How the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation Fought the Pandemic (fastcompany.com) 144
In a long article titled "Gates versus the Pandemic," Fast Company looks at the many mitigation efforts launched by the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation.
- It's one of the largest funders of the World Health Organization.
- It's partnered with the governments of Norway and India, the World Economic Forum, and the research-charity Wellcome Trust to launch an important group called the Coalition for Epidemic Preparedness Innovations (CEPI).
And then Fast Company breaks down the specifics: - The Gates Foundation invested $52 million in a German mRNA startup named CureVac in 2015; a year later, it gave Massachusetts-based Moderna a $20 million grant to support its development of mRNA-based HIV therapeutics, which helped the company further its underlying platform that can also be used to make vaccines.
- The foundation made an initial equity investment of $55 million in BioNTech, another German startup working on mRNA technology, in 2019. (While the foundation typically makes grants, it sometimes invests in companies to negotiate terms that require a funded product be globally accessible and affordable.)
The goal of all of this spending, in part, was to encourage these companies to focus on mRNA vaccines for communicable illnesses. "If you're looking at where the money is," in medical funding, "it's in oncology and cancer immunotherapy," says Lynda Stuart, deputy director of vaccines and host-pathogen biology at the Gates Foundation. Without a push, companies working in the space "wouldn't necessarily gravitate to infectious disease vaccines."
As the virus was beginning to spread, the Gates Foundation encouraged its other vaccine development partners to turn to COVID-19.
- Researchers at Oxford University started work on a coronavirus vaccine made from a weakened, altered form of a chimpanzee cold virus, a platform that CEPI had supported for other vaccines such as MERS.
- Novavax, a biotech startup the foundation had previously funded, also entered the race to create a vaccine.
By October, more than 200 COVID-19 vaccines were in development, but only 11 had reached Phase III clinical trials (human efficacy tests, the last step before regulatory approval). Of those, four vaccine platforms — from Moderna, BioNTech, Novavax, and the University of Oxford — had received early backing from CEPI or the Gates Foundation. In November, BioNTech-Pfizer, Moderna, and Oxford-AstraZeneca all announced that their respective vaccines had proved highly effective in preliminary study results. On December 11, the FDA approved the BioNTech-Pfizer vaccine, which represents a huge victory for the Gates Foundation. (In addition, the foundation is funding contenders that are at an earlier stage of development, such as Icosavax's nanoparticle vaccine construct.)
"Without the efforts of the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, the Covid-19 crisis would almost certainly be worse," writes Fast Company. "But its extensive role raises questions about how much we rely on philanthropy."
Their article includes this quote from a Northeastern University law professor focused on intellectual property rights and universal access to treatments for HIV/AIDS and COVID-19. "A fundamental question is, Well, because you have the money, should you be able to control the architecture of global health?"
A former director of vaccine delivery at the Gates Foundation counters that "they add value in helping to design very effective programs."
- It's one of the largest funders of the World Health Organization.
- It's partnered with the governments of Norway and India, the World Economic Forum, and the research-charity Wellcome Trust to launch an important group called the Coalition for Epidemic Preparedness Innovations (CEPI).
And then Fast Company breaks down the specifics: - The Gates Foundation invested $52 million in a German mRNA startup named CureVac in 2015; a year later, it gave Massachusetts-based Moderna a $20 million grant to support its development of mRNA-based HIV therapeutics, which helped the company further its underlying platform that can also be used to make vaccines.
- The foundation made an initial equity investment of $55 million in BioNTech, another German startup working on mRNA technology, in 2019. (While the foundation typically makes grants, it sometimes invests in companies to negotiate terms that require a funded product be globally accessible and affordable.)
The goal of all of this spending, in part, was to encourage these companies to focus on mRNA vaccines for communicable illnesses. "If you're looking at where the money is," in medical funding, "it's in oncology and cancer immunotherapy," says Lynda Stuart, deputy director of vaccines and host-pathogen biology at the Gates Foundation. Without a push, companies working in the space "wouldn't necessarily gravitate to infectious disease vaccines."
As the virus was beginning to spread, the Gates Foundation encouraged its other vaccine development partners to turn to COVID-19.
- Researchers at Oxford University started work on a coronavirus vaccine made from a weakened, altered form of a chimpanzee cold virus, a platform that CEPI had supported for other vaccines such as MERS.
- Novavax, a biotech startup the foundation had previously funded, also entered the race to create a vaccine.
By October, more than 200 COVID-19 vaccines were in development, but only 11 had reached Phase III clinical trials (human efficacy tests, the last step before regulatory approval). Of those, four vaccine platforms — from Moderna, BioNTech, Novavax, and the University of Oxford — had received early backing from CEPI or the Gates Foundation. In November, BioNTech-Pfizer, Moderna, and Oxford-AstraZeneca all announced that their respective vaccines had proved highly effective in preliminary study results. On December 11, the FDA approved the BioNTech-Pfizer vaccine, which represents a huge victory for the Gates Foundation. (In addition, the foundation is funding contenders that are at an earlier stage of development, such as Icosavax's nanoparticle vaccine construct.)
"Without the efforts of the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, the Covid-19 crisis would almost certainly be worse," writes Fast Company. "But its extensive role raises questions about how much we rely on philanthropy."
Their article includes this quote from a Northeastern University law professor focused on intellectual property rights and universal access to treatments for HIV/AIDS and COVID-19. "A fundamental question is, Well, because you have the money, should you be able to control the architecture of global health?"
A former director of vaccine delivery at the Gates Foundation counters that "they add value in helping to design very effective programs."
fake news (Score:5, Funny)
Re:fake news (Score:5, Funny)
Re:fake news (Score:4, Funny)
you mean infected and adwared windows machines?
Re:Bill Gates wants to reduce world population... (Score:5, Insightful)
From this summary, Gates is way more trustworthy in medicine than in operating systems.
Re: Bill Gates wants to reduce world population... (Score:5, Insightful)
Which is the point. Now that he feels guilty about microsofts path to success and that he has more money than he can spend, he puts that money towards health programs that are actually effective but that ultimately give his good will a lot of power to decide what's important.
I don't have any concerns for the vaccines developed by these companies, anymore than the general concerns with big pharma. However, the idea that a few rich guys can decide the global issues worthy of attention is worrisome.
This returns to the age old truth that having a king can be great for a nation but it can also be absolutely terrible. The power these CEOs wield rivals many leaders of nations. The Adequate checks and balances don't really exist against their power, except for the brute force method of taxing them to kingdom come...
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Governments are accountable, accountable to people saying "that is a waste of my tax $$$" and who then try and move those $$$ to somewhere where the need is more immediate, or benefits them personally. There are also Luddite concerns with this kind of research.
Gates does not suppress research in other fields, he just finances it in *this* field. This is probably part of the fallout from SARS and Ebola, he - or his friends who are experts in this field - saw a need.
Gates pulls above his weight with multipliers (Score:2)
Actually, Gates pulls way above his weight in terms of affecting research spending. Normally, when he spends $1, he wants to use that to get several other bodies to also throw in $1. He provide seed money and then expertise and push to get more funding from government agencies.
Is that good?
Well, on thing you have to admit is that Gates is proven to be good at something -- building a software empire. He is obviously astute if also a little bit evil. That puts him in a league well above the average bureau
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Which is the point. Now that he feels guilty about microsofts path to success
He doesn't feel guilty; he doesn't give a fuck. He's interested in doing a Carnegie and having his name slapped across a bunch of positive things so that people forget that he's a complete cunt.
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Most people with significant sociopathic tendencies enjoy manipulating others, often in ways that involve how those others perceive them. They don't do this out of a sense of guilt since in general they don't feel much guilt and lack the ability to feel empathy for others. They do it because they enjoy manipulating, and it has the nice side effect of aggrandizing them personally.
Gates certainly has significant sociopathic tendencies, you d
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Maybe he just enjoys proving he can do it better than all of the worlds governments combined.
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Why would he want that if he doesn't feel guilty?
Ego.
Gates has an internal representation of himself as something special, so going to the grave with a reputation as a half-assed programmer who got lucky and then got rich by cheating, stealing, and breaking the law while producing rafts of third-rate software that people hate using bothers him. Obviously, producing rafts of third-rate software does not in itself make him feel guilty or, presumably, he wouldn't have kept doing it for so long.
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Until you change the stupid logic of capitalism half the rich like the Koch brothers will farm you like cattle and a few of the rest like Gates and Soros attempt to make the world a better place. Until this stupid system is changed then you should observe that imperfect though the likes of Gates are they are infinitely preferable to the other bastards.
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I note that Bill Gates is continuing a family tradition started by his father in doing things to make the world a better place. His motivation is more complex than just paying back for the advantage he has accrued.
https://www.nytimes.com/2020/0... [nytimes.com]
"Bill Gates Sr., Who Guided Billionaire Son’s Philanthropy, Dies at 94 Sept 15 2020
He channeled support for campaigns to eradicate polio, reduce infant mortality, build schools and help find an AIDS vaccine — among other causes."
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The Gates Foundation is the largest philanthropic organization in the world and has invested more than $10 Billion in companies whose practices run counter to the foundation’s supposed charitable goals and social mission.
In Niger, the Foundation has invested more than $400 million dollars in oil companies responsible for much of the pollution causing respiratory problems and other afflictions among the local population.
The Gates Foundation also has investments in sixty-nine of the worst polluting comp
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So they are investing in companies whose deleterious effects are to be countered by their charity? The Yin and Yang here is Yrong.
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Dude.. he wrote what is probably the most influential piece of software in the history of personal computing.
Just to be clear here, what piece of software are you talking about?
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Dude.. he wrote what is probably the most influential piece of software in the history of personal computing.
Just to be clear here, what piece of software are you talking about?
Exactly. Gates wrote the original Basic that was bundled with the PC, nothing else. According to people I knew that worked for him and saw that code, Gates was not a very good programmer, though obviously a great entrepreneur.
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To be fair to Gates on the quality of the programming, he only wrote part of it. Paul Allen and Monte Davidoff did the bulk of the work. I've heard varying stories about how dedicated Gates was. Some claimed that he spent a lot of his time when he should have been programming playing poker, but the official story is that he stopped playing poker and worked only on the BASIC code.
Gates was a great if evil programmer (Score:2)
His code on the original basic has turned up, and he used every trick in the book to get an entire basic system into a couple of K of memory.
He was also technical. The story was told by the guy that wrote Visual Basic for Excel (very well designed and important for early Microsoft). He was summoned to Gates office, together with his manager and his manager's manager. Gates had a copy of his spec printed out and went though it page by page asking sensible questions which resulted in some minor improvement
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Gates definitely was a programmer, and a decent one, I don't think that's in dispute with anyone. Ultimately, he was part of a team that created Microsoft BASIC, which was a working product that fit into the memory available. Since it was a rush job, I'm sure there were plenty of improvements that could have been made, but it clearly worked. Whether it was "probably the most influential piece of software in the history of personal computing" is questionable. It was one BASIC interpreter among many. If they
Re:fake news (Score:5, Informative)
Um, what? Graphical user interfaces would've happened with or without windows. The Mac, Amiga, and Atari ST all came out in 84-85 with GUIs from the start, all loosely based of the Xerox PARC Alto Mouse and Window model. In UNIX-land, the X Window System came out in 1984 as well.
Windows was always a follower.
Not sure Altair Basic was that big of a deal (Score:4, Interesting)
The Basic interpreter for Altair was probably pretty cool, but I'm not sure I'd call it "the most influential piece of software in the history of personal computing".
Maybe you're talking about one of the applications that his employees wrote for the Mac, in the years before Windows 1.0?
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Microsoft BASIC set the standard for the time, and was constantly pushing the limits of what was possible on those old machines. Many 8 bit machines adopted it and Microsoft BASIC became a de facto standard of its own, back when a lot of software was distributed in books and magazines as BASIC listings.
Maybe not the most influential, although I do wonder how many important developers got a start with Microsoft BASIC.
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Agreed, it was a quite popular piece of software.
Given OP's reference to "we'd still be typing cryptic commands" or whatever, I think OP was under the impression that Bill Gates invented and wrote the first GUI. In fact, of course, Microsoft was still selling the DOS it has bought from SCS while they were making programs for the MacIntosh GUI.
Windows really came on the scene in a significant way in 1990, years after Mac and decades after the first GUI. Of course, Bill didn't write Windows either.
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I note that your 401k is also invested in these supposedly evil enterprises. Investments are in bad things unless you make a special effort to make sure that they are not.
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Investments are in bad things unless you make a special effort to make sure that they are not.
Yes, absolutely. Which brings us to another example of how Bill Gates is a shitlord. After this article came out in 2007 highlighting one investment the Gates foundation has made which is literally killing people they are claiming to be trying to save [latimes.com], the Foundation made a press release saying that they would be reviewing their investments for ethics. The very next day they took that release down, and put up another one saying that they would not be doing any such thing, because it is difficult. Yes, liter
Re: fake news (Score:2)
Oh look, facts I don't agree with. I must down vote them immediately!
#slashdot #shitshow
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Point to the false statements, coward. I will provide citations.
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https://www.thenation.com/arti... [thenation.com]
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The efforts of Gates et al are a lot more useful than the opposing team who offered hydroxychlorquine and the comforting news that you were going to die of a fake virus. All information peddled by the Koch network to the detriment of the American people.
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I don't think microsoft minions would be of any use, given previous attempts like clippy
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He just wants you to think it failed
We should rely exclusively on philanthropy! (Score:2)
its extensive role raises questions about how much we rely on philanthropy.
There should be a gradual transition to exclusively relying on philanthropy, not taxation, to achieve social good.
Philanthropy is people voluntarily directing their assets toward causes they passionately believe in.
Taxation is the coercive redirection of an individual's assets -- at best, toward causes that the individual is almost never passionate about, and at worst, toward causes that the individual vehemently opposes. Furthermore, a large fraction of those assets are wasted by the inefficiency of gover [slashdot.org]
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You know that the US already keeps vaccine records for children. We just have the infrastructure to handle it either on paper or digitally. In developing/poorer countries, even paper is not a safe long term storage option. That is what the UV barcode innovation is about.
But having a custom-code for each dose instead of for each type of dose would be cost-prohibitive since it involves the alignment of a bunch of microneedles. The only thing you could track is whether someone is vaccinated.
5G (Score:2, Funny)
I can't wait until Bill Gates personally injects 5G tracking technology directly into my veins! At least I'll get mobile 1gbps straight into my body.
Re:5G (Score:5, Funny)
> At least I'll get mobile 1gbps straight into my body.
Not with the size of that antenna.
Re: 5G (Score:5, Funny)
Come on, if we know anything from Apple its not the size of the antenna, its how you hold it.
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Gates ought to partner with Neuralink, assuming they can put aside their differences and be friends. Too bad Elon Musk called Gates a knucklehead for not knowing that Musk was building vaccine production machines for CureVac.
Whatever (Score:1, Insightful)
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Still doesn't give him the right to tell people how to live.
This is the consequence of a tax policies that deeply favor the rich. Without people like you voting to support such policies then we wouldn't have billionaires with the power to do such things.
You are complaining about the consequences of your own actions.
Re: Whatever (Score:4, Interesting)
Wrong. The US government pays EV buyers $7500 to not by from Tesla***. Furthermore, the top five non-Tesla tradeins for a Model 3 are 1) BMW 3-series, one of BMW's lower-end models; 2) Toyota Prius; 3) Nissan Leaf; 4) Honda Accord; and 5) Honda Civic. Does this sound like your typical vehicle profile of "some rich guy"?
*** - The US credit scheme is basically not an EV credit at all, since it gives roughly the same total amount of money (~$1,5B) for all companies whether they make 10k EVs per quarter or 100k EVs per quarter. The latter basically gets it upfront and then nothing, while the former gets it as a trickle (in both cases, indirectly, via subsidizing customers), but it's (roughly) the same amount of money.
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I vote for policies that lean toward leaving people the fuck alone.
And the result "give[s] him the right to tell people how to live."
You are complaining about the consequences of your own actions.
Re: Whatever (Score:1)
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You honestly don't care what he says, you only care that he has a voice which can make an impact on the real world. Without ungodly amounts of money he would have neither. How do you not see this obvious connection?
Re: Whatever (Score:1)
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It is incumbent on people like Bill Gates and Elon Musk as well as people like Thomas Picketty and Paul Krugman and Robert Reich and Joe Rogan to restrict their commentary to "here's an idea" rather than "blah blah blah obey!"
No it's not. They are in no way restricted and extreme wealth does not bring any additional obligations. To believe they should some how be limited in this way when we have propagandist in full swing is a delusion of your own making. They are free to do as they please and you choose to empower them still.
Don't blame other people for your own poor choices.
Re: Whatever (Score:1)
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I choose to do no such thing.
Disclaiming responsibility doesn't make you less responsible. Just ask the outgoing president about that.
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I choose to do no such thing.
This is about as naive a take as pushing for guns for kids K-12 and then absolutely denying any responsibility when accidental and school shootings go through the roof. Some things simply go together.
propagandists only have power if you the listener give it to them.
Congratulations on proving you don't understand how the human mind functions.
As for the rest of your post, please, stop being so emotional about this.
Re: Whatever (Score:1)
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I vote for policies that lean toward leaving people the fuck alone.
The greatest trick the devil ever pulled was convincing Americans that your choice is between policies that lean toward the government leaving people the fuck alone and policies that lean toward corporations leaving people the fuck alone.
Re: Whatever (Score:2)
Re: Whatever (Score:1)
Disable Advertising (Score:5, Insightful)
The checkbox is futile when ads come in the form of "articles".
Re: Disable Advertising (Score:1)
Re: (Score:1)
Re: Disable Advertising (Score:2)
The checkbox is futile regardless. It no longer blocks even any of the overt advertising, and it also turns itself off periodically. So it is working about as well as the rest of the site...
Did it have to do with anti-virus? (Score:3)
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Whenever he's out of prison it's mostly drugs.
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Name recognition (Score:5, Insightful)
We've gotten to the point where name recognition, such as the name of his foundation, is harmful to their goals. There are just too many ignorant people out there believing the most insane conspiracy theories now. Social media allows nonsense to propagate like never before, and somehow "Bill Gates", having been involved (purely at the business end) of some technology company DECADES ago means he's.... doing all this ludicrous stuff involving 5G and tracking. Because, you know, he has something to do with technology and thus ANYTHING he does must be motivated to a technological end in some way.
Really, these organizations need to be operating much more silently in the background, and not affixed to celebrity names, in this day and age.
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Well, being evil and sneaky as CEO of Microsoft didn't help either. Maybe he should come clean and confess to his past misdeeds if he wants to be taken more seriously.
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We middle-aged programmers (I see you have a 5-digit uid too) hated Bill Gates long before any of the bullshit conspiracy theories, and we actually valid reasons.
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We've gotten to the point where name recognition, such as the name of his foundation, is harmful to their goals. There are just too many ignorant people out there believing the most insane conspiracy theories now.
In a section of the population widely viewed as hilariously paranoid. Don't let your tin foil hat bump the door on your way out.
That man... (Score:5, Insightful)
That man is a saint (other than the corruption, theft, and decades of anti-competitive, underhanded dealing).
A true saint among men.
He earned, hell, hedeserves that massive tax break and spotless reputation.
Praise be unto him and his.
Controlling the architecture? (Score:5, Insightful)
'"A fundamental question is, Well, because you have the money, should you be able to control the architecture of global health?"
Another question just as pressing: If you have a clueless grifter running your country into the ground, shouldn't SOMEONE be thinking about the architecture of global health?
If Donald can't read, perhaps Bill can read to him.
they probably fought it by (Score:2)
Hard to separate this from political ideology (Score:3)
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I like the idea that there are people smarter than government collectively
What we need is people more moral than government. Bill Gates is doing the kinds of things that governments do. Notably, he's making deals with other nations in order to control them. You can't get vaccinations from the Gates Foundation without supporting strong western-style IP law. So later, if you decide that you need to make a generic copy of some medication to keep your people alive, the WTO can turn your country into a smoking hole, economically.
"Fought the Pandemic" (Score:3)
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But really, I'm just glad it's over.
Phase 1 is over, and Phase 2 is beginning. Phase 1 got us used to the idea of surrendering fundamental rights to thunderous applause. Phase 2 will take more or those rights (after a short reprieve to give us false hope), most likely in the guise of an equally (or more!) dangerous charade.
World Economic Forum?? (Score:2)
The Same WEF that says this this "Great Reset" will result in a utopia where "I Own Nothing, Have No Privacy And Life Has Never Been Better"?
https://www.forbes.com/sites/w... [forbes.com]
This is starting to get beyond a conspiracy theory at this point.
dolly parton funded the drug (Score:1)
More sycophants (Score:1)
More sycophants hoping for a handout.
Cure for the Common Cold (Score:2)
Coronavirus vaccine is one step towards the cure for the common cold, is it not?
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Coronavirus vaccine is one step towards the cure for the common cold, is it not?
Most common colds are caused by rhinoviruses, although some are caused by coronaviruses. However, this is a "novel coronavirus", meaning it's substantially different from those others.
Atta Boy, Bill (Score:2)
Minions or not, it's still working out very well. Thanks too for all the money matching Rotary International's anti-polio campaign.
Philanthropy has it's place (Score:2)
We should rely exclusively on philanthropy! (Score:2)
its extensive role raises questions about how much we rely on philanthropy.
There should be a gradual transition to exclusively relying on philanthropy, not taxation, to achieve social good.
Philanthropy is people voluntarily directing their assets toward causes they passionately believe in.
Taxation is the coercive redirection of an individual's assets -- at best, toward causes that the individual is almost never passionate about, and at worst, toward causes that the individual vehemently opposes. Furthermore, a large fraction of those assets are wasted by the inefficiency of gover [slashdot.org]
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Move on nothing to see here but a Bil and Melinda Gates PR Promo and other pure junk. You go to their web site and there isn't even an About Us page. And it is just every lengthening list of junk pr articles.
It seems to me that the Gates' family has all the money they can spend for a minimum of several generations... he's purchasing generational goodwill with these altruistic gestures, not all that different from the Noble fam's legacy.
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the Gates' family has all the money they can spend for a minimum of several generations.
They've said that their kids are going to receive a "small" trust fund each, and all the rest of their money is going to the Foundation. Warren Buffet's kids have all made their own money, so all of his is going the the Foundation as well.
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They've said that their kids are going to receive a "small" trust fund each, and all the rest of their money is going to the Foundation.
Sure, after Gates uses his Foundation to make sure that his kids will have the opportunity to make absolute asspiles of money, kind of like Gates himself has done by directing the foundation's investments. Gates is now worth more than he was when he seeded the Foundation, and he's not [yet?] putting that money into the Foundation.
While he's alive, though, Gates putting the money into the Foundation is merely a tax dodge. He can't live long enough to spend it all, and he is in ultimate control of the disburs
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Here I thought Libertardians were against paying taxes.
Re: Who is Fast Company? (Score:2)
What does that have to do with me? I was a libertarian as a teen, but I'm older and wiser now, and that was a long time ago.
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Oops, sorry. Confused you with a different poster.
Gates is now worth more than he was when he seeded the Foundation
Of course he is. Once one arrives at a certain level of wealth it only continues to accumulate. Keep in mind that the Dow Jones was at about 11,000 when he founded the Foundation, today it's over 30,000, so there really isn't any way he could be poorer. A few years ago he voluntarily stepped down as 'richest man in the world' by dumping $5 billion at one shot into the Foundation.
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Well fast company is well known. It's carried on most news stands. I am sure you can google them to find out their circulation numbers .. I can't be bothered. Anyway, if you haven't heard of them, that's a knock on your own credibility.
OK I googled fastcompany and I dunno if you're blind or what, I see they do have an About Us page: fastcompany.com/about-us
Re: Planted story (Score:1, Troll)
I would estimate that most of these kinds of stories are "planted." Sometimes, institutions with good reputations (many top flight universities, NASA, Democrat campaign offices, movie studios, "cool" companies like Tesla or SpaceX or Apple, etc) just need to put out a press release and it gets copy pasted into reputable newspapers.
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I agree with the concept (having money doesn't make people smart), but Bill Gates and his foundation have devoted billions to public health over the past decade - and that includes hiring a lot of public health experts. He does seem to listen to them. It's amazing what a billionaire who wants to learn something can pick up in a decade with personalized tutelage.
Re:The real Virtue Signalling (Score:5, Interesting)
Dumbshit, Gates and Warren Buffet have spent the last 20+ years lobbying congress to have their income taxes raised
"The 400 of us pay a lower part of our income in taxes than our receptionists do, or our cleaning ladies, for that matter. If you're in the luckiest 1 percent of humanity, you owe it to the rest of humanity to think about the other 99 percent." - Warren Buffet
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Dumbshit, Gates and Warren Buffet have spent the last 20+ years lobbying congress to have their income taxes raised
Fuckface*, how much have they spent on that? Vs. How much have they spent on whitewashing their own reputations?
* I just wanted to get into the spirit of the thing. You set the tone, now enjoy the music.
Wrong, cusco (Score:2)
Dumbshit, Gates and Warren Buffet have spent the last 20+ years lobbying congress to have their income taxes raised
Wrong -- they have been lobbying to have everyone's taxes raised.
They don't need to lobby anyone if they want to raise their own taxes. Everyone is free to give more money to the government than the minimum amount owed. Were you aware of that?
If your Form 1040 says you need to send in $15,000 this year, and instead you send in $35,000, you have effectively imposed a large tax increase on yourself. No change in legislation required.
But hardly anyone does that. Gates and Buffet don't. Nobody smart does. T
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Tell you what BG, how about you spend your money lobbying the government to make off-shore tax havens impossible to use
Sure, why not? After all, there are several US states which function as tax havens [wikipedia.org]. Why would Gates care about offshore ones?
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At this point in time I think nothing less than a French style heads off revolution will fix the mess that is badly running this planet, but that won't work either because people are too brainwashed to see a good guy when one comes along, the majority of the population don't want to think for themselves, they are no good at discerning true news from false and worst of all they don't want to know. We're fucked.
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https://www.theguardian.com/wo... [theguardian.com]
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If you notice, /. does not have many Bill Gates fan boys, but is full of Bill Gates haters like yourself.
That's because he's done more harm than good, and continues to do more harm than good. He hasn't wiped out any diseases, only chased a couple of them back to reservoirs, then he's taken credit for eliminating them anyway. The money he has spent on education has wrought havoc on systems which are barely hanging on; since it comes only sporadically and is not guaranteed to keep coming, it only disrupts.
The USDoJ said Gates held back computing probably a full decade. Do you comprehend how important computing i