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.
And he is one of the “better” billionaires. He has donated over $100 Billion to help people around the world, which makes him look like a great guy on paper.
I think it’s not so much him as a person, but his business decisions in the context of capitalism. That’s the real evil, not any one person.
Just to be clear, I’m not defending him or his actions.
Brave of you to hold a nuanced opinion! So many people have a very binary view of others, and Lemmy’s the same, as the downvoting shows.
And yes, totally, he was a typical morally corrupt businessman and one of the first tech bros in a time before most of Lemmy was even born. But he’s also done a lot of good in the second half of his life. People are dismissive of that but they bloody well shouldn’t be.
Who else has contributed $2bn specifically to fight malaria? Nobody. There’s quite a few now who could have helped but nobody else has. The Gates Foundation has also contributed that much again towards fighting Tuberculosis and AIDs. These are big numbers and they’ve had a real effect. Those of us who live comfortable lives are fortunate where these diseases aren’t everyday killers of friends and family and we cannot fully appreciate the benefit this work has done.
Does this offset his earlier negative behaviour? I honestly think it might do.
What a ridiculous argument you’ve made here. The voting system is literally binary. No one can vote 7/10 on messaging, 4/10 on points.
This is exactly why hes done it. You don’t know what hes actually responsible for. You don’t see the pharmaceutical investments hes made, farmland he owns, or his bad takes (like recently suggesting that we should abandon the climate because he’s dipping his toes into the AI space).
You see some flashy figures and figure, well that must be a good guy!
Some “nuance” that is.
Gates is in the Epstein files.
He is moving money in his own foundation
Yeah. He has shaped the world in very negative ways through his decisions. He could donate his entire fortune today and live out the rest of his life in a monastery, but I would still hate him.
That doesn’t even scratch the anti consumerist behaviour behind what he did to Linux that piece of shit.