So I just read Bill Gates’ 1976 Open Letter To Hobbyists, in which he whines about not making more money from his software. You know, instead of being proud of making software that people wanted to use. And then the bastard went on and made proprietary licences for software the industry standard, holding back innovation and freedom for decades. What a douche canoe.
yeah… no shit…
My PC repair teacher hated Gates. The first story he told us about him was about how he essentially obtained DOS for a literal pittance, turned a massive profit on it, and never credited the original creators.
I might’ve skewed the story over the years of trying to keep it in my memory, but if I did it just goes to show how much I hate Bill Gates.
Nah you about got it.
All billionaires are horrible humans and parasitic to all of humanity
The most lemmy take ever
Billionaire being a selfish person? Who woulda known? But yes, even though he donates a lot of his wealth, becoming a billionaire is a sign of being a sociopath.
His donations are a tax dodge. Besides this billionaire philanthropy is a way to say that the people should not dictate how funds are allocated to things like medical and scientific research, international aid, etc. it’s saying that we instead are okay with our wealth being extracted to pseudokings and allowing them to make these decisions on our behalf. Should we research aids? Space? Should we give food aid to foreign nations experiencing famine? We don’t get to decide, let’s hope one of the oligarchs shines their light on these plights.
Meanwhile it buys great PR to rehab an image. Bill gates is “the nice billionaire” who sends people 10k of Microsoft shit he didn’t even pay for through reddit secret Santa (eg an ad buy). No one then cares that was instrumental in making computers full of proprietary bullshit, destroying interoperability, eliminating competition and killing open source efforts (look up embrace, extend, extinguish if you want to get angry about 90s and early 2000s Microsoft), or even that he probably raped kids on epsteins island
He desperately wants a Nobel Prize
Nobody cares about a Nobel Prize. He buys up vaccines using his “charity” and then puts them all behind a patent wall. And bill uses his influence to do capitalist psyops, like doing climate change denial through channels like Kurzgesagt.
What?! No. I bet next you are gonna tell me lil Donnie Trump is a pedophile.
Wait till you know ol Billy could be one too
What!? Nooo. Who next? Prince Andrew. Come on, like the royals would ever be into something like that.
He was friends with Jeffrey Epstein after he was convicted for child abuse. Bill Gates is just an awful awful billionaire.
I’ve read that rather than little kids, Gates was interested in Epsteins influence with other members of the elite because Bill has an obsession with getting a Nobel Prize. Doesn’t absolve his character but I haven’t heard any rape allegations from victims yet.
Bill’s wife was very mad that Bill kept hanging out with Epstein and cited it as one of the divorce reasons.
She refused to elaborate and told people they should hear the rest from Bill himself. So I think we all know where this is going.
I’m not defending Gates, I’m saying he allegedly had other motivations. Definitely could have been a 2 birds with 1 stone for him.
I didn’t say he did. Is more of Billy at the height of his wealth and influence he couldn’t ditch Epstein. He has no good bone in his body.
There have been many times when I thought to myself: “Hold on. Can I be absolutely sure that billionaires are scum? Maybe there’s a crucial part of the story I’m missing?”
Every single time I just found even more cases of them blatantly lying, manipulating data and taking advantage of everything and everyone around them for personal gain. And every one of those times, it got me more depressed about the current and future state of society and the world in general.
You can try this yourself. I highly recommend it, even though the outcome is obvious. We can very rarely, if ever, be 100% sure about anything, so it’s always a good idea to put your beliefs to the test. However, I find it fairly self-evident that anyone seriously arguing in favor of any billionaire has simply never critically examined this topic.
No matter where and how deeply you look, it’s just evidence upon evidence upon evidence that they are, in fact, the worst filth that has ever shared the air with us. Though at least this one thing is comming to an end. Soon, we’ll be breathing toxic waste while they’ll be enjoying clean air in their doomsday bunkers larger than entire neighborhoods.
There’s some 0.0001% theoretical possibility that a billionaire could be a non-sociopath. If they literally dedicated their life to extracting money from the wider economy or top crust, not spending any of it on themselves or their descendants, but instead solely redistributing to the most needing people in the world. Monetary wealth at the end of the day is just economic control - it doesn’t become evil until it’s actually used for your own benefit, i.e., the economy is being rewired for you to live in luxury.
Assuming of course (big fat assumption) that you don’t screw people over to get it in the first place - and, even if you are giving it all away, it’s questionable why you’d end up with a surplus of money that large, if your goal is to donate it, why would the rate coming in exceed the rate going out, unless the goal was to purchase some institution or something, i.e., purchase Walmart and turn it into a cooperative. Probably not to invest the money to grow it to have more to give, because the return on investment for the money also has to come from somewhere, i.e., has its own ethical ramifications.
But I mean, name a single person in the last century who fit that profile. I can’t name one. So. And at the end of the day the best situation for the society isn’t to have single people controlling things and hoping they use their power responsibly, it’s to democratize that power and have everyone use it responsibly.
Oooh, ruin Warren Buffet for me!
(This isn’t a snarky rebuttal I just never heard anything but figures it’s too good to be true)
Warren Buffet is an interesting case. He’s straight up said that their IS a class war going on and billionaires are winning. He also expressed some amazement that society would award his skill set with so much money. That being said he is a capitalist thru and thru and has faith in a failed economic system because it turned out well for him.
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Even Taylor.
That’s why one should not trust billionaires who make noises about changing the world for the better. It is merely to stoke their egos. I’m not even religious anymore but I still remember being taught that it is better to share the success without bragging about it. There are genuinely good rich folks, but they don’t brag about how nice they are. Chuck Feeney, the billionaire founder of Duty Free, quietly donated the majority of his wealth by the time he died. He was left with $2 million after the donations and was renting an apartment in New York. There is also a millionaire who built houses for the homeless. But I would say that the “good ones” are far and few.
However, the darker side of trying to “be rich and be quiet about it” are some billionaires donating to regressive causes. I think I don’t need to mention the Koch brothers and Murdochs. Being the “power behind the throne” is more effective way to actually wield power. That’s why I don’t think ridding Trump will solve anything unless there is a more robust system to prevent money in politics being put ever again.
The “doing good” thing is just a cover to avoid paying taxes. All the money Gates has donated just went to charities he set up and his heirs own/control…
Precisely. And to belabour the point, if they really want to “do good”, just shut up and do it. No need to announce on the megaphone that they are good for wanting to donate most of their wealth, but are still billionaires and getting richer. If they are serious about helping, their net worth would have decreased by now and would not be billionaires anymore.
Mackenzie scott made more money than she donated, and shes donated quite a bit, idk the logistics of that or how it works, donated 19 billion worth 32
Obviously Bill Gates is a household name and in the tech community everyone knows who is Steve Ballmer. However not many people know who Paul Allen is even though he was one of the founder of Microsoft at the very start. In 1982 Paul Allen was diagnosed with cancer and Bill and Steve were worried that if Paul died the shares of the company would go to someone else along with control of the company. While Paul was literally getting cancer treatment, Bill and Steve were scheming to dilute the shares of the company to wrestle the control of the company away from Paul. Fortunately for Paul he survived the cancer. It really doesn’t put Bill Gates and Steve Ballmer in very good light though. I remember reading about this from Robert X. Cringely’s blog about two decades ago and I heard Paul Allen wrote about his version of this story in his memoir before his death.
Edit: I tried to find the original Robert X. Cringely’s story from back in 2006 but looks like that link is broken but he did referenced it in 2011 when Paul Allen’s book was released.
He’s missing out on his redemption arc. But I doubt if put in his shoes that anyone would pass up the opportunity he had.
yeah, but on the other hand, he fucked up the entire reduction system in the US.
More of a total goatse of a man, an impressive gaping emptiness that consumes and gets ass all over everything while making us all look at it.
Except the wedding ring. He’s too much of a pedophile to keep one of those.
Upvote for use of goatse in an insult.
He’s totally fine… when he has his billions and complete unlimited financial safety, and never has to have a worry about spending ever again. Take all that away and his monster comes back out.
J/k, once corrupted, always corrupted.
He is literally in the Epstein List no?
gates wife left him bc epstein hooked him up with a russian chick 30 years younger then him :\
but he was a piece of shit decades before that happened.
Even if he wasn’t he’s still a capitalist pig.
*oligarchical pig
Capitalism is just free competition, which is the opposite of what Bill Gates is for.
In a communist economy he would be the same pig.
Capitalism always lead to monopolies and a lack of competition. At some point one company will always get lucky and be able to use its money to completely destroy competition, especially small competition.
*Oligarchy always lead to monopolies and a lack of competition.
Yes and capitalism has all the incentives to create oligarchies.
So does socialism and communism.
Ok buddy boy. Sounds like someone is a temporarily embarassed millionaire.
