Summary
Bill Gates criticized Elon Musk for his support of far-right politicians, including the UK’s Tommy Robinson and Germany’s AfD party, calling it “insane shit” and accusing Musk of destabilizing political systems.
Gates questioned Musk’s focus on divisive politics while managing global businesses like Tesla and SpaceX.
Gates also expressed concern about wealthy individuals influencing foreign elections.
Musk has faced backlash for controversial actions, including a Nazi salute.
I always forget Gates is one of the elite. Then I remember how ruthless and savage he was in the 80s.
Then I remember.
80s, 90s, and a few years into early 2000s. Gates ruthlessness lasted decades, destroyed many businesses and lives, and is mostly whitewashed thanks to his philanthropic efforts and a few reddit amas and some secret santa participation
Not to mention the destruction he did to computing as a whole. The nightmare of proprietary bullshit is something that he did not architect but he pushed heavily and lobbied for constantly. He had the position to push for interoperability from an early stake in computing, to set the stage for computers to have a strong precedent to work together. Instead he and microsoft made every effort to work against open standards. They would adopt open standards and extend them with proprietary extensions to intentionally ruin them. A lot of what is infuriating about modern tech can be traced back to precedent that microsoft set at his direction
Reminder despite every donation he has made his net worth is higher now than it ever was and this has essentially always been the case. His philanthropy, while objectively good, is a measured pr effort that does not impact his overall obscene wealth and basically never has
His philanthropy, while objectively good, is a measured pr effort that does not impact his overall obscene wealth and basically never has
Like with the some billionaires.
Untrue. Most don’t engage in actual philantropy at all, but donate only to causes that will directly benefit their bottom line, such as sectors that depend on their products, or for scholarships in fields where their companies hire heavily. That isn’t actually donating. It’s just tax-exempt investing. In this sense, Gates is a cut above other billionaires.
His actions merit a freshly sharpened blade on his guillotine. Musk can have the rusty one that we’ll need to drop thrice to get the job done.
His philanthropy, while objectively good,
I wouldn’t even go that far.
Say you have a crazy idea that education would be better if kids went to school blindfolded so they wouldn’t be distracted. You then use your vast fortune to arrange for that to be tried out on a bunch of kids for a few years. It’s a disaster. It sets those kids back for years. You realize it’s a disaster, so after a few years you abandon the project.
In that case was your philanthropy objectively good? Or was it probably bad?
Those are the kinds of experiments the Gates foundation has done. Because Gates is so insanely rich, he doesn’t have to bother with convincing people he has a good idea. He doesn’t need to run his ideas by education experts or psychologists, he can just run with them. So he does, and he fucks shit up, then he leaves.
I bet Elon can’t jump over a chair.
Maybe Elon’s mommy will allow him and Zuck to have a chair jumping contest in the octagon.
I’d put money on Zuck, he seems like he might be able to jump a chair.
Shitty Person, but possibly good chair jumper. Maybe Zuck will do a Philanthropy run later in life like Bill?
If Zuckerberg ever does philanthropy, it will be in a dystopian format where you need to hand over all your personal data to receive the benefits
And how he fought tooth and nail against generic versions of the covid vaccines being allowed, likely leading to thousands if not millions of deaths and many more getting sick in poorer countries where most people can’t afford name brand drugs.
had he actually cared, he should have demanded and funded research into them to either prove his point or fix the problem.
Further proof that Capitalism is a religion.
not religion. a disease of society
Bill Gates became friends with Epstein AFTER he was convicted.
Source?
https://www.nytimes.com/2019/10/12/business/jeffrey-epstein-bill-gates.html
And unlike many others, Mr. Gates started the relationship after Mr. Epstein was convicted of sex crimes.
Bill Gates made his acquaintance with Jeffrey Epstein in 2011 when Epstein had been jailed for years for soliciting prostitution from a minor.
https://jacobin.com/2021/08/bill-gates-jeffrey-epstein-mistake-cnn-interview
They were two of the richest men on Earth, meeting after Epstein had already been convicted for child sex trafficking, very intentionally scratching each other’s back and bolstering each other’s charitable endeavors. The relationship between them — and what compelled both to build one — should be seen not as a lapse in judgment but as an indictment of billionaire philanthropy itself.
There’s plenty more out there if you look.
Thanks
Yeah, he was a real asshole 44 years ago. Glad people never change at all.
TIL that his blocking generic versions of the covid vaccines which led to the deaths of thousands if not millions in poorer countries where most people can’t afford name brand drugs happened 44 years ago 🙄
I can only repeat what I said before I anther comment. I’m not defending Gates. Of course there are things he should be criticised for. You bring up one example here.
What I am saying is, that you should not judge him on what he did four decades ago, but how he is acting today.
Buying up as much arable American land as possible?
Yea he’s still sketchy af
Of course there are things he should be criticised for. You bring up one example here.
An example with a body count exceeding that of almost all other people on earth. That’s worthy of far more than just “criticism”.
If he had been poor and responsible for the same number of avoidable deaths, he would be rightly considered one of history’s greatest monsters.
What I am saying is, that you should not judge him on what he did four decades ago, but how he is acting today.
And today he’s acting like a goddamn monster who values property and profits over thousands if not millions of human lives. That’s what I’m judging him for today.
I would call 2020 close enough to today to call it the modern era. So he IS being judged for who he’s recently shown himself to be
Nosferatu says Dracula has gone too far
I feel like it’s the other way around.
Dracula can at least fit into polite society.
Count Chocula is my buddy
We’re safe now, we have a good boy up there who will rotect us against all those bad guys 🤮
I have to question the judgement of Bill Gates when he calls Musk “super-smart”. Maybe if Musk started out with no money, that would be fair in some sense. I think he was just lucky and unencumbered by ethics or self-doubt.
Maybe if Musk started out with no money, that would be fair in some sense.
Why is this american obsession on weighting the value of men with the money they made? Musk is an idiot regardless of his money or how he made it.
I’m not sure what you mean. I’m not American, and I don’t place much value on enormous wealth accumulation. I’m just acknowledging that there is a difference between gaining enormous wealth with a hefty leg up from family wealth versus doing it from scratch, like growing up in poverty for example.
You can’t get that amount of money without exploitation. If you start from 0 it just means you have to actually work for it but end result is still the same.
I agree. If you started from 0 and got rich you became a class traitor.
you should define the word rich better in this context. Personally I have started to think word “rich” as negative thing, someone who has more than they need at expense of others, but I dont think that is very common way to think.
You’re right, the term is very subjective. The lower bound for me is owning multiple properties, owning a business and making money from the labour of others.
Well, its okay to make some money from others labour, as long as its fair. But way it currently works, that some business owner gets majority of the value of someones work is not okay. That is just benefitting from being on stronger position than someone else and ultimately isnt much different from taking from someone by force. Its not like you can refuse to participate as people need to have money to live.
making money from the labour of others.
So…anyone with a 401k
I think a lot of people don’t consider the exploitation angle. Often they see someone like Bill gates as having invented windows and see his wealth as earned by goods provided that they don’t think would otherwise exist. It’s what capital teaches is the justification for wealth
Americans equal money with power, the more power you have, the more value, etc. That is basically it.
Its not just power, its ego and success. If McDonalds started paying 30$ an hour it would suddenly be a job that signaled success, despite nothing changing about the job duties.
Thats what’s happening here, elon is rich so he must be smart, and now people are jealous and emulate him. The OP is right though, money or not he’s an idiot.
Quite a lot of americans equate money with success and ability. Elon musk must be the smartest guy because dumb people dont make money like that.
I think its reverse engineering though, americans see his worth, and work backwards claiming all his choices are genius and well thought out.
It’s absolutely reverse engineering. People want to believe that the world is a meritocracy, and that means believing that those who have succeeded at meritful.
People avoid internalizing that the world is a kleptocracy, because that would mean having to confront that if they want to get ahead, they’ll have to actively amd knowingly fuck other people over, and most of us are not psychopaths
People who have fully bought into the hard work+talent=success line cannot stand to have that belief shaken by realizing that someone dinner than them lucked/exploited their way to more success than they did.
because maybe those american values are fundementally poisoned?
Bill Gates has also been riding an unearned “genius” appellation for decades. He didn’t make DOS. (His charitable work on vaccination is also questionable - iirc there were concerns over intellectual property rights)
The tide is turning against billionaires, and he’s just recognizing that Musk is making them all look bad.
Gates had two lawyers for parents, one of whom served on a board of directors with the CEO of IBM. IBM had been continually fighting an antitrust suit with the government for years, so they knew they had to tread carefully with the operating system for their first personal computers. It’s no surprise they hired Gates to do that work. Also, because of the antitrust case, they directed Gates to buy QDOS instead of buying it themselves. As for the contract that gave Gates a very sweet deal when it came to selling DOS to for non-IBM computers… I wonder if his two lawyer parents might have been involved in that contract.
It’s a compliment sandwich. You have to include the two pieces of compliment bread even if it’s bullshit or else you’ll be accused of not offering constructive criticism.
Trump makes a variety of compliment sandwiches. It’s hard to tell after a while just what kind of sandwich it is.
If you want to nudge the ketohead narcissist, you have to pander to the ego.
To be fair there are plenty of ruthless greedy people with zero morals out there but Musk is far more successful than any of them so something has to differentiate him. He might not be intelligent enough to recognise what a crigerworthy loser he is but let’s not pretend he isn’t smart.
Mate, he is on a very self destructive spiral doing those nazi salutes at the inauguration. That’s not a smart move. He’s let his fantasies get the better of him. If he was really smart he would shut the fuck up about politics. He has everything, And consequently he values nothing.
Smart can mean many things. My dentist is smart, but he is not well rounded. Most people aren’t well rounded smart.
Musk is a good investor, and expert con artist. He is smart in those ways.
He’s about as smart as trump is a successful businessman.
Trump is worth billions now though…
A person doesn’t become not smart no matter how much he flirts with neo nazism. They might be an immoral piece of shit but pretending he isn’t also smart can be extremely dangerous, lest people think we can now just let him wreck his brand and become irrelevant.
The insane shit is probably Musk’s obsession with trying to impress gamers with his (pretend) gaming skills. Having characters in Diablo 4 or PoE2 being clearly played by other people, while acting like this is his work alone.
If he’s so desperate to impress about something as inconsequential as gaming, what kind of lies is he saying about everything else …
Like if anyone ever screamed “overcompensating for a small dick”…
Like we probably don’t have the scientific equipment to actually locate Musk’s cock if it’s size is relative to how much he’s overcompensating.
That’s the vibe of the whole Trumptard government, SDE
I for one wouldn’t rule out that, when Musk talks about working 12-hour days, what he really does is to let others work, while he sits on his ass tweeting and playing video games like the pathetic fraud that he is.
Grindy shit. Call me when he wins a Quake 3 tournament.
Put him on a starcraft tourney
philanthropist
If he was one, he wouldn’t be a billionaire
I’ll not trust Gates anyway
Gates is a “lesser evil” billionaire but he advocated not to revoke the patents on Covid-19 vaccines during the height of the pandemic. I understand the need for innovation, but screw him for still being greedy in the face of immediate crisis. He is two-faced nonetheless.
He’s a greater evil billionaire with a good PR team.
He still has given away a lot of his wealth to charities, to be fair. He was the richest man after all until Elon came. But Gates is still a billionaire (only because of his underhanded business practices) in spite of donations so he’s still evil but to a lesser extent.
A lot? He’s currently worth $107 billion. That’s the most he’s ever been worth.
You would think that someone giving away “a lot” of their wealth would be worth less than before. If you’re giving away so little that your wealth is actually growing, I’d say you’re not actually giving away a lot.
I thought his net worth went down but it looks like it plateaud. However, according to this article, Bill’s net worth could be much higher but donates a lot of his assets to charities and his foundations. https://moneyweek.com/investments/605912/bill-gates-net-worth
Wikipedia says he’s given 50 billion in charity. Enough ? Maybe not. But it certainly is a lot of his wealth.
yeah he’s so good… at fucking up the education system. seriously fuck this guy and his wife for what they did in the name of so-called education reform, he’s just like the rest of them thinking just because he made a lot of money gaming the system he suddenly knows so much about everything. and fuck the united states for allowing these maniacs completely shape the country however they want.
I thought it was foolish that they allowed gates to do education reform, but then I thought it was insane they allowed reelon the troglodyte to make tunnels for his fucking explody cars. but that wasn’t enough apparently so now they give him the keys to the entire kingdom.
un-fucking-believable.
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The Old Guard chastises the new
“A bunch of pretentious old men playing at running the world, but the world left them behind long ago. We are the future!”
- Incredibly Evil Man
Pistols at dawn. One less billionaire either way.
Could be two!
Bill Gates is equally responsible for perpetuating wealth inequality
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Bill Gates’ foundation also donated money strategically in European countries putatively with the goal of influencing politics
Yeah, no Billie. You’ve caused enough shit with Microsoft, making yourself a billionaire. you don’t get to play the good guy now all of the sudden.
This is exactly what he wants, for you to see him as a good guy billionaire. There’s no such thing. He is one of them not one of us, this is just PR and lip service
If this is a tactical move purely for selfish reasons, its not a good one considering the power Musk now wields. I think this is genuine from Gates. Saying it out loud maybe is a degree of performance, but I think he likely legitimately finds Musk’s fascist support a morally bad thing.
Assuming all billionaires are constantly playing some kind of 4D chess game is just as bad being overly charitable when a billionaire says or does something that could be seen as good. Remember, Elon Musk has put himself in the spotlight constantly despite it often times hurting him financially, his desire to be liked/beloved as a genius is also genuine its just fueling frequently terrible decisions.
That said, Gates is still an egotist and obviously pretty conventionally selfish (at what I’d describe as a pretty human level, if an average joe/jane came to have billions of dollars they’d probably treat the money in similar ways as Gates). Gates doesn’t deserve his wealth and Gates is no genius either, I just don’t think hes a fascist or a sociopath like Musk is.
I don’t think you’re wrong in general, and I could give you a list of criticisms of Gate’s actions even today. But if we’re going to have wealth disparity, and we probably always will, I’d rather it be pragmatic self-interest clothed in good will than rabid self-interest clothed in freedom.
I don’t think that way, sorry
It’s not insane at all. It sucks but it’s completely logical. Musk is just protecting his capital as best he can within a global capitalist system.
It’s like corporate “greedflation” during Covid. Of course they jacked up prices and lied about wholesale costs, thereby wildly inflating profits, because profit motives are what drive our world.
It’s not insane at all. It sucks but it’s completely logical. Musk is just protecting his capital as best he can within a global capitalist system.
No, it’s absolutely insane, and short sighted. You know how much his capital will be in the event of WWIII? We won’t be spending money on overpriced EVs or sending rockets to outer space on scientific missions to study the universe. Assuming he doesn’t get himself assassinated first by people that actually care about democracy. The absolute BEST thing to protect his capital is a strong spending class in the US, which would require the economy to not collapse. You gut social services, there is exactly one logical outcome and it is social unrest followed by either class war or civil war.
Wasn’t he kissing Trump’s ass a week ago?
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Bill Gates really doesn’t want to get eaten. Remember he is not one of us, he is one of them.
Right thing for the wrong reasons is still the right thing. We’ve got bigger fish to fry than him.
For now.
Reminds me of comments made when Colin Powell resigned (ie “…bunch of fucking Crazies!”) [referring to the republican administration atvthe time].
Colin Powell was one of the two Republicans I respected. Then he went on TV and lied to the nation to start Iraq 2.
