Skiluros@sh.itjust.works
on 08 Apr 20:57
nextcollapse
Thank you to Howard G. Buffett!
I am glad that Howard Buffett has a sober understanding of how the russians operate. They will not engage in good faith unless you demonstrate that you are able and willing to fuck them up.
DontMakeMoreBabies@lemm.ee
on 08 Apr 21:53
nextcollapse
Fuck this asshole for existing - I don’t give a shit what he does, good or bad, because no single person should get to decide what happens to that much stolen wealth.
null_dot@lemmy.dbzer0.com
on 08 Apr 22:01
nextcollapse
Billionaires should not exist, but in a world where they do the ones that give away some of their billions are less terrible than the others.
SwingingTheLamp@midwest.social
on 08 Apr 23:21
nextcollapse
So get to it.
null_dot@lemmy.dbzer0.com
on 08 Apr 23:31
nextcollapse
This is black and white thinking and it’s unproductive.
The rapist analogy is not helpful because it’s merely emotive language and not analogous.
I don’t give a shit what he does, good or bad
billionaire provides $1b in aid to ukraine
billionaire builds satellite internet infrastructure to enrich themselves and then denies it’s use to ukraine
billionaire provides $1b to netanyahu in exchange for an option to buy prime real estate in Pallestine.
If you don’t give a shit about any of these options then you have no credibility and you are the problem.
It would be nice to live in a world where billionaires do not exist but that is not your reality. By rabidly screaming blue bloody murder at any mention of a billionaire you forego any opportunity to limit their impact.
Your examples listed above are skipping the part they are taking issue with, “becoming a billionaire.” The problem isn’t that it’s emotive language, its that you don’t care to focus on the portion they want to focus on.
To become a billionaire you make the vast majority of your money off the backs of other people. Some do it via markets, investment, buying and selling companies and all other things “capitalism.” There are others that do it through actual slavery and other extremely abusive methods. But no billionaires do the work themselves to make this money. And all billionaires could give more back to those doing the actual work, relishing themselves mere millionaires and still never have to worry about money.
Maybe we should be acknowledging when a billionaire does a good thing but not ignore the fact that they are just giving away other’s hard work. Maybe the only real good act a billionaire can do is not be a billionaire.
null_dot@lemmy.dbzer0.com
on 09 Apr 02:37
collapse
Everybody understands that becoming a billionaire is unethical.
You would think that but we did have a few tens of millions of people vote for someone who said he was going to fuck up the economy and now these people are all asking what the hell happened.
Maybe we should stop assuming and start calling a spade a spade.
“In a world filled with rapists one who raped only a woman is less terrible than someone who raped 10.”
Yes, no shit that he’s less terrible compared to others but he’s still one of the greediest human being on the planet and he doesn’t deserve any praise.
null_dot@lemmy.dbzer0.com
on 09 Apr 23:24
collapse
What’s with this fixation on rape metaphors?
Just gonna spell this out real quick. Having a father who made many billions trading shares is not at all similar to raping a woman.
Additionally, there are extraordinarily few people who would not choose to be a billionaire.
It’s easy to suggest that you’re a better person than any billionaire simply because the odds are that you (nor me, nor any of us) will ever be one. However, if the fairy god mother appeared right now and offered you $1b you would instantly become “one of the greediest human beings on the planet” by your own definition.
People fail to realize how evil billionares are and so you have to come up with stupid comparisons. A billion in money is the equivalent of owning hundred of thousands cars or houses, they affect society negatively more than a single murderer would do. Criminality and people losing their shit is partially the result of a society where people are exploited and turn against each other to make profits. Billionares are the ones who sit on top of this rigged pyramid.
if the fairy god mother appeared right now and offered you $1b you would instantly become “one of the greediest human beings on the planet” by your own definition.
Any normal person that wins a billion dollar would keep some for himself and gift or donate the rest with the result that they wouldn’t be a billionare anymore. A billion is simply a ridiculous amount of money, you could buy a castle, invest 100 millions in the stock market and you would still be left with most of it.
FinnFooted@lemmy.world
on 09 Apr 06:39
nextcollapse
I have mixed feelings. His gist is basically that he agrees billionaires shouldn’t exist and that there’s no ethical billionaire and he wants reforms to make it so they don’t.
But he argues that we live in a system where billionaires are inevitable and that it would be stupid not to invest wisely and make billions if he can because if he doesn’t someone else just will and he can use the money for good.
However, even if you buy this narrative of good billionaire, you can just look to his ties will Bill Gates and the Bill and Melinda gates foundation to see that, even if he did mean well, his perception on how to do good is completely twisted.
FinnFooted@lemmy.world
on 09 Apr 08:38
nextcollapse
Bill gates put a lot of effort into making monopolies. He tried to stomp out Linux. And, part of his whole weird philantrophy was trying to circumcise the men of Africa to save them from aids but inadvertanly likely increased the spread of aids which is just one case study in how his foundation can help but also does harmful bananas shit.
Listen to the behind the bastards on him. Warren buffet might get a pass if you squint, but Bill Gates is a bastard.
Edit: I would like to say that “increased the spread of aids” is probably misleading in that I make it sound like the program overall increased AIDS in Africa. That is not true. There is controversial evidence that circumcision may decrease the spread of AIDS. There’s controversial evidence that circumcision led the risky behavior in circumcised men who felt they were immune after circumcision. The data, since its an uncontrollable population study, is messy. But, Bills foundation involvent in Africa has had many unintended consequences across the continent that has saves some lives and cost others and no one man should have such strong say on the health policies of an entire continent. Personally, I also feel very strongly no one man should have such strong sway on campaigns which result is mass surgery on the genitals of an entirely different group of men when there are arguably better ways to mitigate disease transmission.
The man should literally be made into a saint. “Oooh Linux blah blah” FIFTY FUCKING MILLION LIVES SAVED. The man has far outweighed anything bad he’s ever done in his life.
FinnFooted@lemmy.world
on 09 Apr 09:40
nextcollapse
Bill Gates has saved 50 million lives according to Bill Gates. But his business and philanthropypractices have directly and indirectly led to degradation of quality of life and death in such complex ways we can’t even put a number on it.
Because Bill Gates, and generally philanthropy from people of his generation, want to throw money at a problem without asking the people they are trying to help how to help them. When you just try to save people without including them in the process because you think you know better than them what’s best for them, there’s usually pretty unintended and bad side effects.
So, not only was he a pretty cut throat and immoral business man, but even when he tries to buy his way into being a good person with the money he makes from his business practices that rely on monopolies and unethically cheap labor, he fucks it up.
null_dot@lemmy.dbzer0.com
on 09 Apr 23:17
collapse
The article you linked is pretty disingenuous and is obviously ideologically opposed to the voluntary circumcision program. The key as to why the program was ultimately unsuccessful is this:
“I blame those who told me that if I get circumcised I won’t get HIV,” said one respondent, “and I got HIV already!” Others mourned the loss of friends, brothers, relatives, and neighbors to AIDS following the procedure they believed would protect them. “These people are dying of HIV due to ignorance,” a respondent explained.
The WHO claimed that male to female transmission is reduced by 60% among circumcised males, and I don’t think that statistic is in question in that article. The problem was that people neglected safe sex practices after being circumcised.
You’re absolutely correct that helping people is hard, particularly in developing nations. We see time and again that programs designed to improve quality of life have unintended and deleterious consequences.
That said, I feel certain that they did in fact ask the people they were trying to help how to help them, and I’m confident that you don’t have any evidence that Gates just landed in Africa and started cutting people without any kind of support from African leaders.
Sure, the program was ultimately unsuccessful. Does that mean Gates is the bad guy compared to other billionaires who didn’t spend their money trying to help?
I linked a research paper, an article interviewing Africans, and a third article outlining all the unintended consequences of bill gates program. The problem with his program is not just that it didn’t focus on education. It’s that Bill Gates got to decide where the majority of money for medical purposes was in sub Saharan Africa in a way that actually limited medical care outside of very specific programs that the bill and Melinda gates deemed important and had unintended consequences. Honestly, the big part that I haven’t honed on enough is the aspect of how much control this gives Bill Gates has over peoples lives. He’s a major donor to the UN health agency and the WHO and has a huge amount of power there that he actually sways to dictate policy. He has huge sway over who lives and who dies. I’m glad you’re confident Bill Gates didn’t just land in Africa without support from leaders of African countries and thus and inferred “support from Africans”. But you and I both know that his huge wealth creates a weird power imbalance with whoever he donates to and I argue that he exercises that power imbalance in a negative way to do what he thinks is best for others instead of asking people what’s best for them.
And, honestly, his vaccination and anti malraia programs saved crazy amounts of lives. I’m not here to act like his philanthropy did nothing to save lives. I’m here to argue that individual men trying to save whole continents by throwing money at problems in ways that also gives them influence and control over a population doesn’t absolve them of their other sins, this isn’t the most effective way to actually save lives, this has unintended consequences that actually costs some lives, and generally how bill gates uses his foundation isn’t how world problems should be handled.
You say at least he spends money on programs unlike others. But I argue that this doesn’t make him good because he doesn’t do it from a place of good or do it in a good way. he doesnt actually pay attention or care about his philanthropy. He was pressured into becoming philanthropic by his mom and, after she died, his dad who then handled it. He only got active after he stepped down as the head of Microsoft (because he was forced down after anti trust shit) and I argue he stayed for the power he gained after he lost power at Microsoft. Much of his foundation money actually goes… To other large companies (like Monsanto, MasterCard, and Vodafone). So, on top of everything, his philanthropy has a huge “giant capitalist companies will save the world” twist to it when we should be focusing on universal health care.
Also, to be detailed on the AIDS thing, the reduction in transmission by 60% is highly controversial in the science community. The research was extremely flawed. There was a lot of skepticism in the science community before and for good reason. And, don’t get me wrong, circumcision probably does decrease the spread of sexually transmitted HIV by reducing the likelyhood a man will get HIV from vaginal sex and then spread it… And HIV is down some so part of some anti HIV program actually was successful. But I’ll also leave this reddit comment here as it highlights a lot of journal articles that indicate it wasn’t circumcision.
Bill gates is not a good guy. Bill Gates is a guy who throws his unethically obtained eboranant wealth at issues in a way that gives him control and actually hinders non capitalistic universal health care which would arguably be more effective. Many times it works out. But it also warped.
Seriously there 2 hours of a behind the bastards episode on this that organizes everything much better than I can on Lemmy.
gamermanh@lemmy.dbzer0.com
on 09 Apr 15:18
nextcollapse
The man should literally be made into a saint
The man fucked children with Epstein, be absolutely shouldn’t you fucking weirdo
To the downvotes: weirdly simping for somebody who repeatedly flew the Lolita Express? Y’all fuck Kids too, huh?
At the same time you could argue that his decisions have affected billions of people on this planet in a negative way and the fifty million lives saved were to whitewash everything else he’s done. He’s not doing it out of the kindness of his heart, he did it because 1) Melinda told him she’d fuck off if he kept being such a jackass, and 2) As one of the most hated men in the world, he needed to fix his image.
I mean he more or less did it at gunpoint. Do you not remember how hated he used to be? He would’ve been shot by someone eventually for sure.
null_dot@lemmy.dbzer0.com
on 09 Apr 23:19
collapse
Yeah I don’t understand this bizarre hatred for Gates.
How many other billionaires are spending their fortunes trying to help the most vulnerable people?
FlashMobOfOne@lemmy.world
on 09 Apr 11:09
collapse
There’s a tweet floating around the Internet that says: “You know that question where you’re asked if you’d press a button for a million bucks, knowing it would hurt someone somewhere that you don’t know? That’s how you get billionaires. They’re pushing that button as often and as quickly as they possibly can.”
Billionaires are motherfuckers. All of them.
FlashMobOfOne@lemmy.world
on 09 Apr 00:40
nextcollapse
Sounds like those motherfuckers need to pay some taxes, clearly.
Yep. A single billionaire funding a war effort is abhorrent.
This one happens to be on the right side, but there’s absolutely no guarantee that his will be the case for any of these fucking psychopaths.who horde wealth. They all need to go.
It wouldn’t, but I think that ship has sailed already. I don’t see how your current governmental structure would ever fix that. It’s been a problem since citizens united, if not before
Are you ByteJunk? Is ByteJunk a name for a group of people or why do you say « they »?
dependencyinjection@discuss.tchncs.de
on 09 Apr 11:39
collapse
No. I am dependencyInjection.
I said they, as I was referencing ByteJunk and what they literally said (typed, if you want to be a pedant) in the comment you replied to.
Are you happy now? Do you need anything else blatantly obvious to be clarified for you?
humorlessrepost@lemmy.world
on 09 Apr 13:24
nextcollapse
Bogus is just doing that new anti-trans-panic performance the nazis do now where they pretend English hasn’t used they/them for unspecified gender for hundreds of years. She’s a troll.
dependencyinjection@discuss.tchncs.de
on 09 Apr 13:27
nextcollapse
Yeah it’s an odd one. You could say my friend Bob is also going and they will meet you in the reception.
Perfectly normal way of speaking and nothing to do with transgender stuff.
Singular they had existed for centuries before your miserable existence.
It’s a way to refer to someone in the 3rd person without knowing their gender. If you do know their gender, you can use the proper gendered pronouns.
Not only ‘the’ for all sexes
‘The’ has always been gender neutral in English because English doesn’t assign gender to nouns. Thus grammatically, a gender-specific “the” isn’t necessary unlike in German or Spanish where all nouns have grammatical genders. And if you come back at me with “‘the’ isn’t even that old, it used to be spelled ‘ye’”, well the problem there is that it was only printed that way for convenience, the pronunciation was never with a “y”.
“It” is incorrect for using about a person as well, unless referring to a baby or a small child. Why? It’s just how English has been spoken for a long time now, and how it’s still used. Language rules should reflect usage, not the other way around.
Well, apparently I communicate sufficiently in English for you to address my points accordingly. And it also shows a certain mental poverty, especially a lack of self-reflection, not just to nitpick infantile grammatical errors, but also to stick your nose into things where you know you’ll get virtually slapped. But as I already mentioned: I can’t turn donkeys like you into a racehorse. This mental effort, if possible for you at all, should come from you.
I see dependencyInjection clearly would have better used his time elsewhere, so let’s learn from his endeavours and tag you appropriately, so we can avoid future waste.
There’s really no such thing as “Russian billionaires”, at least not in the western sense. Also not in the oligarch sense, oligarchy implies rule by few, that’s not the case in Russia, it’s an autocracy, rule by one: There’s the Tsar and he doeth bequeath wealth upon loyal viceroys in the form of fiefdoms to exploit. The Tsar giveth, and the Tsar taketh away. Shit hasn’t changed since the times of the Russian Empire but this time around it’s less about territories and the people on it but factories and industries.
Certainly, the Russian system was and is totally a hierarchical system based on- like everywhere - on power and influence (both intermingle). But this does not exclude that there are very wealthy people in Russia who are funding the war, being it because they are forced to (I hardly believe) or because they make profit out of it. Don’t you think so?
The war is funded partly by the taxpayer, partly by inflation. The viceroys might be making less of a profit right now as they can’t engage in their usual level of grift but Putin doesn’t, and isn’t going to, touch their villas and fancy cars.
That’s not contradicting anything I said, on the contrary it’s contradicting your assertion that those people would be funding the war. Their wealth is largely unaffected, still making profits (even if a bit lower) because they’re still fulfilling their purpose as loyal viceroys.
Like, usually they could e.g. produce ballistic vests out of cardboard, bill the army full price for the things, and pocket the difference. That doesn’t fly any more but that doesn’t mean that suddenly their businesses are unprofitable.
Among kremlinologists there’s generally an acknowledgement that the viceroys aren’t exactly thrilled about the war because it’s cutting into their profits and they’re not seeing any point in it, OTOH they’re also not willing to bite the hand that feeds them. Few have armies large enough to march on Moscow, none have armies large enough to face down the actual one, and none of them wants to end like Prigozhin. They also don’t like not being able to travel to Monaco. They’re assholes captured between a rock and a hard place. Normal Russian circumstances, one might say.
ReluctantMuskrat@lemmy.world
on 09 Apr 13:31
collapse
Except he’s not funding a war, he’s funding the defense of a nation fighting for freedom and its right to exist.
Ukraine didn’t get in this war as a pissing match with Russia. It was wrongly attacked and is a democracy defending itself. It’s had its children kidnapped and its civilians targeted. It will cease to exist if it loses. We don’t have a greedy capitalist funding an unjust war for profit as you’re trying to suggest. Helping Ukraine is the right thing to do. Refusing to help them will simply result in Europe fighting a better-resourced Russia later.
I’m not arguing that these funds shouldn’t go to Ukraine. I’m arguing that no single individual should ever be allowed to have so much money that they are able to do this. They all need to be cut down to size ASAP.
FlashMobOfOne@lemmy.world
on 10 Apr 02:35
collapse
If there’s one thing billionaires are known for, it is, of course, giving billions to a war effort with absolutely zero strings attached. Totally.
FlashMobOfOne@lemmy.world
on 09 Apr 10:57
collapse
Absolutely. What other reasonable response is there?
FlashMobOfOne@lemmy.world
on 09 Apr 11:22
collapse
Yes. If we lived in another reality, and there was a true progressive about to pass a 100% tax on all wealth over a billion dollars, Warren would be showing is true colors very, very quickly. It’s easy to say the right thing on this because he knows he’ll never have to pay a dime more than he does right now.
He’s a dragon among 700 or so other dragons sitting on unimaginable wealth that he will never spend in his lifetime. He deserves nothing but disrespect.
agamemnonymous@sh.itjust.works
on 09 Apr 13:31
nextcollapse
It’s easy to say the right thing on this because he knows he’ll never have to pay a dime more than he does right now.
And it’s easy to make sweeping statements based purely on hypotheticals and your own assumptions. In our reality, he’s one of the biggest advocates for raising his own taxes.
Why would Buffet need “good PR”? He’s a trader who just buys and sells shit all day. If anything, something like this would be bad PR as rich people wouldn’t want to invest in his companies.
ABAB
I agree, but I feel you’re just swinging at the air here.
They shouldn’t exist to begin with, workers should get a bigger share and products should be cheaper. Taxes money aren’t necessarily used for good especially when you have a bunch of fascists at the government.
I have mixed feelings about this headline. On the one hand, it’s good to see this much money going to a good cause. On the other hand, I firmly oppose the ability of any one person to control this much money.
Compare this one guy’s donation to a good cause against all the other billionaires donating money to the Heritage Foundation, MAGA, etc
pancakes@sh.itjust.works
on 09 Apr 16:52
nextcollapse
Not the OC but the problem I have is in just one private citizen’s ability to influence so much military power. While historically this isn’t new and in this case it does overall good, I think that this kind of thing is a slippery slope that eventually could lead to billionaires funding wars to manipulate market elements for profit.
IndustryStandard@lemmy.world
on 09 Apr 18:20
collapse
Billionaires “donating” to foreign countries sounds like bribes for rare earth minerals.
No billionaire is altruistic. Bill Gates is the best example.
An altruistic billionaire is an oxymoron. If they were truly altruistic, they wouldn’t be a billionaire.
tyler@programming.dev
on 09 Apr 18:57
nextcollapse
this is clearly reductionist. you can inherit that money and then utilize it effectively by donating it without destroying your ability to raise more money for donating. donating all your money means you have no investments to raise more money for donating. governments don’t do this, their goal is to spend taxpayer money to make the world a better place, while billionaires can only do the same if they keep an income stream.
IndustryStandard@lemmy.world
on 09 Apr 19:12
collapse
But billionaire kids do not do this. Warren Buffet is still alive too.
Another nefarious motive would be tax writeoffs to purchase goods at one of his own companies.
Never ever ever ever give a billionaire the benefit of the doubt. Ever.
InternetCitizen2@lemmy.world
on 10 Apr 13:25
collapse
The fundamental leap in logic to being a libertarian
SoftestSapphic@lemmy.world
on 09 Apr 16:36
nextcollapse
The world would be better off if all excess wealth were perpetually redistribed
prole@lemmy.blahaj.zone
on 10 Apr 13:19
nextcollapse
I also hate that it just moves forward this idea of “individuals and charities will pick up the slack” when they dismantle everything good the government does.
I guess exploiting the opioid crisis, climate change, or labor violations are just details.
There is no good billionaire. You can use whatever crazy scale to justify your opinion of one, but the truth is they made money profiteering from the destruction of hundreds of thousands of lives, if not more.
Once you made a couple of millions and are set for life there are no reason to keep investing money in evil companies. A normal person would take the money out and donate them not keep investing.
SoftestSapphic@lemmy.world
on 09 Apr 16:38
nextcollapse
So if Warren wants to do the morally correct thing why doesn’t he hire assassins to kill the bad billionaires?
Technically, we don’t know that he isn’t. That kind of money likely means an assassination would be heavily planned out and need to look like natural causes because if was obvious he’d potentially put a target on his own back from other billionaires.
A Fortune article about a billionaire scum being propped up as one of the best things of the day, even though it directly implies that Ukraine is dependent on American oligarchs.
Fucking hell, that’s low… and truly representative of how every underlying aspect of human society is terminally sick.
CalipherJones@lemmy.world
on 09 Apr 17:19
nextcollapse
Wonder if this Buffets PR teams idea.
FundMECFSResearch@lemmy.blahaj.zone
on 09 Apr 17:49
nextcollapse
Yup. That’s what happens when we hand over all the power to a few people.
We get excited when those priviledged people, who are literally the ones who oppress us, make choices that helps us a little.
threaded - newest
Thank you to Howard G. Buffett!
I am glad that Howard Buffett has a sober understanding of how the russians operate. They will not engage in good faith unless you demonstrate that you are able and willing to fuck them up.
Fuck this asshole for existing - I don’t give a shit what he does, good or bad, because no single person should get to decide what happens to that much stolen wealth.
Billionaires should not exist, but in a world where they do the ones that give away some of their billions are less terrible than the others.
So get to it.
This is black and white thinking and it’s unproductive.
The rapist analogy is not helpful because it’s merely emotive language and not analogous.
If you don’t give a shit about any of these options then you have no credibility and you are the problem.
It would be nice to live in a world where billionaires do not exist but that is not your reality. By rabidly screaming blue bloody murder at any mention of a billionaire you forego any opportunity to limit their impact.
I like you. Very well put.
Your examples listed above are skipping the part they are taking issue with, “becoming a billionaire.” The problem isn’t that it’s emotive language, its that you don’t care to focus on the portion they want to focus on.
To become a billionaire you make the vast majority of your money off the backs of other people. Some do it via markets, investment, buying and selling companies and all other things “capitalism.” There are others that do it through actual slavery and other extremely abusive methods. But no billionaires do the work themselves to make this money. And all billionaires could give more back to those doing the actual work, relishing themselves mere millionaires and still never have to worry about money.
Maybe we should be acknowledging when a billionaire does a good thing but not ignore the fact that they are just giving away other’s hard work. Maybe the only real good act a billionaire can do is not be a billionaire.
Everybody understands that becoming a billionaire is unethical.
Everyone here, anyway.
Except you keep defending them, and blocking anyone who calls you out
You would think that but we did have a few tens of millions of people vote for someone who said he was going to fuck up the economy and now these people are all asking what the hell happened.
Maybe we should stop assuming and start calling a spade a spade.
Yet here they are. What you gonna do about it? Whine till their existence fade?
Lol, this is the most immature thing I’ve read all day.
^Written masturbation.
Edit: Maybe “literary”? But OP seems dumb af…
Yawn.
Blocked.
Aww, what a bootlicking crybaby
Whose boots am I supposed to be even licking? Some billionaires I guess?
Whtever, I’ll never see whatever you reply.
Not surprising that a bootlicker would instantly block anyone calling them out
Lemmy can be so dramatic at times
Nuole vaan saappaita
🎻
👅 🥾
That’s pretty good
That’s basically the show Dexter.
Really high quality discussion man. Your views are well informed and updated to align with reality and totally not unhinged.
“In a world filled with rapists one who raped only a woman is less terrible than someone who raped 10.”
Yes, no shit that he’s less terrible compared to others but he’s still one of the greediest human being on the planet and he doesn’t deserve any praise.
What’s with this fixation on rape metaphors?
Just gonna spell this out real quick. Having a father who made many billions trading shares is not at all similar to raping a woman.
Additionally, there are extraordinarily few people who would not choose to be a billionaire.
It’s easy to suggest that you’re a better person than any billionaire simply because the odds are that you (nor me, nor any of us) will ever be one. However, if the fairy god mother appeared right now and offered you $1b you would instantly become “one of the greediest human beings on the planet” by your own definition.
People fail to realize how evil billionares are and so you have to come up with stupid comparisons. A billion in money is the equivalent of owning hundred of thousands cars or houses, they affect society negatively more than a single murderer would do. Criminality and people losing their shit is partially the result of a society where people are exploited and turn against each other to make profits. Billionares are the ones who sit on top of this rigged pyramid.
Any normal person that wins a billion dollar would keep some for himself and gift or donate the rest with the result that they wouldn’t be a billionare anymore. A billion is simply a ridiculous amount of money, you could buy a castle, invest 100 millions in the stock market and you would still be left with most of it.
I have mixed feelings. His gist is basically that he agrees billionaires shouldn’t exist and that there’s no ethical billionaire and he wants reforms to make it so they don’t. But he argues that we live in a system where billionaires are inevitable and that it would be stupid not to invest wisely and make billions if he can because if he doesn’t someone else just will and he can use the money for good.
However, even if you buy this narrative of good billionaire, you can just look to his ties will Bill Gates and the Bill and Melinda gates foundation to see that, even if he did mean well, his perception on how to do good is completely twisted.
Oh no, not that horrible person Bill Gates who checks notes saved 50 million peoples lives
Bill gates put a lot of effort into making monopolies. He tried to stomp out Linux. And, part of his whole weird philantrophy was trying to circumcise the men of Africa to save them from aids but inadvertanly likely increased the spread of aids which is just one case study in how his foundation can help but also does harmful bananas shit.
Listen to the behind the bastards on him. Warren buffet might get a pass if you squint, but Bill Gates is a bastard.
Edit: I would like to say that “increased the spread of aids” is probably misleading in that I make it sound like the program overall increased AIDS in Africa. That is not true. There is controversial evidence that circumcision may decrease the spread of AIDS. There’s controversial evidence that circumcision led the risky behavior in circumcised men who felt they were immune after circumcision. The data, since its an uncontrollable population study, is messy. But, Bills foundation involvent in Africa has had many unintended consequences across the continent that has saves some lives and cost others and no one man should have such strong say on the health policies of an entire continent. Personally, I also feel very strongly no one man should have such strong sway on campaigns which result is mass surgery on the genitals of an entirely different group of men when there are arguably better ways to mitigate disease transmission.
Fifty. MILLION.
The man should literally be made into a saint. “Oooh Linux blah blah” FIFTY FUCKING MILLION LIVES SAVED. The man has far outweighed anything bad he’s ever done in his life.
Bill Gates has saved 50 million lives according to Bill Gates. But his business and philanthropy practices have directly and indirectly led to degradation of quality of life and death in such complex ways we can’t even put a number on it.
Because Bill Gates, and generally philanthropy from people of his generation, want to throw money at a problem without asking the people they are trying to help how to help them. When you just try to save people without including them in the process because you think you know better than them what’s best for them, there’s usually pretty unintended and bad side effects.
So, not only was he a pretty cut throat and immoral business man, but even when he tries to buy his way into being a good person with the money he makes from his business practices that rely on monopolies and unethically cheap labor, he fucks it up.
The article you linked is pretty disingenuous and is obviously ideologically opposed to the voluntary circumcision program. The key as to why the program was ultimately unsuccessful is this:
The WHO claimed that male to female transmission is reduced by 60% among circumcised males, and I don’t think that statistic is in question in that article. The problem was that people neglected safe sex practices after being circumcised.
You’re absolutely correct that helping people is hard, particularly in developing nations. We see time and again that programs designed to improve quality of life have unintended and deleterious consequences.
That said, I feel certain that they did in fact ask the people they were trying to help how to help them, and I’m confident that you don’t have any evidence that Gates just landed in Africa and started cutting people without any kind of support from African leaders.
Sure, the program was ultimately unsuccessful. Does that mean Gates is the bad guy compared to other billionaires who didn’t spend their money trying to help?
I linked a research paper, an article interviewing Africans, and a third article outlining all the unintended consequences of bill gates program. The problem with his program is not just that it didn’t focus on education. It’s that Bill Gates got to decide where the majority of money for medical purposes was in sub Saharan Africa in a way that actually limited medical care outside of very specific programs that the bill and Melinda gates deemed important and had unintended consequences. Honestly, the big part that I haven’t honed on enough is the aspect of how much control this gives Bill Gates has over peoples lives. He’s a major donor to the UN health agency and the WHO and has a huge amount of power there that he actually sways to dictate policy. He has huge sway over who lives and who dies. I’m glad you’re confident Bill Gates didn’t just land in Africa without support from leaders of African countries and thus and inferred “support from Africans”. But you and I both know that his huge wealth creates a weird power imbalance with whoever he donates to and I argue that he exercises that power imbalance in a negative way to do what he thinks is best for others instead of asking people what’s best for them.
And, honestly, his vaccination and anti malraia programs saved crazy amounts of lives. I’m not here to act like his philanthropy did nothing to save lives. I’m here to argue that individual men trying to save whole continents by throwing money at problems in ways that also gives them influence and control over a population doesn’t absolve them of their other sins, this isn’t the most effective way to actually save lives, this has unintended consequences that actually costs some lives, and generally how bill gates uses his foundation isn’t how world problems should be handled.
You say at least he spends money on programs unlike others. But I argue that this doesn’t make him good because he doesn’t do it from a place of good or do it in a good way. he doesnt actually pay attention or care about his philanthropy. He was pressured into becoming philanthropic by his mom and, after she died, his dad who then handled it. He only got active after he stepped down as the head of Microsoft (because he was forced down after anti trust shit) and I argue he stayed for the power he gained after he lost power at Microsoft. Much of his foundation money actually goes… To other large companies (like Monsanto, MasterCard, and Vodafone). So, on top of everything, his philanthropy has a huge “giant capitalist companies will save the world” twist to it when we should be focusing on universal health care.
Also, to be detailed on the AIDS thing, the reduction in transmission by 60% is highly controversial in the science community. The research was extremely flawed. There was a lot of skepticism in the science community before and for good reason. And, don’t get me wrong, circumcision probably does decrease the spread of sexually transmitted HIV by reducing the likelyhood a man will get HIV from vaginal sex and then spread it… And HIV is down some so part of some anti HIV program actually was successful. But I’ll also leave this reddit comment here as it highlights a lot of journal articles that indicate it wasn’t circumcision.
Bill gates is not a good guy. Bill Gates is a guy who throws his unethically obtained eboranant wealth at issues in a way that gives him control and actually hinders non capitalistic universal health care which would arguably be more effective. Many times it works out. But it also warped.
Seriously there 2 hours of a behind the bastards episode on this that organizes everything much better than I can on Lemmy.
The man fucked children with Epstein, be absolutely shouldn’t you fucking weirdo
To the downvotes: weirdly simping for somebody who repeatedly flew the Lolita Express? Y’all fuck Kids too, huh?
At the same time you could argue that his decisions have affected billions of people on this planet in a negative way and the fifty million lives saved were to whitewash everything else he’s done. He’s not doing it out of the kindness of his heart, he did it because 1) Melinda told him she’d fuck off if he kept being such a jackass, and 2) As one of the most hated men in the world, he needed to fix his image.
I don’t care why he did it, and neither should you. What a ridiculous purity test.
I mean he more or less did it at gunpoint. Do you not remember how hated he used to be? He would’ve been shot by someone eventually for sure.
Yeah I don’t understand this bizarre hatred for Gates.
How many other billionaires are spending their fortunes trying to help the most vulnerable people?
There’s a tweet floating around the Internet that says: “You know that question where you’re asked if you’d press a button for a million bucks, knowing it would hurt someone somewhere that you don’t know? That’s how you get billionaires. They’re pushing that button as often and as quickly as they possibly can.”
Billionaires are motherfuckers. All of them.
Sounds like those motherfuckers need to pay some taxes, clearly.
That’s your take away?
Yep. A single billionaire funding a war effort is abhorrent.
This one happens to be on the right side, but there’s absolutely no guarantee that his will be the case for any of these fucking psychopaths.who horde wealth. They all need to go.
Counterpoint - under the current administration, paying taxes might help Russia more
But would the current administration be the current administration without wealth hoarding psychopaths?
No, it would not.
It wouldn’t, but I think that ship has sailed already. I don’t see how your current governmental structure would ever fix that. It’s been a problem since citizens united, if not before
It has always been up to the people to establish governmental structure. History provides the examples, mon frére.
Do you say the same thing about Russian billionaires funding the war against Ukraine?
They said :
All being the operative word here, which is inclusive of Russian billionaires.
Are you ByteJunk? Is ByteJunk a name for a group of people or why do you say « they »?
No. I am dependencyInjection.
I said they, as I was referencing ByteJunk and what they literally said (typed, if you want to be a pedant) in the comment you replied to.
Are you happy now? Do you need anything else blatantly obvious to be clarified for you?
Bogus is just doing that new anti-trans-panic performance the nazis do now where they pretend English hasn’t used they/them for unspecified gender for hundreds of years. She’s a troll.
Yeah it’s an odd one. You could say my friend Bob is also going and they will meet you in the reception.
Perfectly normal way of speaking and nothing to do with transgender stuff.
Ah, great idea for progress in English, they have. Not only ‘the’ for all sexes, but ‘they’ for all, now they say. Great idea they have, yes. 🤣
Seek help.
Don’t need. You?
Singular they had existed for centuries before your miserable existence.
It’s a way to refer to someone in the 3rd person without knowing their gender. If you do know their gender, you can use the proper gendered pronouns.
‘The’ has always been gender neutral in English because English doesn’t assign gender to nouns. Thus grammatically, a gender-specific “the” isn’t necessary unlike in German or Spanish where all nouns have grammatical genders. And if you come back at me with “‘the’ isn’t even that old, it used to be spelled ‘ye’”, well the problem there is that it was only printed that way for convenience, the pronunciation was never with a “y”.
“It” is incorrect for using about a person as well, unless referring to a baby or a small child. Why? It’s just how English has been spoken for a long time now, and how it’s still used. Language rules should reflect usage, not the other way around.
You should not be looking into the mirror too long. It seems that you got a pretty brain damage.
I’m not the one making deliberately obtuse comments about completely valid grammatical constructs to make a political point.
Well, apparently I communicate sufficiently in English for you to address my points accordingly. And it also shows a certain mental poverty, especially a lack of self-reflection, not just to nitpick infantile grammatical errors, but also to stick your nose into things where you know you’ll get virtually slapped. But as I already mentioned: I can’t turn donkeys like you into a racehorse. This mental effort, if possible for you at all, should come from you.
Please, correct it you want to say, then ‘it’ say, you must 😂
Ah, ByteJunk, one person it is not, many, it is. Got it. But how they decide what to comment, hmm? Take much time, it must 😂
Ideas transcend people.
Written language transcends you.
I see dependencyInjection clearly would have better used his time elsewhere, so let’s learn from his endeavours and tag you appropriately, so we can avoid future waste.
You are right. I cannot make race horses out of donkeys like you two are. Write this sentence on a mirror so that you both are reminded each day.
There’s really no such thing as “Russian billionaires”, at least not in the western sense. Also not in the oligarch sense, oligarchy implies rule by few, that’s not the case in Russia, it’s an autocracy, rule by one: There’s the Tsar and he doeth bequeath wealth upon loyal viceroys in the form of fiefdoms to exploit. The Tsar giveth, and the Tsar taketh away. Shit hasn’t changed since the times of the Russian Empire but this time around it’s less about territories and the people on it but factories and industries.
Certainly, the Russian system was and is totally a hierarchical system based on- like everywhere - on power and influence (both intermingle). But this does not exclude that there are very wealthy people in Russia who are funding the war, being it because they are forced to (I hardly believe) or because they make profit out of it. Don’t you think so?
The war is funded partly by the taxpayer, partly by inflation. The viceroys might be making less of a profit right now as they can’t engage in their usual level of grift but Putin doesn’t, and isn’t going to, touch their villas and fancy cars.
Please take a look at these articles:
Le Monde
The Cyber Voice
And even the Moscow Times
That’s not contradicting anything I said, on the contrary it’s contradicting your assertion that those people would be funding the war. Their wealth is largely unaffected, still making profits (even if a bit lower) because they’re still fulfilling their purpose as loyal viceroys.
Like, usually they could e.g. produce ballistic vests out of cardboard, bill the army full price for the things, and pocket the difference. That doesn’t fly any more but that doesn’t mean that suddenly their businesses are unprofitable.
Among kremlinologists there’s generally an acknowledgement that the viceroys aren’t exactly thrilled about the war because it’s cutting into their profits and they’re not seeing any point in it, OTOH they’re also not willing to bite the hand that feeds them. Few have armies large enough to march on Moscow, none have armies large enough to face down the actual one, and none of them wants to end like Prigozhin. They also don’t like not being able to travel to Monaco. They’re assholes captured between a rock and a hard place. Normal Russian circumstances, one might say.
Except he’s not funding a war, he’s funding the defense of a nation fighting for freedom and its right to exist.
Ukraine didn’t get in this war as a pissing match with Russia. It was wrongly attacked and is a democracy defending itself. It’s had its children kidnapped and its civilians targeted. It will cease to exist if it loses. We don’t have a greedy capitalist funding an unjust war for profit as you’re trying to suggest. Helping Ukraine is the right thing to do. Refusing to help them will simply result in Europe fighting a better-resourced Russia later.
Yet.
I don’t doubt the possibility but that’s not the situation here and now with defending Ukraine.
I’m not arguing that these funds shouldn’t go to Ukraine. I’m arguing that no single individual should ever be allowed to have so much money that they are able to do this. They all need to be cut down to size ASAP.
If there’s one thing billionaires are known for, it is, of course, giving billions to a war effort with absolutely zero strings attached. Totally.
Absolutely. What other reasonable response is there?
Warren Buffet agrees
forbes.com/…/billionaires-more-taxes-gates-buffet…
It’s easy to say the right things when you know you’re never going to be held accountable for your words.
That’s your takeaway?
Yes. If we lived in another reality, and there was a true progressive about to pass a 100% tax on all wealth over a billion dollars, Warren would be showing is true colors very, very quickly. It’s easy to say the right thing on this because he knows he’ll never have to pay a dime more than he does right now.
He’s a dragon among 700 or so other dragons sitting on unimaginable wealth that he will never spend in his lifetime. He deserves nothing but disrespect.
Seems like you make your own reality
And it’s easy to make sweeping statements based purely on hypotheticals and your own assumptions. In our reality, he’s one of the biggest advocates for raising his own taxes.
Here’s the first sentence of that article that you didn’t read:
It doesn’t matter.
He can say anything, anything at all, because he knows tax laws are never going to change.
His words are completely inconsequential apart from serving as good PR.
ABAB
Why would Buffet need “good PR”? He’s a trader who just buys and sells shit all day. If anything, something like this would be bad PR as rich people wouldn’t want to invest in his companies.
I agree, but I feel you’re just swinging at the air here.
They shouldn’t exist to begin with, workers should get a bigger share and products should be cheaper. Taxes money aren’t necessarily used for good especially when you have a bunch of fascists at the government.
I have mixed feelings about this headline. On the one hand, it’s good to see this much money going to a good cause. On the other hand, I firmly oppose the ability of any one person to control this much money.
Compare this one guy’s donation to a good cause against all the other billionaires donating money to the Heritage Foundation, MAGA, etc
Not the OC but the problem I have is in just one private citizen’s ability to influence so much military power. While historically this isn’t new and in this case it does overall good, I think that this kind of thing is a slippery slope that eventually could lead to billionaires funding wars to manipulate market elements for profit.
Billionaires “donating” to foreign countries sounds like bribes for rare earth minerals.
No billionaire is altruistic. Bill Gates is the best example.
An altruistic billionaire is an oxymoron. If they were truly altruistic, they wouldn’t be a billionaire.
this is clearly reductionist. you can inherit that money and then utilize it effectively by donating it without destroying your ability to raise more money for donating. donating all your money means you have no investments to raise more money for donating. governments don’t do this, their goal is to spend taxpayer money to make the world a better place, while billionaires can only do the same if they keep an income stream.
But billionaire kids do not do this. Warren Buffet is still alive too.
Another nefarious motive would be tax writeoffs to purchase goods at one of his own companies.
Never ever ever ever give a billionaire the benefit of the doubt. Ever.
The fundamental leap in logic to being a libertarian
The world would be better off if all excess wealth were perpetually redistribed
I also hate that it just moves forward this idea of “individuals and charities will pick up the slack” when they dismantle everything good the government does.
Yeah, we know. There’s hundreds of opportunities to complain about its use for evil. Let’s just appreciate it for what it is.
All billionaires deserve the vast majority of their wealth to be seized, but I vote we spare this one the guillotine.
why
He’s made basically all of his money off the stock market and he agrees billionaires should pay more in taxes.
Comes off more as a person gaming the system rather than gaming people.
Not saying he’s a good person, but in comparison to people like Musk he’s pretty meh.
I guess exploiting the opioid crisis, climate change, or labor violations are just details.
There is no good billionaire. You can use whatever crazy scale to justify your opinion of one, but the truth is they made money profiteering from the destruction of hundreds of thousands of lives, if not more.
Nazi Musk scale… Thanks for this great joke.
Once you made a couple of millions and are set for life there are no reason to keep investing money in evil companies. A normal person would take the money out and donate them not keep investing.
So if Warren wants to do the morally correct thing why doesn’t he hire assassins to kill the bad billionaires?
Technically, we don’t know that he isn’t. That kind of money likely means an assassination would be heavily planned out and need to look like natural causes because if was obvious he’d potentially put a target on his own back from other billionaires.
But I seriously doubt he’d do this anyway.
Most people prefer to stay out of prison.
Billionaires don’t go to prison tho
A good person turning into a billionare by accident would donate all his extra money away as soon as he gets them. There aren’t any good billionares.
A Fortune article about a billionaire scum being propped up as one of the best things of the day, even though it directly implies that Ukraine is dependent on American oligarchs.
Fucking hell, that’s low… and truly representative of how every underlying aspect of human society is terminally sick.
Wonder if this Buffets PR teams idea.
Yup. That’s what happens when we hand over all the power to a few people.
We get excited when those priviledged people, who are literally the ones who oppress us, make choices that helps us a little.
It’s orphan-crushing-machine stuff
If the wealthy’s heads end up in baskets, the Buffets won’t be among them.