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Comment by bransonf | Hacker News Reader

Personally, I’m a huge fan of the Gates foundation and their public health efforts. However, I recognize that not everyone shares this sentiment.

The anti-vax crowd had painted Gates as the devil, and a non-insignificant number of people just don’t like him because he’s wealthy. In these ways, I don’t think there was anything more he really could have done. The reason that Covid has hit the United States so hard is because of a blatant culture of denial. As a country, we deny the news, we deny science. Had Gates tried to speak up more, it would have been met with denialism.

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A lot of people don’t like him not because he’s wealthy, but because the ways he used to become wealthy.

I think outside of tech circles you will find very few people that have issue with how he became wealthy.

True, but the end still doesn't justify the means.

Even if that means the Bill and Melinda Gates foundation wouldn't exist today? At the cost of the hundreds of millions[0] of lives they've saved?

Not attacking, just starting a discussion. What if we frame this in the context of the Trolley Problem? Bill pulled the lever, and the trolley deviated from its mandated course, but now many lives have been saved as a result.

Does the end still not justify the means?

0: https://www.theguardian.com/world/2017/feb/14/bill-gates-phi...

In the context of the Trolley Problem, one option is the reality of the present (X amount of lives saved due Gates' success / the foundation), the other option is unknown - it may be Y lives saved. It is possible that this alternate reality might have a better outcome than the present. Can't say with any certainty but it is tempting to guess that X > Y

>Even if that means the Bill and Melinda Gates foundation wouldn't exist today?

Many people don't know what the foundation means. I found out more recently when defending him against rumor mongers on a forum.

The personal insults I received was immense.

For one, I didn't know he's one of the largest backers of WHO (they said he's the second largest). Yet, the spun this good deed as negative. Claiming, he's manipulating WHO from under the shadows.

But for me, I now know who to thank for free HIV drugs in my country cos I know my government wouldn't give free drugs under any circumstance.

>About infant mortality

Bill gates attackers frequently mentioned a large number of vaccine caused deaths in India. I don't have a come back against this. But I know the deaths and deformations would be worse if there were no Polio vaccines for example.

As much as I like most of what he does nowadays I always wonder how many years of technological progress we lost due to Microsofts shenanigans.

Microsoft had Xenix in 1980 yet their extortion racket compelled OEMs to put MS-DOS in front of consumers through 2001 (until WinXP).

We are loosing more due to Google every year than we ever did with Microsoft.

Why do you think so? Their business model? Google are vicious competitors for sure but they open source a ton of cutting edge stuff like jax & tensorflow. I would say they've did a great job at advancing the state of science & technology in the world.

I always wonder about Google. I know they produce Android but if they disappeared overnight, the world would carry on working, e.g everyone would switch to using another search engine. There would be less tracking (thanks Google Analytics)!

If Microsoft disappeared overnight, how many businesses (not tech businesses but real businesses, like warehouses etc. not running Macs) would need a functioning version of Windows or Win32 software to get by?? I think Microsoft has a larger effect on the world than Google by a very very large stretch.

Even in development, Microsoft's products are used far more widely. How many Google development tools are people using? I've got Android Studio but my daily dev work is Visual Studio on Windows and VS Code on Mac.

You could also argue that due to Microsoft and the past being what it was, there is also way more to lose.

People are suspicious of centralization of power. You can call it whatever you want, a donation, a foundation, a cause, NGO, government, corporation; centralization of power & influence has proven to have side effects that many find undesirable...

A similar perspective happened with David Rockefeller & his Rockefeller Foundation.

Which is why it's laudable that Gates has specified that their Foundation needs to disburse all funds within some specific, limited timeframe (20 years?) after his death.

Once you have amassed a three-digit billion dollars amount, giving it away in such an expedited manner is really the best you can do. It's better than some Foundation set up for eternity amassing power over time. And it's also better than the default of creating a dynasty of trust-fund babies where too much economic power meets unpredictable ambitions.

> Gates has specified that their Foundation needs to disburse all funds within some specific, limited timeframe (20 years?) after his death.

First time I'm hearing of this. Anyways, haters are going to hate no matter what he does.

>Once you have amassed a three-digit billion dollars amount, giving it away in such an expedited manner is really the best you can do.

I'm not sure it's the best. I like what he's currently doing though, ensuring the money gets to where it's needed instead and use for what its intended purpose.

If giving it all quickly was his main goal, he'd have just given it all to WHO, Red cross and the thousands of NGOs around the world. But it's an open secret that less than half of the money gets to its destination. The rest are spent on administrative purposes, logistics, marketing, more fund raising...

> [..] he'd have just given it all to WHO...

You'll be happy to hear that the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation is not just any supporter of WHO, but their second largest.

That's second largest including all the world governments'. Their donation makes up around 10% of WHO's total financing, with only the United States contributing more (for now).

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/World_Health_Organization#Pres...

But your larger point is definitely valid. It's a perennial debate if such individually organised altruistic endeavours aren't liable to waste their money due to incompetence/lack of coordination/self-aggrendization/etc.

>You'll be happy to hear that the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation is not just any supporter of WHO, but their second largest.

Thanks. I knew about it thanks to the anti-Bill gates crowd who managed to spin the huge donation negatively. I.e. he's in control of WHO using it to pursue his 'evil' agendas. And to force mandatory vaccination.

But for me, the knowledge made me know who to thank for the free polio, yellow fever, HIV... vaccines in my country.

I also made it a point to point out how much he's spent on malaria in Africa. I suspect he's subsidizing malaria drugs as well but I don't have any source to back this up.

Does his money go somewhere? I have heard stories that he'll give most of it away. Still every year he stays about the richest man in the planet. Also his foundation. In my opinion, the question is not about giving when your wealth just increases each year. Yes, he could keep it all on himself, but as wealthy as he is, it is nice to have these side projects that paint him as a great man.

> Which is why it's laudable that Gates has specified that their Foundation needs to disburse all funds within some specific, limited timeframe (20 years?) after his death.

That is laudable. I would like to understand the details of this dispersion. For example, even if a family does not receive the inheritance, a set of institutions, with a particular network & belief system, will. Centralization of power is not just a familial phenomenon, but also pertains to institutions, beliefs, etc. The Catholic Church as an institution is an example of centralization of power & influence that transcended a single family line well over one thousand years...

The Rockefeller Foundation continues to have worldwide influence well after David Rockefeller's death.

No, it goes further than that: The Foundation is required to spent all its funds within 20 years of Bill & Melinda's death. It will then cease to exist.

See https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bill_&_Melinda_Gates_Foundatio... and https://www.gatesfoundation.org/who-we-are/general-informati...

Why wait until death? Why not start right away? All his entities are just getting wealthier each year. In 2010 Bill Gates wealth was 50 billion. Now it is 100 billion. 15 years after the announcement and "philanthropic" work. Can you explain that.

He was a strong armed businessman, but he was not in any way a criminal; and that's just a social bubble - people outside tech admire him, if they don't hate him with/because of the antivaxxers.

The FTC disagreed on your second point, and convinced a district court and an appeals court also.

There's also that little thing where he had a close association with Jeffrey Epstein after his 2007 sex trafficking conviction, and was caught lying about the timing and extent of his involvement by the New York Times. He also has close ties to the man whom Epstein named executor of his estate (who was "quick to distance himself" of course).

And had other high-level staff overlapping with Epstein’s foundation and his own.

https://www.nytimes.com/2019/10/12/business/jeffrey-epstein-...

Let's not ever decide anything based on the anti-vax or anti-rich crowd. Whether they are or aren't significant is impossible to quantify, changes from moment to moment and honestly doesn't matter.

There are very good reasons to be anti-rich. This particular rich person is better than most, however.

Every time I've had this conversation it boils down to a feeling that it is morally wrong to be rich. There's some logical fallacy at the root of the feeling, like "they must have done something bad to get where they are" or "they have so much because they took it from someone else".

The first is just a feeling without evidence in the hypothetical. If we're talking about a specific case of a specific rich person that did something wrong to get their riches, we can likely agree. But making a blanket statement like that is stereotyping for the sake of creating an "us-vs-them" scenario. It presumes facts not in evidence. It also doesn't address people who truly earned what they have.

The second assumes the economy is a zero-sum system, which betrays a lack of understanding of economics. It is completely reasonable to debate whether a rich person has a moral responsibility to share or help. But it is not reasonable to presume guilt solely because they have means and someone else doesn't.

Being anti-rich is fashionable. I don't think there are good reasons for the stance, though. Being pro-charity, and pro-giving, or in favor of redistribution is not the same as being anti-rich. One comes from philosophy and ethics, the other from the drum-beat of envy and anger.

I disagree. There might be reasons to want reforms but for the most part the rich just played the game better than everybody else and the anti-rich crowd would, to a man/woman, instantly swap places with the rich if they could. Envy is a hell of a thing.

The person with twice as much money as you may have played the game better than you.

The person with 2000 times as much money as you did more than that.

The person with 200,000 times as much money as you did was never playing the same game at all.

The founder of WhatsApp made 0.5 Billion from his exit. Similar outcomes exist for other unicorns, some likely even more extravagant. What game do you think these people played?

> for the most part the rich just played the game better than everybody else

That's not something Bill Gates himself believes, mind you.

Well, apart from the cases where they started on the finish line or cheated.

I used to think of Bill Gates as a role model, a 'good guy' and so I was very surprised to realize just how much hate there was against him from certain groups. The sheer number of conspiracy theories surrounding Bill Gates is shocking.

In an odd way, even though I don't believe in the conspiracies, it was still an eye opener in the sense that it made me realize that I actually knew nothing about this person and that my positive perception of him was as poorly founded as these conspiracies. As well intentioned as he may be, the reality is that we cannot know who he really is and, therefore, it's simply not right to idolize him and in doing so give him as much voice and power as he has.

> blatant culture of denial

I would say it is denial to not admit the fundamental problems with the media these days. So many organizations are desperate for clicks they are pushing whatever sensationalist items they can to the front page.

I mean early on the news was pushing reports that 2 million Americans would die. When it became clear that wasn’t the case how are people supposed to react? Trust them less or trust them more?

I would argue that the problem science faces is due to the poor state of journalism. If the media try and use ‘science says’ and do a poor or sensationalist job, it harms faith in science even it wasn’t any scientists fault.

That number was the upper bound of at least one epidemiological model. According to https://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/americas/us-politic..., the possibility was included in White House briefings. Should the media not report that fact?

I'm also fairly certain all such report noted the large uncertainty of such models, especially at the beginning when almost no data was available.

And I should point out that extrapolating current death rates in New York City (2%) to the entire US comes out to 600,000 deaths. If we further include that total excess deaths in NY are about twice the number of confirmed COVID deaths, and we're above 1,000,000 deaths.

I don't believe we will see such numbers: NY's density and International connections are probably contributing factors that just don't apply to Idaho. But as a worst-case scenario, those 2 million are not quite as ridiculous as you seem to think.

> When it became clear that wasn’t the case how are people supposed to react?

When did this become clear? The epidemic is still growing at superlinear speed AFAIK. Total cases are 4x since the last month.

I think many of our problems with the media could be solved by people reading the story and not just the headlines.

The media didn’t make up the 2 million Americans dying statistic, they merely reported it.

I saw many people calling this fear mongering, but what are they supposed to do just not share information coming from the government or institutions?

> The media didn’t make up the 2 million Americans dying statistic, they merely reported it.

Absolutely but the point I am making is -how- the media chooses to communicate science facts or studies leads to people just thinking they were blatantly wrong.

Good scientists optimize for truth, the media optimizes for impact. Both are wrong from time to time but scientists are far more careful at how they quantify certainty (which is so often lost in translation when reported).

Another issue is that the Gates & his foundation has stock ownership & influence over the corporate media; thus influencing the public interpretation of the Science.

The Corbett Report has some independent journalism re: Gates. Whether we agree with one perspective or another, we should understand the different perspectives & not paint with broad, sensationalist, brushstrokes. People often have good reasons for believing what they believe or being skeptical of others' beliefs...

https://www.corbettreport.com/gates/

Its a bit scary. There doesn't seem to be any good strategy on how to connect with these people. I tried on Twitter where the Bill Gates bashing has suddenly exploded but its like everyone has turned into Alex Jones.

> The anti-vax crowd had painted Gates as the devil

If I had a dollar for every time I see that link to a TED talk where Bill Gates supposedly "advocates" for the "extermination" of 15% of the world's population via "vaccination"... The clip is always out of context, that's not what he's saying, and I suspect at least the person who created the clip did so maliciously, but still there's no reasoning with the people who fall for it. I want to bang my head against a wall every time a well-meaning person links to that clip.

> anti-vax crowd had painted Gates as the devil,

They are very clever in the way they do this. One claim is that he owns 23 million dollars worth of shares in Monsanto an evil agrochemical company... A little googling showed the company was bought by Bayer in 2018.

They claim he already has a vaccine and released the virus to enrich himself. Absolutely ridiculous but quite tantalizing to people who want to hear such and neutral readers.

One other nonsense they are spreading is digital vaccination because he backed a research for an invisible ink that could be placed on the skin of vaccinated people.

To me, the advantage of such is clear since record keeping in the wild is poor and double vaccination could be bad. But to conspiracy theorists, it's "he's going to track people with satellites."

>non-insignificant number of people just don’t like him because he’s wealthy.

Very true and it has little to do with how he made his money. Just plain jealousy.

Agreed, I think his presence would’ve amplified the “Plandemic” people like Judy Mikovitz more than they’ve already been amplified.

It’s so frustrating to see and feeling like there isn’t much to be done about it.

The problem with the liberal reception of Gates is that it doesn’t generally allow for an accurate critique of his work, nor account for his ties to the unsavory parts of the global elite, like Jeffrey Epstein.

What this does is allow space for conspiracy theorists and the far right to swoop in with their towers of lies, built on top of an acknowledgement of these truths, while liberals retreat into a kind of tribalist, irrational defense of him. Each side then reinforces the other, while both distancing themselves from the reality.

The sepia-toned image that the media has crafted of the Gates Foundation (and which liberals have largely swallowed) isn't helpful either. You don't have to dig very deep to find all sorts of ways that it's a mixed bag, at best: https://www.thenation.com/article/society/bill-gates-foundat...

>The problem with the liberal reception of Gates is that it doesn’t generally allow for an accurate critique of his work,

To accurately critique his work, one must first KNOW his work. Bill would have less troubles if he were Elon Musk or Donald Trump because those guys are natural marketers. They would trumpet every of their accomplishments for the world to hear.

Since Bill doesn't do that, it's created a market for rumor mongers. It's the same reason why celebrity gossip is a thing.

>nor account for his ties to the unsavory parts of the global elite

If 10 out of my 100 friends are 'unsavory' does that make me responsible for their actions?

Bill Gates and his foundation have invested quite a deal into his image, not the least his investment in media companies, which have resulted in wall-to-wall positive coverage in the press and a Netflix documentary celebrating him. His style is different, but I would say he’s possibly as successful at marketing himself as Trump or Musk.

Your “10 out of 100” question isn’t relevant because that not an accurate depiction of Gates and his foundation’s ties to Epstein.

Irrespective of his intentions, or the quality of his work - which seem quite laudable, both his tremendous wealth and the political power of his foundation play into fears many have that the world will degenerate into an authoritarian, pseudo-technocratic plutocracy.

Capitalism and industrialization have made replaceable widgets of most workers. Many employers view their labor as expendable, reward incompetence, and exercise undue or (seemingly) arbitrary levels of control over how their employees live.

When the architects and winners of such dehumanizing systems, who wield power greater than that of many nations attempt to bypass traditional gates to power and directly influence public policy (especially policy concerning people's bodies) because they 'know' what's best, even with the purest of intentions, people have the right to be suspicious and concerned.

It also doesn't help that Gates seems to favor the diminishment of individual nations in favor of a stronger level of global governance. It's not popular with a lot of people, and on the fringes can even be taken as a form of soft treason.

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