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A Critical Examination of Bill Gates' Philanthropic Record
sam_handelman writes "The common perception among Slashdotters is that while Bill Gates may cause us some professional difficulties, he makes up for it with an exemplary philanthropic record. His philanthropic efforts may turn out to be not as altruistic as one may think. Edweek, not ordinarily an unfriendly venue for Gates, is running a series of blog post/investigative journalism pieces into what the Gates' foundation is doing, and how it is not always well received by stakeholders."
The common perception among Slashdotters is that while Bill Gates may cause us some professional difficulties, he makes up for it with an exemplary philanthropic record.
Not me. I've voiced my concerns that are not so warmly received.
The short of it is that I think what Gates is doing is great but I don't understand why they buy research facilities in America and not Africa or why all the drug companies that get to sell their cures to Africa are all American. I mean without stability, roads and other infrastructure, Africa is going to constantly need someone else to fix their problems. And the money from the B&G Foundation stays in America invested in American companies that pays out to American companies that provide "cures" for Africa. It will perpetually work that way.
Imagine aliens landed on Earth, took an assessment of us and were saddened to see war, pollution, poverty, etc. So they say they're going to help us and they buy 10 long range matter transmitters from another alien race and give them to Earth. But if we ask them on how to make the transmitters ourselves they just laugh and say "Please, you're still searching for subatomic particles. Plus, you're just going to use them for war if you can make them. And on top of that, you would have to pay sums you cannot fathom to the alien race who invented these machines. When these break, we'll get you some new ones." Meanwhile they're receiving accolades from the galactic senate and Earth remains full of war, pollution, poverty, etc.
It's a horrible truth but the one thing Africa has a lot of is humans. Life is cheap there. If you want to reverse that, you need to introduce stability and then farming and then commerce. There are huge areas where crime, corruption and warlords make it impossible to raise crops. Curing malaria is important but it isn't going to stop that from being the hungriest place on Earth. And it's not going to raise the value of human life there. Gates' idea to fix that is to pair up with Monsanto (surprise another American company with tons of IP). Right. I wonder if they'll patent the seeds they breed that grow well in regions of Africa?
Just like thinking up a new microfinancing system can win you a Nobel Prize, ideas on how to make areas secure and stable will go much further for farming in Africa than importing Monsanto seed with terminator genes.
My work here is dung.
Well I DID read TFA and basically its just the word "foundation" wrapped around a lobbying group. Surprise surprise, rich people that reach the level of Gates, Jobs, and Ellison are greedy self serving douchebags, news at 11.
I mean who didn't know that? while I'll give him credit for using what must be a ripped off copy of Job's old RDF when it came to the foundation, seriously guys, who did NOT know the uber rich are greedy soulless self serving douchebags? You see those of us that DO have a soul, and thus a conscience, couldn't actually stomach sitting on billions of dollars while knowing the guy down the street is praying his 92 Dodge stuck on the side of the road will start because if it don't and he misses a day of work he's gonna be homeless, we just couldn't do it.
Hell I'm not rich by ANY means yet I've given away more computers and more of my time than I could ever count, and not taken a cent off of anything because that is not what it was for it was for making someone else's life a little bit better, for helping some single mom or as I've been doing with the guy downstairs helping a guy who has nothing become computer literate. Has someone like Gates EVER invited someone who had no place to go into his home for Xmas dinner? I doubt it,and before anyone asks yes I have, but I didn't do it for any type of credit or recognition, I did it because it was the right thing to do.
So while I'm glad the RDF is starting to fail on the foundation I'm frankly not surprised its a greedy self serving foundation because i have yet to see a single one of the billionaires that aren't just as I described, more sociopath than normal person by a LONG shot. Hell Jobs fucked over Woz with the Atari sale and he was supposed to be Jobs best friend and without him he would have never had a company, I'm sure if you looked into Gates and Ellison you'd find just as many cases of them royally fucking over people that were honestly trying to be friendly and help them when they were starting out. The pure unadulterated greed required to get to that level, to truly be one of the 1%, just requires a viciousness that most of us thankfully do not possess.
ACs don't waste your time replying, your posts are never seen by me.