According to NetMarketShare during April we saw a big bump in Linux use - Ubuntu gains big

Bryan Lunduke has weighed in:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_H3vDe9OTvk

What's wrong with microsoft? Two words: vendor lock-in. Look it up, there's even an internal quote from microsoft in the vendor lock-in Wikipedia page saying the only reason they were still in business is vendor lock-in. That's also how they killed oh so many good things for their own survival.

Just like John Cena the person, Bill Gates the person is one of the best things in this world...

Really? How so? Because if it's about all the charity, IMO if you look a bit under the surface of that charity it, too, is somewhat disturbing.

Just like John Cena the person, Bill Gates the person is one of the best things in this world...

Really? How so? Because if it's about all the charity, IMO if you look a bit under the surface of that charity it, too, is somewhat disturbing.

In what way? Both John Cena devotes much of his spare time to charity (especially for the Starlight Foundation), and Bill Gates has given away a significant portion of his wealth in the name of charity... I've not heard anything to suggest this is not the case, with either of them.

Just like John Cena the person, Bill Gates the person is one of the best things in this world...

Really? How so? Because if it's about all the charity, IMO if you look a bit under the surface of that charity it, too, is somewhat disturbing.

In what way? Both John Cena devotes much of his spare time to charity (especially for the Starlight Foundation), and Bill Gates has given away a significant portion of his wealth in the name of charity... I've not heard anything to suggest this is not the case, with either of them.

Gates does genuinely give away a huge amount of money to charity. But, to be specific, Gates has established a huge charitable fund, which he controls, which doesn't pay taxes because it's a charity. So the process of giving to charity doesn't really reduce the amount of money that he has under his control. I don't know whether he actually gives away more money than he would have paid in taxes.
This charitable fund of course has investments. Some specific areas of heavy investment include pharmaceutical companies and private education. Gates then structures the fund's charitable donations in ways that seek to shape the ways that countries approach relevant issues. So for instance, in terms of public health, Gates donations steer a country's public health emphasis towards buying expensive patented drugs (creating profits for pharmaceutical companies) and away from, say, buying mosquito netting, which might be more cost effective in saving lives. Similarly, in the United States, the Gates foundation lobbies consistently for the privatization of education, which in my opinion is a Bad Thing, so as to increase the profits of the private education companies it has investments in (perhaps Gates himself also has an ideological belief in private education, with which I would disagree). Stuff like that. So I feel Gates' charitable donations are more problematic than one might think at first glance. He wields his charity somewhat the way the IMF wields its loans.

Gates does genuinely give away a huge amount of money to charity. But, to be specific, Gates has established a huge charitable fund, which he controls, which doesn't pay taxes because it's a charity. So the process of giving to charity doesn't really reduce the amount of money that he has under his control. I don't know whether he actually gives away more money than he would have paid in taxes.
This charitable fund of course has investments. Some specific areas of heavy investment include pharmaceutical companies and private education. Gates then structures the fund's charitable donations in ways that seek to shape the ways that countries approach relevant issues. So for instance, in terms of public health, Gates donations steer a country's public health emphasis towards buying expensive patented drugs (creating profits for pharmaceutical companies) and away from, say, buying mosquito netting, which might be more cost effective in saving lives. Similarly, in the United States, the Gates foundation lobbies consistently for the privatization of education, which in my opinion is a Bad Thing, so as to increase the profits of the private education companies it has investments in (perhaps Gates himself also has an ideological belief in private education, with which I would disagree). Stuff like that. So I feel Gates' charitable donations are more problematic than one might think at first glance. He wields his charity somewhat the way the IMF wields its loans.

Do you have any references for this?

Gates does genuinely give away a huge amount of money to charity. But, to be specific, Gates has established a huge charitable fund, which he controls, which doesn't pay taxes because it's a charity. So the process of giving to charity doesn't really reduce the amount of money that he has under his control. I don't know whether he actually gives away more money than he would have paid in taxes.
This charitable fund of course has investments. Some specific areas of heavy investment include pharmaceutical companies and private education. Gates then structures the fund's charitable donations in ways that seek to shape the ways that countries approach relevant issues. So for instance, in terms of public health, Gates donations steer a country's public health emphasis towards buying expensive patented drugs (creating profits for pharmaceutical companies) and away from, say, buying mosquito netting, which might be more cost effective in saving lives. Similarly, in the United States, the Gates foundation lobbies consistently for the privatization of education, which in my opinion is a Bad Thing, so as to increase the profits of the private education companies it has investments in (perhaps Gates himself also has an ideological belief in private education, with which I would disagree). Stuff like that. So I feel Gates' charitable donations are more problematic than one might think at first glance. He wields his charity somewhat the way the IMF wields its loans.

Do you have any references for this?

A bit of searching later . . .
https://www.thestar.com/news/world/2018/07/16/bill-gates-among-billionaires-fuelling-us-charter-schools-movement.html
https://www.vox.com/2015/6/10/8760199/gates-foundation-criticism
(meat on this one starts around halfway down)
https://www.counterpunch.org/2020/03/02/toxic-agriculture-and-the-gates-foundation/
https://nancyebailey.com/2019/03/08/bill-melinda-gates-dont-discuss-their-takeover-of-americas-public-schools/

I've read a fair number of other articles, particularly about the health stuff, often in Counterpunch, but it was hard to track down good focused ones.


Last edited by Purple Library Guy on 14 May 2020 at 12:02 am UTC

Maybe I'm missing something, but I don't see what the problem is with the first link and although I only skimmed the rest of the links, the general argument seems to be a disagreement with the direction and / or priorities of the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation... That's not really doing anything sinister, disturbing or immoral.

What direction should the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation be moving in, and what should their priorities be?

Well if I asked that here, I'd probably get a dozen or more different answers... Each answer would be based exclusively on what that individual Community Member thinks is the right direction to move in or are priorities in the world.

What I think is important is almost certainly going to be different to what you think is important.

This is hardly proof that the the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation is actually doing something wrong or malicious - just evidence that you and / or the author of those articles don't share the same vision as the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation.

This is hardly proof that the the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation is actually doing something wrong or malicious - just evidence that you and / or the author of those articles don't share the same vision as the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation.

The charter school stuff is admittedly political, and even if they're rather obviously disguising their own business and political interests as charity, I see your point. The most common criticism I've seen is about their medicine related efforts in the third world. Can't really spend time (at work) looking for good sources, but a google/duckduckgo search with "gates foundation controversy" will get you started. Of course you might argue that this is all political, but that doesn't mean we shouldn't expect some ethical standards as long as they call it a charity.

EDIT: A bit clearer now, hopefully. Shouldn't comment in a hurry.


Last edited by tuubi on 14 May 2020 at 7:12 am UTC

Maybe I'm missing something, but I don't see what the problem is with the first link and although I only skimmed the rest of the links, the general argument seems to be a disagreement with the direction and / or priorities of the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation... That's not really doing anything sinister, disturbing or immoral.

That's why I said "problematic" rather than "sinister" or "immoral".
There's certainly a range of interpretations you can put on Gates' actions. You can say he's acting out of genuine conviction that his approach/es are the right ones. Probably to a good extent he is . . . people often convince themselves that the approach which is good for them is the right one.
But consider. You have a guy with tens of billions of dollars, on which he would normally pay tax. He shelters that money from tax in a charitable trust. He invests that money in profitable endeavours; the capital gains made would, again, normally be taxed, but because it is a charity they are not.
He then uses the untaxed money both to donate and to lobby. He donates money to things such as education . . . money that might have been available for the democratically elected government to spend on education had he not sheltered it from taxation in the first place. In doing so, he shapes the way education is delivered. So he is substituting the priorities of the public with his own private priorities--and in setting the agenda, he shifts public money to being spent on what his private money was donated towards. Even if his priorities are good ones, by what right does he hijack public policy?

Getting more specific, the policies he pushes are self-dealing ones, which increase the profits of the very firms his funds are invested in. This helps the fund grow . . . lather, rinse and repeat. You could say, doing well by doing good. But what are the opportunity costs? Now there you get into opinion, certainly.

What direction should the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation be moving in, and what should their priorities be?

Well if I asked that here, I'd probably get a dozen or more different answers... Each answer would be based exclusively on what that individual Community Member thinks is the right direction to move in or are priorities in the world.

The fact that other people may have other opinions on what policy is best is not a reason for me to stop having opinions. I have an opinion about the earth being on the round-ish side despite my knowledge that there are people who hold the opinion that it's flat. I have an opinion about the Third Reich being a bad thing; the existence of neo-Nazis who disagree does not sway me.
But if you do want to say that all opinions are purely subjective, then Bill and Melinda Gates are just spending money at random and there's nothing either good or bad about it. I prefer to think that it's possible to evaluate policies. So for instance, we have a pandemic right now. Some policies will result in more people dying than other policies. I think that matters.

But in the normal day in, day out, year in, year out workings of governments and societies, some policies will still result in more people dying. At some point the rubber meets the road and people's opinions result in life or death. Some countries have higher incidences of disease, death in childbirth, and so on. Some countries have shorter average lifespans. There is a lot of research on what can be done to improve public health, what is cost effective and what is not. Far as I can tell, while few may be willing to bite the hand that feeds them, when the research isn't about the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation but is on the general question of what measures are good for public health, experts rarely say that the way to go is to spend most of your public health money on patented pharmaceuticals at monopoly prices.
Gates is of course a big supporter of intellectual property; his beliefs about software extend naturally to other areas like drugs. The Gates foundation lobbies for IP as a string on its donations. But in the case of pharmaceuticals, intellectual property is a life and death issue, particularly in the third world where they cannot afford the jacked up prices.

So yeah, in my opinion, if you push a third world country's priorities away from low-tech public health measures, and get it to back off on generic drugs, instead using its health care money to buy the expensive drugs your donation was the gateway for, that is going to result in a bunch more real people dying. And in my opinion, that's not particularly good.

Ok, I'm not surprised he's the same d*ck he always was, but it's not very clear still. Is all his money in a charity fund? Or does he just donate as much as he would have otherwise had to pay in taxes?