Comment by soperj

5 hours ago

> If only Bill Gates and Larry Summers had had my mom to go to for advice, they could’ve saved themselves a lot of grief.

Doubt it would have changed anything for Bill. There's a pattern there and this is just a piece of that pattern.

39 comments

soperj

Reply
pixl97  4 hours ago

Turns out Bill is just actually a piece of shit through and through

  • decimalenough  4 hours ago

    The kind of piece of shit who donates basically his entire fortune to charity? And actual charity at that, not Ellison style "Larry Ellison Research Foundation for Prolonging the Life of Larry Ellison and Getting Some Tax Breaks Along the Way".

    • Lammy  4 hours ago

      You don't get that rich in the first place without being a ruthless asshole.

    • soperj  3 hours ago

      You'll have to prove the "an actual charity" at that. It's literally in his name, Bill and Melinda Gates foundation, and Melinda had enough of Bill that she nixed their relationship.

      Bill and Melinda Gates foundation are also behind Common Core and basically ruined public education in the US.

      The foundation is a way for Bill to keep doing what he likes without having to pay taxes on it, he's just done a better job of repairing his image than Larry.

    • godelski  1 hour ago 

        > basically his entire fortune

      Money is a completely different concept for someone that rich.

      If I give away 50% of my fortune my entire life falls apart and I am struggling. If I give away 10% it is going to hurt.

      But Gates? He gives away 99% of his money and he's still a billionaire. His life isn't really going to change in any meaningful way. His money still generates tens or hundreds of millions of dollars a year without him lifting a finger. He gives away 99.9% of his money and he's still worth $100m and again, his life effectively does not change, making now only millions of dollars a year doing nothing.

      Don't get me wrong, I am glad he's giving his money away and this is far better than Ellison or plenty of others, but that doesn't absolve their crimes/behavior. There's definitely a hierarchy of wrongness, being a cheater is definitely better than being a pedo cheater but neither is good or an excuse. The dude was associating with a known sex trafficker. Definitely not an "ops, I didn't know", his wife definitely knew and told him...

    • saalweachter  3 hours ago

      Listen, billionaires just have to do three things to be beloved:

        1. Donate 5-10% of their fortune to random unobjectionable charities.
  2. Don't abuse children.
  3. Stay off Twitter.

      It's not a high bar, we don't need to give a silver medal to those that fall short.

      1 reply →

    • mrguyorama  3 hours ago

      Jeffrey Epstein ran a child sex slavery operation for rich people.

      There is nothing at all you can do that could ever overcome the harm of helping that man, participating in his business, and calling him a friend.

      I don't care if Jesus Christ himself comes down and says Bill Gates is solely responsible for the ending of all suffering.

      Raping kids is Bad. Enslaving kids to rape is Bad. This is as clear as you can get in real human society to being The Bad Guy, and Bill Gates spent his precious, limited time on this earth helping him, legitimizing him, and participating in his influence peddling and child rape and slavery

      Bill Gates is a piece of shit.

    • oulipo2  3 hours ago

      The problem is how the society allowed him to build that wealth. It shouldn't be allowed, not in that way.

      He took more from the society than he gave back. And when you take from society, you're not supposed to decide alone how to redistribute. That's the issue

    • sobkas  4 hours ago

      >The kind of piece of shit who donates basically his entire fortune to charity?

      So he is no longer a billionaire? And donating to what charity, The Gates Foundation? The one that he controls? The one that he uses to push his ideological stances and repeatedly fails to help anyone? Just look how successful his work on improving education system in America was. What a sacrifice it was for him...

      2 replies →

  • Insanity  4 hours ago

    These binary distinctions (mostly) don't work for people in the real world. It's not a book or movie where people are clearly either good or bad, in reality all people are a mix of both.

    He's still doing his work on philanthropy which is IMO a good thing.

    The one counterexample to my point that I'd think of is Hitler. And _technically_ he did do good things for Germany as well, the bad just overwhelmingly outshines the good in this case.

    • sobkas  3 hours ago

      He uses philanthropy to force his ideology on everyone and his ideology doesn't work. His philanthropy makes things worse not better.

      At some point it stops being a philanthropy when it makes lives of people he tries to "help" worse. Like his actions have a ulterior motives...

      2 replies →