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Comment by sildur | Hacker News Reader

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-...

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