this post was submitted on 08 Sep 2023
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[โ€“] quat@lemmy.sdfeu.org 13 points 1 year ago (4 children)

A good act does not wash out the bad, nor a bad act the good. Each should have its own reward.

[โ€“] Balefirex@hexbear.net 21 points 1 year ago (1 children)

Give them a cookie and the wall

[โ€“] mustardman@hexbear.net 12 points 1 year ago (1 children)
[โ€“] Squirrel@thelemmy.club 20 points 1 year ago

True, and they generally get ample praise for the good. The bad has, unfortunately, rewarded them with their billions.

[โ€“] Grimble@hexbear.net 13 points 1 year ago

IDK if it works in this case.

The people with power over you will inevitably use that logic to demand constant praise.

[โ€“] Helmic@hexbear.net 4 points 1 year ago

The issue is that any philantropy a billionaire does comes from money "earned" through exploitation and is never enough to un-make them a billionaire. Even if they did, it's still a single person taking the resources of millions of people and controlling it themselves to put into their pet projects, in a completely undemocratic manner - so Gates gets to benefit from the looting of Africa and then turn arounf and tell Africans how he will be allocating that stolen loot. Oh, and that man controlling so much policy in various African nations thinks Africa is overpopulated, an extremely racist eugenicist myth.

The good and bad are not separste things you can judge in isolation, any "good" a billionaire does is only possible by causing disproportionate harm. It is not as though these billionaires are personally doing much of anything, they are simply seizing resources from the public to inefficiently address problems that the public could have managed themselves if they were permitted to control their own lives, if they aren't just doing what Gates does of using donations as money laundering.