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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.

    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.

  • AI will replace routine — freeing people for creativity.

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    sommerset@thelemmy.clubS
    You guys are legit delusional. Bill Gates says this. Bill Gates says AI is doing labor substitution both blue and white collar. https://www.cnn.com/2025/05/11/business/video/bill-gates-donald-trump-tariffs-uncertainty-worry-fareed-zakaria-gps-digvid
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    My cousin partially set his bedroom on fire doing something very similar with the foil from chewing gum. This was in the 1980s though so no one really cared, I'm pretty sure he just got shouted at.
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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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    ulrich@feddit.orgU
    If you want a narrative, look at all the full-price $250k Roadster pre-orders they've been holding onto for like 8 years now with zero signs of production and complete silence for the last...5 years?
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    Being “locked down” is irrelevant for a device used to read and write on. All those devices are also significantly more powerful than this thing. They all also have keyboard attachments readily available across all sizes and prices. Linux isn’t at all necessary for the use cases the author talks about. Windows would be massively overkill.
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    Sure, he wasn't an engineer, so no, Jobs never personally "invented" anything. But Jobs at least knew what was good and what was shit when he saw it. Under Tim Cook, Apple just keeps putting out shitty unimaginative products, Cook is allowing Apple to stagnate, a dangerous thing to do when they have under 10% market share.
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    This is why they are businessmen and not politicians or influencers
  • Microsoft's AI Secretly Copying All Your Private Messages

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    Forgive me for not explaining better. Here are the terms potentially needing explanation. Provisioning in this case is initial system setup, the kind of stuff you would do manually after a fresh install, but usually implies a regimented and repeatable process. Virtual Machine (VM) snapshots are like a save state in a game, and are often used to reset a virtual machine to a particular known-working condition. Preboot Execution Environment (PXE, aka ‘network boot’) is a network adapter feature that lets you boot a physical machine from a hosted network image rather than the usual installation on locally attached storage. It’s probably tucked away in your BIOS settings, but many computers have the feature since it’s a common requirement in commercial deployments. As with the VM snapshot described above, a PXE image is typically a known-working state that resets on each boot. Non-virtualized means not using hardware virtualization, and I meant specifically not running inside a virtual machine. Local-only means without a network or just not booting from a network-hosted image. Telemetry refers to data collecting functionality. Most software has it. Windows has a lot. Telemetry isn’t necessarily bad since it can, for example, help reveal and resolve bugs and usability problems, but it is easily (and has often been) abused by data-hungry corporations like MS, so disabling it is an advisable precaution. MS = Microsoft OSS = Open Source Software Group policies are administrative settings in Windows that control standards (for stuff like security, power management, licensing, file system and settings access, etc.) for user groups on a machine or network. Most users stick with the defaults but you can edit these yourself for a greater degree of control. Docker lets you run software inside “containers” to isolate them from the rest of the environment, exposing and/or virtualizing just the resources they need to run, and Compose is a related tool for defining one or more of these containers, how they interact, etc. To my knowledge there is no one-to-one equivalent for Windows. Obviously, many of these concepts relate to IT work, as are the use-cases I had in mind, but the software is simple enough for the average user if you just pick one of the premade playbooks. (The Atlas playbook is popular among gamers, for example.) Edit: added explanations for docker and telemetry