>Hopefully peoples' memories aren't so short
Who has time for thinking when Marvel Megahero Show #34 has 3000 new episodes to binge? Besides, he's donating to or even directing all the Right Causes now! He's like a real life superhero.
>Hopefully peoples' memories aren't so short
Who has time for thinking when Marvel Megahero Show #34 has 3000 new episodes to binge? Besides, he's donating to or even directing all the Right Causes now! He's like a real life superhero.
Can you tell us more about the extraordinarily and unforgivably damaging lives of evil of those two?
Do you really think that’s a reasonable way to describe Gates’s tenure at Microsoft? Some anticompetitive behaviour hardly seems unforgivably evil.
Do you subscribe to some weird right wing conspiracy theory about Soros?
He seems like a pretty reasonable and interesting guy. The Vox episode sounded like a balanced take on his legacy: mixed but generally positive impact. The biggest argument against him that resonates with me is the same that applies to all the mega-wealthy: a handful of rich individuals should not have ultimate power to craft policy decisions, rather the world would benefit from a more balanced democratic process.
He was really nasty on a personal level too. Allen only saved his stake in the company because he happened to walk through the office late one night and heard Bill gloating with someone else about how they were going to screw him out of his shares.
I'm glad Bill has turned into the philanthropic leader he is now, but there was more ugly to his career than just some anticompetitive behavior.
Sounds like a fun story, do you know if it's online somewhere?
The stuff you mention is so far from “evil” that it’s hardly worth mentioning in this context. Gates isn’t a saint, but calling him unforgivably evil is just ridiculous.
I can remember 4 controversies surrounding Soros off the top of my head. There is (or there should be) room to discuss the statements below without redirecting off-topic by raising a curtain around the subject through claims of anti-semitism:
* In the late eighties Soros was convicted of insider trading by some French regulatory authority. If memory serves, his appeals of these convictions failed. Some people claim the conviction and fine was politically motivated, some claim the conviction was true as written.
* In 2009 a Hungarian agency fined Soros Fund Management LLC for manipulating values of Hungarian OTP bank stocks. The same arguments were made for/against the justice of the conviction.
* There are claims that Soros took advantage of the British screwing up when they pegged the Pound against the Deutschmark under the Exchange Rate Mechanism, and that he gamed a lot of value from the British economy as a result. I probably don't have the details right, I've heard people say that he sucker-punched the British, and others say that it actually helped the Brits in the long run.
* There are claims that in the 90's Soros manipulated the Maylaysion economy, society and currency for his profit, and that many suffered as a result. Some believe Soros had nothing to do with the Malaysion troubles and call this a conspiracy theory- it's still worth discussing.
My point is that the use of labels that identify real problems to distract from or avoid altogether a potentially controversial discussion has the potential to make [real] racism, [real] anti-semitism, etc. much worse, and should be avoided.
EDIT: spelling / grammar
You're conflating two posts- each is taking a different position.
The OP mentions "...the league of superwealthy philanthropists like Bill Gates and George Soros who leave their lengthy, extraordinarily and unforgivably damaging lives of evil...". He was referring to his belief that there is an evil group of wealthy people- and that this group includes Soros as well as Gates. My post gave examples of controversy surrounding Soros, with the admonition that these should be discussed instead of being labeled then memory-holed because of the man's ancestry.
In the OP's post, Soros was included as a member of a group- without mention or implication of any member's ancestry or race. The accusation of anti-semitism regarding the post, based only on Soros having been included in a list of "bad" superwealthy people, lacks any support other than Soros's inclusion in the list- which itself is not even "thinly veiled" evidence of anti-semitism.
The application of the label "anti-semitic" to either post is an over-reaching use of the term, and this over-reach very likely contributes to an increase in real anti-semitism.
The inclusion of Bill Gates further supports this view, most of the people who’d describe him that way believe in weird right wing conspiracy theories about microchips and 5G.
And in any case, “screwing a whole nation”? Are you serious? Black Wednesday screwed the Tories, not the UK. Poor monetary policy cost the UK a few billion pounds, small money in the grand scheme of things.