Why are people not protesting ? Businesses should stop buying Microsoft licenses and that should force Microsoft to remove bill gates completely from the company. Same should be done with Musk, trump etc.

  • FiniteBanjo@feddit.online
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    12 hours ago

    Looks like Bill Gates should see trial. He should have immediately come to the FBI about this if he had any conscience.

    • aeronmelon@lemmy.world
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      11 hours ago

      He betrayed one of his closest friends to become the biggest software company in the world.

      I’m guessing no.

      • FiniteBanjo@feddit.online
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        10 hours ago

        He also donated 99% of his income to charity including bringing food, water, and medicine to impoverished all across Africa and the middle east. He pressured many other wealthy to do the same.

        He needs to see trial for his crimes but you can’t blame people for thinking he is the best billionaire.

        • BarneyPiccolo@lemmy.today
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          35 minutes ago

          Microsoft could have shared the company’s wealth with the employees who actually EARNED the money and made the company successful, but instead it all accumulated with the guy who mostly said “That’s a good idea, go do that,” (while only being successful about 50% of the time), and kept ALL the money for that “work,” while paying the people who did the actual work as little as he could legally get away with.

          • FiniteBanjo@feddit.online
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            27 minutes ago

            So, the thing about that assertion is, Bill Gates wealth came from his ownership of shares of the company, Microsoft.

            It’s not that Bill has been funneling all the income of the company into his pockets, no, it’s that when he sells shares of the company then other people are willing to pay massive sums for it because everyone has collectively agreed the company is extremely valuable.

            This sort of wealth is why the DNC propose an unrealized gains tax for the rich.

        • melfie@lemy.lol
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          51 minutes ago

          The Gates foundation started over 25 years ago and his net worth is still $124 billion. He’s going to give it all away and stop hoarding wealth any day now, though.

          • BarneyPiccolo@lemmy.today
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            24 minutes ago

            When I was a kid, I had a Scrooge McDuck comic book in which Scrooge had a serious problem - he was accumulating money faster than he could build vaults to hold it all. So he took Donald, and the nephews Hewey, Dewey, and Louie, on a cross country road trip, to try and spend as much money as they could.

            They threw money around everywhere they went. If they got a bug on the windshield, they’d buy a new car. When they got hungry, they’d eat in the most expensive restaurants they could find. Once, they even invited an entire Duck Scouts troop to eat with them.

            When they finally got home, Scrooge found his company officers in a crisis. While Scrooge was on vacation with his family, it seemed that someone had traveled across the country, buying luxury cars at Scrooge’s car dealerships, eating enormous expensive meals in his restaurants, etc. Now they had even more money than before, and his financial “crisis” had only increased.

            Scrooge’s attempt at spending a significant amount of his money had only resulted in creating even more wealth. Modern billionaires are a lot like that. They have so much, they can’t get rid of it if they tried.

            Every billionaire residing in or visiting America should have to pay a million dollars a day in rent to United States, to be used to fund Medicare 4 All and UBI, over and above their tax burden.

          • FiniteBanjo@feddit.online
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            24 minutes ago

            Selling stocks is also income, the statement is in past tense, to date Bill has donated hundreds of billions of dollars.

            • Knock_Knock_Lemmy_In@lemmy.world
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              9 minutes ago

              Selling stocks is also income

              No, that is liquidating capital. It attracts capital gains tax, not income tax.

              Also that would imply he’s sold 99% of his stocks, which is also false.

              • FiniteBanjo@feddit.online
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                6 minutes ago

                The only way it would imply that he sold 99% of his stocks is if I had said he donated all of his wealth, which is not at all what I said. I said he donated income and he did, multiple hundreds of billions of his income.

        • resipsaloquitur@lemmy.world
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          8 hours ago

          The guy that thought union-busting was the key to improving education and campaigned hard to keep Covid vaccines under patent?

          Yeah, man, keep licking those billionaire boots.

          • FiniteBanjo@feddit.online
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            7 hours ago

            If by campaigned hard you mean backpedaled immediately then yes, that’s the guy. His foundation also paid billions to distribute the vaccine at no cost.

            • BenderRodriguez@lemmy.world
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              6 minutes ago

              People here are looking for someone to hate right now and your getting down voted for submitting facts. There’s always a lot of bandwagoning on this site.

              There’s no certification when it comes to bad and good. Sometimes evil assholes can do good things and vice versa.

              Life exists mostly in the grey area. The court of the Internet is black and white and arguments here forget that. Unless you’re Trump, Musk, or Bezos them fuckers are straight up evil.

          • FiniteBanjo@feddit.online
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            5 hours ago

            His “propoganda” helped people, saved millions from death or suffering. If you think my statement was false then who do you believe is the best out of all the billionaires?

              • FiniteBanjo@feddit.online
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                12 minutes ago

                Her entire networth is less than a fifth of the amount that Bill Gates has donated, her donations are 1/10th, and her philanthropy is a part of the Giving Pledge that Gates created.

                Almost all of her donations were exclusively US based and focused charities unlike how the Gates Foundation helps the worlds most vulnerable peoples.

            • verdi@tarte.nuage-libre.fr
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              3 hours ago

              No billionaire is the best, they should all disappear. Gates, through his tenure at the foundation, delayed anti-malaria research for a decade because he sponsored his cronies instead of distributing broadly. Furthermore, his foundation accomplished good in spite of him, not through him.

        • EpicStuff@lemmy.ca
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          9 hours ago

          I think there was something about how the gates foundation is actually not that good, patenting vacciens and other stuff. (too lazy to find links links right now)

          • FiniteBanjo@feddit.online
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            9 hours ago

            They initially opposed a WHO resolution which would have member nations pause or withdraw patents over the Covid19 vaccine but they backpedaled on that shortly after and have spent billions producing and distributing those vaccines.

      • FiniteBanjo@feddit.online
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        12 hours ago

        Never is a pretty strong word, plenty of powerful people got roped into Epstein’s prostitution ring and continued associating with him long after the fact. I want to clarify my stance that while Bill needs to see trial over these allegations, especially if minors were involved, that it does not cancel out the good things his foundation has done for the world.

          • FiniteBanjo@feddit.online
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            2 hours ago

            It’s one thing to say “This man is a criminal who needs to be brought to trial” and a completely different thing to say “This man is pure unconscionable evil.”

            Tons of racists and conspiracy theorists have been railing on Bill Gates for decades because of how he’s spent his money: saving dark skinned people.

        • FreddiesLantern@leminal.space
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          6 hours ago

          I don’t know enough about the whole Bill Gates tied into Epstein saga. But I will say this=> it kinda reads like “oh noez, I messed up, better do some good in the world to clean up my image preemptively”.

          That kinda money just doesn’t happen squaky clean. It doesn’t. Visiting Epstein’s island… at that point he should’ve known he was treading onto the wrong side of history.

          • FiniteBanjo@feddit.online
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            5 hours ago

            That’s nonsequitur to my comment, I’m saying despite his crimes and being a criminal, he is at least more moral than any other billionaire in existence, to say he has never had any conscience is not accurate.

            Also, the new information released has, afaik, not mentioned any specifics about places, times, or identities of the girls involved, so as of yet we don’t know that he has ever been to the island.