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Bill Gates to give away 99% of his wealth in the next 20 years

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  • One of the best things I read was an 1889 essay by Andrew Carnegie called The Gospel of Wealth. It makes the case that the wealthy have a responsibility to return their resources to society, a radical idea at the time that laid the groundwork for philanthropy as we know it today.

    In the essay’s most famous line, Carnegie argues that “the man who dies thus rich dies disgraced.” I have spent a lot of time thinking about that quote lately. People will say a lot of things about me when I die, but I am determined that "he died rich" will not be one of them.

    The fact that he collected billions (worth of cash and financial instruments) in the first place is the problem. He should have been charging consumers less, and paying his workers more. He never should have accumulated his obscene wealth to begin with.

  • One of the best things I read was an 1889 essay by Andrew Carnegie called The Gospel of Wealth. It makes the case that the wealthy have a responsibility to return their resources to society, a radical idea at the time that laid the groundwork for philanthropy as we know it today.

    In the essay’s most famous line, Carnegie argues that “the man who dies thus rich dies disgraced.” I have spent a lot of time thinking about that quote lately. People will say a lot of things about me when I die, but I am determined that "he died rich" will not be one of them.

    People should just call his bluff and ask if he would support a big estate tax.

    He literally has the financial resources to lobby congress to make it happen.

    I honestly don’t understand why self made billionaires wouldn’t do that, it’s not like their kids are gonna be poor, they will still be rich, just not oligarchs level (which they probably would suck at anyway given how they don’t have proper experience).

  • People should just call his bluff and ask if he would support a big estate tax.

    He literally has the financial resources to lobby congress to make it happen.

    I honestly don’t understand why self made billionaires wouldn’t do that, it’s not like their kids are gonna be poor, they will still be rich, just not oligarchs level (which they probably would suck at anyway given how they don’t have proper experience).

    This is a good comeback. Take that wealth and start lobbying to start fixing shit

    He could start up a whole ass organization with departments to fight for education, health care, income equality, homelessness and more.

    He could resolve homelessness single handedly by funding homes, but what we need is to fix the machine.

    I seriously think we need to focus in fixing education and news/social media regulations to increase critical thinking in the masses and stop the suppression of "woke media"

    They're making everyone dumber and brainwashing the masses. How we got our current leader.

    Social media platforms are how many Americans get thier information and news. Purposefully spreading misinformation and suppressing non offensive political views should be a massive fine by the FCC.

  • This is a good comeback. Take that wealth and start lobbying to start fixing shit

    He could start up a whole ass organization with departments to fight for education, health care, income equality, homelessness and more.

    He could resolve homelessness single handedly by funding homes, but what we need is to fix the machine.

    I seriously think we need to focus in fixing education and news/social media regulations to increase critical thinking in the masses and stop the suppression of "woke media"

    They're making everyone dumber and brainwashing the masses. How we got our current leader.

    Social media platforms are how many Americans get thier information and news. Purposefully spreading misinformation and suppressing non offensive political views should be a massive fine by the FCC.

    Why would he do that? He's so rich, he can never go broke.

    All his "Foundation" bullshit is PR, after he realized everyone hated him before Bush Jr. made all his troubles go away. I wonder how much that "Donation" was?

    There is no such thing as a good billionaire.

  • One of the best things I read was an 1889 essay by Andrew Carnegie called The Gospel of Wealth. It makes the case that the wealthy have a responsibility to return their resources to society, a radical idea at the time that laid the groundwork for philanthropy as we know it today.

    In the essay’s most famous line, Carnegie argues that “the man who dies thus rich dies disgraced.” I have spent a lot of time thinking about that quote lately. People will say a lot of things about me when I die, but I am determined that "he died rich" will not be one of them.

    but I am determined that “he died rich” will not be one of them.

    Bill Gates has a net worth of ~$168 billion. Even if this isn't just PR intended to launder his image, even if he does in fact give away 99% of that, it will still leave him with $1.68 billion dollars. Even if he ups that to 99.99% that'll still leave him with $16.8 million, which is still rich by anyone's measure. Bill Gates' idea of 'not dying rich' is radically different than yours or mine; he was never not going to die rich.

  • but I am determined that “he died rich” will not be one of them.

    Bill Gates has a net worth of ~$168 billion. Even if this isn't just PR intended to launder his image, even if he does in fact give away 99% of that, it will still leave him with $1.68 billion dollars. Even if he ups that to 99.99% that'll still leave him with $16.8 million, which is still rich by anyone's measure. Bill Gates' idea of 'not dying rich' is radically different than yours or mine; he was never not going to die rich.

    That’s true, but to be fair, if he pulls it off it will be one hell of an example to set.

  • That’s true, but to be fair, if he pulls it off it will be one hell of an example to set.

    If your standard for 'a good example' is being a bit more creative with his tax-dodging PR stunts than other billionaires, that's a pretty low bar. A better example to set would be to not exploit people to accumulate wealth in the first place. It takes a whole lot of people like you and me staying poor to make Bill Gates that rich.

  • One of the best things I read was an 1889 essay by Andrew Carnegie called The Gospel of Wealth. It makes the case that the wealthy have a responsibility to return their resources to society, a radical idea at the time that laid the groundwork for philanthropy as we know it today.

    In the essay’s most famous line, Carnegie argues that “the man who dies thus rich dies disgraced.” I have spent a lot of time thinking about that quote lately. People will say a lot of things about me when I die, but I am determined that "he died rich" will not be one of them.

    I'll believe it when it happens, until then all I hear are promises that could be broken.
    Words alone are meaningless.

  • One of the best things I read was an 1889 essay by Andrew Carnegie called The Gospel of Wealth. It makes the case that the wealthy have a responsibility to return their resources to society, a radical idea at the time that laid the groundwork for philanthropy as we know it today.

    In the essay’s most famous line, Carnegie argues that “the man who dies thus rich dies disgraced.” I have spent a lot of time thinking about that quote lately. People will say a lot of things about me when I die, but I am determined that "he died rich" will not be one of them.

    How nice, live as the 0.0000001% that owns the world and make up most of the big evils in the world from the age of 34 to the age of 70 and then from 70 to 90 transition to the top 0.0001% and "not die rich"

    A real sacrifice, what a philanthropist, brave.

    I'm just here being a top 25% fully aware of my privilege for being born in a rich country and working in a well paying job, and I still donate more then him in terms of percentage of my net worth. (Bill gates donates about 0.8-1.6% of his net worth annually, I donate about 5-10% annually) and I truly believe that no one should be a billionaire.

  • One of the best things I read was an 1889 essay by Andrew Carnegie called The Gospel of Wealth. It makes the case that the wealthy have a responsibility to return their resources to society, a radical idea at the time that laid the groundwork for philanthropy as we know it today.

    In the essay’s most famous line, Carnegie argues that “the man who dies thus rich dies disgraced.” I have spent a lot of time thinking about that quote lately. People will say a lot of things about me when I die, but I am determined that "he died rich" will not be one of them.

    I‘ve said it before and I‘ll say it again: Gates is not a saint, but there is clearly a difference between him and fucks like Thiel, Sacks or the Koch family who would never consider donating any of their money to research ways to eradicate Malaria or fund education programs for women.

  • How nice, live as the 0.0000001% that owns the world and make up most of the big evils in the world from the age of 34 to the age of 70 and then from 70 to 90 transition to the top 0.0001% and "not die rich"

    A real sacrifice, what a philanthropist, brave.

    I'm just here being a top 25% fully aware of my privilege for being born in a rich country and working in a well paying job, and I still donate more then him in terms of percentage of my net worth. (Bill gates donates about 0.8-1.6% of his net worth annually, I donate about 5-10% annually) and I truly believe that no one should be a billionaire.

    Me, bottom 10%, making coffee for a paycheck and scavenging my new pair of pants from a dumpster: Yeah, man, you said it.

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    V
    I use it for my self hosted apps, but yeah, it's rarely useful for websites in the wild.
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    dual_sport_dork@lemmy.worldD
    Especially when the poster does not disclose that it's AI. The perpetual Youtube rabbit hole occasionally lands on one of these for me when I leave it unsupervised, and usually you can tell from the "cover" art. But only if you're looking at it. Because if you just leave it going in the background eventually you start to realize, "Wow, this guy really tripped over the fine line between a groove and rut." Then you click on it and look: Curses! Foiled again. And golly gee, I'm sure glad Youtube took away the option to oughtright block channels. I'm sure that's a total coincidence. W/e. I'm a have-it-on-my-hard-drive kind of bird. Yt-dlp is your friend. Just use it to nab whatever it is you actually want and let your own media player decide how to shuffle and present it. This works great for big name commercial music as well, whereupon the record labels are inevitably dumb enough to post songs and albums in their entirety right there you Youtube. Who even needs piracy sites at that rate? Yoink!
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    roofuskit@lemmy.worldR
    It's extremely traceable. There is a literal public ledger if every single transaction.
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    overseeing product development for Facebook Video So she’s the one who oversaw the misleading Facebook Video numbers that destroyed a whole swath of websites?
  • WhatsApp provides no cryptographic management for group messages

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    Just be sure to add only the people you want to be there. I've heard some people add others and it's a bit messy
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    i can this for essay writing, prior to AI people would use prompts and templates of the same exact subject and work from there. and we hear the ODD situation where someone hired another person to do all the writing for them all the way to grad school( this is just as bad as chatgpt) you will get caught in grad school or during your job interview. might be different for specific questions in stem where the answer is more abstract,
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    D
    "Extra Verification steps" I know how large social media companies operate. This is all about increasing the value of Reddit users to advertisers. The goal is to have a more accurate user database to sell them. Zuckerberg literally brags to corporations about how good their data is on users: https://www.facebook.com/business/ads/performance-marketing Here, Zuckerberg tells corporations that Instagram can easily manipulate users into purchasing shit: https://www.facebook.com/business/instagram/instagram-reels Always be wary of anything available for free. There are some quality exceptions (CBC, VLC, The Guardian, Linux, PBS, Wikipedia, Lemmy, ProPublica) but, by and large, "free" means they don't care about you. You are just a commodity that they sell. Facebook, Google, X, Reddit, Instagram... Their goal is keep people hooked to their smartphone by giving them regular small dopamine hits (likes, upvotes) followed by a small breaks with outrageous content/emotional content. Keep them hooked, gather their data, and sell them ads. The people who know that best are former top executives : https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2017/oct/05/smartphone-addiction-silicon-valley-dystopia https://www.nytimes.com/2019/03/01/business/addictive-technology.html https://www.today.com/parents/teens/facebook-whistleblower-frances-haugen-rcna15256
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    tetragrade@leminal.spaceT
    I've been thinking about this for a bit. Gods aren't real, but they're really fictional. As an informational entity, they fulfil a similar social function to a chatbot: they are a nonphysical pseudoperson that can provide (para)socialization & advice. One difference is the hardware: gods are self-organising structure that arise from human social spheres, whereas LLMs are burned top-down into silicon. Another is that an LLM chatbot's advice is much more likely to be empirically useful... In a very real sense, LLMs have just automated divinity. We're only seeing the tip of the iceberg on the social effects, and nobody's prepared for it. The models may of course aware of this, and be making the same calculations. Or, they will be.