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.
There have been many times when I thought to myself: “Hold on. Can I be absolutely sure that billionaires are scum? Maybe there’s a crucial part of the story I’m missing?”
Every single time I just found even more cases of them blatantly lying, manipulating data and taking advantage of everything and everyone around them for personal gain. And every one of those times, it got me more depressed about the current and future state of society and the world in general.
You can try this yourself. I highly recommend it, even though the outcome is obvious. We can very rarely, if ever, be 100% sure about anything, so it’s always a good idea to put your beliefs to the test. However, I find it fairly self-evident that anyone seriously arguing in favor of any billionaire has simply never critically examined this topic.
No matter where and how deeply you look, it’s just evidence upon evidence upon evidence that they are, in fact, the worst filth that has ever shared the air with us. Though at least this one thing is comming to an end. Soon, we’ll be breathing toxic waste while they’ll be enjoying clean air in their doomsday bunkers larger than entire neighborhoods.
It’s kinda part of the process. You have to an infinite turbo cunt to even TRY to become a billionaire. And the ones that make it are the worst of the worst. Bring back the fuckin guillotine.
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.
He is literally in the Epstein List no?
Even if he wasn’t he’s still a capitalist pig.
*oligarchical pig
Capitalism is just free competition, which is the opposite of what Bill Gates is for.
In a communist economy he would be the same pig.
A tale of greed ending with a despicable billionaire.
Obviously Bill Gates is a household name and in the tech community everyone knows who is Steve Ballmer. However not many people know who Paul Allen is even though he was one of the founder of Microsoft at the very start. In 1982 Paul Allen was diagnosed with cancer and Bill and Steve were worried that if Paul died the shares of the company would go to someone else along with control of the company. While Paul was literally getting cancer treatment, Bill and Steve were scheming to dilute the shares of the company to wrestle the control of the company away from Paul. Fortunately for Paul he survived the cancer. It really doesn’t put Bill Gates and Steve Ballmer in very good light though. I remember reading about this from Robert X. Cringely’s blog about two decades ago and I heard Paul Allen wrote about his version of this story in his memoir before his death.
Edit: I tried to find the original Robert X. Cringely’s story from back in 2006 but looks like that link is broken but he did referenced it in 2011 when Paul Allen’s book was released.
Paul Allen got great cards.
I really don’t get how opinions on intellectual property and its “theft” turn 180 whenever AI is mentioned.
the common denominator is money
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.
ai is the rich stealing from us, piracy is usually us taking it from the rich.
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.
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
Sees an anarchist
“Tankie”
???
Clearly one of those horrible anarchotankapalists.
tbf that’s also the tankie view about it.
Even libertarians, who are on the exact opposite side economically, agree IP is garbage made and manipulated to enrich the few.
It’s a bit of a split among libertarians. Some very notable figures like Ayn Rand were strong believers in IP. In fact, Ayn Rand’s dogmas very much align with what is falsely represented as left-wing thought in the context of AI.
It’s really irritating for me how much conservative capitalist ideals are passed off as left-wing. Like, attitudes on corporations channel Adam Smith. I think of myself as pragmatic and find that Smith or even Hayek had some good points (not Rand, though). But it’s absolutely grating how uneducated that all is. Worst of all, it makes me realize that for all the anti-capitalist rhetoric, the favored policies are all about making everything worse.
Anarchists believe that “all property is theft”? Lol
yes.
And piracy is actual enjoyment of art made by hardworking devs who unfortunately work for multi billion dollar companies T-T
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.
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.
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.
from the letter
What hobbyist can put 3-man years into programming, finding all bugs, documenting his product and distribute for free?
Im all for giving fair or even plentiful compensation to developers who made our softwares. But, how times and hindsight made this passage sounds like, “wait you guys got paid?”
And for any of the people saying “he changed”.
One of his most recent “philanthropic” ventures was to partner with Nestle (good start) to “modernize and increase yields” of the dairy industries in impoverished countries.
The two organizations then sold modern (likely non-servicable) equipment and entrenched them in corporate supply chain systems geared towards export and making it much harder to trade locally (not sure how that part worked, but was in what I read).
For a grand total of… 1% increased dairy yields.
Then 3-4 years later they pulled out, leaving heavily indebted farmers without the corporate supply chains and delivery systems they were forced to switch to, and making it very difficult to switch back to the old ways of working, so they can’t sell nearly as much locally.
Who do you think will buy up those farms when the farmers go bankrupt and have to sell ar rock bottom prices.
His work on malaria in Africa focused on bed nets to the explicit exclusion of larvacide control of mosquitoes. Millions of preventable cases over the last 30 years.
Then there’s the circumcision to fight aids.
Guy’s a fuckwit.
He is doing what the robber barons did, they are trying to clear their name before they die.
He’s still the same sociopath as always, except now with a savior complex. Giving away all his money, is he? His foundation has been around 25 years and he still has $100b+ net worth. A single individual shouldn’t have that much power, and the fact that he still voluntarily wields it while virtue signaling affirms every negative opinion of him. Even if he were the benevolent billionaire his PR campaign would have us believe he is, such a net worth should be reserved for governments where it’s spread across multiple agencies that have checks and balances and are accountable to voters. I don’t trust any individual with that much power, though I’d trust any random person off the street over anyone ruthless enough to become a billionaire.
I remember reading somewhere that his foundation was all a massive tax avoidance scheme. It was quite a compelling argument when broken down. I wish I could find it again.
Did you also read that he taught himself code by reading out print outs in the trash? He wanted to close that ability to learn. Shut that open stuff down and make licenses, while he himself learned from others.
Didn’t he come from a stupidly rich family and had access to a computer (at a time when it was like having access to a helicopter) whenever he wanted to learn and fiddle around? Isn’t that where he got the print outs?
No. He’s a nepo baby.
Yup. His dad i believe was a renowned lawyer.
With connections to the Rockefeller family. Also his mom was the one who convinced IBM to give Bill the contract for MS-DOS (which he bought from some other guy).
If I’m remembering correctly, his mom was on the board of IBM.
yup. It was originally QDOS (Quick and Dirty Operating System). I believe he ripped the guy off when he bought it? Not sure
How many 0’s are in his bank account?
Yeah, he ripped that guy off.
not necessarily. There’s no saying if QDOS would have taken off if Gates and co hadn’t bought it. Also, Gates and co got their start because Gates’ mother put in a good word at IBM to get a contract. So had that not happened, we may not have windows today. Who’s to say.
We all know that every billionaire is a horrible person. They can’t be anything else.
There is no such thing as an innocent billionaire.
You don’t get to a billionnwithout exploiting people along the way.
ABAB
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.
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?
He’s a total ideologue.
And in retrospect it’s too bad more people didn’t steal from Microsoft so that it failed as a business.
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.
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.
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.
Well yes.
Being a Billionaire should be criminalized
I don’t mind billionaires as long as everything is fairly taxed.
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.
It should be classified as a sign of mental illness.
It is. They call it hoarding disorder.
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
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.
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.
For the record, i literally said “if the math works out” 😁
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.
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.
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.
