He helped championed one of the Covid vaccines, but also forced the private ownership and profit of it. Something the scientists working on it didn’t want to do. This in an stark contrast to the polio vaccine, which was free and who’s lead scientist referred the idea as “trying to own sunlight”.
Comment on Malaria
THE_ANTIHERO@lemmy.today 2 years ago
One of the few good billionaires (lol maybe he is the only one ).
Duamerthrax@lemmy.world 2 years ago
darkpanda@lemmy.ca 2 years ago
More specifically it was Jonas Salk, and what he said was “There is no patent. Could you patent the sun?” and then laughed at the thought.
Video of him saying it here:
MystikIncarnate@lemmy.ca 2 years ago
This is true. It was said by Jonas Salk, who was attributed with the creation of the injectable vaccine in the 1950s that was greenlit for widespread use.
The injectable vaccine is a non-sterilizing vaccine (meaning you still get the disease, but your body can fight it off effectively - which is most vaccines). The injection vaccine was replaced by a sterilizing vaccine (where your bodily systems can kill the virus before you become contagious, and in many cases, before symptoms). The sterilizing vaccine, used to this day, is basically a magic potion that you drink. It looks the polio virus in your gut, which is the ingress method for polio.
From what I’ve seen, Salk didn’t live to see the success of his vaccine; but he’s a hero in my mind.
My late father was a polio survivor. He was permanently disabled as a result of the disease. He lost something like 70% of the use of his right (?) leg (could have been his left). He was still ambulatory, and could walk, but often needed to use his stronger leg when climbing stairs because his disabled leg was too weak to lift him up the stairs. He walked with a limp… And he was lucky. Post-polio survivors frequently had much more severe disabilities. I saw him struggle with the effects of it my entire life, and given he only had a relatively mild disability, I consider anyone who developed a poliovirus vaccine to be a hero of humanity, and anyone who refuses that vaccine to be an ignorant fool.
Salk’s comments are just icing on that hero status for me.
Don’t be a fool, get vaccinated.
RootBeerGuy@discuss.tchncs.de 2 years ago
You are unfortunately mistaken. Maybe in comparison better than others but that does not mean good.
I don’t have any links ready to prove that though, so I understand if you disregard that.
THE_ANTIHERO@lemmy.today 2 years ago
Of course i meant by comparison and no need for links i have heard some shit
WalrusDragonOnABike@reddthat.com 2 years ago
Even with issues like polio where he’s supposedly doing good, he does lots of harm from my understanding. Probably not though malice, but being a know-it-all who uses their money to shape policy, the end result is still the same. Having a tech billionaire in charge of medical policy has caused many more people to suffer from polio as a result than would have without his meddling. And that’s the problem with billionaire: even if they try to be good, they’re no dieties and giving that much power to unaccountable individuals means they can accidentally cause lots of harm. And often the have perverse incentives (see Bill Gates and all he’s done to hurt education in the US, for example).
THE_ANTIHERO@lemmy.today 2 years ago
Sauce or it didn’t happen .
Ashelyn@lemmy.blahaj.zone 2 years ago
On the education thing, this AP article doesn’t go too heavily into policy details but does cover the extent of Gates’ influence on the American education system.
Or were you talking about the controversies surrounding the Foundation’s handling of certain diseases? Here’s one from PBS that’s arguably the most neutral I could find outlining criticisms regarding joint efforts between the Gates Foundation, WHO, and various governments/orgs on eradicating polio and issues with their strategies.
WalrusDragonOnABike@reddthat.com 2 years ago
Or what didn’t happen? That the public didn’t get a chance to vote on how Bill Gates spends his money?
axim@lemmy.blahaj.zone 2 years ago
only a forcibly expropriated billionaire is a good billionaire
Dagnet@lemmy.world 2 years ago
Gonna take a few downvotes and agree with you. Dude donates so much to the world health organization he beats all other COUNTRIES except for the US. If all billionaires were like him, the world would be a much better place.
Anticorp@lemmy.world 2 years ago
He and Buffet have been making a lot of progress towards affordable, renewable energy in poverty stricken and rural areas. So Buffet might be alright too.
THE_ANTIHERO@lemmy.today 2 years ago
Huh thanks that seems nice of him
KingThrillgore@lemmy.ml 2 years ago
Wrong. Gabe Newell is the only good billionaire.
axim@lemmy.blahaj.zone 2 years ago
bruh gaben is literally an ancap nutjob whose company is a breeding ground for all kinds of bigotry under the guise of mEritOcrACy it’s only because he’s basically not a public figure that he isn’t tied with elon for worst billionaire
hemko@lemmy.dbzer0.com 2 years ago
THE_ANTIHERO@lemmy.today 2 years ago
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.
Droggelbecher@lemmy.world 2 years 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.
Doing charity with a small fraction of your obscene wealth after this isn’t any kind of moral absolution.
TrickDacy@lemmy.world 2 years ago
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.
TranscendentalEmpire@lemm.ee 2 years ago
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.
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.
FiniteBanjo@lemmy.today 2 years ago
Aside from anticompetitive actions, I don’t see much harm having been done by selling an operating system.
hemko@lemmy.dbzer0.com 2 years ago
Maybe, but that’s clearly not his intention as he has showed many times.
Take for example case covid
Source: en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bill_Gates
THE_ANTIHERO@lemmy.today 2 years ago
Hmm you do make a compelling argument
FiniteBanjo@lemmy.today 2 years ago
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.
Kalkaline@leminal.space 2 years ago
Charity is the oligarchy picking the winners.
TrickDacy@lemmy.world 2 years ago
So the only way bill gates can set himself apart as a billionaire is by destroying capitalism singlehandedly?
Humanity is fucked by these idiotic binary ways of thinking.
grue@lemmy.world 2 years ago
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 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.
Trainguyrom@reddthat.com 2 years 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
Anticorp@lemmy.world 2 years ago
You’re not wrong. Compared to his peers, he’s a saint.
THE_ANTIHERO@lemmy.today 2 years ago
Everyone is compared to his peers
Dasus@lemmy.world 2 years ago
We can say Bill Gates is the best billionaire without accepting that there are any good billionaires.
He doesn’t realise best of shit is still shit. Like talking about “the best rapist”, haiyaaaaa
absentbird@lemm.ee 2 years ago
He’s not even better than Taylor Swift IMO
idiomaddict@feddit.de 2 years ago
He’s not even better than his ex-wife
doingthestuff@lemmy.world 2 years ago
He’s pretty terrible. I don’t know whether or not all of the other billionaires are worse.
hemko@lemmy.dbzer0.com 2 years ago
I don’t think we can say that.