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
Comment on Malaria
hemko@lemmy.dbzer0.com 8 months ago- There’s no good billionaires
- Bill Gates is not any kind of exception
- Even in comparison to other living billionaires
Dasus@lemmy.world 8 months ago
absentbird@lemm.ee 8 months ago
He’s not even better than Taylor Swift IMO
idiomaddict@feddit.de 8 months ago
He’s not even better than his ex-wife
doingthestuff@lemmy.world 8 months ago
He’s pretty terrible. I don’t know whether or not all of the other billionaires are worse.
hemko@lemmy.dbzer0.com 8 months ago
I don’t think we can say that.
THE_ANTIHERO@lemmy.today 8 months 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 8 months 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 8 months 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.
Droggelbecher@lemmy.world 8 months ago
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.
TranscendentalEmpire@lemm.ee 8 months 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 8 months ago
Aside from anticompetitive actions, I don’t see much harm having been done by selling an operating system.
grue@lemmy.world 8 months ago
“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.
hemko@lemmy.dbzer0.com 8 months 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 8 months ago
Hmm you do make a compelling argument
hemko@lemmy.dbzer0.com 8 months ago
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
FiniteBanjo@lemmy.today 8 months 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.
hemko@lemmy.dbzer0.com 8 months ago
That’s one stupid argument backed with made up numbers there
Kalkaline@leminal.space 8 months ago
Charity is the oligarchy picking the winners.
TrickDacy@lemmy.world 8 months 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 8 months ago
Who gives a shit about whether “Bill Gates can set himself apart as a billionaire?” That’s a moot point because he shouldn’t have become a billionaire to begin with.
Kalkaline@leminal.space 8 months ago
No, he can be taxed to millionaire status. Then we can democratically decide who the money is used to help. He no doubt got to where he is because he benefitted from the help of the US.
grue@lemmy.world 8 months 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 8 months 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 8 months ago
You’re not wrong. Compared to his peers, he’s a saint.
THE_ANTIHERO@lemmy.today 8 months ago
Everyone is compared to his peers