Why did you cut your philanthropic efforts to fight climate change and disease? Why have you and your buddies fought for minimizing
The problem is that billionaires should not exist but come on. $80 billion already donated. $7 Billion more just for Africa. Hundreds of millions in malaria research.
Microsoft is perhaps the most complicit tech company in Israel’s illegal apartheid regime and ongoing genocide against 2.3 million Palestinians in Gaza. Microsoft’s complicity in Israel’s apartheid and genocide is well documented, exposing its strong ties to the Israeli military, its collaboration with Israeli government ministries, and its involvement in the Israeli prison system, which is notorious for systematic torture and abuse of Palestinians. Microsoft knowingly provides Israel with technology, including artificial intelligence (AI), that is deployed to facilitate grave human rights violations, war crimes, crimes against humanity (including apartheid), as well as genocide. In light of the International Court of Justice’s legally-binding rulings to prevent Israel’s plausible genocide in Gaza, as well as its July 19 Advisory Opinion affirming Israel’s illegal occupation and apartheid system, Microsoft has failed its corporate obligation to prevent genocide, war crimes and crimes against humanity. Microsoft, as well as its boards of directors and executives, may face criminal liability for this complicity.
Microsoft provides the Israeli military with Azure cloud and AI services that are crucial in empowering and accelerating Israel’s genocidal war on 2.3 million Palestinians in the illegally occupied Gaza Strip. Microsoft’s extensive ties with Israel’s military are revealed in investigations by The Guardian with the Israeli-Palestinian publication +972 Magazine, demonstrating how the Israeli military turned to Microsoft to meet the technological demands of genocide.
The 7 billion to Africa isn’t as nice as it first seems either; it’s investments into venture capitalist solutions, much more restrictive that aid and the profits are not realized by the locals
The problem is that billionaires should not exist but come on. $80 billion already donated. $7 Billion more just for Africa. Hundreds of millions in malaria research.
Philanthropists hoarding wealth and resources and then getting to choose which of the poors to allow to have any is actually part of the problem, even if it makes you feel good.
We saw that when Gates leveraged his contributions to force a vaccine that had been developed with public money for the benefit of humankind, to become patent locked and hard for the Third World to access or afford.
The problem is that the theft begins by simply becoming a billionaire in the first place. You don’t get to be one by playing nice and not exploiting a lot of people and rules along the way. Sure the government could be blamed some for not having enough regulations in place to prevent/stop that, but capitalism ensures that businesses exploit any available loophole possible to maximize profit, otherwise you’re a bad business.
While I can respect a lot of those philanthropic efforts, those should not be his decisions alone to make. That money should’ve been paid into taxes and distributed in agreed upon ways. $7 Billion dollars to Africa is just great, but it could do a lot of help here, too. I have no issues with sending $7B to Africa, but that sure seems like something the people should agree upon first, through some sort of national aid, and not as an effort to spare the conscience of an aging billionaire.
The problem is that billionaires should not exist but come on.
Was your first point. I expanded on it by calling out that it is specifically theft and then going further to illustrate that he was using that theft to make personal choices about how that money should be spent, compounding the reasons I find this distasteful.
Forgiving it simply because it’s philanthropy plays exactly into their narrative. Don’t buy it! Don’t defend billionaires to any extent.
theft implies violating laws, which few billionaires explicitly do, because other billionaires made the laws and intentionally provide legal methods to extract wealth from the poor.
While I can respect a lot of those philanthropic efforts, those should not be his decisions alone to make. That money should’ve been paid into taxes and distributed in agreed upon ways.
As a capitalist, all of his solutions are capitalist. His efforts to slow climate change are primarily technological, with a focus on unproven horseshit like carbon capture rather than proven improvements like better, less car centric urban planning and reducing meat intake. He would never even consider an strategy of economic degrowth to fight climate change even though available evidence shows that that is exactly what we need.
I think we’re well past the chance of urban designing our way out of the climate collapse.
We need to make major changes in our consumption to even make a dent, but I say our best shot is cold fusion and carbon capture. Those are obvious longshots.
We’ve created a runaway greenhouse gas effect. Even if we cut emissions to 0 temperatures will continue to climb.
Obviously cutting emissions to 0 would give us more time to fix this mess though
We need to make major changes in our consumption to even make a dent, but I say our best shot is cold fusion and carbon capture. Those are obvious longshots.
I would argue for extensive rewilding as an alternative
Still the wrong conversation. Yes he was appropriately villainized for anticompetitive behavior running Microsoft, accumulating excessive wealth at the expense of many others, but come on ……
I have no issues with sending $7B to Africa, but that sure seems like something the people should agree upon first,
Just no. His philanthropy, his wealth. His choice.
But I’m with you on inadequate taxation for the wealthy, and that we have a responsibility as a country to help the less privileged of humanity, and should not just assume someone’s personal largesse.
Well now no US tax money is going to Africa, since people voted for Trump. Most Americans would rather see Africans exploited, starve and die than pay a bit more in taxes.
Gates has history of lawsuits against open source projects. And he actively donates against any real systemic change. For example he has invested heavily in carbon capture technology which is useless to making impact to climate change.
This is the way. If classical conditioning reliably alters human behavior, we know negative conditioning against the 0.1% will indeed work, but never as well as positive reinforcement. It’s only for lack of opportunity to reward the good that we resort to punishing the bad, so when opportunities to use positive reinforcement present themselves, jump on them!
Concretely, if tomorrow the wealthiest of the world became avid philanthropists like Gates and divested as much as he has, the impact would be singular. It would feel like the first daybreak in human history. We’d still need to fix the systems that gave us monsters, but the friction preventing necessary reform would vanish. Encouraging this behavior is absolutely correct. Disregarding this behavior in order to exact personal vengeance makes it ever more unlikely to occur.
Thank you for your forward-thinking, non-reactionary contribution.
The problem is that billionaires should not exist but come on. $80 billion already donated. $7 Billion more just for Africa. Hundreds of millions in malaria research.
https://www.forbes.com/sites/carlieporterfield/2022/11/17/bill-gates-foundation-pledges-7-billion-to-support-africa-health-and-agriculture/
Could he do more? Sure. But attacking someone who is doing a little because he isn’t doing more doesn’t seem fair.
Years ago Elon said he was disappointed when he met Bill Gates because Gates only wanted to talk about philanthropy and climate.
The 7 billion to Africa isn’t as nice as it first seems either; it’s investments into venture capitalist solutions, much more restrictive that aid and the profits are not realized by the locals
https://www.commondreams.org/views/2022/12/02/perhaps-bill-gates-not-best-expert-hunger-africa
https://www.commondreams.org/views/2022/11/10/open-letter-bill-gates-food-farming-and-africa
Bill Gates hasn’t been CEO of Microsoft in 25 years. He left completely in 2008.
He didn’t completely leave, he’s literally the technical advisor listed under “key people” for Microsoft
Bill Gates continues to ‘backstage’ manage Microsoft despite official departure, as Satya Nadella relies on his advice for Microsoft’s transformative AI initiative
Saytalla seeking advice doesn’t mean Gates is making the business decisions.
And claiming Microsoft cloud services are worse than RTX’s actual bombs that kill children is a stretch.
Philanthropists hoarding wealth and resources and then getting to choose which of the poors to allow to have any is actually part of the problem, even if it makes you feel good.
We saw that when Gates leveraged his contributions to force a vaccine that had been developed with public money for the benefit of humankind, to become patent locked and hard for the Third World to access or afford.
The problem is that the theft begins by simply becoming a billionaire in the first place. You don’t get to be one by playing nice and not exploiting a lot of people and rules along the way. Sure the government could be blamed some for not having enough regulations in place to prevent/stop that, but capitalism ensures that businesses exploit any available loophole possible to maximize profit, otherwise you’re a bad business.
While I can respect a lot of those philanthropic efforts, those should not be his decisions alone to make. That money should’ve been paid into taxes and distributed in agreed upon ways. $7 Billion dollars to Africa is just great, but it could do a lot of help here, too. I have no issues with sending $7B to Africa, but that sure seems like something the people should agree upon first, through some sort of national aid, and not as an effort to spare the conscience of an aging billionaire.
Fuck all billionaires. Every. Last. One. Forever.
That’s why that was my first sentence!
Was your first point. I expanded on it by calling out that it is specifically theft and then going further to illustrate that he was using that theft to make personal choices about how that money should be spent, compounding the reasons I find this distasteful.
Forgiving it simply because it’s philanthropy plays exactly into their narrative. Don’t buy it! Don’t defend billionaires to any extent.
theft implies violating laws, which few billionaires explicitly do, because other billionaires made the laws and intentionally provide legal methods to extract wealth from the poor.
deleted by creator
As a capitalist, all of his solutions are capitalist. His efforts to slow climate change are primarily technological, with a focus on unproven horseshit like carbon capture rather than proven improvements like better, less car centric urban planning and reducing meat intake. He would never even consider an strategy of economic degrowth to fight climate change even though available evidence shows that that is exactly what we need.
I think we’re well past the chance of urban designing our way out of the climate collapse.
We need to make major changes in our consumption to even make a dent, but I say our best shot is cold fusion and carbon capture. Those are obvious longshots.
We’ve created a runaway greenhouse gas effect. Even if we cut emissions to 0 temperatures will continue to climb.
Obviously cutting emissions to 0 would give us more time to fix this mess though
I would argue for extensive rewilding as an alternative
Both are good. I’m not convinced it’ll be enough to stop things, but a massive help still
yeah we need every tool at our disposal fs
Still the wrong conversation. Yes he was appropriately villainized for anticompetitive behavior running Microsoft, accumulating excessive wealth at the expense of many others, but come on ……
Just no. His philanthropy, his wealth. His choice.
But I’m with you on inadequate taxation for the wealthy, and that we have a responsibility as a country to help the less privileged of humanity, and should not just assume someone’s personal largesse.
Not his wealth. That’s my point.
It is his wealth. We don’t have to like it, but that’s how the current system works.
Well now no US tax money is going to Africa, since people voted for Trump. Most Americans would rather see Africans exploited, starve and die than pay a bit more in taxes.
Gates has history of lawsuits against open source projects. And he actively donates against any real systemic change. For example he has invested heavily in carbon capture technology which is useless to making impact to climate change.
I’m fuzzy on the timeline but wiki says the sco Linux lawsuit was 2003. Gates had already quit being CEO in 2000.
This is the way. If classical conditioning reliably alters human behavior, we know negative conditioning against the 0.1% will indeed work, but never as well as positive reinforcement. It’s only for lack of opportunity to reward the good that we resort to punishing the bad, so when opportunities to use positive reinforcement present themselves, jump on them!
Concretely, if tomorrow the wealthiest of the world became avid philanthropists like Gates and divested as much as he has, the impact would be singular. It would feel like the first daybreak in human history. We’d still need to fix the systems that gave us monsters, but the friction preventing necessary reform would vanish. Encouraging this behavior is absolutely correct. Disregarding this behavior in order to exact personal vengeance makes it ever more unlikely to occur.
Thank you for your forward-thinking, non-reactionary contribution.
Edit: moved postscript
I resist the urge to become a billionaire every day.
I’ve allowed trillions of dollars to continue circulating in the global economy, undisturbed by my whims.
I’m a goddamn philanthropic hero compared to Gates.
And you can tell I’m better than him, cuz I didn’t have to slap my name on a “Foundation For Leaving People The Fuck Alone” to do it.
At least your ego is bigger than a billionaires fortune