this post was submitted on 22 Apr 2025
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A Boring Dystopia
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At least Bill gives away a lot of his money, and his stance on politics seems relatively sensible and measured. Whereas the South African billionaire gets a kick out of being stupid and damaging to the US (and beyond the US if you look at his comments on foreign politics).
Does he? If you still control how it is spent, are you really giving it away?
Actually yeah. You can't just give a billion to an organization. Most of the organizations that receive money have the capacity to handle millions at most. Anything above that would just sit on their bank accounts because they'd have to scale up massively.
The amount of money the Gates Foundation is handling requires so much managing that they have 2000 employees.
I suggest to read up on what they are actually doing:
It's quite altruistic in nature.
Giving it away allows other people to decide what to do with it.
Gates is in full control of what he "gives" away.
I literally explained why it is set up like that. Except for the part where they use money of the foundation to make more money for the foundation.
And rightfully so. The foundation is always looking for organizations to give grants to. You can't just give it all away randomly. To give away so much money you need to put it somewhere where it can be distributed fairly. Which is exactly what the foundation is doing.
The only real argument you can have against Gates is whether or not he should be giving even more. But that is not the best argument because he still is giving away much more than people more wealthy as him.
https://www.thenation.com/article/archive/how-gates-foundations-investments-are-undermining-its-own-good-works/
Examples of irresponsible investing include some of the world's worst polluters, including ConocoPhillips, Dow Chemical and Tyco International; predatory lending companies such as Sallie Mae; fraudulent health care firms; and chocolate companies profiting from the slave labor of children.
International Assessment of Agricultural Knowledge, Science and Technology for Development (IAASTD) conclusions were diametrically opposed, at both philosophical and practical levels, to those espoused by Gates.
His personal investments benefited from foundation grants in Agbiome, Incarta therapeutics and Just Biotherapeutics
Not surprising given that Cascade Investments controls both the foundation and Bill's personal portfolio.
Yeah i find the investment part of the foundation to be quite horrible. It heavily goes against what the foundation is giving grants to.
I will also soften my position.
I'm much happier with the way Gates uses his billions than other deathly individuals.
My point is that the phrase "giving it away" is highly misleading.
He spends quite big sums on healthcare I think? I'm not saying he's a perfect guy. Maybe the world would be better if taxes were such that nobody could be a billionaire. I just think I prefer Bill Gates to other billionaires, especially the prominent South African one.
He blocked Oxford university from open sourcing it's covid vaccine so that his other vaccine investments paid off.