News
Welcome to the News community!
Rules:
1. Be civil
Attack the argument, not the person. No racism/sexism/bigotry. Good faith argumentation only. This includes accusing another user of being a bot or paid actor. Trolling is uncivil and is grounds for removal and/or a community ban.
2. All posts should contain a source (url) that is as reliable and unbiased as possible and must only contain one link.
Obvious right or left wing sources will be removed at the mods discretion. We have an actively updated blocklist, which you can see here: https://lemmy.world/post/2246130 if you feel like any website is missing, contact the mods. Supporting links can be added in comments or posted seperately but not to the post body.
3. No bots, spam or self-promotion.
Only approved bots, which follow the guidelines for bots set by the instance, are allowed.
4. Post titles should be the same as the article used as source.
Posts which titles don’t match the source won’t be removed, but the autoMod will notify you, and if your title misrepresents the original article, the post will be deleted. If the site changed their headline, the bot might still contact you, just ignore it, we won’t delete your post.
5. Only recent news is allowed.
Posts must be news from the most recent 30 days.
6. All posts must be news articles.
No opinion pieces, Listicles, editorials or celebrity gossip is allowed. All posts will be judged on a case-by-case basis.
7. No duplicate posts.
If a source you used was already posted by someone else, the autoMod will leave a message. Please remove your post if the autoMod is correct. If the post that matches your post is very old, we refer you to rule 5.
8. Misinformation is prohibited.
Misinformation / propaganda is strictly prohibited. Any comment or post containing or linking to misinformation will be removed. If you feel that your post has been removed in error, credible sources must be provided.
9. No link shorteners.
The auto mod will contact you if a link shortener is detected, please delete your post if they are right.
10. Don't copy entire article in your post body
For copyright reasons, you are not allowed to copy an entire article into your post body. This is an instance wide rule, that is strictly enforced in this community.
view the rest of the comments
Just because it was midlife doesn’t mean it’s a crisis.
He started the charity as a shelter for his obscene wealth. That is all.
I'm not obscenely wealthy, so I don't have the experience...but it seems plausible that a billionaire midlife crisis could be "Where am I going to put this ridiculous amount of money that I've earned through less-than-ethical means?"
It’s plausible that a man who made his billions fucking everyone over who was even remotely near him….
… developed a conscience?
https://www.businessinsider.com/how-ultra-wealthy-americans-use-philanthropy-to-avoid-taxation-2021-10
https://apnews.com/article/business-philanthropy-b8acb10f529ac2dbaff7631021d823c9
I mean, the main motivator for the endowment was always Malinda Gates. I'm sure it functions as a tax shelter, but I doubt that was really the main motivator. He's already given over several times what his tax burden would have been, and if we compare it to other NGOs whose sole purpose is truly preserving or raising money, they really aren't comparable.
I'm in agreement that no one should have hundreds of millions of dollars, let alone billions. We can discuss the validity of NGO as a concept, but as far as NGO go, the gates foundation has done more actual aid work for 3rd world countries than most governments.
most governments don’t have nearly the same revenue. This is like saying corporations have done more to help homeless people than homeless shelters (to whom the corpos donate money.)
The reality is that a lot of the way things are, are caused by people like- and including- bill gates.
While there are many NGOs that exist to do good things- and are very good at aid- the gates foundation is not one of those.
I think you’ve bought into the reputation washing the foundation has done for the Gates, and severely underestimate just ho sociopathic they are…. And just how profitable the foundation is for them personally.
In this hypothetical, the shelters are still necessary for the investment to do any actual good, therefore the input of the investment could never exceed the input of the shelter.
One of the things that makes the gates foundation an actual working NGO is that they employ their own aid workers, and set up the logistics systems that support their mission.
I agree, my claim isn't that bill gates deserves his wealth, or that his NGO validates his earnings, or even the economic system that allowed it. My claim is simply that the gates foundation is about as good of an NGO we could ever expect to have within our current economic system.
I think that the vast majority of those impacted by the "sociopathy" you speak of are/were other wealthy silicon valley types, and the rest of the 1rst world in general. Was he a monopolistic technocrat who personally slowed the march of technology for personal gain? Yes, but to be honest so did other corporations like apple. The thing apple hasn't done is save +30 million lives from preventable diseases.
As far as how profitable the foundation is...... I don't really think you understand how tax write offs work. They aren't an infinite supply of free tax credits that you can deduct from your personal income. There is a point where the amount you give exceeds your personal tax burden.
If it were truly about making money, he would just do the same thing musk is, keeping his investments in unrealized gains, and then using those assets as collateral for tax free loans.
Also, Id hardly claim the gates foundation has been a success at reputation washing. I mean just in the last couple years he's been accused of everything from drinking baby's blood for adrenochrome, injecting people with the 5g, and even creating COVID. I think he's a difficult person to have a nuanced opinion over. People tend to not criticize them for the things he's actually done, and tend to focus instead on some hidden insidiousness.
I didn't say that