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SgathTriallair t1_jd68cae wrote

Reply to comment by bobbib14 in The Age of AI has begun - Bill Gates by Buck-Nasty

He's doing a good job of redistributing his own assets so this isn't the gotcha you imagine it to be.

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[deleted] t1_jd6bo1d wrote

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SgathTriallair t1_jd6jign wrote

How dare he want to save children's lives. Every single philanthropic organization has funds that make money. If they didn't invest and grow a fund, they would quickly die, and the goal they were set up for would suffer.

Any of these countries could kick him out, just like they could kick out any business or other NGO that was trying to operate in the country.

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[deleted] t1_jd6t4z5 wrote

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SgathTriallair t1_jd7zcqu wrote

The ideal situation is that a democratically rejected and accountable government should be doing this work. They aren't though so someone needs to step into the breach.

The misalignment is of course undesirable but to act as if it's some evil plot is ridiculous. His work on ending malaria will do more to help humanity than we can possibly imagine. Tackling the single biggest cause of human death is more than enough to justify his philanthropy.

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[deleted] t1_jd85gn8 wrote

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Hotchillipeppa t1_jd96qcu wrote

It’s funny, for a sub who generally prides itself on critical thinking, a lot of people upvote the comment defending bill gates, believing his charity justifies the insane wealth he has.

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HumanSeeing t1_jd6xac4 wrote

This reminds me some talk about how if you are a billionaire who does something to help humanity, they get tons of shit for not doing enough (and i agree) but when you are a billionaire and you just hoard your wealth and do nothing, no one complains about you. To be clear i think it is absurd that we are still living in a system where it is possible for billionaires to exist.. i mean i understand how we got here. History and human nature and corruption and greed etc. But it is wild how successful the brainwashing of people is to just take the world today and everything in it as normal.

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SnipingNinja t1_jd75hly wrote

I think people who complain about billionaires "doing good" are still complaining about it but it just doesn't come up as much. Also, if a billionaire is genuinely being good, they don't need to care what a minority thinks they can keep doing good and the results will speak for themselves.

After all, we know the billionaires not doing good will keep not doing it and will have the results speak for themselves anyway.

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RetroRocket80 t1_jd9og5r wrote

Human Nature. It's not our fault really, this is millions of years of natural selection in a competitive world with limited resources and literal survival on the line, and you piss all over Bill and Jeff and Elon for doing exactly what Nature intended all along and not being able to rise beyond the sum of their parts.

That's what AGI will allow us to do, create it to be better than ourselves, to usher in the world we all want, but can't bring ourselves to create on our own.

A literal Deus Ex Machina.

It's human nature that has brought us to this point. Perhaps we are the first.

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boxen t1_jd6mmja wrote

Everyone that owns stock (which is every wealthy person) is always "richer than they've ever been before." That's just how stock works.

If you have 100 billion dollars to give away, giving it away in a lump sum and just absolving yourself of responsibility for how it gets spent is a terrible idea. The whole point of his philanthropic organization is to ensure that the money gets spent as wisely as possible.

Your view of him is wildly inaccurate. How would use a 100 billion dollars to better the world? It's not a simple question to answer.

And you mentioned "unelected." Are you suggesting he should give it to the government and let them handle it? They already have Trillions of dollars, and what are they doing with it? Health care? Education? Or war?

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[deleted] t1_jd6qlig wrote

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SgathTriallair t1_jd8003g wrote

Getting rich of stocks isn't hoarding anything. That wealth doesn't actually exist, is all based on how much they could theoretically make on the open market if they sold their stocks. Of course if he did sell those socks they would lose value.

The government could choose to prioritize taking care of it's citizens. Those of us in democracies could view for politicians who support these priorities (and I do). Unfortunately we, as a country, don't view for these politicians. The existence of philanthropists isn't causing the government to do anything.

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[deleted] t1_jd883ch wrote

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SgathTriallair t1_jd8g8kd wrote

I agree that we need to fix there economic system and the existence of billionaires proves that we are broken.

I'm not, however, going to get mad at the ones who are trying to make the world better when there are so many trying to make the world worse.

The goal is to reduce human suffering and create a more equitable world. ANYTHING which furthers that goal is good. So Bill Gates foundation is good and should be recognized as such. Having no need for philanthropists would be better but that isn't the choice we are offered right now.

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[deleted] t1_jd8l4u3 wrote

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SgathTriallair t1_jd9plpg wrote

What is the solution then? Do we let the poor starve hoping it will active everyone else's empathy centers in just the right way? Do we start a violent revolution that ends with an oppressive dictatorship that makes everyone's life worse? I get that saying "we've got philanthropy so our work here is done" isn't good but why would we try to stop them from helping? If I'm dying of cancer I'd really like medicine to help me, but I'm not going to turn down the person who is patching up my gunshot wound even if it is delaying me getting my cancer meds.

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[deleted] t1_jda0xgf wrote

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SgathTriallair t1_jda3by4 wrote

I agree with all of these. My only complaint was that I want to do whatever harm reduction we can while we work towards implementing these ideas.

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Hotchillipeppa t1_jd97527 wrote

This looks like an ai wrote this not gonna lie,either way I agree

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visarga t1_jd75ooz wrote

But your supposition is not falsifiable, right? Under what circumstances would you believe a billionaire philanthropist is sincere?

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RadRandy2 t1_jd968tx wrote

Some reddit nerd is trying to convince you this billionaire is but a humble man of the people; trying his best to make sure life is fair and just. He's doing a great job at growing more wealth and still somehow giving it away so charitably.

Classic.

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ztrz55 t1_jd6gi9z wrote

He's definitely good at telling us about it.

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mudman13 t1_jd7cw8c wrote

You mean dodging tax by hiding it in philanthropy?

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bobbib14 t1_jd69i1r wrote

Its not a gotcha for Bill per se. its all of them. Sure he can be the best of them, thats fine

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