made profits. Oh, and look, they are now 50 years in business and they still cannot do reliable updates, reasonable system security, good GUIs, and they get their cloud hacked in the most pathetic way and generally do the worst engineering they can get away with. The really pathetic thing, obviously, is how so many people fall for a two-bit player and make themselves dependent on MS.
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The irony of this being posted on Slashdot. (Score:5, Insightful)
The irony. Back in the day, the talk of this electronic town was how evil Gates was.
People seriously see him as savior? We're more boned than Idiocracy said, and quicker, too.
FFS, /. used to have a Gates icon of him wearing Borg kit.
Name a philanthropist and you'll find someone seeking to whitewash their name. The ladder to the stars is peppered with broken bodies that served as steps on that ladder.
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Lol, comparing a software company to an 1890s steel mill.
Re:The irony of this being posted on Slashdot. (Score:5, Informative)
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> Name a philanthropist and you'll find someone
> seeking to whitewash their name.
I'm not 100% sure that's true in all cases. But in gates' case, it certainly is. It has been a documented fact that his so-called "charity" and "philanthropy" are nothing more than PR exercises for a good quarter-century [theregister.com] now.
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Re:The irony of this being posted on Slashdot. (Score:5, Interesting)
Jobs gave millions to charity and never spoke about it, it only became public knowledge after his death. No publicity stunts, no tax writeoffs, no donations with strings attached.
Gates doesn't give anything without strings attached, and his "foundation" is a highly profitable business in its own right while sheltering him from some tax liabilities. Look closer at the HIV medication, first dose is free but in order to get that free dose you have to accept pharma patents and give up the ability to make cheap generics, and buy subsequent doses from preferred suppliers. It may benefit some people in the short term through free doses, but long term they're locked in.
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It may benefit some people in the short term through free doses, but long term they're locked in.
Much like free Windows upgrades, Office 365, and Azure.
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Gates donated thousands, perhaps millions of copies of Windows and Office, with the only cost to Microsoft being the media and packaging. He wrote off the full retail amount of the products.
Re:The irony of this being posted on Slashdot. (Score:4, Informative)
Not only does he get a huge tax write off on something that cost nothing to produce (did they even supply media and packaging or just registration codes?), but he also gets the recipients locked in so that they have to purchase upgrades in the future.
This is exactly the kind of "philanthropy" he does.
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It's called a tax writeoff. Don't assume a guy who infamously parked in handicapped spots and gave the middle finger to western medicine when he got cancer gives a fuck about hospitals.
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Re:The irony of this being posted on Slashdot. (Score:4, Interesting)
Jobs gave millions to charity and never spoke about it, it only became public knowledge after his death. No publicity stunts, no tax writeoffs, no donations with strings attached.
Of course not. Rich give to charities silently for tax purposes. This wasn't Jobs being nice. The guy was an infamous arsehole, the kind of guy who had his car re-registered every couple of months so he didn't have license plates and parked in handicapped spots. He was an arse to all those around him and an arse to people who met him in public or at conferences as well. This is also the same Jobs that cut all philanthropic activities at Apple during his tenure, and that cut Apple's policy of donation matching for employees.
The Gates foundation may not be all chocolates and roses, but there sure as heck wasn't anything charitable about Jobs. The guy for all his genius running a company was a selfish thunder-douche, and you can read about that in virtually every biography of people close to him.
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Was just going to post that too. He's (in)famous for shutting down Apple's corporate philanthropy program and making sure it stayed shut down for as long as he was CEO, and for avoiding any (public) philanthropy. So we're left with various "oh, he was very charitable, you just never heard about it" claims from pro-Apple sources.
In addition, as a sociopath it would be very out of character to give away money unless they could gain something from it, so that factor would also make charity from him surprisi
Re:The irony of this being posted on Slashdot. (Score:4, Insightful)
I guess the white washing is working, at least on you. If you think Bill gate followed a different path than the 3 you mentioned you need to look more closely at what you are reading.
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Frankly... (Score:5, Insightful)
...I'm always surprised when someone mentions Gates as a good guy. I just don't see it.
He built a megacorp based on questionable business practices out his wazzoo. Seriously, try to list all the crap that company pulled while he was at the helm... It's gonna take you a while.
As for the philanthropie: Yeeeeah but no. Do I remember wrong or was it revealed that a lot of the money he pumped into non-profit organizations... went to HIS non-profit organizations?
I may or may not be doing this man wrong but from where I stand, very little of what this man has done is a net gain for humanity. Any OS that came out of that house that actually improved productivity was mere coincidence. Usually productivity took a back seat to strengthening their monopoly.
And these days, the actually intentionally mess up productivity left and right. They're even beyond denying it. And yes, that is no longer Bill Gates' company but in my opinion it's just the natural continuation of a company that pissed on morals since it was brought forth.
If anything, any philanthropy that may actually happen in earnest seem to be a weak attempt to redeem himself enough to get into heaven. I wonder if he has ever asked anyone for forgiveness for what he's done.
Re:Frankly... (Score:5, Interesting)
And yes, that is no longer Bill Gates' company but in my opinion it's just the natural continuation of a company that pissed on morals since it was brought forth.
Let me just leave this here [businessinsider.com].
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He is just less frequently in the same buildings where all the young cute interns are.
Do not pass Go or collect $200 Go directly to JAIL (Score:4, Insightful)
...I'm always surprised when someone mentions Gates as a good guy. I just don't see it.
If anything, any philanthropy that may actually happen in earnest seem to be a weak attempt to redeem himself enough to get into heaven. I wonder if he has ever asked anyone for forgiveness for what he's done.
That's right. All this 'philanthropy in retirement' bullshit is just Bill's working his ass off to stay out of Hell before he dies. We're in complete agreement given his egregious sins.
Bill: "But I'm gonna give away all my money before I die, while I'm still alive."
Yeah, right. And now he's even pissed off Warren Buffet. [inc.com]
This is what it looks like when a billionaire actually makes such a commitment. [archive.today] Today, Bill's still way up there on the billionaire list. Today he's #8. [forbes.com]
Re: Do not pass Go or collect $200 Go directly to (Score:2)
His philanthropy looks an awful lot like investments. He purchases land in Africa for agriculture then lets it go fallow to save the environment while the supposed people they were to be improving starve. But he still owns the land, they then sell it to developers for tourist destinations to keep the grift going somewhere else.
The philanthropy angle is just a tax dodge for Bill Gates to become one of the biggest landowners in the US because money in the bank or a fluctuating money market is risky, real esta
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I hadn't heard of Charles Feeney before your post, but he seems like a very interesting and charitable person who rediscovered his roots. With that said, there is a difference between giving your money to charitable organizations and using your money to achieve specific charitable goals. Giving your money to different organiza
Re: Frankly... (Score:2)
Usually productivity took a back seat to strengthening their monopoly.
We call it an app ecosystem nowadays. And enshitification, sometimes.
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> He built a megacorp ...
Buying 276+ companies [wikipedia.org] for their technology and slapping the Microsoft name on it also didn't hurt. /s
> try to list all the crap that company pulled while he was at the helm... It's gonna take you a while.
Indeed. David Wheeler made a list of Microsoft "Innovations" [dwheeler.com] a while back which is only scratching the surface.
i.e. It doesn't list the MS-DOS 6.0 DoubleDisk / DoubleSpace / DriveSpace [wikipedia.org] fiasco:
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...I'm always surprised when someone mentions Gates as a good guy. I just don't see it.
Same here. You have to actively and aggressively deny reality to not see it. Of course, lots of people are into that. We could have secure and reliable mainstream computing today if Microsoft was not in the picture. Instead we have this constant, never-ending mess where they do not even get basic things right.
gates really is not that nice a guy (Score:5, Insightful)
So all you need to know (Score:5, Insightful)
There's no such thing as a good billionaire. You don't get that much power by being a nice guy. If anyone should know that it's the slashdot community
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There's no such thing as a good billionaire. You don't get that much power by being a nice guy.
Oprah.
Billionaires do philanthropy (Score:3, Informative)
to shirk taxes [businessinsider.com].
It's not out of love for their fellow man: those people are so far right on the psychopathy scale they wouldn't know what love or kindness are or what they entail.
Can you really picture Bill Gates, Mark Zuckerberg or Jeff Bezos doing anything that doesn't serve their own selfish interest in some way or other, out of pure kindness? Of course you can't.
Hint: billionaires didn't get to be billionaires because they are kind people.
We've hit a place in western society were (Score:4, Insightful)
One of Bill's Least Likely Supporters (Score:5, Insightful)
With that said, he seems to be doing everything in his power to use his ill-gotten money to make the world a better place. I can't think of any private citizen that has had a bigger impact in attempting to rid the world of numerous diseases and fixing problems at a global level. He's certainly not perfect, but he's trying harder than anyone else to make a positive difference. It amazes me how many people will do anything to tear down someone who is doing far more good for the world than they are.
With that said, obviously his relationship with Epstein is extremely troubling and warrants a full investigation. As a matter of fact, there are a lot of investigations that are warranted that seem to have completely evaporated after Epstein's convenient death. But until there's evidence that Bill Gates committed any crimes, then it's pure speculation and I'm not willing to torch someone who is trying so hard to make the world a better place over situations that currently seem mostly hypothetical.
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He was widely admired when he did his worst and is now vilified that he is doing a lot of good.
Says a lot about how utterly fucked up our world is.
Hardly a better moneymaking play (Score:4, Interesting)
Bill Gates makes a much better return on each dollar invested in vaccines than he could ever dream to make from a dollar invested in Microsoft. It's not even close.
I very much doubt this is true.
Vaccines have famously been a backwater of the pharma industry because their returns are low relative to other endeavors. Spend tons of money on research and trials and -- if you're lucky -- you can sell one dose to everyone, maybe one dose annually. You want to make gobs of money? Be a drug dealer: spend tons of money or research and trials, and then get people hooked on happy pills for the rest of their lives. Alternatively, sell software subscriptions.
Let's go to the numbers:
2023 profit margins
Microsoft: 40%
GSK: 13%
Pfizer: -4%
Moderna: -116%
Epstein Client List (Score:2, Interesting)
FBI has all of Epstein's CD-R's with the recordings of his johns.
Going back to the 80's. I wonder if it was VHS or if his masters sprung for a D-1 system.
Cancel person you don't like? (Score:2)
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You're a nut job.
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Cancel culture is Internet mob rule. When there's a salacious accusation and everyone immediately decides that's enough to start sanctioning the accused.
It's a very, very bad thing.
Shine a light on bad people doing bad things. Support accusers like you would a whistleblower. Don't ruin somebody until they've had a chance to defend themselves, and don't assume their defense is bullshit just because the accusations are of something horrible.
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Johnny Depp (and a whole lot of others) would probably disagree with that statement.
Everyone does stupid shit. Some more and/or worse than others, but everyone does it. That doesn't make it excusable, but I believe we should give people a path to redemption. Cancel culture destroys all paths to redemption. If society convinces itself
Peanuts (Score:2)
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The damage these bankers did was short-term. Gates held back technological progress at least by a decade or two. That is long-term, massive damage.
Totally on board with this evaluation (Score:5, Interesting)
Most middle-aged adults today, and their younger counterparts, don't remember the railroad tycoons of the late 1800s but that's what Bill has always reminded me of. Let us not forget his corporate love child killing any and all competition ruthlessly. Let us not forget him litigating to death anything he couldn't kill outright. Or buying it and then putting it on a shelf to be forgotten. Any number of VirtualPC/SoftPC/Emulator products provide ample proof of that. Nor let us forget Microsoft being a huge monolith company that price fixed for decades and got away with it, essentially because they had no competitors (of course, they were all dead now). Nor should we forget the SCO proxy-war against Linux. Funny thing; FreeBSD was legally vetted against AT&T back in 1994. I'm surprised that Microsoft didn't try to kill BSD. But, oh wait!, they "borrowed" the BSD TCP stack from FreeBSD for Windows 98 and beyond because their network stack sucked. Then also remember that, while the BSD License allowed them to "borrow" liberally from BSD, they NEVER gave anything back to the community that saved that miserable little operating system. -- Even the Robber Barons of the late 1800s (The Rockefellers, The Vanderbilts, The Carnegies, The Morgans, et al.) understood that they had to give something back to society so that other people's lived did suck that much, otherwise they risked social revolution (mainly against them). Bill Gates is cut from the same cloth. And Bill Gates is a Robber Baron of the late 1900s, much as Steve Jobs was. -- Now, the Robber Punks of the early 2000s, that's a different story. I feel like Mark Zuckerberg and the rest of the current "Big Tech" giants aren't saddled with the social equity moral quandary. They'd all rather be like Sam Bankman-Fried and just use morally and ethically corrupt lawyers to kill or cover their greed issues. -- All in all, the author is not wrong. Stop putting shitty billionaire activists on a pedestal. It's not good for the human race or the planet.
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Gates had pretty good parents. Some of that rubbed off on him. he's complex; but without good parents he'd be a real Zucker or Bankman.
Fiction writers are not this on-the-nose!
Bill put a planet behind digital Gates; a control freak.
Mark is a massive Zucker of a berg.
Sam has the humanity of a big Bankman. His name even says his fate: fried. electric chair anybody?
Steve Jobs wasn't as much of a Robber Baron. Not the same. Not good but his motives always were towards leaving HIS mark on the world; not the top
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Yep. Pretty accurate. Also remember that his actions held back technological progress for a at least a decade and more likely two and that the damage from that is still mounting. At this time, we should have reliable and secure personal computing that basically runs on any hardware. What do we have in the mainstream? A series of train-wrecks by a company that cannot even get updates right, 50 years in. Of system security. Or GUIs. That gets its cloud completely hacked. That pulls crap like making a whole ge
No good deed goes unpunished (Score:2, Insightful)
Try to help the world forward by providing free vaccines to billions? You're a show-off.
Set up a company which happens to be successful? You're a ruthless businessman; or rather, a psychopath.
Happen to make billions in your life? Now you're the epitome of selfishness!
Relation to Epstein? You're a pedophile!
And so on...
Cut the guy some slack.
This book does not deserve the attention it's getting and is probably written by a very bitter and resentful person.
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The vaccine thing is definitely objectively good, regardless of motivation.
But Microsoft didn't just "happen", it started with, continued with, and to this day still has, extremely objectionable business practices. Bill started that and oversaw most of it. He's not a good guy.
Re: No good deed goes unpunished (Score:2)
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Cut the guy some slack.
With the massive damage he did? No. He is one of the worst members of the human race.
Gates is no angel (Score:2, Insightful)
But he's doing a fuck ton more to contribute back to the world than any other billionaire is.
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He stole money from everybody. You can't know what good that money would have done or the harm his billions caused vs another person who stole money merely selling you expensive oil and paper products or whatever. He held back a whole industry - which would have solved EVERY PROBLEM on it's own without him and likely done it better too. A lot of the problems attributed to them weren't even solved by Gates or even Microsoft.
Excel is their best product and they bought that.
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Overall? No. He cannot even begin to put a small dent into the massive damage he did to society.
Re: Gates is no angel (Score:2)
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Except he isn't a criminal, and he didn't steal money.
No need for a book on his good deeds (Score:2)
...those were all loudly trumpeted in the press at the time. A book that is all about the bad points is not unbalanced; it's bringing balance at last.
There's no such thing as a good billionaire (Score:3, Insightful)
Let's look at history (Score:4, Insightful)
In the late '80s, when we started having 32 bit processors with MMUs that can run proper OSes, what'd Microsoft give us? Bill Gates will be remembered as the person who helped keep the computing world in the Dark Ages. Think of how many computers got dumped in to landfills because it financially benefitted Microsoft to make reinstallation difficult and licensing a nightmare. Think of how many computers and human-years of work were lost because Microsoft made more money with insecurity than with something that worked properly. Think of how they cultivated their ecosystem to waste, to extract revenue, and to encourage tribalism.
Bill Gates is a villain, and I am certain he knows how his role in computing will be remembered. I'm sure he wants to change that, but I don't think his philanthropy is going to save him from that.
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In the late '80s, when we started having 32 bit processors with MMUs that can run proper OSes, what'd Microsoft give us? Bill Gates will be remembered as the person who helped keep the computing world in the Dark Ages. Think of how many computers got dumped in to landfills because it financially benefitted Microsoft to make reinstallation difficult and licensing a nightmare. Think of how many computers and human-years of work were lost because Microsoft made more money with insecurity than with something that worked properly. Think of how they cultivated their ecosystem to waste, to extract revenue, and to encourage tribalism.
Bill Gates opposed mice, for the sake of DOS. 'nuff said.
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Indeed. At this time, we should have mainstream computing that is secure, reliable, easy to use and administrate and runs on basically every hardware. What we have instead is a series of constant catastrophes and near-catastrophes. That is the legacy that Gates leaves to the world. Take a lot and give back sub-standard crap. This person cost the human race at least one, probably two decades of progress. It is hard to do a more evil thing.
Just a bunch of BS (Score:2, Insightful)
Was Bill Gates a "good guy"? No. But he wasn't a "bad guy" either. He built a company that produced better software than its competitors, and he was absolutely ruthless in doing that. Then the company started abusing its success.
Re:Just a bunch of BS (Score:4, Insightful)
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Microsoft artificially jacked up the price of computers in the 80's and 90's by overcharging for software licenses and doing their best to prevent the use of open source alternatives. The way this impacted the education of children in poorer and developing nations borders on a "human rights abuse" in my book.
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Microsoft artificially jacked up the price of computers
Microsoft had nothing to do with selling computers. You could buy computers without any OS back then just fine (as you can now). OEM Windows was also inexpensive.
The way this impacted the education of children in poorer and developing nations borders on a "human rights abuse" in my book.
Now you are so full of shit, it's falling out of your mouth. The most popular OS in the 90-s (when Microsoft was abusing its monopoly) in poorer countries was pirated Windows. Nobody cared about license enforcement there and then, and pretty much nobody was buying "brand name" computers from the US or from companies that cared about licensing. I kn
People are not simple (Score:2)
There are no 100% heroes or villains, everyone has good and bad
Gates accomplished a lot of good, but also did more than a bit of bad
Some of the lies that have become popular recently miss the point
If ya wanna criticize the guy, there are plenty of true things that he did that deserve criticism
Would people prefer he not try to help? (Score:2)
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I would prefer he not be *able* to help because "his" money was already doing even more good as administered by people responsive to the public trust.
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Epstein and Gates (Score:2)
The entirety of the relationship was Epstein discovering Gates had an affair with a mutual acquaintance and Epstein trying to blackmail Gates into being a founding member and donor of an Epstein 'charity'.
So yes it was bad that Gates had an affair, but no there was nothing sordid other than the affair.
This is news? (Score:2)
Geeze, welcome to the 21st century.
I have always felt this way about him (Score:2)
Private Jet and Multiple Mansions (Score:2)
Gates is a guy who talks about climate change while flying around in a private jet and maintaining multiple mansions. The money he gives away has a huge emissions footprint. The non-profits he supports often promote industry and development where he has parallel private investments. Witness his promotion of nuclear power.
Of course none of that is unique to Bill Gates. There is a reason Christ said it was almost impossible for a wealthy person to enter the kingdom of heaven. The things that allow you to acc
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As much as I've spent over 30 years against Bill Gates, some of this stuff is stretching. People are complex. He does a lot of good today and his bad stuff is not that harmful or likely even intentionally bad. Yes, he did want to improve his image and he also wanted to avoid taxes and this parent's charity work probably rubbed off on him besides his mom getting him a chance of a lifetime deal with IBM that made his fortune. He is has control issues which became a power addition and money was how he got th
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People are complex. He does a lot of good today and his bad stuff is not that harmful or likely even intentionally bad.
What difference does it make whether he is "intentionally bad". His "bad stuff" really is that harmful. He is warming the planet while greenwashing his own contribution encourages others to do the same. Is he intentionally warming the planet? No. But his contribution to global warming is at least proportional to his wealth.
Yes people are complex. For instance, you will find all sorts of evil people that have lots of good qualities. It was said Hitler was kind to children.( Just not Jewish children, or Poli
Billionaires with good PR are worse, not better (Score:2)
The fact that he saves a bunch of lives might seem good in theory. But his entire fortune is based on exploiting the work of people he considers below him, and his engaging in every unfair and underhanded tactic that capitalism affords him.
A billionaire who is good at whitewashing his evil away is actually worse than a plain old mustache-twirling billionaire. They can fool you into thinking they're something they're not. That's far more of a hazard.
The same amount of resources, in millions or billions of ha
Ownership and profit (Score:2)
Billionaires are the living gods in a pantheon of American Exceptionalism: Bill Gates did more good than most them but that was always a by-product of seeking ownership and profit. His priority was never inspiration and equality: His legacy won't be a monument to human endeavour and nobility.
It would be nice to remember the true cost of a billionaire's so-called charity but the forgotten and dead can't speak of their suffering so history forgets the details and most-times, disappears the ugly truth. A
Payout (Score:2)
Everyone pushing the philanthropist lie are people wishing for a handout from the fat cow. See Vince McMahan. See Donald Trump. They are surrounded by lying bastards sucking from the tit of the cow, until you LITERALLY shit on your employees.
Hated Gates for DOS and Win 3.1 (Score:2)
Hating him now is utterly pointless.
Re:Epstein (Score:5, Interesting)
https://www.yahoo.com/news/fox... [yahoo.com]
“I guess I would. I think that less so because, you don’t know, you don’t want to affect people’s lives if it’s phony stuff in there, because it’s a lot of phony stuff with that whole world. But I think I would,” Trump said.
https://www.congress.gov/118/m... [congress.gov]
“You had many people in that group other than neo-Nazis and white
nationalists,” Trump said. “The press has treated them absolutely unfairly.”
“You also had some very fine people on both sides,” he said.
Who are these "fine people" who just happen to find themselves in the middle of a klan rally? MAGA voters.
Re: Epstein (Score:2)
or the "fine people" hoax.
That wasn't a hoax, Trump said there were very fine people on both sides of a protest in Charlottesville following a white supremacist ramming his car into a crowd killing a young woman. That's the only reason he was talking about Charlottesville then, the car ramming incident was all over the news.
Trump says he wasn't talking about the white supremacists at that event. We can take his word for it, like Snopes did, but that happened on day two of an explicitly white supremacist rally, Unite the Right. So wh
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Re: Epstein (Score:5, Informative)
> Says the guy supporting a convicted felon.
Do you know what the underlying crime was or do you find it acceptable that a defense team is not told what the charges are they are defending against?
You do know what you're talking about, right?
And you'd be OK facing the same situation yourself?
I mean, those people who were convicted under the Fugitive Slave Act were very bad people because the Courts concluded as such - right?
Sigh, get your facts from real news sources and not alt-right ones. It took a 5 second web search to find a Times article which debunks your statement about his charges as the very first item on the list.
Myth: No one knows what Trump was charged with.
Response: Trump was charged in a 15-page indictment, handed up by a grand jury, with 34 counts of violating New York Penal Law 175-10 in the first degree, which is a felony. A violation in the first degree occurs when a person falsifies business records with an intent to defraud that includes an intent to commit, aid, or conceal another crime. In addition to the indictment, the Manhattan District Attorney filed a 13-page statement of facts detailing the allegations.
https://time.com/6985532/trump... [time.com]
I expected better from a 4 digit slashdot ID, but I guess all the super old members are just nuts now.
Try to at least get your lies right (Score:3, Informative)
The prosecutor in New York went after Trump for NOT using campaign funds to silence the prostitute. By using personal funds, Trump did NOT run afoul of federal laws (which is why the feds did not prosecute) and in fact if Trump HAD used campaign funds (as you and the Democrat prosecutor in NY wanted) he WOULD have violated federal law (my previous congresscritter did that very thing and went to prison for it). Trump was the victim of a blackmailer (Stormy Daniels) and the government SHOULD have been on HIS
Re:Try to at least get your lies right (Score:5, Funny)
And no, Trump's team still does not know what we was convicted of, just as we do not.
https://www.npr.org/2024/05/30... [npr.org]
Here, read all the documents for yourself. https://ww2.nycourts.gov/peopl... [nycourts.gov]
Holy shit I've seen some dick riders on this site but you win first prize.
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Here, read all the documents for yourself. [link]
It's nice of you to help this guy 'do his own research.'
Re: Try to at least get your lies right (Score:3)
Trump was the victim of a blackmailer (Stormy Daniels) and the government SHOULD have been on HIS SIDE (blackmailing is a crime, after all)
I'm not a rocket lawyer but how do you accuse someone of blackmailing while at the same time saying you had zero contact with them, and arranged method of buying their silence through a bunch of your own intermediaries on your own initiative.
Tiqui, if I write a book about your misdeeds and you try to buy the entire print run, from the publisher you're in cahoots with, and according to you we've had no communication, explain how that's blackmail because it looks an awful lot like a coverup from where I'm sta
Re: Try to at least get your lies right (Score:2)
Now the criminal thing: He didnâ(TM)t use _his_ money to pay, but one of his companies paid. So instead of him paying $100,000 his company did. Thatâ(TM)s tax evasion. To make it legal, th
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You are that he used company funds, unlike the post that said he used campaign funds. Trump however was not convicted of tax evasion, he was convicted of covering up the transaction so as to fool the public. This made it into a felony. Firstly if hiding things from the public that can effect the election is a felony then I would say 99% of politicians are guilty. Secondly it was quite clear at the time of the election that Trump had slept with Stormy Daniels, that and his pussy grabbing statement, if people
Re: Try to at least get your lies right (Score:3)
Re:I don't like his operating system one bit, but. (Score:4, Informative)
Just as with Jimmy Carter, I see Bill Gates as achieving nobility in retirement
For what? Because not only can you find corruption or even malicious intent in everything he's done, but there remains the question of whether any positive effects outweigh the harm he did while running Microsoft. He set back computing a decade with his war on Linux, you don't think that has had secondary effects across all modern industries and disciplines?
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NYT is solidly democrat and carries their water. Turning on Biden because he wouldn't give interviews isn't because they suddenly turned right.
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He made billions from unethical business practices, and gave much less back in charity so if you measure it in net money taken from the system so he is bad.
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Re: (Score:2, Insightful)
Trump is all about Eugenics. He speaks like a believer all the time but disguised in ignorance. Trumps PARENTS were into it as was his grandfather; he picked up the belief and never dropped it.
He keeps reminding us how big and smart his brain is because his uncle did ok at MIT. He just learned to not say broad stuff about a whole race-- simply say it about individuals and nations instead! He won't say all black people look a like but he'll routinely confuse very different looking ones he doesn't see often