Why are people not protesting ? Businesses should stop buying Microsoft licenses and that should force Microsoft to remove bill gates completely from the company. Same should be done with Musk, trump etc.
Why are people not protesting ? Businesses should stop buying Microsoft licenses and that should force Microsoft to remove bill gates completely from the company. Same should be done with Musk, trump etc.
Looks like Bill Gates should see trial. He should have immediately come to the FBI about this if he had any conscience.
He betrayed one of his closest friends to become the biggest software company in the world.
I’m guessing no.
He also donated 99% of his income to charity including bringing food, water, and medicine to impoverished all across Africa and the middle east. He pressured many other wealthy to do the same.
He needs to see trial for his crimes but you can’t blame people for thinking he is the best billionaire.
The Gates foundation started over 25 years ago and his net worth is still $124 billion. He’s going to give it all away and stop hoarding wealth any day now, though.
When I was a kid, I had a Scrooge McDuck comic book in which Scrooge had a serious problem - he was accumulating money faster than he could build vaults to hold it all. So he took Donald, and the nephews Hewey, Dewey, and Louie, on a cross country road trip, to try and spend as much money as they could.
They threw money around everywhere they went. If they got a bug on the windshield, they’d buy a new car. When they got hungry, they’d eat in the most expensive restaurants they could find. Once, they even invited an entire Duck Scouts troop to eat with them.
When they finally got home, Scrooge found his company officers in a crisis. While Scrooge was on vacation with his family, it seemed that someone had traveled across the country, buying luxury cars at Scrooge’s car dealerships, eating enormous expensive meals in his restaurants, etc. Now they had even more money than before, and his financial “crisis” had only increased.
Scrooge’s attempt at spending a significant amount of his money had only resulted in creating even more wealth. Modern billionaires are a lot like that. They have so much, they can’t get rid of it if they tried.
Every billionaire residing in or visiting America should have to pay a million dollars a day in rent to United States, to be used to fund Medicare 4 All and UBI, over and above their tax burden.
Microsoft could have shared the company’s wealth with the employees who actually EARNED the money and made the company successful, but instead it all accumulated with the guy who mostly said “That’s a good idea, go do that,” (while only being successful about 50% of the time), and kept ALL the money for that “work,” while paying the people who did the actual work as little as he could legally get away with.
So, the thing about that assertion is, Bill Gates wealth came from his ownership of shares of the company, Microsoft.
It’s not that Bill has been funneling all the income of the company into his pockets, no, it’s that when he sells shares of the company then other people are willing to pay massive sums for it because everyone has collectively agreed the company is extremely valuable.
This sort of wealth is why the DNC propose an unrealized gains tax for the rich.
Right… people are aware of this. Don’t pretend we’re arguing about how shares work. What we are saying is that the system being setup like this is fundamentally broken and the scam is in the design.
Income? He has wealth, not a job.
Selling stocks is also income, the statement is in past tense, to date Bill has donated hundreds of billions of dollars.
No, that is liquidating capital. It attracts capital gains tax, not income tax.
Also that would imply he’s sold 99% of his stocks, which is also false.
The only way it would imply that he sold 99% of his stocks is if I had said he donated all of his wealth, which is not at all what I said. I said he donated income and he did, multiple hundreds of billions of his income.
If selling selling stocks = income then he has not donated 99% of his income.
Your statement is incorrect.
He has, though. Now you’re just denying reality. https://www.cbsnews.com/news/bill-gates-philanthropy-giving-pledge-200-billion-africa-gates-foundation/
Is he still a billionair? Then he didn’t give enough.
He owns so much land in the US and stocks and so on.
He is still a billionaire
We shouldn’t even expect it, we have to tax the rich.
My point was that he is not a good guy and does not deserve being defended.
He isn’t a good guy but he has done amazing good things and he has a conscience.
A conscience? Do you remember what fucking thread you are in? Lmao actually delulu
The thread where Bill Gates got an STD from hookers and because of it ended contact with Jeffery Epstein in 2013.
That was all Melinda’s doing
Then why didn’t Bezos Ex do something about the state of the world?
I don’t know, why didn’t a completely different person do the same thing as melinda gates?
Yes that is what I asked you. Why does one woman control her husband and none of the other billiionaires wives do the same?
What magical mind altering power does Melinda have that turns Bill Gates autonomy off and force him to listen to her?
The guy that thought union-busting was the key to improving education and campaigned hard to keep Covid vaccines under patent?
Yeah, man, keep licking those billionaire boots.
If by campaigned hard you mean backpedaled immediately then yes, that’s the guy. His foundation also paid billions to distribute the vaccine at no cost.
he backpedaled precisely because it backfired on him spectacularly. Stop jumping through the hoops to clean his spoilt image.
I think in this day and age we can stop pretending public relations actually mean anything for the 12 digit club.
Elon Musk literally exposed everyone’s grandma’s social security, waved a nazi salute, and turned Twitter into a CSAM generator.
They backpedaled because backpedaling was the right thing to do, not because of any fake consequences you’re imagining.
I wonder why your mindset is like this.
At the 12 digit club it’s ALL about image. Why else would Bill Gates try to do stuff with his foundation? Why would Jeff Bezos try to fly to space with fuck you money? Why would Elon Musk enter a slap fight in twitter and end up buying the damn company?
No they backpedalled because they care about their image. For them, any consequence is far preferrable to tarnishing their image or becoming irrelevant.
Egos control people who have such wealth.
And they wouldn’t do the right thing if it meant they have to admit they are wrong.
People here are looking for someone to hate right now and your getting down voted for submitting facts. There’s always a lot of bandwagoning on this site.
There’s no certification when it comes to bad and good. Sometimes evil assholes can do good things and vice versa.
Life exists mostly in the grey area. The court of the Internet is black and white and arguments here forget that. Unless you’re Trump, Musk, or Bezos them fuckers are straight up evil.
Thank you.
Wait until you see his comment down below
I can’t blame them for falling for the propaganda, yes. After all, it was designed to deceive as many people as possible.
His “propoganda” helped people, saved millions from death or suffering. If you think my statement was false then who do you believe is the best out of all the billionaires?
MacKenzie Scott.
She gives money without ties.
Her entire networth is less than a fifth of the amount that Bill Gates has donated, her donations are 1/10th, and her philanthropy is a part of the Giving Pledge that Gates created.
Almost all of her donations were exclusively US based and focused charities unlike how the Gates Foundation helps the worlds most vulnerable peoples.
Gates does not donate. He makes conditional investments through a charitable vehicle. He is totally in control of his
donationsinvestments.MacKenzie Scott has donated billions more than Gates because her money was actually given away.
The average lifespan in Africa increased by 12 years as a direct result of the Gates Foundation. It’s a core founding member of Gavi which has vaccinated over a billion children around the globe, its likely to have singlehandedly eradicated entire strains of disease.
No billionaire is the best, they should all disappear. Gates, through his tenure at the foundation, delayed anti-malaria research for a decade because he sponsored his cronies instead of distributing broadly. Furthermore, his foundation accomplished good in spite of him, not through him.
They should all be taxed out of existence, but they are not at all equal.
I think there was something about how the gates foundation is actually not that good, patenting vacciens and other stuff. (too lazy to find links links right now)
They initially opposed a WHO resolution which would have member nations pause or withdraw patents over the Covid19 vaccine but they backpedaled on that shortly after and have spent billions producing and distributing those vaccines.
Yes, ‘if’. Spoiler: He never did.
Never is a pretty strong word, plenty of powerful people got roped into Epstein’s prostitution ring and continued associating with him long after the fact. I want to clarify my stance that while Bill needs to see trial over these allegations, especially if minors were involved, that it does not cancel out the good things his foundation has done for the world.
Agreed. So why bring it up?
It’s one thing to say “This man is a criminal who needs to be brought to trial” and a completely different thing to say “This man is pure unconscionable evil.”
Tons of racists and conspiracy theorists have been railing on Bill Gates for decades because of how he’s spent his money: saving dark skinned people.
I understand the principle you’re applying (that a person’s positive and negative actions can be judged separately). My question was more about the conversational relevance.
In a discussion specifically about serious criminal allegations, introducing a person’s philanthropic work often feels like a deflection tactic, whether intended or not. It shifts the focus from ‘Did this bad thing happen?’ to ‘How do we weigh the good against the bad?’
So my ‘why bring it up?’ was really asking: In a conversation about alleged sex crimes, what is the purpose of directing attention to his charity work? Is it to ensure the allegations aren’t overstated, or is it to steer the discussion away from the allegations themselves?
That’s the distinction I’m trying to understand.
I feel like the best possible outcomes for all people do not involve villainizing Bill Gates, and in fact doing so can lead people down paths to right wing extremism. He got an STD from a prostitute according to an unsent draft of an email, if it’s true then it makes him a bad person and criminally liable, it does not make him a villain.
I understand your concern about backlash. But doesn’t that approach inadvertently prioritize Gates’ reputation over the gravity of the allegations themselves? If the allegations are true, the victims and the pursuit of justice deserve the central focus. Introducing his charity work, even to prevent ‘villainization,’ inherently shifts that focus. It suggests the story about Bill Gates is more important than the facts of the case.
No, I said he needs to go to trial for this and I’ve been consistent about that message. If you’re interpreting something opposite from what I’m saying, then perhaps you’re arguing more with a figment of your own imagination than me.
I don’t know enough about the whole Bill Gates tied into Epstein saga. But I will say this=> it kinda reads like “oh noez, I messed up, better do some good in the world to clean up my image preemptively”.
That kinda money just doesn’t happen squaky clean. It doesn’t. Visiting Epstein’s island… at that point he should’ve known he was treading onto the wrong side of history.
That’s nonsequitur to my comment, I’m saying despite his crimes and being a criminal, he is at least more moral than any other billionaire in existence, to say he has never had any conscience is not accurate.
Also, the new information released has, afaik, not mentioned any specifics about places, times, or identities of the girls involved, so as of yet we don’t know that he has ever been to the island.
"A very attractive Swedish woman and her daughter dropped by and I ended up staying there quite late,” Gates wrote in an email to colleagues after one of his meetings with Epstein, according to the New York Times.
And? What you said did neither argue what I said nor confirm.
Gates has provided the specific information you were not aware of.
The meeting with miss sweden and daughter was in 2011, not 2013, and Sweden is not Russian
This is an archived version without the paywall: https://archive.is/20251221221400/https://www.nytimes.com/2019/10/12/business/jeffrey-epstein-bill-gates.html