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Billionaire close to tears amid fears of "lefties" like AOC, Bernie Sanders
(www.newsweek.com)
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this post was submitted on 09 Sep 2023
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Politics
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If he gave it all back, why is he still a billionaire?
It's a neat trick: You give your donations to a foundation where you also put your family members, and use that foundation to lobby for the stuff that you're investing in.
That's at least mostly what Gates is doing.
Yes, please see the links below, however as a brief summary:
Bill and Melinda Gates foundation do two things: Invest in public issues and lobby governments to spend in said issues, in exchange for further donations and investments.
However, in parallel, Bill Gates also invests in specific companies that will be targeted as main providers for those activities.
One could consider that he's investing in companies that help out (e.g., vaccination) and that's not a bad thing. The problem is that he is bennefiting from lobbying in pro of the companies he has invested on.
We could also agree that even if he's bullying governments and institutions into giving him more money through those companies, at the end it is a positive boost (like the example you mention).
That's not the case with Common Core: Diane Ravitch put it better than I could here, but basically Bill Gates' is forcing public schools into programs that do not work, alienate teachers and students, have almost bankrupt public education and required purchasing materials from companies he controlled.
Furthermore, for each time Common Core failed, he doubled down, and for each consecutive failure he decided that a new drastic measure will solve the issue, even though the education community was saying otherwise.
The issue with these foundations is that rich people believe they have the solution to all the problems: not money but their intellect, and that they know more than everyone combined on that profession.
This is in parallel what is been happening with carbon capture. This foundation is also lobbying for a technology that has been heavily critisized as a pipedream; however, surprise surprise, Bill Gates do have large investments in carbon capture companies (e.g. Heirloom).
Again, I do not think he's evil or is going to inject me with pentium II mmx now; I just think he feels smarter than everyone else and is misguiding governments to invest in failed practices despite what the actual professionals are saying.
Videos:
https://youtu.be/U3Z9gBKuTIk (CNBC - How Common Core Broke U.S. Schools)
https://youtu.be/laGtd-b0vMY (FT - Carbon Capture: hopes, challenges and controversies)
https://youtu.be/ag5zQeXC-TY (THD - How Bill Gates Hijacked US Education Agenda (Opinion))
I mean, I think he's evil. But I also remember Microsoft in the 90s: the EEE strategy, the monopolistic bullshit with web browsers, the FUD against competitors, the Strong arming of computer manufacturers to not offer alternatives, etc.
You don't mean to say that the guy who tried to keep vaccines for COVID patented instead of making them free for everyone to manufacture is evil, right?
Gates is a weird figure - I don't think he's actually evil (nowadays), because evil implies malicious intent. Rather, he unintentionally commits evil actions (those which harm people and if committed with full understanding would be unambiguously evil) as a result of his own personal extremely warped values. The guy thinks patent law is the highest moral good, so the millions of people who don't get vaccinated as a result are either forgotten about or a necessary sacrifice for the societal good of protecting patents (which he might justify as making these sorts of innovations possible in the first place - demonstrably incorrect, but good luck getting him to listen to anyone who might tell him that).
tl;dr you can't be evil by human standards if you have alien blue and orange morality.
Your point is well made, except this was going to be an exception, it was not going to be a rule for all vaccines going forward, so I have a hard time accepting the story you have weaved as an explanation. There's still possible for there to be an explanation, just as much as it's possible for it to be weaponized incompetence/ignorance.
You're probably right, I just watered down my rant to make it sound less like 5G chips in vaccines gang.
Pledged to give all of his money to… the foundation named after him that he dictated the charter of…
This is different from Carnegie, Rockefeller, how?
He's certainly a better example than most, but there's nothing stopping him from using his insane wealth to literally BUY reform, or even giving it all away now and living comfortably on the interest alone. Money like that could purchase half of Congress.
Why wait until death?
The owner of Patagonia is also doing that.
You don't understand rich folk. They are giving it back to themselves - all of it, and all they can weasel out of you.
Oi i have an idea!
He's lying.