Summary
Bill Gates criticized Elon Musk for his support of far-right politicians, including the UK’s Tommy Robinson and Germany’s AfD party, calling it “insane shit” and accusing Musk of destabilizing political systems.
Gates questioned Musk’s focus on divisive politics while managing global businesses like Tesla and SpaceX.
Gates also expressed concern about wealthy individuals influencing foreign elections.
Musk has faced backlash for controversial actions, including a Nazi salute.
Yeah, no Billie. You’ve caused enough shit with Microsoft, making yourself a billionaire. you don’t get to play the good guy now all of the sudden.
It’s not insane at all. It sucks but it’s completely logical. Musk is just protecting his capital as best he can within a global capitalist system.
It’s like corporate “greedflation” during Covid. Of course they jacked up prices and lied about wholesale costs, thereby wildly inflating profits, because profit motives are what drive our world.
It’s not insane at all. It sucks but it’s completely logical. Musk is just protecting his capital as best he can within a global capitalist system.
No, it’s absolutely insane, and short sighted. You know how much his capital will be in the event of WWIII? We won’t be spending money on overpriced EVs or sending rockets to outer space on scientific missions to study the universe. Assuming he doesn’t get himself assassinated first by people that actually care about democracy. The absolute BEST thing to protect his capital is a strong spending class in the US, which would require the economy to not collapse. You gut social services, there is exactly one logical outcome and it is social unrest followed by either class war or civil war.
philanthropist
If he was one, he wouldn’t be a billionaire
Billionaires say “we kind” again…
I’ll not trust Gates anyway
Gates is a “lesser evil” billionaire but he advocated not to revoke the patents on Covid-19 vaccines during the height of the pandemic. I understand the need for innovation, but screw him for still being greedy in the face of immediate crisis. He is two-faced nonetheless.
He’s a greater evil billionaire with a good PR team.
He still has given away a lot of his wealth to charities, to be fair. He was the richest man after all until Elon came. But Gates is still a billionaire (only because of his underhanded business practices) in spite of donations so he’s still evil but to a lesser extent.
A lot? He’s currently worth $107 billion. That’s the most he’s ever been worth.
You would think that someone giving away “a lot” of their wealth would be worth less than before. If you’re giving away so little that your wealth is actually growing, I’d say you’re not actually giving away a lot.
I thought his net worth went down but it looks like it plateaud. However, according to this article, Bill’s net worth could be much higher but donates a lot of his assets to charities and his foundations. https://moneyweek.com/investments/605912/bill-gates-net-worth
yeah he’s so good… at fucking up the education system. seriously fuck this guy and his wife for what they did in the name of so-called education reform, he’s just like the rest of them thinking just because he made a lot of money gaming the system he suddenly knows so much about everything. and fuck the united states for allowing these maniacs completely shape the country however they want.
I thought it was foolish that they allowed gates to do education reform, but then I thought it was insane they allowed reelon the troglodyte to make tunnels for his fucking explody cars. but that wasn’t enough apparently so now they give him the keys to the entire kingdom.
un-fucking-believable.
One oligarch calls out another for brownie points with the public
Bill Gates really doesn’t want to get eaten. Remember he is not one of us, he is one of them.
He can avoid the oven by being more vocal.
The deadweight loss of a monopoly means he destroyed even more than he stole. The best he can offer now is an example.
Right thing for the wrong reasons is still the right thing. We’ve got bigger fish to fry than him.
For now.
I bet you he’d be great with some malt vinegar.
Every single billionaire is a policy failure. By hoarding that much wealth, they are literally bad people. But that doesn’t mean they can’t do good things, or even give away what they don’t need, like the ex-billionaire Charles Feeney who redeemed himself and donated most of his billions, anonymously.
After “but” the nonsense has started…
Oligarch Wars
I never expected the end to be so boring: White Collar Apocalypse. Wait, what collar colour are billionaires?
Disclaimer: >!I don’t actually think it’s “The End”!<
Horizon zero dawn did it better
Queen Elizabeth’s Twenty Foot Diameter Ruffle Collar
Preferably red…
Your spoilers are wrong.
I think spoilers on Lemmy use triple colons:
::: spoiler Spoiler title hidden content :::Spoiler title
hidden content
Reminds me of comments made when Colin Powell resigned (ie “…bunch of fucking Crazies!”) [referring to the republican administration atvthe time].
This is exactly what he wants, for you to see him as a good guy billionaire. There’s no such thing. He is one of them not one of us, this is just PR and lip service
If this is a tactical move purely for selfish reasons, its not a good one considering the power Musk now wields. I think this is genuine from Gates. Saying it out loud maybe is a degree of performance, but I think he likely legitimately finds Musk’s fascist support a morally bad thing.
Assuming all billionaires are constantly playing some kind of 4D chess game is just as bad being overly charitable when a billionaire says or does something that could be seen as good. Remember, Elon Musk has put himself in the spotlight constantly despite it often times hurting him financially, his desire to be liked/beloved as a genius is also genuine its just fueling frequently terrible decisions.
That said, Gates is still an egotist and obviously pretty conventionally selfish (at what I’d describe as a pretty human level, if an average joe/jane came to have billions of dollars they’d probably treat the money in similar ways as Gates). Gates doesn’t deserve his wealth and Gates is no genius either, I just don’t think hes a fascist or a sociopath like Musk is.
I don’t think you’re wrong in general, and I could give you a list of criticisms of Gate’s actions even today. But if we’re going to have wealth disparity, and we probably always will, I’d rather it be pragmatic self-interest clothed in good will than rabid self-interest clothed in freedom.
I don’t think that way, sorry
He is probably just envious he didn’t get to do it himself. Or that it doesn’t fit his made-up persona.
The insane shit is probably Musk’s obsession with trying to impress gamers with his (pretend) gaming skills. Having characters in Diablo 4 or PoE2 being clearly played by other people, while acting like this is his work alone.
Grindy shit. Call me when he wins a Quake 3 tournament.
I for one wouldn’t rule out that, when Musk talks about working 12-hour days, what he really does is to let others work, while he sits on his ass tweeting and playing video games like the pathetic fraud that he is.
Did he do that for D4? I thought I heard he could actually play that, but he just absolutely n00bed up the PoE2 play.
When you see him playing in video’s he’s playing.
He just uses other people to help level him up. I wouldn’t really say that using someone to grind for you means you can’t play. Him not being able to play would be him getting destroyed in the videos where he shows himself playing.
He just cheats to get his characters to a high level.
Edit: Another way to think of it… lets say he did this with Dota 2, and he gets up to the 2nd highest tier through his own play, and with cheating by others grinding his ranks. Then, he plays matches at that tier and consistently wins (and self performs) as much as you’d expect anyone at that tier. Can he play Dota 2? I’d say yes. Did he cheat? Yes.
From the sounds of it he just sucks at all games. The one game we know he plays himself is a little puzzle game that’s on the level of tic tac toe. It’s just a dopamine generator.
If he’s so desperate to impress about something as inconsequential as gaming, what kind of lies is he saying about everything else …
Like if anyone ever screamed “overcompensating for a small dick”…
Like we probably don’t have the scientific equipment to actually locate Musk’s cock if it’s size is relative to how much he’s overcompensating.
That’s the vibe of the whole Trumptard government, SDE
Wasn’t he kissing Trump’s ass a week ago?
I have to question the judgement of Bill Gates when he calls Musk “super-smart”. Maybe if Musk started out with no money, that would be fair in some sense. I think he was just lucky and unencumbered by ethics or self-doubt.
Bill Gates has also been riding an unearned “genius” appellation for decades. He didn’t make DOS. (His charitable work on vaccination is also questionable - iirc there were concerns over intellectual property rights)
The tide is turning against billionaires, and he’s just recognizing that Musk is making them all look bad.
Gates had two lawyers for parents, one of whom served on a board of directors with the CEO of IBM. IBM had been continually fighting an antitrust suit with the government for years, so they knew they had to tread carefully with the operating system for their first personal computers. It’s no surprise they hired Gates to do that work. Also, because of the antitrust case, they directed Gates to buy QDOS instead of buying it themselves. As for the contract that gave Gates a very sweet deal when it came to selling DOS to for non-IBM computers… I wonder if his two lawyer parents might have been involved in that contract.
It’s a compliment sandwich. You have to include the two pieces of compliment bread even if it’s bullshit or else you’ll be accused of not offering constructive criticism.
To be fair there are plenty of ruthless greedy people with zero morals out there but Musk is far more successful than any of them so something has to differentiate him. He might not be intelligent enough to recognise what a crigerworthy loser he is but let’s not pretend he isn’t smart.
Mate, he is on a very self destructive spiral doing those nazi salutes at the inauguration. That’s not a smart move. He’s let his fantasies get the better of him. If he was really smart he would shut the fuck up about politics. He has everything, And consequently he values nothing.
A person doesn’t become not smart no matter how much he flirts with neo nazism. They might be an immoral piece of shit but pretending he isn’t also smart can be extremely dangerous, lest people think we can now just let him wreck his brand and become irrelevant.
Smart can mean many things. My dentist is smart, but he is not well rounded. Most people aren’t well rounded smart.
Musk is a good investor, and expert con artist. He is smart in those ways.
He’s about as smart as trump is a successful businessman.
Trump is worth billions now though…
Generational wealth is a bitch and doesn’t really prove anything.
Well the billions only came after his presidency because he now had a huge pool of loyalists he could grift out of their life savings with meme coin and begging for donations. Yes he had some generational wealth, most of which he blew on his bankrupted businesses but he’s also just a good grifter.
Maybe if Musk started out with no money, that would be fair in some sense.
Why is this american obsession on weighting the value of men with the money they made? Musk is an idiot regardless of his money or how he made it.
because maybe those american values are fundementally poisoned?
Quite a lot of americans equate money with success and ability. Elon musk must be the smartest guy because dumb people dont make money like that.
I think its reverse engineering though, americans see his worth, and work backwards claiming all his choices are genius and well thought out.
It’s absolutely reverse engineering. People want to believe that the world is a meritocracy, and that means believing that those who have succeeded at meritful.
People avoid internalizing that the world is a kleptocracy, because that would mean having to confront that if they want to get ahead, they’ll have to actively amd knowingly fuck other people over, and most of us are not psychopaths
People who have fully bought into the hard work+talent=success line cannot stand to have that belief shaken by realizing that someone dinner than them lucked/exploited their way to more success than they did.
Americans equal money with power, the more power you have, the more value, etc. That is basically it.
Money = Speech don’t ya know.
Mo’ money is a bigger voice in their system. Other countries call that “corrupt to the core”.
Its not just power, its ego and success. If McDonalds started paying 30$ an hour it would suddenly be a job that signaled success, despite nothing changing about the job duties.
Thats what’s happening here, elon is rich so he must be smart, and now people are jealous and emulate him. The OP is right though, money or not he’s an idiot.
I’m not sure what you mean. I’m not American, and I don’t place much value on enormous wealth accumulation. I’m just acknowledging that there is a difference between gaining enormous wealth with a hefty leg up from family wealth versus doing it from scratch, like growing up in poverty for example.
You can’t get that amount of money without exploitation. If you start from 0 it just means you have to actually work for it but end result is still the same.
I agree. If you started from 0 and got rich you became a class traitor.
you should define the word rich better in this context. Personally I have started to think word “rich” as negative thing, someone who has more than they need at expense of others, but I dont think that is very common way to think.
I think a lot of people don’t consider the exploitation angle. Often they see someone like Bill gates as having invented windows and see his wealth as earned by goods provided that they don’t think would otherwise exist. It’s what capital teaches is the justification for wealth
You’re right, the term is very subjective. The lower bound for me is owning multiple properties, owning a business and making money from the labour of others.
Well, its okay to make some money from others labour, as long as its fair. But way it currently works, that some business owner gets majority of the value of someones work is not okay. That is just benefitting from being on stronger position than someone else and ultimately isnt much different from taking from someone by force. Its not like you can refuse to participate as people need to have money to live.
making money from the labour of others.
So…anyone with a 401k
If you want to nudge the ketohead narcissist, you have to pander to the ego.
You can’t become the richest man in the world and the most powerful billionaire in the world by accident, even if you start with a golden spoon. Most millionaire child will just spend the rest of their life being spoiled and unconcerned with the world, very very few spend their money helping others and building society, but him? He spend his time and money resurrecting nazi and making those dystopian scifi real. That’s some insane dedication right there. Smart or not, dude is dangerous.
not by accident, but certainly by luck, and then you can argue whether someone makes their own luck or not, musk hit the jackpot of being at the right moment at the right time and having the right skillset.
There are plenty of alternate universes out there where he became a nobody after paypal.
I think he is dedicated, dangerous and awful. I just don’t think he is smart. I’ve known people who achieved wealth, started successful businesses etc. They had domain expertise and ambition. But they also neglected and fucked up other critical aspects of their lives (like their relationships with partners and kids). I didn’t consider them to be smart. In my mind, smart implies a well roundedness, and the capacity for self reflection, and empathy. Musk just has the personality traits, and family wealth, to enable him to “succeed” in our current society.
See? Bill Gates is one of us! /s
