Summary
Bill Gates criticized Elon Musk for his support of far-right politicians, including the UK’s Tommy Robinson and Germany’s AfD party, calling it “insane shit” and accusing Musk of destabilizing political systems.
Gates questioned Musk’s focus on divisive politics while managing global businesses like Tesla and SpaceX.
Gates also expressed concern about wealthy individuals influencing foreign elections.
Musk has faced backlash for controversial actions, including a Nazi salute.
philanthropist
If he was one, he wouldn’t be a billionaire
Bill Gates is equally responsible for perpetuating wealth inequality
It’s not insane at all. It sucks but it’s completely logical. Musk is just protecting his capital as best he can within a global capitalist system.
It’s like corporate “greedflation” during Covid. Of course they jacked up prices and lied about wholesale costs, thereby wildly inflating profits, because profit motives are what drive our world.
The insane shit is probably Musk’s obsession with trying to impress gamers with his (pretend) gaming skills. Having characters in Diablo 4 or PoE2 being clearly played by other people, while acting like this is his work alone.
If he’s so desperate to impress about something as inconsequential as gaming, what kind of lies is he saying about everything else …
Like if anyone ever screamed “overcompensating for a small dick”…
Like we probably don’t have the scientific equipment to actually locate Musk’s cock if it’s size is relative to how much he’s overcompensating.
I always forget Gates is one of the elite. Then I remember how ruthless and savage he was in the 80s.
Then I remember.
80s, 90s, and a few years into early 2000s. Gates ruthlessness lasted decades, destroyed many businesses and lives, and is mostly whitewashed thanks to his philanthropic efforts and a few reddit amas and some secret santa participation
Not to mention the destruction he did to computing as a whole. The nightmare of proprietary bullshit is something that he did not architect but he pushed heavily and lobbied for constantly. He had the position to push for interoperability from an early stake in computing, to set the stage for computers to have a strong precedent to work together. Instead he and microsoft made every effort to work against open standards. They would adopt open standards and extend them with proprietary extensions to intentionally ruin them. A lot of what is infuriating about modern tech can be traced back to precedent that microsoft set at his direction
Reminder despite every donation he has made his net worth is higher now than it ever was and this has essentially always been the case. His philanthropy, while objectively good, is a measured pr effort that does not impact his overall obscene wealth and basically never has
He’s still pushing ‘intellectual property’ as part of his philanthropy. The creators of the Oxford vaccine wanted to open source it and give it away for free. Gates opposed that and he got his way (partly because of the influence of the Gates Foundation). The delays this caused probably killed millions of extra people in the Global South (not sure if anyone ever did the maths on this).
Not shocking to hear, he’s a scumbag at heart. But now if you say that people will be like “uhhh how can you say that he’s donated so much money”
Then when you point out he’s donated literally 0% of his overall current net worth, his past (and current, apparently) behavior has arguably as much humanity if not more than he has offset, etc you’ll get whataboutism. “What have you done??”
I don’t want philanthropy to be contingent on the whims of billionaires. Gates has done a lot but it still has major issues, there is no real transparency, and it’s still authoritatively controlled because he has a great deal of influence over his foundation. The even bigger issue is that he is by far the exception. Other billionaires donate minimally only to maximize tax benefits and only to issues they have been personally impacted by.
The other day I was with people who were watching a football game. The eagles won and I asked why the owner gets to speak first at the trophy ceremony, let alone at all, given it was the teams effort. This led to a whole discussion but one thing that came up was how he donates so much money to autism research because he has a grandson with autism. This was meant to appeal to me because I have a background working in autism research and I work with people with autism a lot.
all I could think is “how fucked up is it that we have to hope that an obscenely rich person personally experiences the issue for them to decide to bequeath funding?” This inherently means that things with a much higher rate of prevalence, like autism (1 in 36, roughly) or dementia (prevalence varies widely by age range (2% to 13%) but ~10 million cases per year), will get tons of money. But what about far less common things? I’ve worked with people who have extremely rare conditions. Angelmans syndrome, prader willi, chromosomal deletions, (rates of 1-2 per 10,000) or extremely rare things like hellers syndrome (rates of 1-2 per 100,000).
This is why we fund things like NIMH, so that money can be fairly dispersed to ensure that all things are researched. Teams of people research what needs to be researched. This isn’t even just about equity; sometimes researching lesser known disorders leads to discoveries that are applicable in a broader context
But instead we let a few oligarchs hoard money. Most of them don’t bother to fund this stuff at all and they few that do only bother to do so when it’s something personally relevant to them. We have no say in the matter.
The biggest argument against philanthropy is that they get to deduct it from their taxes, so instead of us as a society collectively deciding what to do with that money (provided you had a working democracy, of course), the billionaire gets to decide that. And some of that philanthropy money actually goes to causes that further undermine democracy. Just because something is a charity doesn’t mean it does good. You can deduct donations to the federalist society or the heritage foundation, for example.
‘Global South’ sounds like some right-wing term. LMIC (low middle-income country) is better.
His philanthropy, while objectively good, is a measured pr effort that does not impact his overall obscene wealth and basically never has
Like with the some billionaires.
Untrue. Most don’t engage in actual philantropy at all, but donate only to causes that will directly benefit their bottom line, such as sectors that depend on their products, or for scholarships in fields where their companies hire heavily. That isn’t actually donating. It’s just tax-exempt investing. In this sense, Gates is a cut above other billionaires.
His actions merit a freshly sharpened blade on his guillotine. Musk can have the rusty one that we’ll need to drop thrice to get the job done.
Yeah, he was a real asshole 44 years ago. Glad people never change at all.
Sarcasm ?
Yes. I don’t want to judge people by who they were four decades ago, but who they have become. I believe that every human has the potential to grow and learn.
Mind you, I’m not saying Mr. Gates is an angel now, or shouldn’t be judged. But I’d rather base ma judgement on the person he is now that on the person he was long ago.
Bill Gates became friends with Epstein AFTER he was convicted.
Source?
https://www.nytimes.com/2019/10/12/business/jeffrey-epstein-bill-gates.html
And unlike many others, Mr. Gates started the relationship after Mr. Epstein was convicted of sex crimes.
Bill Gates made his acquaintance with Jeffrey Epstein in 2011 when Epstein had been jailed for years for soliciting prostitution from a minor.
https://jacobin.com/2021/08/bill-gates-jeffrey-epstein-mistake-cnn-interview
They were two of the richest men on Earth, meeting after Epstein had already been convicted for child sex trafficking, very intentionally scratching each other’s back and bolstering each other’s charitable endeavors. The relationship between them — and what compelled both to build one — should be seen not as a lapse in judgment but as an indictment of billionaire philanthropy itself.
There’s plenty more out there if you look.
I have to question the judgement of Bill Gates when he calls Musk “super-smart”. Maybe if Musk started out with no money, that would be fair in some sense. I think he was just lucky and unencumbered by ethics or self-doubt.
Bill Gates has also been riding an unearned “genius” appellation for decades. He didn’t make DOS. (His charitable work on vaccination is also questionable - iirc there were concerns over intellectual property rights)
The tide is turning against billionaires, and he’s just recognizing that Musk is making them all look bad.
To be fair there are plenty of ruthless greedy people with zero morals out there but Musk is far more successful than any of them so something has to differentiate him. He might not be intelligent enough to recognise what a crigerworthy loser he is but let’s not pretend he isn’t smart.
Mate, he is on a very self destructive spiral doing those nazi salutes at the inauguration. That’s not a smart move. He’s let his fantasies get the better of him. If he was really smart he would shut the fuck up about politics. He has everything, And consequently he values nothing.
Smart can mean many things. My dentist is smart, but he is not well rounded. Most people aren’t well rounded smart.
Musk is a good investor, and expert con artist. He is smart in those ways.
He’s about as smart as trump is a successful businessman.
Mr Gates actually has some power to do something about the crazyness and shittines of the world we live right now.
I don’t discredit his philanthropic work, some of the things he does is actually good, neither that he calls out the insanity, any sane person should do, but, and this but is as huge as the Titanic, Mr Gates, is able to do something about it, and has been for a long time before shit hit the fan tbh, actions speak louder than words, specially the lack of action lmao.
If Mr Gates really feel this way, he should do something about it, he has the money.
Maybe it’s no coincidence that Twitter has been pushing all the “Bill Gates Microchip Vaccines” lunatics over the last few years, in order to discredit a rival.
I’ll not trust Gates anyway
Gates is a “lesser evil” billionaire but he advocated not to revoke the patents on Covid-19 vaccines during the height of the pandemic. I understand the need for innovation, but screw him for still being greedy in the face of immediate crisis. He is two-faced nonetheless.
He’s a greater evil billionaire with a good PR team.
He still has given away a lot of his wealth to charities, to be fair. He was the richest man after all until Elon came. But Gates is still a billionaire (only because of his underhanded business practices) in spite of donations so he’s still evil but to a lesser extent.
A lot? He’s currently worth $107 billion. That’s the most he’s ever been worth.
You would think that someone giving away “a lot” of their wealth would be worth less than before. If you’re giving away so little that your wealth is actually growing, I’d say you’re not actually giving away a lot.
Wikipedia says he’s given 50 billion in charity. Enough ? Maybe not. But it certainly is a lot of his wealth.
