Sure.
Bill Gates and the Gates Foundation will probably eradicate polio.
Before people jump on the bandwagon about how Gates is evil and problematic, that there are no virtuous billionaires, and a government or an NGO or an equivalent should have been the one to do it… I know. But the question was “name one billionaire that’s done anything good,” and I think it’s pretty difficult to argue that eradicating polio isn’t good.
On same tone, Warren Buffet.
He has also donated billions in the same charity and largely lives controversy free.
The company he’s synonymous with is very much not controversy free
Bill gates is not curing polio, it’s the doctors and scientists that are doing it.
However, one can posit that the Gates Foundation is creating a market for vaccines that aren’t of interest in the industrialized nations.
I’m not sure that subsequent doses are going to be provided as generously as the first ones.
That’s not how vaccines work. The illness is already there, it’s not like people get sick after you introduce a vaccine into the system. So the “market” has always been there and every dose administered is great.
You don’t understand my point.
- Sick people receive vaccines for free or very cheap
- Sick people gets hope of survival to disease, hope which wasn’t previously available.
- Sick people ask their governments to continue receiving vaccines.
- People providing vacciones now are charging a lot more to said governments.
- Profit (which was the whole point, and not any “humanitarian” notions.)
And the market wasn’t there, because unless there’s some way to create high demand and guaranteed payment in poor countries, there’s no profit in said vaccines (or any medication, for that matter; do you see any multinational farmaceutical companies giving much thought to the creation of medicine to cure Chagas disease? And it’s endemic in many areas of South America. But those are poor areas, so the is no profit there).
The problem with your argument is that the Gates foundation is a non-profit. They aren’t trying to make a profit, they’ve burned through tens of billions of dollars in the past 20 years.
Are you arguing that countries should just let people die from polio rather than accept humanitarian aid or am I missing something?
Bill gates, also the guy who spent loads of time on epsteins island banging children. I guess it evens out /s
Source on that?
Pretty easy to find the connections on google. Try it. Start with his divorce and work backward. Just because you love him doesn’t mean he didn’t do bad things.
Ah, the classic ‘Do your own research’
Ahh the classic dismissive “source?”
Anything good?
Then all of them. They are human beings, not black holes of pure evil.
Mark Cuban is a bit of a wall street asshole, but he’s created a drug company to slash the prices of generic drugs for Americans: https://www.npr.org/2022/01/24/1075344246/mark-cuban-pharmacy#:~:text=Billionaire investor and Dallas Mavericks,of its online pharmacy Wednesday.
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OK I’m sorry maybe I’m letting the autism overflow my brain but seeing you just say “wrong” to technically correct statements that answer the question presented here is just so fucking annoying. Ooooo you got so many upbears from fellow Hexbears who dont want to think but just dunk. Getting very frusterated with this community right now.
A single good thing that a single billionaire has done? The Gates foundation fighting malaria. I think that’s good.
Taxing them would do even more good.
Is the topic of the thread called “Should we tax billionaires” or was it “I dare you to name one good thing a billionaire has done”?
Sure but, considering they use only 5% of the money they have for all there “good” projects and invest the ither 95% in fossil fuels. The gates Foundation is really only a little good because the law forces them to use min of 5%, to stay tax exempt. So if they didn’t have to, would they still do it? I doubt that.
Didn’t one of the Koch brothers die? That was pretty cool.
The submarine dude that got rid of a few more in one go?
There’s a lot. In the late 1800s it started becoming something of a tradition for billionaires to move on to philanthropy after their retirement. J.D. Rockefeller was worth several hundred billion dollars in today’s money. He gave away close to 200 billion of it.
A more modern example that people have brought up is Bill Gates.
Good acts do not make a good person. Plenty of billionaires have done good things, but they don’t even come close to outweighing the bad.
I love a quote I read once in a thing about alignment. “If you fix twenty neighbor’s roofs, you’re Jimmy the Helpful Thatcher. But if you eat the neighbor’s daughter, you’re Jimmy the Cannibal, and no amount of additional carpentry assistance will change that.”
Traditionally this joke is:
Bad Scottish Accent Engaged
I build 200 ships, do they call me Seamus the shipbuilder? Nae.
I paint 100 houses, do they call me Seamus the Housepainter? Nae.
But ye fuck one sheep…
A good act does not wash out the bad, nor a bad act the good. Each should have its own reward.
Give them a cookie and the wall
In what order tho?
Crassus invented the fire brigade and his head became a stage prop for the Parthians.
Crassus invented the fire brigade
Didn’t he routinely order his brigade to do nothing until he managed to acquire the burning property (at increasingly decreased cost as the fire raged) from its owner ?
Chuck Freeney. He basically invented “Duty Free” stores and became a billionaire in the process. Then decided he should die “broke” and created The Atlantic Philanthropies secretly staking it with a little over a third of his wealth. In 2020 he closed the organization because he had given away the vast majority of his net worth. Mostly as grants to universities all over the world. He also may have low-key helped fund the IRA.
He’s still got enough to live comfortably, and I’m sure his family is set up nicely.
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What? They’re greedy humans who are doing things that have terrible consequences out of selfishness, not mustache twirling cartoon villains out to destroy the world for destruction’s sake. I’m sure every single billionaire in the world has done something good at some point. That doesn’t justify the kind of wealth disparity that makes their existence possible though.
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Mike Cannon-Brookes (co-founded Atlassian) has set up a 1.5b green fund to invest in green energy projects
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Tony Khan created AEW and seems to genuinely care about his employees. He put on a private plane this week so the wrestlers could attend the funeral of Bray Wyatt and still make it to Dynamite
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Elon Musk. Without him, electric cars wouldn’t be the almost-mainstream thing they are today. We also would be a decade behind on space launch.
//Edit - for everyone down voting me, you may hate the guy today but that doesn’t mean he hasn’t done some useful shit.
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I dont know her name
Jeff bezos ex wife, who has donated a lot of money to charity
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