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
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