If Bill Gates spent $1 million every day
August 17, 2024 7:01 AM Subscribe
According to Forbes, his current net worth is $130 billion. If Bill Gates spent $1 million every day, it would take him over 355 years to spend his fortune.
yeah that is amazing, giving nearly 27% of his wealth to charity make him number #1 billionaire although he is not.
posted by Redmoss at 7:21 AM on August 17 [1 favorite]
posted by Redmoss at 7:21 AM on August 17 [1 favorite]
I guess the $1mil a day for 355 years sort of helps understand the big number but honestly if he's making even a paltry 4% return on investments he would be making approximately $10 million a day right? Is my math wrong?
posted by Wretch729 at 7:24 AM on August 17 [16 favorites]
posted by Wretch729 at 7:24 AM on August 17 [16 favorites]
Wow, it's almost like you can give some money away and still be a bad person who hoards wealth.
posted by SaltySalticid at 7:25 AM on August 17 [46 favorites]
posted by SaltySalticid at 7:25 AM on August 17 [46 favorites]
The human brain does not easily grasp the difference in scale between a million and a billion.
One million seconds is about 11.5 days.
One billion seconds is about 31.5 years.
As a thought experiment, if you earned enough to set aside $10,000 a day, you'd have had to start saving over 35,000 years ago to amass 130 billion.*
Billionaires should not exist. They are a danger to us all.
*Please don't get all 'well akshually' about compound interest and investing stuff. Just don't. For one thing, there were no banks in the heart of the last ice age. (This does assume of course that my quick math is correct—never a safe assumption. Feel free to correct that.)
posted by los pantalones del muerte at 7:26 AM on August 17 [39 favorites]
One million seconds is about 11.5 days.
One billion seconds is about 31.5 years.
As a thought experiment, if you earned enough to set aside $10,000 a day, you'd have had to start saving over 35,000 years ago to amass 130 billion.*
Billionaires should not exist. They are a danger to us all.
*Please don't get all 'well akshually' about compound interest and investing stuff. Just don't. For one thing, there were no banks in the heart of the last ice age. (This does assume of course that my quick math is correct—never a safe assumption. Feel free to correct that.)
posted by los pantalones del muerte at 7:26 AM on August 17 [39 favorites]
Or he could contribute significantly to the USD $7 billion that the Bill and Melinda Gates foundation donates each year.
Billionaire's donations should be replaced with progressive taxation.
posted by signal at 7:41 AM on August 17 [61 favorites]
Billionaire's donations should be replaced with progressive taxation.
posted by signal at 7:41 AM on August 17 [61 favorites]
And yet I can’t get Microsoft Teams to load reliably on any given weekday.
posted by ryanshepard at 7:43 AM on August 17 [32 favorites]
posted by ryanshepard at 7:43 AM on August 17 [32 favorites]
There should be no such thing as a billionaire in a just society. It's more money than anyone could spend in a lifetime of ridiculous indulgence. Hoard all you want, up to $999,999,999 for the sake of argument, then the rest goes for taxes, you still get to lead a ridiculously indulgent life, and the rest of us get to have nice things like schools and roads. (Also, if we didn't incentivize amassing these completely ridiculous hoards, maybe people wouldn't try so hard to get them by creating monopolies and exploiting workers and all of the other things one has to do to get that rich.)
posted by Daily Alice at 7:44 AM on August 17 [33 favorites]
posted by Daily Alice at 7:44 AM on August 17 [33 favorites]
I'd suggest talking about the "net wealth" rather than "net worth" of these people. A person's worth doesn't depend on how much money they control.
Just a personal opinion of mine.
posted by biogeo at 8:12 AM on August 17 [19 favorites]
Just a personal opinion of mine.
posted by biogeo at 8:12 AM on August 17 [19 favorites]
Billionaire, Nerd, Saviour, King — what is the truth about Bill Gates? [ungated] - "Anupreeta Das investigates the power of Microsoft co-founder to shape our world — and asks: is it effective and accountable?" (Behind Bill Gates, yt)
-Warren Buffett warns Gates Foundation there is no guarantee his support of the charity will continue once he's gone: 'No money coming after my death'
-Musk, Gates, Bezos: Meet the Gen Z and millennial heirs now coming into their own — and set to inherit billions
-Ballmer Is Richer Than Gates, a First for Microsoft Billionaires
posted by kliuless at 8:42 AM on August 17 [2 favorites]
-Warren Buffett warns Gates Foundation there is no guarantee his support of the charity will continue once he's gone: 'No money coming after my death'
-Musk, Gates, Bezos: Meet the Gen Z and millennial heirs now coming into their own — and set to inherit billions
-Ballmer Is Richer Than Gates, a First for Microsoft Billionaires
posted by kliuless at 8:42 AM on August 17 [2 favorites]
Just for illustrative purposes (I'm certain things are *much* more egregious now thatn c.4 years ago when this came out), let's wheel this out again.
posted by aesop at 8:46 AM on August 17 [9 favorites]
posted by aesop at 8:46 AM on August 17 [9 favorites]
I always wondered this about people like this. When you have this much money, the amount of good you could do with it is immense. But they don't. You would think some of them, just for PR reasons, would. The Robber Barons built libraries and museums and stuff. Half the small towns in the country have a Carnegie library.
100,000 dollars would solve most people's problems. People like Bill Gates could just walk around every day handing out wrapped bundles of ten thousand dollar bills. Financially he wouldn't even notice it. None of them do anything of the sort.
posted by Ray Walston, Luck Dragon at 9:00 AM on August 17 [27 favorites]
100,000 dollars would solve most people's problems. People like Bill Gates could just walk around every day handing out wrapped bundles of ten thousand dollar bills. Financially he wouldn't even notice it. None of them do anything of the sort.
posted by Ray Walston, Luck Dragon at 9:00 AM on August 17 [27 favorites]
No one has ever earned a billion dollars.
posted by Faint of Butt at 9:25 AM on August 17 [47 favorites]
posted by Faint of Butt at 9:25 AM on August 17 [47 favorites]
It's the kind of thing that makes you wonder why they're so addicted to accumulating more. But I mean, why do weird old people collect dozens of cats? If they could collect millions, or billions of cats, would they? And what would they do if you tried to take one away?
posted by kittens for breakfast at 9:35 AM on August 17 [5 favorites]
posted by kittens for breakfast at 9:35 AM on August 17 [5 favorites]
The stupid thing is his billions came producing and bringing to market a critical set of useful things -- Windows itself was responsible for a measurable*chunk of the $40k per-worker (2024 dollars) of GPD rise between 1990 and 2008 . . . I'd say $1000/yr or so??
I also think computerization has greatly moderated the recessionary tendencies of the traditional business cycle (we didn't have much space in the house so my dad plopped on my bedroom desk the ol' MS-DOS HP 150 running the company gave him to help his managerial tasks ca. 1983).
The network effect of being the common OS and API provider were immense, so the first company to force its way into it (by hook or crook) was going to collect a ton of money in rents.
MSFT has 10X'd** (~6X from the 2000 local maxima oddly enough) one more time since billg stepped down in 2014, but unlike 1980 - 2000*** its monopolistic position in PCs hasn't really harmed the wider technology ecology at all AFAICT. Microsoft is largely coasting on its legacy position, bolstered by its aggressive move to cloud integration since 2014, to cement the productivity gains LANs, WANs, and the internet gave the company in the 80s and 90s.
Being a Mac aficionado since after the Mac II came out I personally never had to deal with Microsoft's crappy output and business practices without actually getting paid to do so.
Microsoft in the 80s used the Mac as the target for their Windows team to copy (and still do, Windows 11 is a slavish copy of earlier macOS design sensibilities) and part of that was developing decent software for the Mac (well Excel and Internet Explorer at least).
apple.com was registered in 1987 vs. microsoft.com in 1991 and that shows the typical lack of tech leadership at Micros~1. AFAICT if Micros~1 never existed we'd still be where we're at in the IT space since they never led on anything, only followed the leader, stealing what they could as they went.
I'm typing this on an ARM MacBook in Safari. I guess in this tech stack in front of me we can thank Microsoft for pioneering AJAX 20-odd years ago, that turned out to be a great idea, well the "AJ" part at least. But other than that it's pretty quite amazing how they managed to miss the desktop publishing, internet, search, touchphone, and AI waves yet here they are still #2 behind Apple's $3.4T market cap.
But I do like my OpenAI and am rather optimistic that it will replace my current job in 5-10 years. I plan on retiring in 2026 so no skin off my nose!
*if we had better instrumentation
** P/E ratio has 3Xd and income taxe rate has halved (from 22% to ~13%) to account for a lot of this rise
*** MSFT market cap rose from $80B in 1995 to $500B in 2000
posted by torokunai at 9:38 AM on August 17 [2 favorites]
I also think computerization has greatly moderated the recessionary tendencies of the traditional business cycle (we didn't have much space in the house so my dad plopped on my bedroom desk the ol' MS-DOS HP 150 running the company gave him to help his managerial tasks ca. 1983).
The network effect of being the common OS and API provider were immense, so the first company to force its way into it (by hook or crook) was going to collect a ton of money in rents.
MSFT has 10X'd** (~6X from the 2000 local maxima oddly enough) one more time since billg stepped down in 2014, but unlike 1980 - 2000*** its monopolistic position in PCs hasn't really harmed the wider technology ecology at all AFAICT. Microsoft is largely coasting on its legacy position, bolstered by its aggressive move to cloud integration since 2014, to cement the productivity gains LANs, WANs, and the internet gave the company in the 80s and 90s.
Being a Mac aficionado since after the Mac II came out I personally never had to deal with Microsoft's crappy output and business practices without actually getting paid to do so.
Microsoft in the 80s used the Mac as the target for their Windows team to copy (and still do, Windows 11 is a slavish copy of earlier macOS design sensibilities) and part of that was developing decent software for the Mac (well Excel and Internet Explorer at least).
apple.com was registered in 1987 vs. microsoft.com in 1991 and that shows the typical lack of tech leadership at Micros~1. AFAICT if Micros~1 never existed we'd still be where we're at in the IT space since they never led on anything, only followed the leader, stealing what they could as they went.
I'm typing this on an ARM MacBook in Safari. I guess in this tech stack in front of me we can thank Microsoft for pioneering AJAX 20-odd years ago, that turned out to be a great idea, well the "AJ" part at least. But other than that it's pretty quite amazing how they managed to miss the desktop publishing, internet, search, touchphone, and AI waves yet here they are still #2 behind Apple's $3.4T market cap.
But I do like my OpenAI and am rather optimistic that it will replace my current job in 5-10 years. I plan on retiring in 2026 so no skin off my nose!
*if we had better instrumentation
** P/E ratio has 3Xd and income taxe rate has halved (from 22% to ~13%) to account for a lot of this rise
*** MSFT market cap rose from $80B in 1995 to $500B in 2000
posted by torokunai at 9:38 AM on August 17 [2 favorites]
Numbers like these are helpfully useless, because at this scale it's really not helpful to think about Bill Gates' wealth as money, that is, tokens of value exchanged for labor and goods.
Really, that big number is a way of measuring his control. How much he controls corporations, how much he controls land, how much he controls credit. Indirectly and ultimately, of course, how much he controls governments.
Adding up his net worth in terms of the fractional share of all the various things he controls is almost pointless, since if all those things were liquidated simultaneously the price of all of them (and everything else!) would drop. But it is useful for visualizing how much control he has over the labor of people. Not exactly in the same way that a king or a duke did, once, but... not entirely unlike them, either.
posted by graphweaver at 9:45 AM on August 17 [14 favorites]
Really, that big number is a way of measuring his control. How much he controls corporations, how much he controls land, how much he controls credit. Indirectly and ultimately, of course, how much he controls governments.
Adding up his net worth in terms of the fractional share of all the various things he controls is almost pointless, since if all those things were liquidated simultaneously the price of all of them (and everything else!) would drop. But it is useful for visualizing how much control he has over the labor of people. Not exactly in the same way that a king or a duke did, once, but... not entirely unlike them, either.
posted by graphweaver at 9:45 AM on August 17 [14 favorites]
But then to use this power to do...what? He doesn't seem to have any interest in elected office, he married a model and got divorced, hung out with Jeffrey Epstein for reasons that I'd rather not know, doesn't seem to be especially engaged in arts or culture or spirituality beyond a superficial allegiance to Catholicism...he's kind of a colorless nothing of a person, a sentient pube floating in a public swimming pool. Why? What is even the point of this human being?
posted by kittens for breakfast at 10:05 AM on August 17 [7 favorites]
posted by kittens for breakfast at 10:05 AM on August 17 [7 favorites]
Tom Scott also did a good visualization of this: A Million Dollars vs A Billion Dollars, Visualized: A Road Trip.
posted by davidest at 10:06 AM on August 17 [3 favorites]
posted by davidest at 10:06 AM on August 17 [3 favorites]
...the rest of us get to have nice things like schools and roads...
While I think education is extremely important for people to realize how immoral and illogical it is to allow people to be billionaires, I think enough food, clean water, safe shelter, and health care are even nicer things to have than smooth roads for assholes to drive their BMW or Tesla even faster. If you're a billionaire looking at people in your own country who are going hungry, drinking polluted water, have no safe place to sleep, and have no health care, you're an evil, evil fuck.
I don't give a damn how much Gates donates--The SOB is just gaming the system and he knows it. For every nickel gives he profits getting back money in the form reduced income tax, capital gains, estate and gift taxes, not to mention the intangibles of free advertising and good will. Don't discount the value of good will--that's what keeps the starving peasants from hauling you off to the guillotine before you can finish eating your gateau.
Gates, you have a very nice donation setup and there are people whose lives have been immeasurably impacted in so many ways. Good on you. You need to pay your fucking taxes, because otherwise you can still just rot in hell AFAIC.
posted by BlueHorse at 10:22 AM on August 17 [13 favorites]
While I think education is extremely important for people to realize how immoral and illogical it is to allow people to be billionaires, I think enough food, clean water, safe shelter, and health care are even nicer things to have than smooth roads for assholes to drive their BMW or Tesla even faster. If you're a billionaire looking at people in your own country who are going hungry, drinking polluted water, have no safe place to sleep, and have no health care, you're an evil, evil fuck.
I don't give a damn how much Gates donates--The SOB is just gaming the system and he knows it. For every nickel gives he profits getting back money in the form reduced income tax, capital gains, estate and gift taxes, not to mention the intangibles of free advertising and good will. Don't discount the value of good will--that's what keeps the starving peasants from hauling you off to the guillotine before you can finish eating your gateau.
Gates, you have a very nice donation setup and there are people whose lives have been immeasurably impacted in so many ways. Good on you. You need to pay your fucking taxes, because otherwise you can still just rot in hell AFAIC.
posted by BlueHorse at 10:22 AM on August 17 [13 favorites]
I worked in IT for a long time, using non-MS tools.
I was a Borland guy, so Paradox, Paradox for Windows, and Delphi. All of which were better than Access and Visual fucking Basic. So I pretty much hated MS and Gates.
And then he bought off the designer of Delphi to come work for him and create C#.
But that was decades ago, and my stance on Gates has mellowed over time. He has used his wealth to do a lot of good in the world.
I no longer hate him in the way I hate Bezos and Musk and other billionaires. When the company you founded, that turned into MS, how do you handle that kind of wealth?
A billion is a crazy number.
posted by Windopaene at 10:55 AM on August 17 [2 favorites]
I was a Borland guy, so Paradox, Paradox for Windows, and Delphi. All of which were better than Access and Visual fucking Basic. So I pretty much hated MS and Gates.
And then he bought off the designer of Delphi to come work for him and create C#.
But that was decades ago, and my stance on Gates has mellowed over time. He has used his wealth to do a lot of good in the world.
I no longer hate him in the way I hate Bezos and Musk and other billionaires. When the company you founded, that turned into MS, how do you handle that kind of wealth?
A billion is a crazy number.
posted by Windopaene at 10:55 AM on August 17 [2 favorites]
But I do like my OpenAI and am rather optimistic that it will replace my current job in 5-10 years. I plan on retiring in 2026 so no skin off my nose!
Ugh. I hope you enjoy your retirement. Think of all the dividends you'll get, from all those companies that no longer have to pay people!
posted by ropeladder at 10:57 AM on August 17 [13 favorites]
Ugh. I hope you enjoy your retirement. Think of all the dividends you'll get, from all those companies that no longer have to pay people!
posted by ropeladder at 10:57 AM on August 17 [13 favorites]
So every day, he could pick a random person, pay off their house, and not even notice. It's not a waste of money in the same way all the solar radiation just streaming off into the cosmos from the sun isn't a waste of hydrogen, because what else is anyone gonna do with it?
Billionaires are criminal, no matter what. No exceptions.
posted by fnerg at 11:47 AM on August 17 [9 favorites]
Billionaires are criminal, no matter what. No exceptions.
posted by fnerg at 11:47 AM on August 17 [9 favorites]
With all the 'capitalism bad socialism good' discussion here, I'd like to note another nuance. While no person or corporation should be allowed to be so wealthy or powerful they cannot be governed, these 'too biggies' happen to be useful as projectors to the world of our national 'soft power' (when they aren't colluding or otherwise working against us, of course.)
We have our nukes and so do the other guys. Likewise, we have our oligarchs to stand against theirs as well. And our government has a conflict of interest -- breaking them up makes defending our interests that much harder. And if no one else is leashing their money guys, we would be at a disadvantage.
So the ultra-wealthy like Gates, Ellison, JPM's Dimon et al are monsters, but at least they are to some extent our monsters. Unpleasant but I found it worth thinking about.
posted by zaixfeep at 11:54 AM on August 17 [1 favorite]
We have our nukes and so do the other guys. Likewise, we have our oligarchs to stand against theirs as well. And our government has a conflict of interest -- breaking them up makes defending our interests that much harder. And if no one else is leashing their money guys, we would be at a disadvantage.
So the ultra-wealthy like Gates, Ellison, JPM's Dimon et al are monsters, but at least they are to some extent our monsters. Unpleasant but I found it worth thinking about.
posted by zaixfeep at 11:54 AM on August 17 [1 favorite]
zaixfeepv who's "us" and "them" in your scenario?
posted by signal at 12:12 PM on August 17 [6 favorites]
posted by signal at 12:12 PM on August 17 [6 favorites]
Likewise, we have our oligarchs to stand against theirs as well. And our government has a conflict of interest -- breaking them up makes defending our interests that much harder. And if no one else is leashing their money guys, we would be at a disadvantage.zaixfeep, I am having trouble with understanding this point, I think like signal. Setting aside the issue signal raises, of who ‘us’ vs. ‘them’ are, in what way do our oligarchs ‘stand against’ theirs? (I'd expect oligarchs to display much more class solidarity than national solidarity.) In what way do our oligarchs defend, or help to defend, our interests? It seems to me that the interests that they jealously defend are their own, even when those are demonstrably contrary to the interests of the rest of us.
posted by It is regrettable that at 12:45 PM on August 17 [7 favorites]
Gates' fortune was amassed through ruthless business practices that strangulated or crushed competitors who had better products. Gates *is* way better at personal PR than Ballmer is, haha!
posted by jabah at 12:54 PM on August 17 [9 favorites]
posted by jabah at 12:54 PM on August 17 [9 favorites]
'Us' = USA, because we're talking about Bill Gates. I imagine many governments pull in their wealthiest from time to time to discuss mutual back-scratching; also some 'super patriots' like Ross Perot conduct their own rescue missions and such.
And our banana guys keep the other banana guys out of power in banana republics. Having supremely rich people as citizens could be another nice tool in the soft power tool box.
I was pondering a particular reason, beyond simple corruption, why the USA or any country would be hesitant to reign in their highest wealth folks. Indeed, complacency and corruption are good enough reasons, but maybe not the only reasons. No great intellectual insight here, just a thought I don't really have anyone else to bring up with for mastication (or micturation ;-> )
posted by zaixfeep at 1:05 PM on August 17 [2 favorites]
And our banana guys keep the other banana guys out of power in banana republics. Having supremely rich people as citizens could be another nice tool in the soft power tool box.
I was pondering a particular reason, beyond simple corruption, why the USA or any country would be hesitant to reign in their highest wealth folks. Indeed, complacency and corruption are good enough reasons, but maybe not the only reasons. No great intellectual insight here, just a thought I don't really have anyone else to bring up with for mastication (or micturation ;-> )
posted by zaixfeep at 1:05 PM on August 17 [2 favorites]
Another way to look at my comment... how many different ways can 'Bill Gates is a selfish bad man. Billonaires shouldn't exist. Capitalism is bad.' be said in one discussion? I just wanted to explore other aspects of the issue.
posted by zaixfeep at 1:17 PM on August 17 [3 favorites]
posted by zaixfeep at 1:17 PM on August 17 [3 favorites]
There should be no such thing as a billionaire in a just society... Hoard all you want, up to $999,999,999 for the sake of argument, then the rest goes for taxes
I'll see your $999,999,999 and lower you $990,000,000.
posted by gurple at 1:30 PM on August 17 [1 favorite]
I'll see your $999,999,999 and lower you $990,000,000.
posted by gurple at 1:30 PM on August 17 [1 favorite]
When Bill Gates "gives away" millions to schools in poor areas, he's not "giving away" anything- he and those like him strip-mined society for wealth and now he's using that wealth to buy control over how some of the worst-hit areas provide what used to be publicly-funded and therefore publicly-controlled services. Everything works like this- you extract as much wealth from the system as you can, watch a hollowed-out economy become increasingly incapable of performing the functions of a society, and now because it was you that stole that money, you can spend it on those functions, with the trick being that everything has to work the way you want it to, or else you'll take your stolen billions and leave and nobody gets anything.
And credulous people who fundamentally respect and admire wealth and theft and exploitation as long as they're framed as "accomplishment" and "success" and "achievement" will think you're wonderful and generous and yell at anybody who points out that you're actually just a thief using the money you stole from people as a weapon against their freedom and self-determination and dignity.
posted by Pope Guilty at 2:18 PM on August 17 [18 favorites]
And credulous people who fundamentally respect and admire wealth and theft and exploitation as long as they're framed as "accomplishment" and "success" and "achievement" will think you're wonderful and generous and yell at anybody who points out that you're actually just a thief using the money you stole from people as a weapon against their freedom and self-determination and dignity.
posted by Pope Guilty at 2:18 PM on August 17 [18 favorites]
Didn’t Gates blow a hole through the USA education system with his high stakes testing nonsense?
And he insisted that Covid vaccines be patented, thereby effing over billions of lives.
Best case he is an over enthusiastic puppy playing with a shotgun. Worst case he is a stone cold killa
posted by pdoege at 3:00 PM on August 17 [5 favorites]
And he insisted that Covid vaccines be patented, thereby effing over billions of lives.
Best case he is an over enthusiastic puppy playing with a shotgun. Worst case he is a stone cold killa
posted by pdoege at 3:00 PM on August 17 [5 favorites]
zaixfeepv who's "us" and "them" in your scenario?
Russia's billionaires got their money by being given ownership of the country's natural resource wealth in the ground, directly impoverishing everybody else thereby.
The 1990s didn't have to go this way: https://www.prosper.org.au/2007/11/letter-to-gorbachev/
Steve Jobs made his billions a bit more honestly than the Gates/Ballmer duo . . . the Apple II+/IIe, Macintosh, Laserwriter, NeXT, iMac, iPod, MacBook, iPhone, iPad . . .that's a rather decent run of successful product design and (cough) marketing.
From Apple's IPO value of $100M after the II+ there were 15 doublings to today's market cap, and nobody was contractually forced to buy or use Apple products over this time. They were just better than the competition. Total triumph of 'capitalism' in my book.
Tesla (alas!) is a similar capitalistic success story. CCS2 is not quite as bad charging form factor, but CCS1 was just god-awful and I'm really glad the legacy ICE makers decided to see sense and go with NACS. Elon is a flam-flam man but he did oversee his company successfully get the S, X, 3, and Y out the door and into the market at least (with a nice $7500 federal credit, along with having its factories largely paid for with regulatory credits . . . even in the recently reported quarter said credits basically doubled their meager profits).
Japan Inc similarly created tons of tons of material/consumer goods wealth for us in the late 20th century, but of course nobody knows who their billionaires are unless they share the name of the company founder.
That's the key problem here with Messrs Gates, Ballmer, Jobs, Musk, Bezos, et al. They are the capitalist poster children, both in the good meaning and the original meaning of man, these people are fucked up example that maybe there's some things we can fix about our system still.
posted by torokunai at 3:18 PM on August 17 [1 favorite]
Russia's billionaires got their money by being given ownership of the country's natural resource wealth in the ground, directly impoverishing everybody else thereby.
The 1990s didn't have to go this way: https://www.prosper.org.au/2007/11/letter-to-gorbachev/
Steve Jobs made his billions a bit more honestly than the Gates/Ballmer duo . . . the Apple II+/IIe, Macintosh, Laserwriter, NeXT, iMac, iPod, MacBook, iPhone, iPad . . .that's a rather decent run of successful product design and (cough) marketing.
From Apple's IPO value of $100M after the II+ there were 15 doublings to today's market cap, and nobody was contractually forced to buy or use Apple products over this time. They were just better than the competition. Total triumph of 'capitalism' in my book.
Tesla (alas!) is a similar capitalistic success story. CCS2 is not quite as bad charging form factor, but CCS1 was just god-awful and I'm really glad the legacy ICE makers decided to see sense and go with NACS. Elon is a flam-flam man but he did oversee his company successfully get the S, X, 3, and Y out the door and into the market at least (with a nice $7500 federal credit, along with having its factories largely paid for with regulatory credits . . . even in the recently reported quarter said credits basically doubled their meager profits).
Japan Inc similarly created tons of tons of material/consumer goods wealth for us in the late 20th century, but of course nobody knows who their billionaires are unless they share the name of the company founder.
That's the key problem here with Messrs Gates, Ballmer, Jobs, Musk, Bezos, et al. They are the capitalist poster children, both in the good meaning and the original meaning of man, these people are fucked up example that maybe there's some things we can fix about our system still.
posted by torokunai at 3:18 PM on August 17 [1 favorite]
When you have this much money, the amount of good you could do with it is immense. But they don't. You would think some of them, just for PR reasons, would. The Robber Barons built libraries and museums and stuff
But he does, hence everybody already having the “philanthropy doesn’t make it right” conversation in this thread? Is the question why he spends it on global public health initiatives instead of libraries in Seattle?
posted by atoxyl at 3:22 PM on August 17 [2 favorites]
But he does, hence everybody already having the “philanthropy doesn’t make it right” conversation in this thread? Is the question why he spends it on global public health initiatives instead of libraries in Seattle?
posted by atoxyl at 3:22 PM on August 17 [2 favorites]
zaixfeep: 'Us' = USA, because we're talking about Bill Gates.
So who's "them"?
posted by signal at 3:46 PM on August 17 [3 favorites]
So who's "them"?
posted by signal at 3:46 PM on August 17 [3 favorites]
reviewing https://www.forbes.com/real-time-billionaires I see the non-US entrants are fashion conglomerates (LVHM, Zara), India's Reliance conglomerate, Mexico's telecom monopoly, L'Oréal, then the Nutella fortune which has conglomerated into other food lines , Japan's Uniqlo, Red Bull, Chanel, India's Jindal Steel, Germany's Lidi . . .guess I'll stop with that at Reinhold Würth, he seems like a semi-decent capitalist success story.
Looking at that list I saw that Microsoft under Ballmer/Gates also missed the social media wave too, LOL.
posted by torokunai at 4:16 PM on August 17
Looking at that list I saw that Microsoft under Ballmer/Gates also missed the social media wave too, LOL.
posted by torokunai at 4:16 PM on August 17
Gates' fortune was amassed through ruthless business practices that strangulated or crushed competitors who had better products
Years ago this statement would have been met by outrage here, so I'm happy to see the turnaround. Would be happier still to see Gates face public opprobrium for his personal and professional connections with Jeffrey Epstein, but it's a start.
posted by They sucked his brains out! at 4:34 PM on August 17 [4 favorites]
Years ago this statement would have been met by outrage here, so I'm happy to see the turnaround. Would be happier still to see Gates face public opprobrium for his personal and professional connections with Jeffrey Epstein, but it's a start.
posted by They sucked his brains out! at 4:34 PM on August 17 [4 favorites]
Bill Gates doesn't have $130B. He has a large equity portfolio of Microsoft, Berkshire Hathaway, and a decent bit of land as well. That portfolio is valued based on current market prices. In reality, he has no way of liquidating it for $130B, since the market price of his assets would drop (significantly) if that much sell volume was put on the market.
Up to a certain amount, Gate's wealth could be distributed from dividends. However, at his current rate of donating >$5-$20B per year, he's making that money from selling his assets because the amount exceeds the dividend yield of his assets [*]. For instance, Berkshire Hathaway, a large part of Gates' portfolio, has a 0% yield, and Microsoft has only a 0.72% yield.
When Gate's sells his assets, he is exchanging a stock share for money from someone else on the market. It's likely that somebody else is a large mutual fund and/or pension - ie, the money is coming from typical people like the sort on this website. Forcing Gates to liquidate his assets would literally be a tax on average people.
But hey, I guess it might make people here feel good.
[*] More accurately, it's most likely the foundations he's donating to selling those assets, as a tax avoidance mechanism for Gates.
posted by saeculorum at 6:26 PM on August 17 [4 favorites]
Up to a certain amount, Gate's wealth could be distributed from dividends. However, at his current rate of donating >$5-$20B per year, he's making that money from selling his assets because the amount exceeds the dividend yield of his assets [*]. For instance, Berkshire Hathaway, a large part of Gates' portfolio, has a 0% yield, and Microsoft has only a 0.72% yield.
When Gate's sells his assets, he is exchanging a stock share for money from someone else on the market. It's likely that somebody else is a large mutual fund and/or pension - ie, the money is coming from typical people like the sort on this website. Forcing Gates to liquidate his assets would literally be a tax on average people.
But hey, I guess it might make people here feel good.
[*] More accurately, it's most likely the foundations he's donating to selling those assets, as a tax avoidance mechanism for Gates.
posted by saeculorum at 6:26 PM on August 17 [4 favorites]
He doesn't seem to have any interest in elected office, he married a model and got divorced, hung out with Jeffrey Epstein for reasons that I'd rather not know, doesn't seem to be especially engaged in arts or culture or spirituality
This memory is faulty but, like, in a casually misogynistic kind of way?
From Wikipedia, unless you have a better source:
This memory is faulty but, like, in a casually misogynistic kind of way?
From Wikipedia, unless you have a better source:
French Gates's first job was tutoring children in mathematics and computer programming.[19] After graduation, she became a marketing manager with Microsoft, being responsible for the development of multimedia products.[20] These included Cinemania, Encarta, Publisher, Microsoft Bob, Money, Works (Macintosh) and Word.[20][21] She worked on Expedia, which became one of the most popular travel booking websites. In the early 1990s, French Gates was appointed as General Manager of Information Products, a position which she held until 1996.[22][23] She left Microsoft that year, reportedly, to focus on starting a family.[22]posted by Lenie Clarke at 6:29 PM on August 17 [9 favorites]
Forcing Gates to liquidate his assets would literally be a tax on average people.
the government can own stock in private corporations, too.
I believe Elizabeth Warren has proposed non-voting preferred shares as a form of taxation (chatgpt confirms this was in 2018).
posted by torokunai at 6:34 PM on August 17 [3 favorites]
the government can own stock in private corporations, too.
I believe Elizabeth Warren has proposed non-voting preferred shares as a form of taxation (chatgpt confirms this was in 2018).
posted by torokunai at 6:34 PM on August 17 [3 favorites]
I don't think it's misogynist to misidentify a random person as a model; I'm sure I confused this no doubt wonderful person with the wife of some other obscenely rich weirdo. Why would it be misogynistic to call someone a model? There's nothing wrong with being a model.
posted by kittens for breakfast at 6:36 PM on August 17 [1 favorite]
posted by kittens for breakfast at 6:36 PM on August 17 [1 favorite]
the government can own stock in private corporations, too.
Absolutely!
And that government, to get cash, would have to sell those shares. That sale would occur on a market exchange, and the cash would come from people who aren't Bill Gates. Bill Gates does not have $130B. It's a fiction to think that he is giving money to people, or has money to give. He has stock to give out, that other people pay for. The actual money is not coming from Bill Gates.
posted by saeculorum at 6:37 PM on August 17
Absolutely!
And that government, to get cash, would have to sell those shares. That sale would occur on a market exchange, and the cash would come from people who aren't Bill Gates. Bill Gates does not have $130B. It's a fiction to think that he is giving money to people, or has money to give. He has stock to give out, that other people pay for. The actual money is not coming from Bill Gates.
posted by saeculorum at 6:37 PM on August 17
"When you have this much money, the amount of good you could do with it is immense. But they don't."
We have a malaria vaccine now and a few million children have already been vaccinated with it thanks to Bill Gates.
"The Robber Barons built libraries and museums and stuff. Half the small towns in the country have a Carnegie library."
So you think he should be spending his money on things that make the lives of primarily white people in developed countries marginally more entertaining instead of saving the lives of African children?
posted by Jacqueline at 6:53 PM on August 17 [1 favorite]
We have a malaria vaccine now and a few million children have already been vaccinated with it thanks to Bill Gates.
"The Robber Barons built libraries and museums and stuff. Half the small towns in the country have a Carnegie library."
So you think he should be spending his money on things that make the lives of primarily white people in developed countries marginally more entertaining instead of saving the lives of African children?
posted by Jacqueline at 6:53 PM on August 17 [1 favorite]
>And that government, to get cash, would have to sell those shares
the preferred shares would come with a preferred dividend. Buffett has $300B of cash sitting on his balance sheet, BRK can afford to start paying this dividend should USGOV go this way in the future.
posted by torokunai at 6:55 PM on August 17
the preferred shares would come with a preferred dividend. Buffett has $300B of cash sitting on his balance sheet, BRK can afford to start paying this dividend should USGOV go this way in the future.
posted by torokunai at 6:55 PM on August 17
I do think that the language we commonly use for describing the ultra-rich gives bad intuitions about how wealth works at that scale. Bill Gates does not have $130 billion. Bill Gates controls assets valued at $130 billion.
If the ultra-rich really just hoarded money like Smaug or Scrooge McDuck, then that money would effectively just leave circulation and cause deflation. Which wouldn't be great but we could probably adjust to that. Reality is actually worse. The ultra-rich don't just sit on their wealth, they use it to exert control and influence in society. And doing so doesn't actually deplete their wealth, because that's not how wealth works at that scale. Those $130 billion aren't bills sitting in a bank somewhere, they're ideas in the minds of millions of people who work for businesses or nonprofits that are tied to them, that shackle how their labor and material goods are allocated within our society to the will and whim of a single person.
The Gross World Product is estimated at something like $85 trillion, which means that of the total economic output in labor and material production, for all of humanity, Bill Gates has been granted the ability to control about 0.15% of it. Which may not seem like a whole lot, but we're talking about one person out of 8 billion being granted that much control, with no democratic input.
$130 billion is not about worth, or hoarding, or even in some sense wealth. When it's concentrated like that, it's about power and control. It's a manifestation of oligarchy.
posted by biogeo at 6:58 PM on August 17 [14 favorites]
If the ultra-rich really just hoarded money like Smaug or Scrooge McDuck, then that money would effectively just leave circulation and cause deflation. Which wouldn't be great but we could probably adjust to that. Reality is actually worse. The ultra-rich don't just sit on their wealth, they use it to exert control and influence in society. And doing so doesn't actually deplete their wealth, because that's not how wealth works at that scale. Those $130 billion aren't bills sitting in a bank somewhere, they're ideas in the minds of millions of people who work for businesses or nonprofits that are tied to them, that shackle how their labor and material goods are allocated within our society to the will and whim of a single person.
The Gross World Product is estimated at something like $85 trillion, which means that of the total economic output in labor and material production, for all of humanity, Bill Gates has been granted the ability to control about 0.15% of it. Which may not seem like a whole lot, but we're talking about one person out of 8 billion being granted that much control, with no democratic input.
$130 billion is not about worth, or hoarding, or even in some sense wealth. When it's concentrated like that, it's about power and control. It's a manifestation of oligarchy.
posted by biogeo at 6:58 PM on August 17 [14 favorites]
the preferred shares would come with a preferred dividend.
And that dividend would come from the market valuation of BRK due to decreasing the book value of the company. It would decrease the value of BRK for BRK holders. It would not be much of a tax on Buffett - he "only" owns 16.45% of BRK right now. It would be a tax on the folks that own BRK.
posted by saeculorum at 6:59 PM on August 17 [1 favorite]
And that dividend would come from the market valuation of BRK due to decreasing the book value of the company. It would decrease the value of BRK for BRK holders. It would not be much of a tax on Buffett - he "only" owns 16.45% of BRK right now. It would be a tax on the folks that own BRK.
posted by saeculorum at 6:59 PM on August 17 [1 favorite]
"But then to use this power to do...what? He doesn't seem to have any interest in elected office, he married a model and got divorced, hung out with Jeffrey Epstein for reasons that I'd rather not know, doesn't seem to be especially engaged in arts or culture or spirituality beyond a superficial allegiance to Catholicism...he's kind of a colorless nothing of a person, a sentient pube floating in a public swimming pool. Why? What is even the point of this human being?"
Tell me you don't follow development economics without telling me you don't follow development economics.
His passion is reducing the child mortality rate worldwide. Between what he's funded himself and what he's harangued other billionaires and assorted politicians into funding, he's almost certainly in the top 10 of people in all of history in terms of saving the lives of children.
posted by Jacqueline at 7:02 PM on August 17 [10 favorites]
Tell me you don't follow development economics without telling me you don't follow development economics.
His passion is reducing the child mortality rate worldwide. Between what he's funded himself and what he's harangued other billionaires and assorted politicians into funding, he's almost certainly in the top 10 of people in all of history in terms of saving the lives of children.
posted by Jacqueline at 7:02 PM on August 17 [10 favorites]
The absolute ignorance of what Bill Gates has done for developing countries on display in this thread is shameful.
Has he done some shitty things, both in business and personally? Yes.
Has he also helped save over 100 million lives? Yes.
I'm not always a utilitarian, but once we start talking 100+ million lives -- primarily children's lives -- then at that magnitude, I become a utilitarian. Bill Gates has been a net good in the world.
There's also a ton of ignorance about how wealth actually works at those levels. Once you own enough stock in a company that your sales affect the value of the stock, the estimates of your net worth cease to represent how much money you actually command. If Gates were to attempt to liquidate his wealth and give it away all at once, he would crash several stock prices in the process and the recipients would get far far less than what his current net worth appears to be on paper. He has to be careful about how much he can siphon off each year for charity without selling enough to start a panic that wipes a ton of people out. Like he could probably single-handedly crash the stock market if he ever attempted to convert all his assets to cash at once.
Meanwhile, anyone who thinks billionaires should be giving away more of their fortunes should be applauding Bill Gates. He's the person who inspired Warren Buffet to give most of his fortune away, and since then then the two of them have been peer-pressuring other billionaires to do the same.
It sucks that one person can have that much influence over the economy and social programs. But Bill Gates is not personally responsible for the economic system that allows billionaires to exist. He played the game he was given, and won. Compared to what other winners of the game have done (e.g., Musk), Gates is probably the least-bad billionaire the world has ever seen.
posted by Jacqueline at 7:30 PM on August 17 [7 favorites]
Has he done some shitty things, both in business and personally? Yes.
Has he also helped save over 100 million lives? Yes.
I'm not always a utilitarian, but once we start talking 100+ million lives -- primarily children's lives -- then at that magnitude, I become a utilitarian. Bill Gates has been a net good in the world.
There's also a ton of ignorance about how wealth actually works at those levels. Once you own enough stock in a company that your sales affect the value of the stock, the estimates of your net worth cease to represent how much money you actually command. If Gates were to attempt to liquidate his wealth and give it away all at once, he would crash several stock prices in the process and the recipients would get far far less than what his current net worth appears to be on paper. He has to be careful about how much he can siphon off each year for charity without selling enough to start a panic that wipes a ton of people out. Like he could probably single-handedly crash the stock market if he ever attempted to convert all his assets to cash at once.
Meanwhile, anyone who thinks billionaires should be giving away more of their fortunes should be applauding Bill Gates. He's the person who inspired Warren Buffet to give most of his fortune away, and since then then the two of them have been peer-pressuring other billionaires to do the same.
It sucks that one person can have that much influence over the economy and social programs. But Bill Gates is not personally responsible for the economic system that allows billionaires to exist. He played the game he was given, and won. Compared to what other winners of the game have done (e.g., Musk), Gates is probably the least-bad billionaire the world has ever seen.
posted by Jacqueline at 7:30 PM on August 17 [7 favorites]
So, I actually don't hate Bill Gates. As far as people with obscene levels of wealth go, he certainly has chosen to try to do better things with it than a lot of other oligarchs, including more popular ones like the often-lauded Steve Jobs. And while there are some really important criticisms of how the Gates Foundation operates and the unintended consequences its international development model has had, on the whole I do think it's been a force for good.
But that said, I think it's really important to ask ourselves in what sense this:
is true. Like, I get what you mean, Jacqueline, but at the same time, is he? Is the person who writes the check really owed credit for the work done by the people they pay? Especially when our society is structured to concentrate so much power and influence through such a small number of people that there are relatively few options for who could be writing that check in the first place?
I've seen close up that oftentimes, the titular leader of a team is awarded credit for work they had minimal or no input on, or even worked to obstruct. The hierarchical nature of our social system means that we act as if, and sometimes believe, that the work of a collective belongs to an individual. And I participate in this, myself. One of the things I try to do in my work is make my bosses look good. Not only because it makes them happy with me, but because it means more resources are assigned to them, and that makes more resources available to me. I directly contribute to reinforcing the idea that the effort of a team belongs to its leader, because in the short term that's what gets me what I need to do my job.
So does Bill Gates deserve credit for saving huge numbers of childrens' lives? Or is he just a convenient tool that thousands of humanitarian-minded people have found to use to divert resources away from the fever dream of hypercapitalism and towards important human needs? Or perhaps a bit of both?
I don't think it's important whether anyone hates or loves Bill Gates, honestly. I do think it's important to think critically about the network of power that our society has woven, and who is allowed to sit at the center of that web, and why.
Incidentally, Bill Gates often used to credit Melinda French for turning him away from selfishly spending his money on insignificant frivolities and towards trying to do something important with his money and life. So perhaps she is the one who deserves credit for saving 100 million lives.
posted by biogeo at 7:43 PM on August 17 [14 favorites]
But that said, I think it's really important to ask ourselves in what sense this:
he's almost certainly in the top 10 of people in all of history in terms of saving the lives of children.
is true. Like, I get what you mean, Jacqueline, but at the same time, is he? Is the person who writes the check really owed credit for the work done by the people they pay? Especially when our society is structured to concentrate so much power and influence through such a small number of people that there are relatively few options for who could be writing that check in the first place?
I've seen close up that oftentimes, the titular leader of a team is awarded credit for work they had minimal or no input on, or even worked to obstruct. The hierarchical nature of our social system means that we act as if, and sometimes believe, that the work of a collective belongs to an individual. And I participate in this, myself. One of the things I try to do in my work is make my bosses look good. Not only because it makes them happy with me, but because it means more resources are assigned to them, and that makes more resources available to me. I directly contribute to reinforcing the idea that the effort of a team belongs to its leader, because in the short term that's what gets me what I need to do my job.
So does Bill Gates deserve credit for saving huge numbers of childrens' lives? Or is he just a convenient tool that thousands of humanitarian-minded people have found to use to divert resources away from the fever dream of hypercapitalism and towards important human needs? Or perhaps a bit of both?
I don't think it's important whether anyone hates or loves Bill Gates, honestly. I do think it's important to think critically about the network of power that our society has woven, and who is allowed to sit at the center of that web, and why.
Incidentally, Bill Gates often used to credit Melinda French for turning him away from selfishly spending his money on insignificant frivolities and towards trying to do something important with his money and life. So perhaps she is the one who deserves credit for saving 100 million lives.
posted by biogeo at 7:43 PM on August 17 [14 favorites]
Yeah if we look at in terms of "if this person didn't exist, then how would outcomes change?" then Melinda probably deserves slightly more credit than Bill. If Bill didn't exist, she likely would have found another rich husband to help execute her vision (albeit probably not nearly as effectively), whereas if Melinda didn't exist then Bill probably would have turned into Elon Musk.
I am not crediting Bill Gates as being in the top 10 simply for writing checks, but for how he has succesfully persuaded so many other billionaires and politicians to get on board with his agenda of reducing global poverty and child mortality. He took all the skills he used to acquire unfair unadvantages for Microsoft in business and applied them to pressuring people to fund and otherwise prioritize his social goals.
Bill Gates is a juggernaut at getting what he wants and Melinda Gates aimed that juggernaut at a worthy cause. The two of them together had an outsized effect on lives saved that we usually only see from scientists like Norman Borlaug, Edward Jenner, Jonas Salk, etc. I suspect we will see more examples of this over time as capitalism continues to develop, since finance is the nervous system of capitalism.
posted by Jacqueline at 7:58 PM on August 17 [2 favorites]
I am not crediting Bill Gates as being in the top 10 simply for writing checks, but for how he has succesfully persuaded so many other billionaires and politicians to get on board with his agenda of reducing global poverty and child mortality. He took all the skills he used to acquire unfair unadvantages for Microsoft in business and applied them to pressuring people to fund and otherwise prioritize his social goals.
Bill Gates is a juggernaut at getting what he wants and Melinda Gates aimed that juggernaut at a worthy cause. The two of them together had an outsized effect on lives saved that we usually only see from scientists like Norman Borlaug, Edward Jenner, Jonas Salk, etc. I suspect we will see more examples of this over time as capitalism continues to develop, since finance is the nervous system of capitalism.
posted by Jacqueline at 7:58 PM on August 17 [2 favorites]
“And he insisted that Covid vaccines be patented, thereby effing over billions of lives.“
All the billionaires I know are sadists
posted by waving at 7:59 PM on August 17
All the billionaires I know are sadists
posted by waving at 7:59 PM on August 17
> It would be a tax on the folks that own BRK.
yeah I've been commenting here recently how the fall in corporate tax rates since 2000 has been pushing up market caps 2X.
as for 'the folks', fuck 'em
The wealthiest 10% of Americans own 93% of stocks
posted by torokunai at 8:07 PM on August 17
yeah I've been commenting here recently how the fall in corporate tax rates since 2000 has been pushing up market caps 2X.
as for 'the folks', fuck 'em
The wealthiest 10% of Americans own 93% of stocks
posted by torokunai at 8:07 PM on August 17
"You could do a very simple search to see what he's done to developing countries on metafilter."
I have a degree in economics with a specialization in development economics. I have been following development economics in general for ~30 years and the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation's efforts in particular since its inception. I know far more about this topic than 99+% of other MeFites.
"Can you name ten billionaries? Let alone all of them? The least bad the world has ever seen?"
If I've never heard of them in my thousands of hours of reading on development economics then they can't have done much. Eradicating global poverty is objectively more important than funding cultural entertainment in rich countries.
Bill Gates is unique because of his leadership in development economics, not just the amout of funds he's personally contributed. If he had never existed, there would be huge ripple effects from all the other people who would have never started caring about much less contributing towards reducing child mortality and poverty in developing countries.
posted by Jacqueline at 8:10 PM on August 17 [5 favorites]
I have a degree in economics with a specialization in development economics. I have been following development economics in general for ~30 years and the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation's efforts in particular since its inception. I know far more about this topic than 99+% of other MeFites.
"Can you name ten billionaries? Let alone all of them? The least bad the world has ever seen?"
If I've never heard of them in my thousands of hours of reading on development economics then they can't have done much. Eradicating global poverty is objectively more important than funding cultural entertainment in rich countries.
Bill Gates is unique because of his leadership in development economics, not just the amout of funds he's personally contributed. If he had never existed, there would be huge ripple effects from all the other people who would have never started caring about much less contributing towards reducing child mortality and poverty in developing countries.
posted by Jacqueline at 8:10 PM on August 17 [5 favorites]
The absolute ignorance of what Bill Gates has done for developing countries on display in this thread is shameful.
I have zero love for Bill Gates and even less respect, somehow, for the lovefest he has enjoyed on Metafilter for the last two decades, but the legacy of the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation is complicated with respect to both vaccine safety and vaccine patent law.
While its founders have helped get vaccines distributed and administered for communicable diseases, complications and adverse effects have created serious issues with getting safe vaccines distributed equitably to developing countries, where their NGO has chosen to get in the way of global health organizations or otherwise create roadblocks.
To call what their money has done an absolute, unequivocally positive thing is also a display of ignorance, in its own way, to people who are more than passably familiar with the effects of this foundation. This is not a black-and-white issue and it doesn't serve the discussion any favors to cast it in those terms.
posted by They sucked his brains out! at 8:23 PM on August 17 [3 favorites]
I have zero love for Bill Gates and even less respect, somehow, for the lovefest he has enjoyed on Metafilter for the last two decades, but the legacy of the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation is complicated with respect to both vaccine safety and vaccine patent law.
While its founders have helped get vaccines distributed and administered for communicable diseases, complications and adverse effects have created serious issues with getting safe vaccines distributed equitably to developing countries, where their NGO has chosen to get in the way of global health organizations or otherwise create roadblocks.
To call what their money has done an absolute, unequivocally positive thing is also a display of ignorance, in its own way, to people who are more than passably familiar with the effects of this foundation. This is not a black-and-white issue and it doesn't serve the discussion any favors to cast it in those terms.
posted by They sucked his brains out! at 8:23 PM on August 17 [3 favorites]
If Bill didn't exist, she likely would have found another rich husband to help execute her vision
This is misogynist. She has a computer science background in her own right and met Bill working at Microsoft in that capacity.
posted by Emmy Rae at 8:30 PM on August 17 [8 favorites]
This is misogynist. She has a computer science background in her own right and met Bill working at Microsoft in that capacity.
posted by Emmy Rae at 8:30 PM on August 17 [8 favorites]
"This is misogynist. She has a computer science background in her own right and met Bill working at Microsoft in that capacity."
I know she met Bill while working at Microsoft. My mother also worked there at the same time and we gave Mom shit for years about why she couldn't have been the one to catch Bill's eye. Mom says she wouldn't have wanted to because he smelled bad.
Melinda may have had a computer science background but she didn't have a parent with influence over the board of IBM. Without those sort of nepotistic contacts, she was unlikely to become a billionaire on her own.
Thinking that Melinda could have become a billionaire on her own requires believing that billionaires are self-made and earn their wealth fairly. I don't.
Melinda had neither the contacts nor the necessary moral ruthlessness to become as rich as Bill. Hence the need for a rich spouse to enact her vision.
posted by Jacqueline at 8:40 PM on August 17 [2 favorites]
I know she met Bill while working at Microsoft. My mother also worked there at the same time and we gave Mom shit for years about why she couldn't have been the one to catch Bill's eye. Mom says she wouldn't have wanted to because he smelled bad.
Melinda may have had a computer science background but she didn't have a parent with influence over the board of IBM. Without those sort of nepotistic contacts, she was unlikely to become a billionaire on her own.
Thinking that Melinda could have become a billionaire on her own requires believing that billionaires are self-made and earn their wealth fairly. I don't.
Melinda had neither the contacts nor the necessary moral ruthlessness to become as rich as Bill. Hence the need for a rich spouse to enact her vision.
posted by Jacqueline at 8:40 PM on August 17 [2 favorites]
So your view is that Melinda French's career goal was to marry rich (to a good end of spreading wealth) and to do that she studied computer science and worked at Microsoft?
posted by Emmy Rae at 8:43 PM on August 17
posted by Emmy Rae at 8:43 PM on August 17
I don't think it was her "career goal" -- she most likely went into the field out of sincere interest -- I think being an attractive woman working in a tech company in the 80s meant she could have married almost any of her single heterosexual male coworkers in whatever company she ended up working at, especially given that bad body odor apparently wasn't a turn-off for her.
The odds were good (but the goods were odd).
posted by Jacqueline at 8:53 PM on August 17
The odds were good (but the goods were odd).
posted by Jacqueline at 8:53 PM on August 17
Basically I'm saying that it is very likely she would have ended up with a rich tech husband regardless. Not because she was a gold digger but because she was in the right place at the right time that those were the sort of men she'd be meeting anywhere she worked. And then she would have had the same influence on that guy that she had on Bill, but that guy might not have been as rich or as influential as Bill and thus she might not have made as big of an impact as she did with Bill.
The world is very fortunate that she's the one who married Bill Gates, and the dumbest thing he ever did was screw that up.
posted by Jacqueline at 9:02 PM on August 17 [1 favorite]
The world is very fortunate that she's the one who married Bill Gates, and the dumbest thing he ever did was screw that up.
posted by Jacqueline at 9:02 PM on August 17 [1 favorite]
I have a degree in economics with a specialization in development economics. I have been following development economics in general for ~30 years and the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation's efforts in particular since its inception. I know far more about this topic than 99+% of other MeFites
This should put you in the absolute best position to criticize Bill Gates and about billionaire philanthropy in general but I can see through the other comments that you've made that all of your opinions align with Gates so I won't bother.
I don't know. You can absolutely look at how Bill gates used his enormous wealth and power during covid. One link. Another. Another.
If you want to pretend that Bill Gates is this great billionaire you absolutely can. But like, I'd love for you to link to actual real things that he's actually done to make the world a better place with his wealth. Because like, that's a very difficult challenge.
posted by Neronomius at 9:15 PM on August 17 [3 favorites]
This should put you in the absolute best position to criticize Bill Gates and about billionaire philanthropy in general but I can see through the other comments that you've made that all of your opinions align with Gates so I won't bother.
I don't know. You can absolutely look at how Bill gates used his enormous wealth and power during covid. One link. Another. Another.
If you want to pretend that Bill Gates is this great billionaire you absolutely can. But like, I'd love for you to link to actual real things that he's actually done to make the world a better place with his wealth. Because like, that's a very difficult challenge.
posted by Neronomius at 9:15 PM on August 17 [3 favorites]
Mod note: One comment removed. Don't insult or attack other members.
posted by taz (staff) at 10:54 PM on August 17 [1 favorite]
posted by taz (staff) at 10:54 PM on August 17 [1 favorite]
An oldie but a goodie: the Bill Gates Wealth Index. Pleasantly surprised it is still around, if a little dated in a nostalgic way.
posted by TedW at 11:09 AM on August 18
posted by TedW at 11:09 AM on August 18
The existence of billionaires is an existential threat to both democracy and our survival as a species. No single person should have that much unchecked, unlimited, power.
posted by sotonohito at 11:55 AM on August 18 [2 favorites]
posted by sotonohito at 11:55 AM on August 18 [2 favorites]
Every billionaire is metaphorically hitting the you get a million and a stranger dies button as hard as they can. That they then do some good with the I'll gotten gains does little to offset that.
Even Steve Jobs who it was posited didn't force anyone to give him money could have dispersed the money he was making to the people who actually do the work instead. Paid the people assembling iPhones enough that it didn't drive them to suicide. Pay the artist making music more than they pay themselves. But hey they would not have been able to accumulate a dragon like hoard of cash to the tune of 85 billion dollars.
posted by Mitheral at 3:57 PM on August 20 [3 favorites]
Even Steve Jobs who it was posited didn't force anyone to give him money could have dispersed the money he was making to the people who actually do the work instead. Paid the people assembling iPhones enough that it didn't drive them to suicide. Pay the artist making music more than they pay themselves. But hey they would not have been able to accumulate a dragon like hoard of cash to the tune of 85 billion dollars.
posted by Mitheral at 3:57 PM on August 20 [3 favorites]
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posted by Tell Me No Lies at 7:17 AM on August 17 [3 favorites]