EZRA KLEIN v MATT YGLESIAS

They spend a lot of money on a lot of things

hes also caused a lot of chaos in the public health world making people meet his wacky non expert ideas because he thinks hes the smartest person in the world because he has the most money

OK, fine, he sucks, I don't care

(although I would like a source for that)

one down, lag∞n

should also be noted he has more money now than when he pledged to give it all away (non binding) and that most of the money he has given away hes given to his own foundation which hes used to become the single most powerful person in public health, all completely accountable to no one but his beautiful self

one down, lag∞n

― Li'l Brexit (Tracer Hand), Tuesday, April 27, 2021 7:37 PM (thirty-five seconds ago) bookmarkflaglink

grimly draws a line on wall of cell

I'll quit my job tomorrow so I don't have to be associated in any capacity with such an awful man

hate to tell you its awful men all the way down

not trying to indict anyone who doesnt have the power to make governments do things fwiw

You're one of the good ones, though. I can tell.

this may be outdated info but wasn't he also a major shareholder in monsanto while trying to get african countries to implement agriculture programs that required them to buy monsanto seeds. like a one man IMF putting conditions on aid. he's bad. i don't care if people take money from him at their jobs though, whatever puts food on the table.

i at least have never blocked a temporary pause in patent enforcement on life saving drugs xp

harbl, what if I also find it motivating to believe that the organization I work for does good in the world? Should I just forget about that, or?

waaait do you work for the gates foundation

Man, you guys sure know a lot about Bill Gates! Must be hard to keep track of it all!

No, I work for an organization that works with them. (I do not personally work with them.)

ah ok i was gonna feel like i wouldve liked to know that before we started lol, anyway i dont know anything about your job but obvs its possible to do good things with gates money, its still green, i mean id take it if hes giving, but overall his track record/ideology pretty bad imho

i don't know, do you just believe it because it makes you feel good? i think that's what people are struggling with on various threads. they aren't pointing it out for the purpose of making you feel bad.

tbh if i had known i was shitting on both your favorite podcaster and your job i prob wouldve picked just one

It's fine, it's pretty tangential to my job, tbh, I just have to write/edit stuff sometimes that approvingly refers to the Foundation's work

ok i hope i have not caused you to feel bad about your job or listening habits, you have always seemed like a good decent person to me

But I do prefer to feel good about the work I do. I mean, in general, I prefer to feel good about the writers I read and the politicians I vote for and the podcasts I listen to. I don't like being bummed out all the time. Today was kind of a bummer for me, tbqh.

xp It's OK. I don't blame you.

yeah understandable re bummer shit, i would say we live in bummer times which is true, but i dont think that means we have to be bummers ourselves, at least not all the time, tho obvs its not easy

fwiw i just asked my dr. friend who has worked for the cdc and others in senegal/guinea/niger/nigeria/ghana/togo/south africa/indonesia/cambodia/etc what he thinks of the gates foundation

his response was 'big swinging dicks who do better than most'

jaymc nobody here wants to make you bummed out! but things like this:

Man, you guys sure know a lot about Bill Gates! Must be hard to keep track of it all!

― jaymc, Wednesday, April 28, 2021 9:46 AM (twenty-two minutes ago)

-- read a lot like "I am bummed out by facts, which I would rather avoid, so people who do not avoid them suck."

International development is a very treacherous field. Some shitty things happen due to aid organizations Implementing not well thought out ideas, but some have done a lot of good. The problem is that most of the good actors in these organizations are really held hostage by the donors desires

fwiw i just asked my dr. friend who has worked for the cdc and others in senegal/guinea/niger/nigeria/ghana/togo/south africa/indonesia/cambodia/etc what he thinks of the gates foundation

his response was 'big swinging dicks who do better than most'

― mookieproof, Wednesday, April 28, 2021 1:11 AM (two minutes ago) bookmarkflaglink

i very much doubt the "big swinging" part of this is true.

Like, "I want to focus on good things done by (x) billionaire or interesting ideas introduced to me by (y) pundit" is a perfectly fine attitude to have. You seem to be having a problem with personally applying "...and I don't care / do compartmentalise about the bad stuff they also do or write," and blaming other people who do care, or who eyeroll, about it. You express that you actively want to believe in the overwhelming good intentions of these people, and of politicians, and seem opposed to compartmentalising their good actions ...perhaps because that inherently acknowledges the need to exclude other words and actions?

xp lol map

This Epstein case is horrific and the young women deserve justice. It is quite likely that some of our faves are implicated but we must follow the facts and let the chips fall where they may - whether on Republicans or Democrats. #WeSaidEnough #MeToo https://t.co/2mvskwQwW1

— Christine Pelosi (@sfpelosi) July 7, 2019

I remembered Pelosi’s wording as “problematic faves” the real thing isn’t quite as good.

Also Gates has totes skated on Epstein.

the phrase "some of our faves are implicated" has been stuck in my head forever, it's so perfect

Hasn't nearly everyone "skated on Epstein" because he and Maxwell cultivated connections for the sake of the size of the network, rather than direct influence, and there's not much evidence of most of the fame-os on his flight logs being implicated in anything more untoward than Matt Groening having gnarly feet?

i think that is plausible, not ready to conclude gates is a pedo yet based on what i've seen. bill clinton is another thing though.

xp lol that is completely incomprehensible to me

Gates laundered donation money for Epstein years after his conviction. His ties were a bit deeper than Chris Tucker.

I don’t think this pegs him as a pedo, just an amoral narcissist whose sole true passion is self-aggrandizement at any cost.

the phrase "some of our faves are implicated" has been stuck in my head forever, it's so perfect

― superdeep borehole (harbl), Tuesday, April 27, 2021 8:34 PM (twenty-four minutes ago) bookmarkflaglink

epic post for sure

the fact that so many of the masters of the universe were still involved with epstein after he was convicted of child prostitution is just so utterly damning of their whole thing

i'm not a particular fan of bill or melinda, and jaymc makes an easy target because he's nice and will blame himself first . . . but to my knowledge lag∞n/milo etc. have no experience in public health whatsoever and are just 'rich people incapable of anything even minimally positive'

his organization has done 'a lot of good,' shouldn't we treat that good as a balance sheet with all the harm the acquisition of $80 billion caused in the first place?

you are absolutely permitted to keep bill gates out of heaven for his acquisitiveness, but we cannot now go back and change that. (although i might support you nationalizing him!) he might even be able to do a wee bit of good with it despite his mighty hubris

if absolutely nothing else, the gates foundation has spent some of its money on mosquito nets instead of shooting a car into space. i don't doubt that each of us would be a better administrator of all that money -- the monsanto thing is unfortunate and bad! -- but that doesn't make it a net negative influence. just a disappointing one

but to my knowledge lag∞n/milo etc. have no experience in public health whatsoever and are just 'rich people incapable of anything even minimally positive'

this is totally dismissive and inaccurate and your whole post is pretty lame and makes no attempt to engage with the info shared in this thread let alone the massive amount available not on this thread

but i guess you got one sentence from an ngo worker so go wild man

k

good responce

but to my knowledge lag∞n/milo etc. have no experience in public health whatsoever and are just 'rich people incapable of anything even minimally positive'

Hope rich people see this, bro.

Defensive responses are so fucking weird - FINE I'LL QUIT MY JOB IF THAT'S WHAT YOU WANT/FINE HE CAN'T GET INTO HEAVEN. No one asked you too/y'all are the ones trying to imprint moral seriousness and value onto Zuckerberg 1.0.

the gates foundation is currently working to deny people covid vaccine in order to protect patent monopolies!!! and its typical of their approach, its not that complicated

i don't like the "no experience" arguments. is everyone else supposed to just withhold judgment regardless of how much other stuff they know? and what do we do about public health experts who feel differently? bill gates is also not a public health expert. i don't have experience as an education expert but i am against charter schools and also against having an unelected rich person influence education policy just because (in part) our failure to tax people like him enough has left schools desperate for money.

most of his bad acts are on more of a governance level than on an actual doing public health level, but i guess im not a governor so

There’s years of reporting on Gates self-dealing and ideologically driven donation schemes!

You don’t have to be a public health expert, you just have to be interested and not like the taste of boot polish.