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Comment by _jab | Hacker News Reader

Why are people hating on Gates these days? The others all spent their wealth on occasionally bizarre self-indulgent passion projects; Gates went into philanthropy. I know the man isn’t perfect but surely he’s a tier above those other three.

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I agree with you. The argument I've heard is that Gates used to be just as much of a shark as any of the others back in the 90s/early 2000s but spent a lot to reverse his public image into a philanthropist. While that may or may not be true, it's certainly true that he does an extraordinary amount of charity with his money now in contrast to most of the others on the list.

They call it reputation laundering. His wife left him after the Epstein thing blew up. Former associates describe him as a pretty terrible person. Being evil and then making a show of your charity, which is often just another outlet for your own personal power trips doesn’t suddenly make you a good person. It’s just buying indulgences, but instead of the church it’s a corrupt fourth estate.

People who know him think he’s terrible, the whole humble Warren Buffet act is done for PR (the same reason Warren Buffet does it).

He wasn’t just palling around with Epstein, his friendship continued after Epstein was convicted. His excuse was that Epstein gave him access… as if Bill G wasn’t the richest person on the planet at the time.

And more often than not those foundations are tax dodges in disguise, you can't spend that much money in a reasonable fashion anyway.

It seems that this is a common misperception for some reason.

There are certainly many charities that are ineffective at their mission, inefficient with their funds or working on a mission that few would consider worthwhile. (And there are also some great charities out there that are effective, efficient and important, such as https://givedirectly.org.)

But charities (of which non-profit foundations are a subclass) aren't a "tax dodge". Money that you give to a charity is untaxed, so you can claim a refund on income taxes you've already paid on that money. But you don't get new money that you haven't already earned from the IRS; every penny given is money that you already had, and the tax refund is purely of tax that is no longer due on that money.

It's possible to be cynical of the motives of some philanthropic gifts, but Gates (and others) aren't financially better off from their giving itself.

No, but they are also not off materially worse because of the tax deductions and when played smart time wise these can actually lead to advantages. Note that Gates & co have a small army of tax lawyer who are very good at this and for Bill gates buying himself a reputation whitewash at the taxpayers expense definitely makes him 'better off' just maybe not in a pure financial sense.

I think it all depends. I note the massive amounts he donates, as reported by the press, but I also note scattered anecdata like a sibling of the parent comment suggesting it's mostly ineffective. But what if the money does accomplish something?

When I hear the name "Carnegie", I think of music and libraries, but his contemporaries would think of emotional abuse and robber-barony.

On the one hand, yes. On the other, if I have to choose between evil and not doing good, and evil but now doing good (for whatever reason), and there’s no one available to choose who’s not evil, I’ll happily pick the one who’s at least doing good, even if it’s for their own reasons.

It's difficult to compare them: Gates has had 14 years of philanthropic retirement to redeem his image.

Bezos stepped down from Amazon in 2021, not sure if it counts as a retirement yet.

Musk is still two years away from Gates' retirement age.

And Zuckerberg is 15 years away from Gates' retirement age.

Did you miss all of the shite Microsoft pulled while Gates was still at the helm and the Epstein connection?

I don't think you should be able to spend your way out of a bunch of stuff like that.

There's an entire generation that only knows Gates as some sort of saint. Older folks here see him, rightly, as only trying to buy his way into heaven now that most of the blood has been washed off the money.

For myself, Microsoft crushing everything in the 90's, and more recently, shorting Tesla. I could care less about Elon, the car is still dope and pushes humanity forward while every aristocrat tried to snuff it, Bill included.

The philanthropy bit I think is just a PR stunt. Bill is not a nice man, or a good man, IMHO.

Do a search on jeffrey epstein and bill gates

Only thing I can figure is cheating on his wife and cursory friendship with Epstein? It doesn't take a whole lot for the far left and far right to hate people and simplify complexity down to one or two character flaws for the "hate to flow"

Cursory?

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

Gates is buying a good name. He’s not really doing any good imo. Hop on a plane and look at what the foundation is actually doing in places where they are doing it. I have never seen anything useful. But it “sounds” really awesome to people back in the West.

Not sure about your hate on Musk though. Fighting climate change, preserving the only life in the universe that we know of, bringing connectivity to the most vulnerable and disadvantaged globally, among many other good things. Not sure what’s bad about that.

If Musk stuck to fighting climate change and his Mars mission I'd be fine with him. But he doesn't. He uses his money to actively destroy people and their reputations just for the lolz, is a continuous source of noise rather than signal and is about equal parts destructive as he is creative. Given another couple of years like the last two I would not be surprised if he final tally ends up as a significant net negative for society.

For example? Who did he “destroy for the lolz”?

Remember the episode with the cavediver rescuing children from a flooded cave that musk called a pedophile and then refused to back down? That one for example.

You mean where he worked with the Thai government on a rescue plan, got attacked verbally by that dude, attacked back, and then the dude couldn’t take it? Yes, I remember that he apologized a day later, even though the other one started it.

Sure I know, because it’s the one thing bad that’s repeated and repeated about him, and he didn’t even start it. And he apologized.

Any example that is actually bad?

The guy as an expert in his domain publicly called musks idea out as unworkable. Is that any kind of reason to call him a pedophile? Is that the standard that we should hold one of the most powerful men in the world to? That’s behavior I’d not accept from my five year old.

And he apologized after substantial public backlash, not because he had a change of mind.

I'm not sure about destroy but attempt to destroy at the very least.

The guy that rescued the kids out of that cave in thailand(?), Yoel Roth, that twitter engineer that told him on twitter that he had his facts wrong... that's just a short list I'm sure that if I weren't posting this while eating breakfast I could cite more.

And another one about the cave dude. Please see my other reply for that case.

Regarding the Twitter guy: Yoel Roth was a different person. What was bad about how he treated Roth and the Twitter Android guy (I guess that’s who you actually were referring to)?

He selectively cited Roth’s academic work to make it appear as if Roth was supporting grooming and sexualization of children, despite the work doing none of that.

Roth had to flee their home due to threats to their safety.

Has Musk apologized yet?

https://gaynrd.com/if-yoel-roth-is-harmed-should-elon-musk-f...

Falsely implying other people are pedophiles or support pedophiles actions seems to be a recurring pattern in this context.

It was a direct quote from Roth’s dissertation, including context. Nobody “had to flee”.

Old Twitter had countless tweets containing images of violence against children. Under Musk it took only days to remove all of that.

Just one example:

https://www.bloomberg.com/news/features/2019-03-13/when-elon...

Separate the things that musk controls (Tesla, Space X, starlink, Solar City, etc) and musk the person (Forcing animal testing, calling rescue operators pedophiles, market manipulation, etc) and it’s easy not to like musk the person. Let’s also not pretend like he’s doing any of those ventures out of the goodness of his heart

that still doesn't help a ton. Solar City/Tesla has backed out of a huge number of deals for solar installs unless the client pays more than the signed contracts. the 'solar roof' was YEARS late and way overpriced.

For Tesla, we still don't have fully self driving cars, but its always coming in Q4 of this year. Products are announced WAY too soon. Its been years since the cybertruck and new roadster were announced and demoed, and still none exist. This isn't their first new model, they should understand how the building of factories work, etc.

I particularly liked the Tesla bot announcement, where it was clear they hadn't even thought about it until just before they announced it. There's also the Dojo which they hyped for years as something that will give them the cutting edge imminently and still AFAICT isn't doing anything yet, meanwhile a couple more generations of TPU have been designed and productionized en masse

> Hop on a plane and look at what the foundation is actually doing in places where they are doing it. I have never seen anything useful.

You're prasing this as if you've flown to Africa, examined something like an anti-malaria program, and decided it was useless for unstated reasons. Somehow I doubt you've done so.

Lived in Africa and all other continents with poverty for 20+ years.

Sure you did. Is your name Dean Browning?

I’m super conflicted on Musk. His stated aims are admirable, and I used to think very highly of him. He’s clearly a smart guy who’s executing on big things most people aren’t (or at least weren’t) even considering.

Sadly the way he goes about that is less than ideal. Tesla keep selling vapourware features and releasing things that are actively dangerous. Boring company was mostly a ploy to distract from high speed rail (which would reduce the need for cars). The Twitter takeover has been a debacle so far. SpaceX are about the only untainted venture here, and my understanding is they’re not run day to day by Musk, with staff spending inordinate amounts of effort to keep him happy and out of the way of the real work.

Tesla isn’t just about cars, it’s about making renewable energy useful.

Boring had little to do with Musk. It was an idea that seemed promising, and a Tesla manager volunteered to make it reality. Musk just provided some initial finding. It is completely unrelated to rail.

Not sure why you feel Twitter to be a “debacle”? I like diversity of though and open discourse. Also the scientific method is a good thing to save.

I'm not sure that we can really assume hyperloop is unrelated to rail

People have claimed musk told them its driven by his hatred for California's high-speed rail project [0]. That sounds like significant evidence that it is related to rail.

[0]. https://twitter.com/parismarx/status/1167410460125097990?ref...

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=D9iF4k16be0

I’m amazed anyone could think that. What’s your take on Soros?

Why would their take on Soros matter at all here?

It's always interesting as well, that Mercer and Koch do all of the things certain segments accuse Soros of, but they aren't up in arms about them in the same way. The "teamification" of politics is complete.

I’m not a “they.” Truly, I have no team and I sort of feel bad that others do.

Soros didn’t make his money in a very honorable way, nor did the Koch brothers. They both have decided to use politics to exercise the same avarice that made them rich, perhaps deluding themselves and others into thinking that it’s ok if they are “doing good for the public.” Unending greed for political influence isn’t much better than greed for cash. It’s all just will to power. I feel similarly about most professional politicians, which is why I don’t have a team.

Gates was against sharing vaccine technology with India while the country's hospitals were literally running out of oxygen and people gasping for breath. Then after finally acquiescing under intense pressure, his foundation ran illegal medical trials on vulnerable groups. Honestly it's a lot more concerning than the various Twitter dramas (or any web app dramas) so many here are obsessed with.

https://thediplomat.com/2021/06/why-are-indians-so-angry-at-...

Have you used BeOS or Netscape lately? Do you recall when Internet Explorer became the dominant web browser and then saw no development for five years? Do you remember when the most widespread malware on the internet was Windows 2000?

Bill Gates is nothing but mindless aggression and wanton destruction. He is Vladimir Putin for your computer. Giving some money away does not erase his misdeeds or change him into a good person. We know his character.

https://www.scirp.org/journal/paperinformation.aspx?paperid=...

"Moreover, the fact that no males, only females of child-bearing age, were vaccinated..."

Referenced from the above article: http://archive.boston.com/business/technology/articles/2010/...

"We must make this the decade of vaccines," Bill Gates said in a statement.

Referenced from the above article: https://www.ted.com/talks/bill_gates_innovating_to_zero

"Bill Gates warned that we weren’t ready for a global pandemic in a talk at TED2015. Now he’s working to make sure the world is better prepared next time around."

https://singjupost.com/wp-content/uploads/2020/03/Innovating...

"First, we’ve got population. The world today has 6.8 billion people. That’s headed up to about nine billion. Now, if we do a really great job on new vaccines, health care, reproductive health services, we could lower that by, perhaps, 10% or 15%. But there, we see an increase of about 1.3."

Guy personally lobbied against having vaccine tech be put in the public domain. Hard to imagine what can counterbalance that (if ethics worked like carbon credits, which they don't)

> Guy personally lobbied against having vaccine tech be put in the public domain.

I think the reason was that he didnt want company to manufacture vaccines with defects and no quality control. In theory that sounds reasonable.

> Gates went into philanthropy

And what does that mean to me? Successful businesses like Tesla and Spacex have done much more for the world through the technology they have developed than any donation ever has. I'm supposed to value charity more highly just because it's not profitable?

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