I cannot be the only one here who sees tiny hands.
I got downvoted on Lemmy the other day because I said that I prefer Bill Gates to Musk.
Maybe there are things about Gates I don’t know. Maybe he is actually quite an evil person; I don’t know. But he does at least spend billions of dollars helping vulnerable people, right? And Bill’s stances on global politics are far more sensible than those of Musk.
There are no good billionaires. But I must agree that Bill Gates cannot be compared to Elon Musk. Bill has done evil, but his evil doesn’t compare to what Elon Musk is doing right now
Nuance is lost on a lot of people on here. All billionaires bad therefore no billionaire is preferred. While I agree there’s no good billionaire there’s a spectrum of bad. Like would I rather break my pelvis or break my legs? Both are bad but one is preferable.
I mean Gates donated his own money to help the poorest people in the world. Elon spent his money to become president so he could steal money from the poor at people in the world.
Gates donated his money to avoid taxes and start a big pharma company.
Also Bill Gates comment is about USAID an imperialistic tool which has killed many millions of children. The irony of this statement is palpable.
Didn’t some nations in Africa ask Gates to stop helping?
I will wager that some people from some nations asked him to stop helping based solely on the fact that we can’t get millions of people to reliably agree on anything.
[narrator]: bill gates did not GET ReST.
so this is what he meant by eliminated world hunger, by killing them directly or indirectly.
The only way to get rid of poverty is to get rid of the poor.
It’s logical: no people -> no hunger.
and that’s how you know it didn’t even occur to him. he just did it for the sake of cruelty.
How many children died because Bill Gates lobbied for the Oxford Covid-19 vaccine to be patented?
Idk how many people have died from Covid 19 vax? I keep taking it and my cock is huge, no other side effects
Your claim seems a bit BS. It was apparently to have a better distribution and quality.
AstraZeneca claimed not to get profits from the vaccine sales. This seems kind of fair knowing that doses were sold at about $4 USD (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Oxford–AstraZeneca_COVID-19_vaccine#Early_development - https://reliefweb.int/report/world/uk-donates-20-million-more-oxford-astrazeneca-vaccines-countries-need)
Unless you’re talking about the side effects?
4$ per dose is quite a lot of money for African countries. Not patenting it would allow them to create their own, which he blocked based on bullshit reasoning.
I did try to find unit costs for Cuba’s vaccine but failed. While doing that I found a paper analysing distribution costs in Vietnam and long story short it can easily cost four bucks just to get the stuff from the plant into people’s arms.
Not patenting it would allow them to create their own
Patenting it and licensing it also allows them to create their own, but now they need a plant to do that, which requires things like reliable electricity, infrastructure to enable supply of raw materials, whatnot. It’s not like you can brew that kind of thing in a bathtub. What patenting also does is stop random Indian pharma producers from cooking it up and selling it to Botswana without giving you a cut, that is, the wrong private enterprise profiting off it. One that didn’t incur costs doing studies so that regulators would greenlight it.
From what I gather most of the doses used overall in the world were AstraZeneca, and much of it was given to countries for free, with western countries stemming the bill, not AstraZeneca. The EU apparently (it’s in your wiki link) brought the price down to €1.78 because the EU was supplying the production capacity, and €12 for Pfizer/Biontech, which was never in the race for distribution to poor countries in the first place because it requires a tight, and very cool, cooling chain. Forget about the four bucks per dose for distribution in that case.
Would this all have been better in a socialist world? Yes. But that’s not what the situation on the ground was during the pandemic so stop making the perfect the enemy of the good, western countries (excluding the US) were up to the task not getting fucked over by big pharma, and passed that on to other countries.
Congrats, you’ve done research and thus got downvoted.<_>
Sadly we don’t have the specifics about what increases the price, but I think it’s fair to say that they probably have an automated process of creating those vaccines, and as such, idk if other labs could create a dose for less than this amount, especially if they don’t have many funds. I’d argue not, but what do I know
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Gates is always whitewashing his own future or past actions when he does something philanthropic tbh
This. Thank you.
That was a villain level move from Gates. The behaviour of the rich nations towards the LICs over covid vaccines was absolutely shameful and destroyed the illusion of Gates’ benevolence.
i heard about that, he advocated for expensive equipment, medicaiton only produced by the us.
I really do think it would be fun to compile all of the billionaires in the world and just have them fight to the death in a gladiator kind of rig. Would be awesome.
I feel like the only way it would work is if they got to keep the money of whoever they killed as long as that person had over a billion dollars… and I would almost be OK with that.
I like to imagine it would reduce the collateral damage the rest of society faces when these people have a dick waving contest.
Roided out billionaires with their hearts exploding out their chests from experimental steroids would really mix things up in a good way. He’ll maybe we’d get some truly sick cybernetic out of it too.
Y…yeah … sure. Yeah totally. The last one standing totally gets to keep everything and will absolutely be leaving the arena alive. Yup. That’s how we’ll do it.
Kat and Kropp get in an argument over the war as they rest from an hour’s worth of drill (occasioned by Tjaden’s not saluting a major properly). Kat believes the war would be over if leaders gave all the participants “the same grub and the same pay,” as he says in a rhyme. Kropp believes the leaders of each country should fight each other in an arena to settle the war; the “wrong” people currently do the fighting.
Erich Maria Remarque - All Quiet on the Western Front 1929
Remember there are no good billionaires. No amount of “good” they do will ever be enough.
Chuck Feeney is the closest we will ever get to a “good” billionaire. Donated over 99% of his wealth and spent his retirement being only worth $2 million.
Yeah, but that’s why it’s great to see them fighting each other. Nobody else seems able to do it better.
Fighting lol…
Why can’t we be better?
Sure, but Bill Gates is as benign as it gets.
He was until he forced patents onto a vaccine that was supposed to be free to the entire world.
Gates is responsible for millions of people in the Third World dying or getting long covid.
He’s an Edison, he’s a Carnegie, he’s a Rockefeller. He’s a robber baron like countless before and that on its own is enough of a condemnation.
Dude single-handedly ruined many, many foss and other software projects because he couldn’t buy, bully, or otherwise get obscenely rich from. He would use windows’ reach to kill projects. “Windows ain’t done until wordperfect won’t run”
He played dirty to get his money and now that he’s “won” and has enough money for his family to be generationally wealthy for ever he’s donating amounts that don’t cut into his oligarch lifestyle. Guess he hired a good PR team though, cuz everyone seems to forget what he did to get so filthy rich.
Not to jump down your throat over it - I just hate that he’s managed to erase the shitty things he’s done by donating the money he got by doing shitty things.
You’re exhausting.
Yes, all billionaires are bad, just like all mountains are big. But some mountains are bigger than others. Amazing concept, I know.
👅👢
Calling a billionaire “benign” then getting pissy when I give evidence to the contrary is weak shit.
Also, so long as we’re trading insults i think ill go with “Fragile Ego Piss Baby who thinks some boots don’t taste that bad”
Your evidence that he is bad is that windows is bad.
Our evidence that Bill Gates isn’t that bad is that Bill Gates has directly saved millions of lives by donating the vast majority of his wealth to an organization he created to supply medicine, food, and water to the world’s poorest regions namely Africa.
I feel like we’re not on the same intellectual playing fields.
what about the numerous sexual harassment lawsuits, decades long friendship with Epstein including numerous trips on the lollita express and his longstanding board membership of Berkshire Hathaway which has presided over numerous ethics violations?
The flight logs do not show that Bill Gates has ever visited the island on any plane. The most that has been confirmed is that Bill Gates flew from New Jersey to Florida on a private plane owned by Epstein once and that he had dinner with Epstain exactly once, which in interviews he expressed as a major mistake. I remind you that before 2006 Epstein was a public figure as a professional financier and broker and even until 2019 him and Ghislaine participated in major fundraisers.
Furthermore, your claim is one that gets constantly circulated by right wing nutjobs after a particularly viral tweet in 2023.
What friendship. He was never at the island according to records. Unless you have some proof.
This is a bot
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Evil isn’t graded on a scale, bud.
This thread is so embarrassing.
So Bill Gates is as bad as Hitler?
Bill Gates is as bad as Bill Gates. You’re trying to get a gotcha without understanding what I said.
Genius.
if you can’t compare evils then there is no reason for someone to try to become less evil.
What?
Lol, dude thinks any of these billionaires give an iota of a fuck how we plebs rank them 🤣
His foundation has done a lot of good, for sure, and he’s actively giving away his billions. I think a lot of people just object to billionaires on principle, I do too TBH
Just not being as bad as Elon doesn’t mean he isn’t bad. It’s like saying that alcoholic drunk asshole husband who beats his wife and kids isn’t as bad as Ted Bundy.
Cool story, Bill. Who did you donate to? Why did you cut your philanthropic efforts to fight climate change and disease? Why have you and your buddies fought for minimizing and coopting government for years? Bill isn’t innocent in all this, it’s just a good time to blame Elon. Don’t get me wrong, Elon 100% deserves it, but that doesn’t mean that Bill isn’t playing the PR game here.
Why did you cut your philanthropic efforts to fight climate change and disease? Why have you and your buddies fought for minimizing
The problem is that billionaires should not exist but come on. $80 billion already donated. $7 Billion more just for Africa. Hundreds of millions in malaria research.
Could he do more? Sure. But attacking someone who is doing a little because he isn’t doing more doesn’t seem fair.
Years ago Elon said he was disappointed when he met Bill Gates because Gates only wanted to talk about philanthropy and climate.
Microsoft is perhaps the most complicit tech company in Israel’s illegal apartheid regime and ongoing genocide against 2.3 million Palestinians in Gaza. Microsoft’s complicity in Israel’s apartheid and genocide is well documented, exposing its strong ties to the Israeli military, its collaboration with Israeli government ministries, and its involvement in the Israeli prison system, which is notorious for systematic torture and abuse of Palestinians. Microsoft knowingly provides Israel with technology, including artificial intelligence (AI), that is deployed to facilitate grave human rights violations, war crimes, crimes against humanity (including apartheid), as well as genocide. In light of the International Court of Justice’s legally-binding rulings to prevent Israel’s plausible genocide in Gaza, as well as its July 19 Advisory Opinion affirming Israel’s illegal occupation and apartheid system, Microsoft has failed its corporate obligation to prevent genocide, war crimes and crimes against humanity. Microsoft, as well as its boards of directors and executives, may face criminal liability for this complicity.
Microsoft provides the Israeli military with Azure cloud and AI services that are crucial in empowering and accelerating Israel’s genocidal war on 2.3 million Palestinians in the illegally occupied Gaza Strip. Microsoft’s extensive ties with Israel’s military are revealed in investigations by The Guardian with the Israeli-Palestinian publication +972 Magazine, demonstrating how the Israeli military turned to Microsoft to meet the technological demands of genocide.
The 7 billion to Africa isn’t as nice as it first seems either; it’s investments into venture capitalist solutions, much more restrictive that aid and the profits are not realized by the locals
https://www.commondreams.org/views/2022/12/02/perhaps-bill-gates-not-best-expert-hunger-africa
https://www.commondreams.org/views/2022/11/10/open-letter-bill-gates-food-farming-and-africa
Bill Gates hasn’t been CEO of Microsoft in 25 years. He left completely in 2008.
He didn’t completely leave, he’s literally the technical advisor listed under “key people” for Microsoft
Saytalla seeking advice doesn’t mean Gates is making the business decisions.
And claiming Microsoft cloud services are worse than RTX’s actual bombs that kill children is a stretch.
The problem is that billionaires should not exist but come on. $80 billion already donated. $7 Billion more just for Africa. Hundreds of millions in malaria research.
Philanthropists hoarding wealth and resources and then getting to choose which of the poors to allow to have any is actually part of the problem, even if it makes you feel good.
We saw that when Gates leveraged his contributions to force a vaccine that had been developed with public money for the benefit of humankind, to become patent locked and hard for the Third World to access or afford.
The problem is that the theft begins by simply becoming a billionaire in the first place. You don’t get to be one by playing nice and not exploiting a lot of people and rules along the way. Sure the government could be blamed some for not having enough regulations in place to prevent/stop that, but capitalism ensures that businesses exploit any available loophole possible to maximize profit, otherwise you’re a bad business.
While I can respect a lot of those philanthropic efforts, those should not be his decisions alone to make. That money should’ve been paid into taxes and distributed in agreed upon ways. $7 Billion dollars to Africa is just great, but it could do a lot of help here, too. I have no issues with sending $7B to Africa, but that sure seems like something the people should agree upon first, through some sort of national aid, and not as an effort to spare the conscience of an aging billionaire.
Fuck all billionaires. Every. Last. One. Forever.
The problem is that the theft begins by simply becoming a billionaire in the first place.
That’s why that was my first sentence!
The problem is that billionaires should not exist but come on.
Was your first point. I expanded on it by calling out that it is specifically theft and then going further to illustrate that he was using that theft to make personal choices about how that money should be spent, compounding the reasons I find this distasteful.
Forgiving it simply because it’s philanthropy plays exactly into their narrative. Don’t buy it! Don’t defend billionaires to any extent.
theft implies violating laws, which few billionaires explicitly do, because other billionaires made the laws and intentionally provide legal methods to extract wealth from the poor.
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While I can respect a lot of those philanthropic efforts, those should not be his decisions alone to make. That money should’ve been paid into taxes and distributed in agreed upon ways.
As a capitalist, all of his solutions are capitalist. His efforts to slow climate change are primarily technological, with a focus on unproven horseshit like carbon capture rather than proven improvements like better, less car centric urban planning and reducing meat intake. He would never even consider an strategy of economic degrowth to fight climate change even though available evidence shows that that is exactly what we need.
I think we’re well past the chance of urban designing our way out of the climate collapse.
We need to make major changes in our consumption to even make a dent, but I say our best shot is cold fusion and carbon capture. Those are obvious longshots.
We’ve created a runaway greenhouse gas effect. Even if we cut emissions to 0 temperatures will continue to climb.
Obviously cutting emissions to 0 would give us more time to fix this mess though
We need to make major changes in our consumption to even make a dent, but I say our best shot is cold fusion and carbon capture. Those are obvious longshots.
I would argue for extensive rewilding as an alternative
Both are good. I’m not convinced it’ll be enough to stop things, but a massive help still
yeah we need every tool at our disposal fs
Still the wrong conversation. Yes he was appropriately villainized for anticompetitive behavior running Microsoft, accumulating excessive wealth at the expense of many others, but come on ……
I have no issues with sending $7B to Africa, but that sure seems like something the people should agree upon first,
Just no. His philanthropy, his wealth. His choice.
But I’m with you on inadequate taxation for the wealthy, and that we have a responsibility as a country to help the less privileged of humanity, and should not just assume someone’s personal largesse.
Not his wealth. That’s my point.
It is his wealth. We don’t have to like it, but that’s how the current system works.
Well now no US tax money is going to Africa, since people voted for Trump. Most Americans would rather see Africans exploited, starve and die than pay a bit more in taxes.
Gates has history of lawsuits against open source projects. And he actively donates against any real systemic change. For example he has invested heavily in carbon capture technology which is useless to making impact to climate change.
I’m fuzzy on the timeline but wiki says the sco Linux lawsuit was 2003. Gates had already quit being CEO in 2000.
I resist the urge to become a billionaire every day.
I’ve allowed trillions of dollars to continue circulating in the global economy, undisturbed by my whims.
I’m a goddamn philanthropic hero compared to Gates.
And you can tell I’m better than him, cuz I didn’t have to slap my name on a “Foundation For Leaving People The Fuck Alone” to do it.
At least your ego is bigger than a billionaires fortune
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Imagine how much extra money the countries of the world would have if they didnt have to pay for microsoft licenses and stuff like dat
It’s their fault also, they could have switch to other systems
Yes, but Gates personally has been lobbying leaders all over the world for decades whenever there was any sort of momentum of governments switching to Linux. Sadly politicians are often corrupt or at least easy to manipulate.
Why did Bill fly on Epstein’s Lolita Express?
Wrong place for “both sides the same”. Sure, any of us could do more, and billionaires could do a lot more, but you’re equating a Nazi cutting entire government programs to aid the most vulnerable here and abroad, with a billionaire who has donated a significant portion of his personal wealth to aid humanity, including eradicating diseases
Nah, I saw a year or two back that Bill was pulling back from his climate and disease philanthropy. I think this is just him jumping on a chance to do some PR by dunking on Musk.
Do you have a source? The only thing I can see is much more recent, and isn’t philanthropy, but lobbying.
He’s apparently reduced his climate change related lobbying under the new administration… which sounds like a rational response, because this administration is actively hostile to any and all climate change initiatives.
What’s the point in donating to lobby for windmills when Don
QuixoteCheeto is in charge?Frankly, I don’t. I read something about it a while back, and I remember being really disappointed that he was stepping back from that.
Cool story bro.
What purpose does he need PR work done?
Well, a few things:
-
they say the only bad press is no press.
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We’re at a moment where anger against the wealthiest people on the planet has never been higher, except maybe during a revolution. Bill is among this group, and he’s likely cognizant that Dingus and Doofus up in DC are exacerbating that sentiment. Maybe he’s hedging his bets to keep from getting put against the wall.
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Didn’t he fly to Epstein Island? Wasn’t it shortly after we found out about that that Melinda divorced him? Probably not the most recent thing he’d like to be remembered for.
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Surprised I had to scroll so long for this article. This is probably the best example (recent history too) of Bill’s actions killing kids.
I’m still glad he called Elon out. Let them fight.
This isn’t Bill’s action, it’s Bill’s inaction. As per those articles, all he did was not support the waiver of patents, which ultimately wasn’t his decision anyway? He claimed that it would not significantly change production, or at least not quickly enough to matter.
It still seems shitty, but comparing to Elon? Who is actively cutting off the flow of medication that has already been manufactured and paid for - to dying children?
Allowing tuberculosis patients to lapse partway through treatment, thereby allowing drug resistant TB to skyrocket in impoverished communities and by extension the entite world?
Effectively guaranteeing a death sentence for infected children, who will experience a relapse of a horrifying but completely curable disease? Children who will not be able to afford the diagnostics and treatments for a second round because they are orders of magnitude more expensive for drug-resistant TB?
I agree. The difference between the two is stark.
Cool story, Soup. Who did you donate to?
Nobody, but I voted for Harris. Last I saw, Gates was cutting back on donating to his foundation that fights infectious diseases in the developing world.
So you’re just whingeing online about someone who plans to spend 99% of their wealth on saving millions of lives, while you’ve done fuck-all.
Let me stop what I’m doing so I can clap for you and your moral high ground.
Oh no, not my ego!
No need for envy. He owns enough farmland that he can easily top Musk by rising prices to let many more children starve to death.
Sounds more like someone has seen the world turning on the worthless shit that are billionaires NOT that someone has seen the light and wants to make the world a better place…
Credit where credit is due, Bill Gates has been putting his money where his mouth is for decades now.
If he had done that, he wouldn’t be as wealthy as he is today. Billionaires being billionaires is a big part of the problem, and the only way to remedy that is for them to not be billionaires anymore.
Wealth is not money.
All wealth can be turned into money.
There’s a slight issue though - it can’t.
We don’t don’t need princes or kings doing PR. If we taxed billionaires out of existence we could fund that and so much more. This guy doesn’t get to make up for whatever he was doing on Epstein’s plane, at least not without coming clean first.
You can’t tax wealth. Wealth is not money.
We tax things that aren’t money all the time, see property taxes.
We could do so much more, but would we? USAID was just shuttered. There’s every chance that money would go into the military industrial complex or something equally unpleasant.
Not defending billionaires as a concept (they shouldn’t exist, and most aren’t as philanthropic as Bill), but I will acknowledge he’s doing a lot of good with his money.
If we had been taxing billionaires for the last 50 years, the education system wouldn’t be where it is now and USAID would have never been under threat. In fact USAID would have probably never had to operate within the US.
It’s also worth mentioning Gates has made our public education system worse by introducing us to the voucher system. Billionaires are part of why we don’t spend our tax dollars on things like universal healthcare or free college.
So if we tax them on wealth they doesn’t exist. Do we tax regular folk on the cost of their houses also? I mean they are worth billions but not till they sell.
If your wealth is enough to serve as security for a credit line that you use to fund your daily spending, it’s enough to be taxed.
I pay property taxes based on the value of my home, but what home is worth billions?
Yeah, TBF that foundation has done a lot of good.
So are you Bill. You utter piece of shit.
Fuck all Billionaires
“I haven’t killed as many kids in so short a timeframe,” is the implication here.
I’m out of the loop.
I’m not down with hoarding of wealth or the shit software he’s made, but what are the allegations against Gates? (The legit ones, not the “he’s putting microchips in Covid vaccines” shit)
During the pandemic, he crippled COVID-19 vaccination efforts in the global south by pressuring Oxford not to open source their vaccine.
https://www.wired.com/story/opinion-the-world-loses-under-bill-gates-vaccine-colonialism/
Question is, how many vaccines would those countries have got if it wasn’t patented?
AstraZeneca sold the vaccines without making a profit
Gates has history of lawsuits against open source projects. And he actively donates against any real systemic change. For example he has invested heavily in carbon capture technology which is useless to making impact to climate change.
Just imagine a World where ALL governments, ALL schools of all countries did not have to pay a fee to the then world richest man.
Imagine if a fraction of those governments invested instead on infrastructure, both physical (imagine literal bridges going to schools) and software (as some are doing now) or better paid teachers. Imagine that some of that money would be invested in Linux, gcompris, etc.
That’s the genuine cost of Gates wealth.
Think I’m a “communist” for thinking that? Well I guess then the American DoJ is on that boat too because the 2001 antitrust law case was a landmark, not a matter of my opinion.
So… yes, he’s a billionaire who did donate a lot of money, but how did he get that money in the first place? It wasn’t his to donate to.
Bonus : as others also highlighted Gates isn’t sadly just about software, he’s also, unfortunately, about intellectual property more broadly (because that is how he made his fortune) in health business (not health care) cf e.g. https://www.wired.com/story/opinion-the-world-loses-under-bill-gates-vaccine-colonialism/
Motherfucker met with Epstein multiple times. That should be enough to say he is just as bad as Elon.
He is also buying up farm land for pennies on the dollar for himself. His education reform was such a painful failure we continue to pay for it. The gates foundation thought they knew mkre than educators and spent a shit ton of money to run an experiment.“aimed at making teachers more effective” my ass. How do you make people more effective when you don’t listen to their needs? Time and time again bill turned educators away or straight up didn’t listen to them when they expressed concerns. Kinda reminds me of doge raiding the department of education now that I think about it. Bill just fucked shit up in a more clean non obvious manner.
He continues to hoard his wealth and placate everyone with his “i am going to donate a lot, don’t worry fellas” statements. Bill why are you waiting til 2045 to donate $200 billion? Why not fight elon now if you are so worried? Because he isn’t.
He is evil just like the rest of them. He has just done a better job at reorganizing the skeletons in the closet over the years to stop people questioning.
Yeah this just seems like a troll or argument for the sake of argument. It’s just too preposterous an argument
Did Melon discover Lemmy?
I must have missed those, thanks for reminding me. Btw can u recommed podcast similiar to behind the bastards.
Well, if you like BtB, you’ll probably enjoy any and all Cool Zone Media pods.
But if I take similar here to mean: Episodic true history that is partly educational, partly comedic, with an air of “How the fuck did this ever happen?”
There are a few that fit:
- Sawbones: A Marital Tour of Misguided Medicine
- Darknet Diaries
- Sixteenth Minute (of Fame)
- If Books Could Kill
- You’re Wrong About
- Build For Tomorrow
Some other ones that I always recommend:
- You Are Not So Smart
- Team Human
- Cory Doctorow’s Craphound
- Molly White’s Citation Needed
- Very Bad Wizards
- Knifepoint Horror
Cory Doctorow’s Craphound
Oh, I didn’t know he had a podcast! Added, thanks
He’s the lesser of two weevils, though.
Let him out his money where his mouth is
He kinda already has. Supposedly already over 100B in charitable donations and has pledged another 100B (basically all of his fortune at) over the next 20 years
The lesser of two evils are still evil
Yep. Equally evil.
- One guy already donates $100B and pledging most of his fortune
- other guy a Nazi who not only makes no donations despite being at times richest person on the planet, but leveraged his wealth to end government programs assisting the less fortunate both in the us and globally
I can see how these look the same. /s
Woosh
Pretty sure he doesn’t care
Or he considers that a good thing. It’s more likely that you think.
He’s a breeder and a eugenicist. He believes the strong/successful should reproduce (how many kids does he have now?) and those less fortunate should die off.
Which makes him a darkest evil soul
I was promised Bill Gates would give me 5G’s with a vaccine.
Well he can’t exactly kill the world 's richest, can he? Its a stronger indictment about the risks of wealth inequality than about the morality of the rich.
