Hi, I'm from Australia, sorry if this is the wrong place for this. I was reading this profile of Melinda French Gates, ex-wife of Bill Gates, here:
https://www.smh.com.au/lifestyle/life-and-relationships/gigantic-joy-melinda-french-gates-on-her-new-life-after-divorce-20250326-p5lmnp.html
I have a serious question for our American friends.
Melinda Gates is worth approximately US$30 billion apparently. And Mackenzie Scott, ex-wife of Jeff Bezos, is worth US$42 billion. They are both philanthropists, focused on women and girls' welfare.
If they really care so much about women's welfare, why didn't they put their money where their mouth is? This question goes for other progressive billionaires in the US too. If they, along with some of their friends had pooled their money together, they could have bought Twitter (and maybe even mainstream news organizations like The Washington Post).
Twitter was a hugely influential resource for the global center-left, and now it has become a source of far-right indoctrination. Elon Musk took a huge risk when he bought Twitter, but it has paid off for him and the global far-right - not in a monetary sense, but in the sense that they were able to take that space away from the left, which I think was their objective in the first place. The right wing seems to be so much more committed, and willing to spend their money to achieve their political objectives, whereas the left (or center-left, or just democracy-loving people) seem so lame in comparison. What gives?
Originally Posted By u/GrouchyInstance At 2025-04-11 11:47:43 PM | Source
You don’t become a billionaire by being ethical or nice. They probably have their own self interests in things that we don’t know about and will probably never know about. To me at least, there is no difference between a Elon Musk and Bill Gates, sure one is less of an ass but these billionaires live on another planet that very few “normal” people get to see what kind of people they truly are.
Then you are not paying attention.
I’m not denying Bill was a merciless asshole as a business man to make his money, but he got married and had kids and learned compassion. Still not a perfect human, but he has given away over 100 billion dollars- with care and thought and in ways that literally save lives. https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/cx2p4p4l78zo
Google says his foundation has saved 122 million lives. SAVED LIVES. Not propped up his own interests or gotten accolades or done PR to impress ignorant people - but literally spent years of his own life working to SAVETHE LIVES of his fellow human beings.
They are not the same.
They're not the same. But keeping billions of dollars is still unethical no matter how much philanthropy you get into.
Agree. Being a billionaire is inherently immoral.
However if all billionaires supported the politicians and policies that the Gates support we would not be in this situation. Like they actually do understand the value of a strong/healthy middle class.
Note that Bill Gates plans to give away more than 99% of his wealth. It’s hard to call him unethical for keeping his money with a straight face when he’s giving away 99% of it. And working hard to do that in ways that will matter to fellow humans who are truly suffering. Like he’s not building libraries to put his name on, he’s giving away vaccines and mosquito nets.
So I’m thinking he actually isn’t keeping his excessive wealth. Like he is actually giving it away - so yeah, I don’t lump him with the others at all.
Why?
Finite resources. When millions of people suffer and die for lack of resources while one parson controls enough resources to support all of them = it’s just not fair. No one person is worth more than hundreds of thousands of people.
For someone lucky and successful and hardworking to be better off than others = totally cool. You can do that no problem with 100 mil.
But when you have 1000x1000 more than you will ever need and other people die for want? Not cool.
Money isn't food and water. Nobody dies because they don't have enough stocks. Also you should notice that money makes more money, which can then be used for, among other things, charity work. Just giving away all your money limits the amount of good you can do in the world a lot more than keeping it in the market and using it in controlled amounts.
People die because they don’t have money.
Money is access to food and water in a capitalist society. You are talking about a trickle down theory which has no incentive to actually do anything to aid society, and just an excuse to hoard.
I'm not pushing trickle down "economics" here; I'm explicitly talking about the handful of billionaires who do use their money for the benefit of society. Definitely tax them and all other billionaires, but the "billionaires are inherently unethical no matter what they do" logic ignores the reasons billionaires are actually bad for society, which are a lot more insidious than "they have a lot of money while others starve". Responding to "Bill Gates used his money to save 122 million lives" with "Bill Gates is bad because he's a billionaire" is more reminiscent of dogma than critical reasoning.
Absolutely you can be rich and stay rich and and invest well AND do great charitable work, all very ethically.
That is not what we are talking about. Go watch some of those videos that try to explain “a billion”. It’s really hard to wrap your head around the difference- but it’s like cup of water, pool of water vs all the oceans on earth. There is a point beyond which it is unethical to keep all that money.
The Bill Gates foundation didn't save 122 million lives by saying "this money is unethical" and throwing it away. There are things you can only do with billions of dollars.
Again, why? Having a lot of money and hoarding resources are two completely different things; certainly nobody needs the amount of food or medicine or houses that can be bought with that much money, but that's not what we're talking about here. Under a capitalist system money is fundamentally power, so the obligation is to use it for the common good, not to get rid of it like it's painted with radium. Most rich people won't do that (if they even know what the common good is), which is why we tax them so that the money goes somewhere where it can hopefully be spent for the common good and why the ultra-rich are a net negative on society—because they use their money to further exploit the workers and accumulate more money at the expense of everyone else. Skipping over all this and saying "billionaires bad" whenever someone has a billion and one dollars no matter what they're doing with it is a non-sequitur.
So the right way to be a billionaire is to do exactly what Gates does - make a charitable foundation and use that to do your “common good” work.
You can have access to all and control of that money AND invest and spend it wisely AND not worry about taxes.. just set up a charitable foundation that you control. Sure there are limits to how you spend it - but if your intention is to do stuff for the common good anyways = totally easy to do “help people” stuff with charitable foundation money.
Technically that money belongs to the foundation, not to Gates. When he dies the money stays with the foundation and continues to do good stuff.
I cannot think of any non selfish reason for one person to have that much money. If they want to do good with the money they will set up a charitable foundation because that is a much more effective way to accomplish good things with their funds.
If they keep the money as their own it is fair to assume they fall in the “billionaire bad” category, because if they were planning to use it for the common good they would put it in a foundation they control and spend it from there.
Charitable foundation is also kinda morally grey because they could do fuck all to help anything and still be used as a shell for tax evasion