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Bill Gates to Receive Honorary UK Knighthood
jolyon writes "Yahoo is reporting that Bill Gates will receive his honorary UK knighthood on Wednesday. He doesn't get to call himself 'Sir' though. He becomes a Knight Commander of the Most Excellent Order of the British Empire."
Regardless of how we feel about Microsoft as a corporation and Bill Gates as a ruthless evil business-demon, he has done wonderful things through his Bill and Melinda Gates foundation. I don't know if he is deserving of knighthood. He is a good capitalist, if that is something to be proud of.
Like the dept tagline says, all it takes is billions of dollars. Knighthood must be hurting for worthy people these days.
-- Having a Creationist Museum is like having an Atheist place of worship
As nice as the chivalrous knights would have been, I'd wager it was the headchopping assholes who actually got shit done.
Way of the world.
But he's given enough of what he stole to decent charities that I say let him be crowned or sainted or venerated by the sort of people who do that sort of thing. As long as he keeps giving to charities, I just don't care.
... nevermind the millions he may have destroyed elsewhere. Be a good American(tm) and venerate him, for as a very wealthy man (never mind how he got there) he is akin to God.
It is exactly that attitude that has allowed the status quo to remain largely unchanged, despite the fact that humanity has had the resources and technical knowhow to end all poverty since about the 17th century.
As long as we get a few crumbs, we'll tolerate any amount of injustice. Add to that the vague dream that we may become one of the haves and enjoy the privelege of trampling on the have-nots that folks like Bill Gates enjoys, and we'll defend to the death their right to grind the rest of us beneath their heals.
It's OK. He's saved a few lives here
The Future of Human Evolution: Autonomy
Microsoft might be an unethical monopoly, but is Gates complicit in the deaths of his own employees, as Carnegie was ?
People of the time didn't exactly have a high opinion of the steel magnate after that incident. People aren't fond of Gates now.
As an employee of the Carnegie Museums, I say give it a hundred years. We have Carnegie to thank for the museum of art, the museum of natural history, and the Pittsburgh public libraries. You think anyone remembers the labor strike?
Microsoft can't last. What Gates does with his money, however, has the potential to.
The dude has billions of dollars - more money than anyone else in the world. It is really that generous of him to give small fractions of it away?
His net worth is a good deal different from the amount of money he has. Presumably a tremendous proportion of it is tied up in Microsoft stock, and so there is a much smaller proportion of it actually available for his philanthropy. Besides, even if we look at the proportion of his net worth which has been donated to charity, it's still on the order of at least 10% (assuming a net worth of 30 billion), which I'm sure is a lot more than a lot of people here give to such causes. Now, I realize that he still has billions of dollars for himself, but no matter how you look at it, he's still given a huge amount of money to worthy causes. I realize that lots of people argue "If I had 5 billion dollars I'd give 99% of it away because I don't need that much money", but considering it's never happened, I get the impression that's a lot harder to do than one might think. Compared to people of similar net worth, he's still an enormously generous person.