So I just read Bill Gates’ 1976 Open Letter To Hobbyists, in which he whines about not making more money from his software. You know, instead of being proud of making software that people wanted to use. And then the bastard went on and made proprietary licences for software the industry standard, holding back innovation and freedom for decades. What a douche canoe.
That’s why one should not trust billionaires who make noises about changing the world for the better. It is merely to stoke their egos. I’m not even religious anymore but I still remember being taught that it is better to share the success without bragging about it. There are genuinely good rich folks, but they don’t brag about how nice they are. Chuck Feeney, the billionaire founder of Duty Free, quietly donated the majority of his wealth by the time he died. He was left with $2 million after the donations and was renting an apartment in New York. There is also a millionaire who built houses for the homeless. But I would say that the “good ones” are far and few.
However, the darker side of trying to “be rich and be quiet about it” are some billionaires donating to regressive causes. I think I don’t need to mention the Koch brothers and Murdochs. Being the “power behind the throne” is more effective way to actually wield power. That’s why I don’t think ridding Trump will solve anything unless there is a more robust system to prevent money in politics being put ever again.
The “doing good” thing is just a cover to avoid paying taxes. All the money Gates has donated just went to charities he set up and his heirs own/control…
Precisely. And to belabour the point, if they really want to “do good”, just shut up and do it. No need to announce on the megaphone that they are good for wanting to donate most of their wealth, but are still billionaires and getting richer. If they are serious about helping, their net worth would have decreased by now and would not be billionaires anymore.
Mackenzie scott made more money than she donated, and shes donated quite a bit, idk the logistics of that or how it works, donated 19 billion worth 32
Watch the TV movie from the late 90s “Pirates of Silicon Valley” which pretty much paints both Bill Gates and Steve Jobs as really shitty people. I mean just look at what Gates did with the Altair. Said he had an operating system, didn’t have an operating system, and what have you.
Then there’s the whole Xerox Park thing where neither Apple nor Microsoft would be where they’re at today without the engineers at Xerox who were pretty much forced to hand over their stuff because Xerox execs didn’t see value in a GUI and Mouse. Gates and Jobs both were more than happy to go in there and pillage what was developed in order to create Windows and The Macintosh/MacOS
*Xerox PARC. It’s an acronym for Palo Alto Research Center.
Yep I remember that movie, but read Steve Levys Hackers. Gates was always a douch. I also read the letter he wrote. I think it was an opinion piece in a newsletter.
Yeah, that’s a good one, and I also enjoyed Walter Isaacson’s Steve Jobs biography. Stories like Jobs getting a bonus when Wozniak was able to design a board with fewer chips and then not mentioning the extra money to Woz are perfect examples of how sociopaths like Jobs and Gates operate. It’s sad that ruthless charlatans like them who exploit the true geniuses and innovators are allowed to accrue so much money and power in our society.
“Well, Steve [Jobs]… I think it’s more like we both had this rich neighbour named Xerox and I broke into his house to steal the TV set and found out that you had already stolen it.”
Gates hides behind his psychopathic greed and thirst for maniacal influence and power behind charity, what few people know is that the Bill’s foundation is an excellent exercise of venture philanthropy, where seeking profits comes first over everything else, at the expense of you know, philanthropy. They admit this.
It is something a lot of billionaires do, the Zuck has one, many do. They are not charities at all, in the practical sense but they are tax shelters. Gates will say that he has no day to day control, but he does help lean it where he wants it to go, plus you know who does by proxy and by earmarking the major donations? The Gates and Melinda Trust Fund. Who controls that? Bill and Melinda Gates and until a few years ago, also Buffet.
Bill is smart. He wants to make a shitload of money on vaccine tech? Sure, have the foundation give earmarked donations to the WHO that can only be used for that, then GABI, his other arm of the foundation can serve as the middle man for that cash. That’s before he invested hundreds of millions in big pharma and then what? = Profit. He does the same on education? = Profit. He pushed fake meat, invest a bit on it --relatively speaking to him-- and then, on the side, becomes the largest if not second largest farm land owner in the USA who then leases that land back to farmers. = Profit.
How come most people do not know most of this, because he also “donates” hundreds of millions to big media, you know, out the kindness of his heart. You know, so why would they report or say or rpeort anything negative of the guy? Quite the opposite. Remember Covid, why is a billionare on the news telling you what to do? Why him? Why any billionaire? Luckily, the link below tells us who they bribe, I mean, help with generous donations to their yearly budgets. And this is a couple of year old but the trend continues.
Revealed: Documents Show Bill Gates Has Given $319 Million to Media Outlets](https://www.mintpressnews.com/documents-show-bill-gates-has-given-319-million-to-media-outlets/278943/)
You question any of this? How dare you you? You bigot, conspiracy theorist! Admittedly, that narrative keeps most people from looking at his BS critically.
Hey, remember when people cared about the environment? Nah, Gates said that we have to focus on Energy production instead now. Wait the guy who is now heavily investing billikns in AI and power hungry data centers wants more energy? You don’t say!
https://www.gatesnotes.com/home/home-page-topic/reader/three-tough-truths-about-climate
Luckily for us he already had created a seeding/funding program where such initiatives will be invested on and much profit will be had on this exact front, and most will fall for it, because they always do.
He’s missing out on his redemption arc. But I doubt if put in his shoes that anyone would pass up the opportunity he had.
He was friends with Jeffrey Epstein after he was convicted for child abuse. Bill Gates is just an awful awful billionaire.
I’ve read that rather than little kids, Gates was interested in Epsteins influence with other members of the elite because Bill has an obsession with getting a Nobel Prize. Doesn’t absolve his character but I haven’t heard any rape allegations from victims yet.
Bill’s wife was very mad that Bill kept hanging out with Epstein and cited it as one of the divorce reasons.
She refused to elaborate and told people they should hear the rest from Bill himself. So I think we all know where this is going.
I’m not defending Gates, I’m saying he allegedly had other motivations. Definitely could have been a 2 birds with 1 stone for him.
I didn’t say he did. Is more of Billy at the height of his wealth and influence he couldn’t ditch Epstein. He has no good bone in his body.
The most lemmy take ever
We all know that every billionaire is a horrible person. They can’t be anything else.
Warren Buffet is ok in my book.
Would you care to elaborate why he is okay in your book? Do you believe that he can make money out of thin air, without harming other people (mostly those who have the least)? Do you believe that when he invests in Goldman Sachs during the economic crisis in 2008, that it was a good choice? That making money of people losing homes and lives is what a good, or even “ok” person does?
I’m a simple man. Ok is ok enough.
There is no such thing as an innocent billionaire.
You don’t get to a billionn without exploiting people along the way.
People or natural ressources. Even if it’s on stock trade, someone had to create that worth - and those who created it, didn’t get it…
Buying low and selling high is fundamentally taking advantage of other peoples losses.
ABAB
And in retrospect it’s too bad more people didn’t steal from Microsoft so that it failed as a business.
A tale of greed ending with a despicable billionaire.
Also, the only reason they were successful at all was his mom was on the IBM board and got IBM to support their shit.
You may want to check your sources on that. If I remember correctly, his mother knew someone on the board, through her work with the United Way.
Billionaire being a selfish person? Who woulda known? But yes, even though he donates a lot of his wealth, becoming a billionaire is a sign of being a sociopath.
His donations are a tax dodge. Besides this billionaire philanthropy is a way to say that the people should not dictate how funds are allocated to things like medical and scientific research, international aid, etc. it’s saying that we instead are okay with our wealth being extracted to pseudokings and allowing them to make these decisions on our behalf. Should we research aids? Space? Should we give food aid to foreign nations experiencing famine? We don’t get to decide, let’s hope one of the oligarchs shines their light on these plights.
Meanwhile it buys great PR to rehab an image. Bill gates is “the nice billionaire” who sends people 10k of Microsoft shit he didn’t even pay for through reddit secret Santa (eg an ad buy). No one then cares that was instrumental in making computers full of proprietary bullshit, destroying interoperability, eliminating competition and killing open source efforts (look up embrace, extend, extinguish if you want to get angry about 90s and early 2000s Microsoft), or even that he probably raped kids on epsteins island
He desperately wants a Nobel Prize
Nobody cares about a Nobel Prize. He buys up vaccines using his “charity” and then puts them all behind a patent wall. And bill uses his influence to do capitalist psyops, like doing climate change denial through channels like Kurzgesagt.
I really don’t get how opinions on intellectual property and its “theft” turn 180 whenever AI is mentioned.
ai is the rich stealing from us, piracy is usually us taking it from the rich.
And piracy is actual enjoyment of art made by hardworking devs who unfortunately work for multi billion dollar companies T-T
AI is theft in the same way that all private property theft. It isnt the piracy of media, it’s the alienation of labor from its product, and withholding it for profit.
Private property is not theft, it is exploitation. Marx already refuted this anarchist childish way of thinking
The exploitation of private property is derived from the exclusion of labor from its product - maybe you have a different understanding of what ‘theft’ means, but it’s the principled exclusion of what labor produces from the labor producing it that is the basis of marx’s claim of ‘exploitation’
All private property is theft? Lmao go back to your cave tankie
yes.
Some people on the Left regretfully tried to redefine Private Property and split off some private property into “personal property” but since that’s not how the language works it’s caused endless miscommunication. By private property is theft he means Private Mean’s of Production with the caveat that people essentially own their owns but homes can’t be bought/sold/inherited.
quotes a concept about property from 1850s
Lmao sorry for not being able to take this seriously
You should recognise that meanings of words might not always match your inner dictionary. “Private Property” is used differently from “Personal Property” in a lot of places.
Sees an anarchist
“Tankie”
???
Clearly one of those horrible anarchotankapalists.
Anarchists believe that “all property is theft”? Lol
private property, distinct from personal property.
Is it? This dichotomy seems incredibly artificial and unsustainable.
There is some disagreement between people who, for example, favor Proudhon versus those who favor Kropotkin over the ownership of personal tools that are involved in individual trade-craft. As with any ideology there are varying schools of thought but the common ideological baseline is that anything that requires capital investment should be collectively controlled and operated for the common good. A person’s personal possessions including their home and tools required for self sufficiency are not considered “property” or a “means of production” by almost anyone.
A good real world example is the FOSS community, most of us would be quite vexed to say the least if someone started changing stuff on our personal computers but we also actively share our code, experience, and knowledge with the world for free. Same goes for the open hardware folks, permacomputing community, and the open research community.
Yet none of that can be interpreted as “all property is theft” unless you redefine what “property” itself means which is a terrible strategy for advertising Anarchy.
Yes
tbf that’s also the tankie view about it.
That’s true in the same way that Trump’s tariffs are paid by other countries. Which is to say: Not at all.
Bill Gates was no billionaire at the time. His background was probably shared by almost all computer hobbyists at the time.
Hardly. Bill Gates came from a wealthy family, attended a private school, and through it had thousands of hours of computer programming time several years before even the Altair 8800 came out. He had a personal connection to IBM through his mother, which is how Microsoft got the DOS deal. His circumstances were unique, and his success the result of a hefty dose of luck.
What kind of person owned a computer as a hobby in 1976?
a rich person
Yeah, one would think so. And those were the hobbyists that Gates was addressing in that open letter.
I don’t mind it if the models are open for anyone to use in any way they see fit. If you trained it off public works and made it available to everyone, I am ok with that.
the common denominator is money
One day chat got won’t work without a paid subscription…
Intellectual property as a concept is a cancer to humanity, and we’d be in a much better world without it.
This is why they want Wikipedia and internet archive, etc, killed off. They have it for their training data but they won’t have a profitable model via paid subscriptions without a monopoly on information.
“They” is the copyright industry. The same people, who are suing AI companies for money, want the Internet Archive gone for more money.
I share the fear that the copyrightists reach a happy compromise with the bigger AI companies and monopolize knowledge. But for now, AI companies are fighting for Fair Use. The Internet Archive is already benefitting from those precedents.
Yes but we’re in the bait and switch phase of it. They’re pushing the AI responses at the top of search to cut down the through clicking to Wikipedia. They’re trying to capture behavior by being the lowest effort route to an answer. They’re gambling that people will forget these other sites and then stop donating. Then it’s to the courts until they’re too broke to keep the servers online.
The information will still be free, but maybe obfuscated enough that most people accept [erratic] information as a service.
I’m on the side of abolishing intellectual property, with the caveats that commercializing someone else’s work or taking credit for someone else’s work should be illegal.
If there wasn’t a profit motive we’d get much less “slop art” and more challenging art made with passion. The slop would also be far less off-putting because at least the slop would be made with love for slop.
the caveats that commercializing someone else’s work or taking credit for someone else’s work should be illegal.
So, not actually abolishing IP, then.
Commercializing means sell for profit. If a non-profit were to create a cracked version of Windows 7 with security updates and sell that for $200 an install that’d not count as commercialization. The idea here is that if Netflix took someone else’s work and made a bajillion dollars off it they’d need to ask for permission and credit the original author.
I don’t know if something still counts as intellectual property if it can be infringed upon except by for-profit entities.
In the US, copyright is limited by Fair Use. It is still IP. Eventually, you’d just be changing how Fair Use works. Not all for the better, I think.
Maybe one could compare it to a right of way over someone’s physical property. The public may use it for a certain purpose, in a limited way, which lowers its value. But what value it has, belongs to the owner.
Cool, you’re taking life lessons from a 21 year old…
Well yes.
Being a Billionaire should be criminalized
I don’t mind billionaires as long as everything is fairly taxed.
If taxes were fair there would be no billionaires.
I kinda compare it to semi truck weigh stations. I found out some time ago that if the math works out that a truck got from one weigh station to another too fast the driver can get a speeding ticket since its assumed they broke the law getting there. Apply that to money. If a person accumulates too much money, it should just be assumed that person broke laws getting it and they should be severly fined (like, most of it).
They’re not assuming anything, they are doing calculus.
For the record, i literally said “if the math works out” 😁
i tried reading that article. I am waaaaaaaaay too dumb to understand it
It does not have to be your cup of tea, but for the record, reading math does not require being smart so much as being patient.
Lol, wikipedia in regards to math is always fucky. I love statistics and calculus, and I still struggle through their pages.
I’m a little disappointed this wasn’t a link to the film strip we saw in high school. The cop drawling “Now this here is Rolle’s theorem…” is classic.
Aw, that makes me sad that I never got that. We just had the example in our textbook be a cop at a tollway.
It should be classified as a sign of mental illness. If I had half of a billion dollars I wouldn’t work another day in my life and the general public would never hear from me. These fuckers have more money than they could ever spend and still desperately want more.
i don’t see the point. It really is fucking pointless. They will NEVER spend billions in their entire fucking life, and yet they want more. More money. More money. So much more money. We need to take after star trek and abolish money
But then how would they track their high score?
It should be classified as a sign of mental illness.
It is. They call it hoarding disorder.
You can be a billionaire if you are willing to pay a million per month as taxes.
That’s a rate of only 1.2% per year, was that your intention ?
oh man. Remember when the ultrawealthy were getting taxed like 80%? Those were the days
There were a lot of tax write offs through incentives which was a good thing because it actually encouraged rich people and businesses to be proactively productive towards the public good.
So done right, they paid nowhere near the 80%. Of course there was abuse and loopholes.
And off topic and contrary to popular thought, Jimmy Carter was the one who started deregulation in this area. He was trying to get the economy moving again and was taking a “reasonable” approach. Reagan took Carter’s idea and went on a heist with it to enrich buddies and doners
No, if he is earning a billion a year that’s too low. But most billionaire have familial wealth and might be earning a few millions in a month. I don’t mind taking a million or two off of it even if he is not earning anything.
“earning”
Now the only thing I will say is that Bill Gates is giving away much of his fortune and yes it may be to his benefit to a point however other people are actually benefiting from him giving it away. Bill Gates even admits that most of what he did when he was younger was driven out agreed. However he is doing quite a bit to try to change that and make up for that.
His donation pledge was more of a flex because he’s increased his net worth more than he has donated. Also, people who were friends with Epstein should not get to decide where that money goes.
