One of the best things I read was an 1889 essay by Andrew Carnegie called The Gospel of Wealth. It makes the case that the wealthy have a responsibility to return their resources to society, a radical idea at the time that laid the groundwork for philanthropy as we know it today.
In the essay’s most famous line, Carnegie argues that “the man who dies thus rich dies disgraced.” I have spent a lot of time thinking about that quote lately. People will say a lot of things about me when I die, but I am determined that “he died rich” will not be one of them.
maybe he can buy my bandcamp albums 🥹
I‘ve said it before and I‘ll say it again: Gates is not a saint, but there is clearly a difference between him and fucks like Thiel, Sacks or the Koch family who would never consider donating any of their money to research ways to eradicate Malaria or fund education programs for women.
How nice, live as the 0.0000001% that owns the world and make up most of the big evils in the world from the age of 34 to the age of 70 and then from 70 to 90 transition to the top 0.0001% and “not die rich”
A real sacrifice, what a philanthropist, brave.
I’m just here being a top 25% fully aware of my privilege for being born in a rich country and working in a well paying job, and I still donate more then him in terms of percentage of my net worth. (Bill gates donates about 0.8-1.6% of his net worth annually, I donate about 5-10% annually) and I truly believe that no one should be a billionaire.
but I am determined that “he died rich” will not be one of them.
Bill Gates has a net worth of ~$168 billion. Even if this isn’t just PR intended to launder his image, even if he does in fact give away 99% of that, it will still leave him with $1.68 billion dollars. Even if he ups that to 99.99% that’ll still leave him with $16.8 million, which is still rich by anyone’s measure. Bill Gates’ idea of ‘not dying rich’ is radically different than yours or mine; he was never not going to die rich.
That’s true, but to be fair, if he pulls it off it will be one hell of an example to set.
If your standard for ‘a good example’ is being a bit more creative with his tax-dodging PR stunts than other billionaires, that’s a pretty low bar. A better example to set would be to not exploit people to accumulate wealth in the first place. It takes a whole lot of people like you and me staying poor to make Bill Gates that rich.
A better example to set would be to not exploit people to accumulate wealth in the first place.
I do that everyday. Everyone feel free to thank me.
That’s true. I just appreciate that he seems to do a bit more than Musk to at least keep the appearance of giving back. This still doesn’t get him off the guillotine list.
I don’t appreciate that one oligarch is better at lying to us than another one, that kinda makes it worse in my mind. Instead of telling ourselves comforting stories about how generous these societal leeches are we should be telling ourselves stories about how much better everyone else’s lives could be if they didn’t exist.
He’s donating through his charity to avoid taxes. He will be known as a man that died rich. He has failed, he’ll remembered for Microsoft and hanging with Jeffrey epstein to get a Nobel peace price.
Prove me wrong Billy boy.
He’s not trying to be seen as “not dying rich”, that’s the author’s interpretation alone.
I’ll believe it when it happens, until then all I hear are promises that could be broken.
Words alone are meaningless.deleted by creator
Way too late to matter you coward
And he’ll still be a billionaire. And he got that money by suppressing the world with proprietary software. He’s single handedly helped hold humanity back. I don’t care the good he’s done as it’s built on the back of all the harm he’s done.
Beat me to it. Anand Giridharadas has spoken on the general scam of billionaires white-washing their legacies like this… their philanthropy seldom approaches, much less exceeds, the harm they did in getting so rich in the first place.
And somehow, even when proclaiming to give “Most” of their fortunes away, it ends up in a “Charity” or “Philanthropy” they control.
He was also a major opponent of the efforts during Covid to waive medical patents for producers in the global south to allow faster distribution of those vaccines.
Shouldn’t be much of a surprise. His family has always been eugenecists with a “benevolent” mask. Not knocking what his foundation has done against malaria, but I believe he’s said some very direct things about wanting lower birthrates in the global south.
It’s not really about lowering birth rates directly it’s about removing the perceived need for higher birth rates.
There are quite a lot of studies that show that even in countries where infant mortality is now manageable it still takes several generations before that trickles down to the population and they stop having 15 kids as standard. Also lack of sexual education doesn’t help.
Can we please not help launder his reputation by proactively giving him credit for something he hasn’t done yet?
And he hasn’t done shit to help the peasants of the country that made him filthy rich?
Not shitting on the African communities he’s “helped,” but he can afford to help a lot more.
Oh, and he shit on making the CVD-19 vaccine IP free.
inb4 he “gives it away” to his own charity for tax dodging purposes
Obvious properity gospel propaganda is obvious Abolish billionnaires, fiscal paradises and inheritance with a monetary value in excess of a lifetime of the median income.
Give it away to a charity you don’t control now, or STFU about it already. We all know you’re still trying to rehab your reputation.
People should just call his bluff and ask if he would support a big estate tax.
He literally has the financial resources to lobby congress to make it happen.
I honestly don’t understand why self made billionaires wouldn’t do that, it’s not like their kids are gonna be poor, they will still be rich, just not oligarchs level (which they probably would suck at anyway given how they don’t have proper experience).
This is a good comeback. Take that wealth and start lobbying to start fixing shit
He could start up a whole ass organization with departments to fight for education, health care, income equality, homelessness and more.
He could resolve homelessness single handedly by funding homes, but what we need is to fix the machine.
I seriously think we need to focus in fixing education and news/social media regulations to increase critical thinking in the masses and stop the suppression of “woke media”
They’re making everyone dumber and brainwashing the masses. How we got our current leader.
Social media platforms are how many Americans get thier information and news. Purposefully spreading misinformation and suppressing non offensive political views should be a massive fine by the FCC.
Why would he do that? He’s so rich, he can never go broke.
All his “Foundation” bullshit is PR, after he realized everyone hated him before Bush Jr. made all his troubles go away. I wonder how much that “Donation” was?
There is no such thing as a good billionaire.
That’s my point. A “good” billionaire would make moves not promises and donations.
Agreed.
I appreciate how civil most lemmings are. I’ve been wrong and admit fault. Or unclear and clarify.
We also have idiots on here though. I imagine that ratio may change as Lemmy gets more adoption.
Regression towards the mean is inevitable. The best we can do is hope to model a good culture for future fediverse denizen (fedizens?)
I’d prefer fedizen over lemming because I can’t get the old lemmings out of my head.
Not saying you are wrong or anything. I just remembered seeing Bill Gates’ name being brought up as a supporter of raising the estate tax for the richest rich people. Its not the article I remembered but didn’t feel like spending time sorting thru the search results for the most reliable source but here is a Forbes article that mentions Gates as supporting raising the estate tax:
There is prolly more/better articles out there but all the top search results today are referencing Trump’s estate tax hike that was announced in the past day or so.
Hell, he could buy the country like Musk did. He’s just not as narcissistic as Musk, who made very dumb decisions that would have landed him in prison in a sane reality.
Donate to his own foundation which he controls
Not the full picture: He plans to donate the majority of his wealth to his foundation, and then wind it down in 20 years. source
Carnegie was the smartest of the Robber Barons. He knew what would eventually happen if he didn’t throw the peasants a bone.
He didn’t want a date with Madame Guillotine. And some of the other Robber Barons realized his motive, and the dumber ones just saw it as a competition. Most of them followed his example.
Cuban is trying to use this strategy today with his “Discount Pharmaceutical” thing. It’s not enough.
The fact that he collected billions (worth of cash and financial instruments) in the first place is the problem. He should have been charging consumers less, and paying his workers more. He never should have accumulated his obscene wealth to begin with.
