Bill Gates did a good job of reputation laundering through his foundation trying to reinvent himself as a “friendly elder statesmen”; then the whole Epstein shit came to light, his wife divorced him etc.
Ever billionaire that has taken Buffet’s so-called philanthropy pledge, will always be a billionaire.
Now Mackenzie Scott on the other hand, has been giving money away faster than anyone, and an order of magnitude more than Jeff “I can’t think of any other way to spend my money except on an interplanetary escape pod for myself” Bezos.
And frankly the reason I'm not a Gates Foundation fan is exactly that it funds all sorts of low quality nonsense research, and has distorted the disease fighting community in all kinds of ways. Not saying I'd be able to do it better mind you. Just that any time you have vast sums of money and give it away you always end up distorting things and maybe creating new problems via broken incentives.
Seriously. The problems you describe come from trying to pick winners. You cant. Just rent helicopter, and let the market decide.
Think also a bit about who is benefitting and making money from instigating this type of jealousy, being exploited as an unpaid click puppet is even worse than being a warehouse worker.
I'll bite. Who? Who has the money, power, and motivation to secretly manipulate the pliable masses to turn against the billionaires, for their own nefarious ends?
Everyone who is not a billionaire, but still currently holds a privileged position compared to the pliable masses, will benefit from such propaganda of over simplified "injustice", because if will deflect attention away from their own privilege and keep them safe.
You will see this most clearly if you look at ivory tower academics or cultural elite, who love to hate rich capitalists for being greedy, to get the "people" on their side to avoid having their own privilege under scrutiny, which in reality is often just as greedy and selfish.
https://www.cato-unbound.org/2009/04/13/peter-thiel/educatio...