Bill Gates accuses Elon Musk of killing poor children by cutting foreign aid, and says he's giving away his wealth
Bill Gates accuses Elon Musk of killing poor children by cutting foreign aid, and says he's giving away his wealth
Gates also announced that his Gates Foundation will cease operations in 2045, sooner than previously planned.
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People will say a lot of things about me when I die, but I am determined that 'he died rich' will not be one of them
I'll just save time for my future self: He died complicit, supporting and enabling the system that creates inequality and blocks progress, and he directly stagnated technology by engaging in monopolistic practices.
Bill Gates quite obviously pays a lot for PR, and giving away wealth to those in need is obviously positive, but if he used his influence to call out Microsoft for using their technology/AI and infrastructure in war, called out the imperialism and destabilizing influence of the US empire, and so on; maybe I would have a more charitable forecast for his legacy.
I would be more than happy to be wrong and I hope I am.
Yeah instead of billionaires giving away their wealth to charity, I’d much rather tax them and let the government distribute that money.
Capitalism exists in the form it does because government doesn't exist. It's a big lie. We are in the age of modern feudalism, ruled by corporations, oligarchs, and others that concentrate wealth, power, and influence.
I wouldn't trust the government to reliably redistribute the money or to reliably tax the very rich.
We have a system that rewards greed, parasitism, and exploitation with wild success. Until that is solved, redistributing wealth will be unsuccessful — a temporary fix, at best.
The entire raison d'etre of Neoliberalism was to reduce the Power of the State (and hence the power of voters, who elect who controls it) below the Power of Money - leaving just about everything to "the Market" with "non-interventionism" and "deregulation" is really just another way to say that the State should not exercise any power over Money and thus leave Money to be the highest Power.
In other words, Democracy has been destroyed, not by wars or revolutions but by being hallowed out into a meaningless performance (the vote) for control of a lesser power, all thanks to Corruption, Propaganda and Subversion by insiders.
It feels like Feudalism because it is Feudalism, just with better image management.
Also, I think he has no concept of what rich is anymore. There's no way in hell he isn't, at minimum, rich in assets when he dies. His house, assuming he dies and only owns one, will probably be worth more than most people make in a lifetime. Unless he takes out insane mortgages against it and donates them, he'll still be rich. Even then, it's still call living a life where you have access to a house like that rich, even if he effectively doesn't own it anymore.
He's definitely not living poorly. His legacy will still be "filthy rich".
He's not giving so much that he can't live a life with more privilege and access to abundance than the overwhelming majority of people. He also wields more power and influence than most could ever hope for.