this post was submitted on 13 Mar 2024
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submitted 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago) by [email protected] to c/[email protected]
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[–] [email protected] 41 points 1 year ago (6 children)

Lives have been saved through his funding . Can you see elon or zuck doing that ? Ever ? So in comparison i do consider him good but i could be wrong.

[–] [email protected] 34 points 1 year ago (4 children)

The reason is that there just isn't an ethical way to accrue a billion dollars. Stealing from workers labour is an inherent part of becoming a billionaire. Plus, usually some other exploitation too, like fucking others over with patents.

Doing charity with a small fraction of your obscene wealth after this isn't any kind of moral absolution.

[–] [email protected] 12 points 1 year ago (1 children)

No one said it was absolution. As was obviously stated, it means he's better than others.

But sure binary thinking is the best. either he is good or bad, either his charity is meaningless or completely erases any bad he ever did.

[–] [email protected] 18 points 1 year ago (1 children)

Hardly anyone is all good or all bad. But with any billionaire ever, the bad will always outweigh the good because of what monumental injustice was necessary to collect a billion dollars.

[–] [email protected] 4 points 1 year ago

I don't really agree but even if so, there still are degrees of wrong doing. Gates has helped to eradicate disease but to many in this thread that means literally nothing because of their binary thinking

[–] [email protected] 7 points 1 year ago

The reason is that there just isn't an ethical way to accrue a billion dollars. Stealing from workers labour is an inherent part of becoming a billionaire. Plus, usually some other exploitation too, like fucking others over with patents.

I would agree that there is no ethical way to become a billionaire, but I think that lacks context and scale.

Most billionaires make their fortunes from exploiting the labour and material wealth of the global south. Gates made his fortune by bullying the rest of silicon valley in the 90s, leading to the monopolistic tech market we know and hate today.

This is unethical in that scope, but when compared to global exploitation of other billionaires in the same tax bracket.... it's the best we could realistically hope for. Gates has essentially been unethical in the realm of wealthy 1rst world nations, all while directing a significant part of his wealth to improve material conditions in the places most billionaires extract wealth from.

Doing charity with a small fraction of your obscene wealth after this isn't any kind of moral absolution.

I mean 50 billion dollars is not just a small fraction of his wealth, and he's literally cured diseases that have killed millions of people over time.

Moral absolution isnt something that can be weighed and measured, it's subject to ethical belief systems that are not uniform across people or cultures.

[–] [email protected] 4 points 1 year ago (2 children)

It's so funny that the socialist rethoric doesn't even crumble here when talking about big tech. Who are Microsoft's poor exploited workers exactly? Last I checked, developers in big tech make bank. It's the customers that get fucked.

[–] [email protected] 12 points 1 year ago

I don't know when the last time you checked is, but I don't think it's funny that as early as 1996 Microsoft was successfully sued for nearly 100m for abusing workers as "permatemps". That isn't counting their practices of forcing their staff to work extreme hours, avoiding to pay benefits, and just doing just about anything they could to avoid giving their employees a way of "making bank".

"In 1996, a class action lawsuit was brought against Microsoft representing thousands of current and former employees that had been classified as temporary and freelance. The monetary value of the suit was determined by how much the misclassified employees could have made if they had been correctly classified and been able to participate in Microsoft's employee stock purchase plan. The case was decided on the basis that the temporary employees had had their jobs defined by Microsoft, worked alongside regular employees doing the same work, and worked for long terms (years, in many cases)."

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Permatemp#Vizcaino_v._Microsoft

[–] [email protected] 10 points 1 year ago

You can't be that naive.

https://www.businessinsider.com/microsoft-slammed-over-child-labor-accusations-2010-4

Also, it's very funny, you talking about "socialist rhetoric", because I don't think you even know what socialism means by "exploited worker".

Have a look.

https://socialistworker.org/2011/09/28/what-do-we-mean-exploitation

THE TERM "exploitation" often conjures up images of workers laboring in sweatshops for 12 hours or more per day, for pennies an hour, driven by a merciless overseer. This is contrasted to the ideal of a "fair wage day's wage for a fair day's work"--the supposedly "normal" situation under capitalism in which workers receive a decent wage, enough for a "middle class" standard of living, health insurance and security in their retirement.

Sweatshops are horrific examples of exploitation that persist to this day. But Karl Marx had a broader and more scientific definition of exploitation: the forced appropriation of the unpaid labor of workers. Under this definition, all working-class people are exploited.

[–] [email protected] 4 points 1 year ago (2 children)

Aside from anticompetitive actions, I don't see much harm having been done by selling an operating system.

[–] [email protected] 9 points 1 year ago (1 children)

Did he code it all by himself? Or give the profits to the programmers in direct proportion to how much they worked on it?

[–] [email protected] 1 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago) (2 children)

I'm not saying Wozniak didn't get fucked by their dealings or that CEO to Worker pay rate is justifiable, but they're a lot better off than most. Wozniak is working as a US treasury and defence contractor and he likes to sell uncut pages of bills to strangers for fun, man is worth at least 120 Million USD.

[–] [email protected] 6 points 1 year ago (1 children)

Woz was at Apple, not Microsoft.

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[–] [email protected] 4 points 1 year ago (1 children)
[–] [email protected] 2 points 1 year ago (1 children)

Yeah I really fumbled on that one, Woz was with Apple not Microsoft. Can you name anybody who worked at Microsoft before 1990 who didn't become wildly successful?

[–] [email protected] 3 points 1 year ago (1 children)

I mean, if you can name them, it's probably because they were successful, right?

Microsoft is not a paragon of good employee treatment btw. As others pointed out, they had their asses sued to pieces for trying to maintain employees as contractors because it allowed them to save money by not paying benefits.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago) (2 children)

This might be the pot calling the kettle black, but absence of evidence is not evidence. My lack of information on a group of tech entrepreneurs who existed over 40 years ago doesn't prove anything, and neither does your lack of ability to present such information.

[–] [email protected] 4 points 1 year ago

So I don't know what I'm talking about because I didn't link you to a super well-known and easily found piece of info? Sure bro.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 1 year ago (1 children)
[–] [email protected] 1 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago) (6 children)

Honestly that doesn't sound all that bad. They even chose temporary staffing agencies that already paid benefits. The lawsuit was basically over whether recurring temp workers could utilize the stock-option plans that permanent employees got. The worst part about this case is that it went on for 8 years before Microsoft settled it.

In January, the U.S. Supreme Court rejected Microsoft's appeal of a lower-court ruling that as many as 10,000 workers hired on a temporary basis should have been allowed to take part in the stock-option plan that the company offers its permanent employees. The case was filed by the Seattle law firm of Bendich, Stobaugh and Strong PC.

Pilla noted that Microsoft changed its policies for temporary employees earlier this year. It now has a 12-month limit on temporary employment, after which workers have to take a 100-day hiatus, Pilla said, adding that the average length of a temporary employee's time at Microsoft has dropped to just 10 months. The company also tries to use temporary employment agencies that already pay benefits to the workers.

Despite the settlement, Pilla reiterated Microsoft's contention that it didn't set a formal policy aimed at keeping temporary workers on as virtually permanent employees in order to avoid having to pay benefits and Social Security taxes.

"I don't think you can look at it as a broad policy," he said. "A lot of times, it just happened. [Temporary workers] moved from project to project." But he added that Microsoft executives eventually "did recognize that" and moved to institute the new requirements for temporary workers.

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[–] [email protected] 9 points 1 year ago (1 children)

Aside from anticompetitive actions

"Aside from 95% of the shit he did, I don't see much harm from the other 5%."

Bill Gates' anticompetitive behavior probably set the entire computing industry back a decade or more.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 1 year ago

Lol, as if. Computing industry limitations are still dictated by Hardware, which has advanced at the same rate it would have without Windows. Plus, the vast majority of servers run Linux, anyways, so all he did was be one of three or four firms that helped bring computing into people's homes when otherwise it would have required more technical skills than anybody had in that time period.

[–] [email protected] 14 points 1 year ago (2 children)

Maybe, but that's clearly not his intention as he has showed many times.

Take for example case covid

In April 2021, during the COVID-19 pandemic, Gates was criticized for suggesting that pharmaceutical companies should hold onto patents for COVID-19 vaccines. The criticism came due to the possibility of this preventing poorer nations from obtaining adequate vaccines. Tara Van Ho of the University of Essex stated, "Gates speaks as if all the lives being lost in India are inevitable but eventually the West will help when in reality the US & UK are holding their feet on the neck of developing states by refusing to break [intellectual property rights] protections. It's disgusting."

Gates is opposed to the TRIPS waiver. Bloomberg News reported him as saying he argued that Oxford University should not give away the rights to its COVID-19 information, as it had announced, but instead sell it to a single industry partner, as it did. His views on the value of legal monopolies in medicine have been linked to his views on legal monopolies in software

Source: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bill_Gates

[–] [email protected] 4 points 1 year ago (1 children)

Hmm you do make a compelling argument

[–] [email protected] 6 points 1 year ago (1 children)

It's easier to just assume all billionaires are evil. The chances of it being wrong is about the same as for any good person to become a billionaire

[–] [email protected] 4 points 1 year ago (2 children)

That is true maybe there were some exploits done by them here and there but everything is gray there are no black and white.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 1 year ago (1 children)

Yeah obviously. I'm not saying an evil person cannot do good things, Hitler was responsible for VW Beetle - objectively one of the most beautiful cars in human history. We just can't call Hitler a good person because of that one thing

[–] [email protected] 2 points 1 year ago

Making a good car isn't doing a good thing . What are you on about ?

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[–] [email protected] 2 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago) (1 children)

Still probably a net positive, though. Hell, he could kill 110 Million people added to every sars-cov-2 death combined and still be net positive. Good person? Debatably no. Best billionaire? Yeah.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 1 year ago (1 children)

That's one stupid argument backed with made up numbers there

[–] [email protected] 2 points 1 year ago (1 children)

Covid19 has killed less than 8 Million people total, and you can argue in good faith that Bill Gates would be responsible for some of those deaths by advocating for full commercialization of the vaccine.

Yeah, it's a lot, but compared to a random estimate from The Guardian of 122 Million lives saved by the Gates Foundation... yeah.

Now, I realize some people would say saving any number of lives wouldn't justify murder, but anybody who says Bill Gates is anything other than a net positive impact on the world is out of their fucking head.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago) (1 children)

Some people would say that he has given negative 130 billion, or whatever his net worth is right now

I wouldn't go that extreme, but still think he has had net negative effect in the world

[–] [email protected] 2 points 1 year ago (1 children)
  1. I would pay 130 billion to save 122 Million lives. That's only 1066 USD per life saved. You must be greedy af if you think that's a bad deal.

  2. That's not how stocks work. He hasn't taken 130 Bn USD. Most of his 129.2 Bn net worth is unrealized gains in the form of shares of companies such as Microsoft, meaning when or if it ever becomes income he will likely donate that as well, in fact he has promised to do so on many occasions. To date, Bill has donated 59 Bn USD to charities, the vast majority of his income.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago)

Okay I take that as you did not read the article, but only the misleading title, if you claim that Bill and Melinda saved 122m infants...

The article says that infant deaths (0-5yo) have halved from 1990 to 2015. From 1990 to 2000 the number already gone from 12 million down to around 9.5 million yearly. This is when Bill and Melinda Foundation was founded and they started pouring money on vaccinations which is good of course.

So yes, they've certainly done a part in reducing infant death rates, but they're only a small part of it. And most of the money invested wasn't even theirs, but donation from Warren Buffet who actually donated away most of his wealth.

[–] [email protected] 5 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago) (1 children)

Who gives a fuck whether some other rich sociopath would've done better?

What you should be asking is why important shit like this should be left to the whims of a single private citizen with too much power instead of handled by government. The notion that Bill fucking Gates is some kind of savior übermensch who somehow knows better than the entire voting public how to spend the money is fucking ludicrous.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 1 year ago

Black or white. Gray doesn't exist. Like at all. I get angry when people say it does.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 1 year ago

His company has also doomed some billions of people to using Excel, but on the other hand some number of millions of people get the pleasure of using Excel

[–] [email protected] 2 points 1 year ago (1 children)

You're not wrong. Compared to his peers, he's a saint.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 1 year ago

Everyone is compared to his peers