Technology

This means Bill Gates gets to dictate where society goes instead of society.

Oh, hey, we're up to the Enlightened Monarchs phase of the Enlightenment of the 18th century.

There was this article about Bill Gates getting his most career-making deal by (badly) cloning the software of a competitor. A true genius is above the common law of peasants.

maybe he can buy my bandcamp albums 🥹

I‘ve said it before and I‘ll say it again: Gates is not a saint, but there is clearly a difference between him and fucks like Thiel, Sacks or the Koch family who would never consider donating any of their money to research ways to eradicate Malaria or fund education programs for women.

but I am determined that “he died rich” will not be one of them.

Bill Gates has a net worth of ~$168 billion. Even if this isn't just PR intended to launder his image, even if he does in fact give away 99% of that, it will still leave him with $1.68 billion dollars. Even if he ups that to 99.99% that'll still leave him with $16.8 million, which is still rich by anyone's measure. Bill Gates' idea of 'not dying rich' is radically different than yours or mine; he was never not going to die rich.

How nice, live as the 0.0000001% that owns the world and make up most of the big evils in the world from the age of 34 to the age of 70 and then from 70 to 90 transition to the top 0.0001% and "not die rich"

A real sacrifice, what a philanthropist, brave.

I'm just here being a top 25% fully aware of my privilege for being born in a rich country and working in a well paying job, and I still donate more then him in terms of percentage of my net worth. (Bill gates donates about 0.8-1.6% of his net worth annually, I donate about 5-10% annually) and I truly believe that no one should be a billionaire.

He's donating through his charity to avoid taxes. He will be known as a man that died rich. He has failed, he'll remembered for Microsoft and hanging with Jeffrey epstein to get a Nobel peace price.

Prove me wrong Billy boy.

And he'll still be a billionaire. And he got that money by suppressing the world with proprietary software. He's single handedly helped hold humanity back. I don't care the good he's done as it's built on the back of all the harm he's done.

Can we please not help launder his reputation by proactively giving him credit for something he hasn’t done yet?

inb4 he "gives it away" to his own charity for tax dodging purposes

People should just call his bluff and ask if he would support a big estate tax.

He literally has the financial resources to lobby congress to make it happen.

I honestly don’t understand why self made billionaires wouldn’t do that, it’s not like their kids are gonna be poor, they will still be rich, just not oligarchs level (which they probably would suck at anyway given how they don’t have proper experience).

Give it away to a charity you don't control now, or STFU about it already. We all know you're still trying to rehab your reputation.

Donate to his own foundation which he controls

The fact that he collected billions (worth of cash and financial instruments) in the first place is the problem. He should have been charging consumers less, and paying his workers more. He never should have accumulated his obscene wealth to begin with.

I'll believe it when it happens, until then all I hear are promises that could be broken.
Words alone are meaningless.

Carnegie was the smartest of the Robber Barons. He knew what would eventually happen if he didn't throw the peasants a bone.

He didn't want a date with Madame Guillotine. And some of the other Robber Barons realized his motive, and the dumber ones just saw it as a competition. Most of them followed his example.

Cuban is trying to use this strategy today with his "Discount Pharmaceutical" thing. It's not enough.

He's already been claiming he would for the last 15. It was too little to late back then. He either needs to get busy with it or shut up about it.

Great; start by paying off all student loans.

Way too late to matter you coward