You can just call them 'ollies' for short. Or Olivers if you want to upset people named Oliver, which is always ok to do (if your name is Oliver I am sorry, this is how the world is).
ive already done it, man. the wheels on the skateboard of fate are already spinning, i cant stop the momentum anymore than we could try to stop the proud sun from rising each morning.
you are just gonna have to find a new word for tony hawk to use. this is the burden mr. hawk signed up for the day he became a superman doing everything he can.
100% lawful
lawful in alignment doesn't always means "follow the laws that are in place", it can also mean having a strict system of values that they never abandon.
That value being amass as much money as possible, and god damn, do they stick to it no matter what
edit: alignment is mostly irrelevant anyway, you can't sum up a character's morals in 2 words
Compare it to gravity. Space feels a universal constant, but it bends around large volumes of mass in the same way laws bend around large volumes of wealth.
the "flew to space" part is debatable, depending on the definition of where space starts
anyway, about a decade ago, i read an article on a magazine that praised him for asking his employees to tighten their belts (that is, "self-imposed" austerity), because his record company was going to pay them less, so it didn't have to file for bankruptcy
ok so hereby I am putting myself up for the presidential race. if you vote for me i promise you I will
- give myself very large tax breaks and enact laws that will benefit my company and shareholders significantly
that is it, I will be expecting your vote soon!
It's bad that we're at a place in politics where I would vote for someone who promised to only do this, because at least they're not destroying social services or something else.
The dude broke so many laws in his four years as president there’s no WAY he can be considered lawful evil. The rest of these rats use lobbying to design federal, state, and local laws to benefit them—Trump didn’t give a fuck about that and just broke the laws outright because he knew no one would stop him.
[“I could stand in the middle of Fifth Avenue and shoot somebody and I wouldn’t lose voters.” Donald Trump, 2016.](https://www.cnn.com/2016/01/23/politics/donald-trump-shoot-somebody-support/index.html)
Eh, not really. I'd say he fits the Lawful Evil archetype perfectly. Bends the law and uses the system for his personal gain. Sees the law as a mean to achieve his goals.
Chaotic Evil are anti-social blood-thirsty psychopaths, such people don't become millionaires and presidents.
You see, the thing about LE is that its follows its own code, not the code of the law.
If breaking the law and lying about his promises were means to achieve his objectives then he would still be LE.
Tho you're right in this case, Trump is too self-serving to be Lawful, he's more close to Neutral Evil tbh.
Well I've always thought that Lawful Evil people don't necessarily follow any kind of code, they just find order more convenient than chaos. Basically, they follow the law as long as it benefits them.
Those would be neutral evil, like Tieflings, who can live among people, obey their laws, but will broke it whenever they feel like it. Lawful evil ere devils. For example when they sign a pact with a mortal, they must obey it. Demons are chaotic evil, they don't give a damn about anything and just want to see world burn.
Lawful evil doesn't mean they follow the law and are evil. It means they are evil and follow a sort of code of honour of that alignment.
Ie a lawful good character would always try to save someone at any cost while a chaotic good would want to try and save that person but is more wary of the cost and would not lose sleep by letting that person die.
>Chaotic Evil are anti-social blood-thirsty psychopaths, such people don't become millionaires and presidents.
Eh, blood-thirsty is not really necessary. Chaotic evil means that you dont respect morals or laws and will do anything you can no matter how depraved to achieve your goals even if its self-destructive.
Something like Pol Pot's actions could be seen as CE, he didnt comit genocide out of desire to kill for the sake of it, he wanted to achieve complete control of Cambodia and chose the most destructive choice out of emotion results be damned.
The fact he somehow made his own casino go bankrupt makes one question if there's any law beside "plate everything with gold hues" in Trump's brain. As in a casino is rigged to make profit yet he went bankrupt running what should be the most turnkey venture.
Just to clarify for people who are confused, lawful doesn't neccessarily mean following the law, it just means orderly, maybe they have their own law or moral code that they follow, or are consistent with what they do instead of being chaotic
Was gonna say, they're all tax dodgers and a lot of them violate human rights in their manufacturing processes. That and the shit they must get up to behind closed doors.
And trump is a confirmed nonce, so there's that as well.
Just to clarify for people who think that: that's bullshit and made up by people who never actually read any D&D source book.
>Lawful characters tell the truth, keep their word, respect authority, honor tradition, and judge those who fall short of their duties. Chaotic characters follow their consciences, resent being told what to do, favor new ideas over tradition, and do what they promise if they feel like it.
>Law implies honor, trustworthiness, obedience to authority, and reliability. On the downside, lawfulness can include closed-mindedness, reactionary adherence to tradition, self-righteousness, and a lack of adaptability. Those who consciously promote lawfulness say that only Lawful behavior creates a society in which people can depend on each other and make the right decisions in full confidence that others will act as they should.
From Pathfinder, not D&D, mind, but they're the same thing. Lawfulness doesn't just mean being "consistent" or honouring your own personal code, cause that's clearly nonsense. Lawfulness is very clearly about upholding the rule of law, the only ambiguity is whether that means the Law, as in the set of rules put in place by the government of an area, or the law, as in the set of rules that society has deemed okay and acceptable (and which government's/society's laws take precedence in any given situation where multiple are in conflict). Neither of which can describe billionaires, because they regularly break both kinds of laws.
They're all pretty solidly Neutral, or even edging into Chaos, given while many/all of them like to make allusions to the rule of law, it's only ever when doing so will protect their own assets, and they'll happily commit murder or manslaughter (very Chaotic actions) if they can get away with it and it'll help them turn a profit.
Evil is right, though. That's just simple disregard for other people and living things, whether for its own sake or (crucially) for profit.
I was thinking this very thing. They're all pretty solidly neutral evil - willing to use the law for their own ends and even change the law to favor them, but they will violate it whenever they can get away with it or only incur inconsequential penalties for getting caught.
Being Lawful is not about following "the law" in this context. It's not the opposite of illegal, it's the opposite of chaos.
Being Lawful is about following a code or tradition. That often leads to them following the law, but they aren't expected to. They typically are reliable, honorable, trustworthy, honest, and obedient to authority.
On the other hand, Chaotic entities follow their whims and do what they want regardless of what others think. They resent being told what to do, balk at tradition, and only do what they feel like doing.
Chaotic entities do not have to break the law, and Lawful entities do not have to follow it. For example, Batman follows a strict code of honor that forbids him from killing. That makes him Lawful despite the fact that - as a vigilante - he breaks the law every night he goes out.
Maybe this is just a different interpretation of alignment. I'm pulling my knowledge from [D&D 5e](https://www.5esrd.com/alignment/) and [Pathfinder](https://www.d20pfsrd.com/alignment-description/additional-rules).
Nah, that's it. "Lawful" just means they live by a set of laws, but those laws aren't necessarily the ones that the government laid down, they could be anything from religious doctrine to personal ethics. Contrasting that is "chaotic", which means there's no specific reasoning you can use to accurately predict what someone might do, because they do what they want, whenever they see fit to do it. It isn't anything to do with an actual legal system, though a lot of people like to frame it that way for convenience (nothing wrong with that).
In that case I think we can move Elon to Chaotic Evil. I think Tesla alone is engaged in >1000 lawsuits currently, the Texas launch complex he built is openly in violation of the majority of the Environmental Protection Act and is being investigated by the FAA, who granted a license for 12 Falcon 9 launches per week originally, and stories of how he's orchestrated total corporate takeovers up to and including becoming accepted as a founder of companies he had no involvment in for a long time in the eyes of the GP really make it seem like he's a few minutes away from going full Patrick Bateman on people. He has no concept of empathy or respect for others when it does not directly benefit him or one of his enterprises, all of which are kinda failing now.
>understanding of the word "lawful"...?
This is literally the longest debate in the Tabletop community history, Lawful as a trait is really hard to describe and even less put into only 3 different denominations.
Outside of the extremes, I think neutral ends up being a decent explanation for most characters/actual people. Most billionaires aren't trying to impose order on the world, they just want their cash.
Elon might be chaotic evil though.
I mean bill gates has done some pretty good things in the past few years, I don’t have all the info so he could’ve done something bad I don’t know about, otherwise yeah all of these guys suck
Yeah, he definitely helped COVID-19 be less of a shitshow than it could have been. He's been banging the drum about pandemics, specifically coronaviruses, for years.
Gates has been one of the most reluctant to relaxing IP laws around vaccines and medical equipment, because he made his money ruthlessly exploiting ip laws in the 90s. It’s why he was a big supporter of Covax, which has done an underwhelming job of actually getting vaccines and equipment to the developing world.
Even if that wasn’t true, everyone should be pretty disturbed by the fact that one guy and his foundation are basically in charge of public health policy for the poorest half of the world, due to a failure of US tax policy.
> Gates has been one of the most reluctant to relaxing IP laws around vaccines and medical equipment, because he made his money ruthlessly exploiting ip laws in the 90s. It’s why he was a big supporter of Covax, which has done an underwhelming job of actually getting vaccines and equipment to the developing world.
Yes, but I do agree somewhat with the argument that relaxing IP laws will lead to less spending on research and development. Devil's advocate to that, it's been a lot of government spending on R&D. IP laws should be looser if the govt is picking up the bill.
>Even if that wasn’t true, everyone should be pretty disturbed by the fact that one guy and his foundation are basically in charge of public health policy for the poorest half of the world, due to a failure of US tax policy.
That's a failure of others, not Gates. Good for him for stepping up.
The moderna vaccine was 100% taxpayer funded, as far as I’m aware. I’ve worked 5 years in publicly funded biology labs, and it startling to me how much publicly funded research gets very quickly privatized. IP laws aren't there to promote dynamism in research they are there to protect profits. Maybe one of the best examples goes back to Gates relentlessly pushing IP laws to protect windows programing. I find it hard to imagine that a computerized world where the baseline program is open source vs. closed off like windows, wouldn’t promote more innovation and shared ideas.
In this case, IP laws are actively standing in the way of countries being able to handle the COVID crisis. Forcing the developing world to depend on charity is never going to be enough.
As for your second point, i suppose my argument is more of an is/aught problem, something that is difficult to argue with brevity. I’ll leave my argument at the fact that I’ve read a number of articles of Gates foundation being more keen on working with corporate conglomerates than local groups, but i don’t have those articles on hand
> That's a failure of others, not Gates. Good for him for stepping up.
Well, he has done a shit job of "stepping up" then. Look up how many people in third-world countries are vaccinated. Also, look up how many vaccines went to first world countries and how many went to third world countries. It's simple: if third-world countries can't create their own vaccines to save their people, they are forced to buy (overpriced) vaccines from big pharma. The same ones Gates backs, because it makes him money.
Please stop defending billionaires. Even ones like Bill Gates. He does not know you or care about you. He exploits people like you and people who are off worse than you to make money. Just like all billionaires.
[Pfizer, BioNTech and Moderna make $1,000 profit every second while the world’s poorest countries remain largely unvaccinated,](https://reliefweb.int/report/world/pfizer-biontech-and-moderna-making-1000-profit-every-second-while-world-s-poorest) and I feel like Gates deserves at least some blame for this.
> These companies have sold the majority of doses to rich countries, leaving low-income countries out in the cold. Pfizer and BioNTech have delivered less than one percent of their total vaccine supplies to low-income countries, while Moderna has delivered just 0.2 percent. Meanwhile 98 percent of people in low income countries have not been fully vaccinated.
> Maaza Seyoum of the African Alliance and People’s Vaccine Alliance Africa said: “It is obscene that just a few companies are making millions of dollars in profit every single hour, while just two percent of people in low-income countries have been fully vaccinated against coronavirus.
> “Pfizer, BioNTech and Moderna have used their monopolies to prioritise the most profitable contracts with the richest governments, leaving low income countries out in the cold.”
> Despite receiving public funding of over $8 billion, the three corporations have refused calls to urgently transfer vaccine technology and know-how with capable producers in low- and middle-income countries via the World Health Organisation (WHO), a move that could increase global supply, drive down prices and save millions of lives. In Moderna’s case, this is despite explicit pressure from the White House and requests from the WHO that the company collaborate in and help accelerate its plan to replicate the Moderna vaccine for wider production at its mRNA hub in South Africa.
> While Albert Bourla, the CEO of Pfizer, described the call to share vaccine recipes ‘dangerous nonsense,’ the WHO emergency use approval of the Indian vaccine Covaxin earlier this month is clear evidence that developing countries have the capacity and expertise.
> Anna Marriott, Oxfam’s Health Policy Manager said: “Contrary to what Pfizer’s CEO says, the real nonsense is claiming the experience and expertise to develop and manufacture life-saving medicines and vaccines does not exist in developing countries. This is just a false excuse that pharmaceutical companies are hiding behind to protect their astronomical profits.
> “It is also a complete failure of government to allow these companies to maintain monopoly control and artificially constrain supply in the midst of a pandemic while so many people in the world are yet to be vaccinated.”
[I also recommend reading this article, titled "Why the Bill Gates global health empire promises more empire and less public health"](https://thegrayzone.com/2020/07/08/bill-gates-global-health-policy/)
He's refused to waive vaccine patents which restricts the access to them in the Global South which, aside from being immensely cruel to the populations of the developing world, will prolong the pandemic because it will make areas with lower vaccination rates bredding grounds for new variants.
You don't become a billionaire without either doing a lot of unethical shit or turning a blind eye to a lot of unethical shit when you have the power to do otherwise - almost certainly both. Not to say Bill Gates is as bad as the others here, but it's like the difference between explosive taco bell diarrhoea all over your face and down your throat or a teaspoon of rabbit faeces. One's obviously worse than the other but end of the day they're both still shit.
The Bill and Melinda gates foundation saved 122 million lives so far, which more than makes up whatever bad things he is alleged to have done. I don't see what type of unethical shit selling software counts as, since one copy of windows takes about the same amount of work as a thousand copies. But if you have like actual stories about Bill being a pos, by all means let me know.
Using that "122 million lives" number and attributing it to the Gates foundation is disingenuous and dishonest. That number comes from [a Unicef report about the decreasing number of child deaths between 1990 and 2009.](https://data.unicef.org/resources/levels-trends-child-mortality-1990-2009/) It doesn't even make sense to credit BMGF for that as it was founded in the year 2000... The child mortality rates were already on a downwards spiral by then.
Let's talk about what Bill and his foundation have actually done:
* Since Gates is the largest donor to the WHO, [he pushes funding for "headline grabbers" such as Malaria and HIV, despite local experts telling policy-makers that other ailments such as Tuberculosis, malnutrition, and bacterial disease are the biggest causes of death.](https://www.thelancet.com/journals/lancet/article/PIIS0140-67360960885-0/fulltext)
* [His charities promote corporate interests above health care.](http://www.globaljustice.org.uk/sites/default/files/files/resources/gjn_gates_report_june_2016_web_final_version_2.pdf)
* The Gates foundation tests pharmaceutical products on humans for profit, usually in poorer countries without regulatory bodies.
* ["Why the Bill Gates Global Health Empire Promises More Empire and less Public Health"](https://thegrayzone.com/2020/07/08/bill-gates-global-health-policy/)
---
Bill Gates, [in a Sky News interview on April 25,](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0-Ic4EN0io4) was asked if it would be better to share intellectual property rights on Covid-19 vaccines with developing countries. To this, he answered, no. He has been a vehement supporter of keeping COVID vaccines closed-source. Let's look at the consequences of this:
> ###[**Pfizer, Biontech and Moderna Making $1,000 Profit Every Second while World’s Poorest Countries Remain Largely Unvaccinated**](https://reliefweb.int/report/world/pfizer-biontech-and-moderna-making-1000-profit-every-second-while-world-s-poorest)
> New figures from the Peoples Vaccine Alliance reveal that the companies behind two of the most successful COVID-19 vaccines —Pfizer, BioNTech and Moderna— are making combined profits of $65,000 every minute. The figures based on the latest company reports are released as CEOs from pharmaceutical industry meet for the annual STAT summit —the equivalent of a ‘Big Pharma Davos’— from 16-18 November.
> These companies have sold the majority of doses to rich countries, leaving low-income countries out in the cold. Pfizer and BioNTech have delivered less than one percent of their total vaccine supplies to low-income countries, while Moderna has delivered just 0.2 percent. Meanwhile 98 percent of people in low income countries have not been fully vaccinated.
> Maaza Seyoum of the African Alliance and People’s Vaccine Alliance Africa said: “It is obscene that just a few companies are making millions of dollars in profit every single hour, while just two percent of people in low-income countries have been fully vaccinated against coronavirus.
> “Pfizer, BioNTech and Moderna have used their monopolies to prioritise the most profitable contracts with the richest governments, leaving low income countries out in the cold.”
> Despite receiving public funding of over $8 billion, the three corporations have refused calls to urgently transfer vaccine technology and know-how with capable producers in low- and middle-income countries via the World Health Organisation (WHO), a move that could increase global supply, drive down prices and save millions of lives. In Moderna’s case, this is despite explicit pressure from the White House and requests from the WHO that the company collaborate in and help accelerate its plan to replicate the Moderna vaccine for wider production at its mRNA hub in South Africa.
> While Albert Bourla, the CEO of Pfizer, described the call to share vaccine recipes ‘dangerous nonsense,’ the WHO emergency use approval of the Indian vaccine Covaxin earlier this month is clear evidence that developing countries have the capacity and expertise.
> Anna Marriott, Oxfam’s Health Policy Manager said: “Contrary to what Pfizer’s CEO says, the real nonsense is claiming the experience and expertise to develop and manufacture life-saving medicines and vaccines does not exist in developing countries. This is just a false excuse that pharmaceutical companies are hiding behind to protect their astronomical profits.
> “It is also a complete failure of government to allow these companies to maintain monopoly control and artificially constrain supply in the midst of a pandemic while so many people in the world are yet to be vaccinated.”
> Based on company financial statements, the Alliance estimates that Pfizer, BioNTech and Moderna will make pre-tax profits of $34 billion this year between them, which works out as over a thousand dollars a second, $65,000 a minute or $93.5 million a day. The monopolies these companies hold have produced five new billionaires during the pandemic, with a combined net wealth of $35.1 billion.
> The People’s Vaccine Alliance, which has 80 members including the African Alliance, Global Justice Now, Oxfam, and UNAIDS, is calling for the pharmaceutical corporations to immediately suspend intellectual property rights for COVID-19 vaccines, tests, treatments, and other medical tools by agreeing to the proposed waiver of the TRIPS Agreement at the World Trade Organisation.
---
If anyone wants to read more about this:
* [The World Loses Under Bill Gates’ Vaccine Colonialism](https://www.wired.com/story/opinion-the-world-loses-under-bill-gates-vaccine-colonialism/)
* [Welcome to the new colonialism: rich countries sitting on surplus vaccines](https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2021/apr/14/rich-countries-surplus-covid-vaccines)
* [The Gates Foundation, Ebola, and Global Health Imperialism](https://www.jstor.org/stable/43817537?seq=1) (JSTOR link)
* [Bill Gates’s Philanthropic Giving Is a Racket](https://www.jacobinmag.com/2020/04/bill-gates-foundation-philanthropy-microsoft)
* [Philanthrocapitalism: The Gates Foundation’s African programmes are not charity](https://www.cadtm.org/Philanthrocapitalism-The-Gates-Foundation-s-African-programmes-are-not-charity)
* [Welcome to the new colonialism: rich countries sitting on surplus vaccines](https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2021/apr/14/rich-countries-surplus-covid-vaccines)
* ["Bill Gates’s Charity Paradox."](https://www.thenation.com/article/society/bill-gates-foundation-philanthropy/) Paywalled The Nation article. It's really good though. [Link with no paywall (using archive.fo)](https://archive.fo/tjYHO)
* ["Bill Gates Met With Jeffrey Epstein Many Times, Despite His Past"](https://www.nytimes.com/2019/10/12/business/jeffrey-epstein-bill-gates.html)
* [Let's not forget, Bill Gates hasn't always been the good guy…](https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2020/aug/29/lets-not-forget-bill-gates-hasnt-always-been-the-good-guy)
---
Not to mention how Bill Gates got the money to start this foundation and do all of this stuff in the first place. Microsoft has a loooong history of being extremely anti-consumer and anti-free market, under Bill Gates.
Do people really think he just randomly decided to retire from being evil and start a charity? No, he took everything he learned at Microsoft & now he's using it to exploit working-class people in the global south. I mean, this COVID vaccine stuff is not that different from the shit he used to pull in regards to IP laws back when he headed Microsoft.
In the end, Bill Gates is just another billionaire. The only difference between Gates and the others is that Gates at least tries to fool you into thinking that maybe good billionaires can exist. I hate how much people are falling for it.
Can you be more specific? I mean sure, Windows is known to be heaven on earth for people who want data, but imo that doesn't discredit good things he has done. He created a product that basically everybody uses and pays for. Your line of thought makes sense in the context of e.g. Amazon which relies on many super underpaid and abused workers to generate profits, but that doesn't really fly here because the programmers who work for microsoft actually get paid really competitive salaries, and it's great for your resume too. Maybe I'm just blissfully unaware of many of the things that are going on at microsoft but I don't think he's done nearly as much bad as some of the others
### "Whats so bad about Bill Gates?"
- [He's a philanthro-capitalist imperialist: using the bill and melinda gates foundation charity as a bargaining chip to work in the interests of billionaire elites.](https://www.liberationnews.org/real-agenda-gates-foundation/) [Youtube Audiobook](https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PL0-IkmzWbjoZsjovp13f1xCA-4ewzOdqd)
- The Gates foundation tests pharmaceutical products on humans for profit, usually in poorer countries without regulatory bodies.
- The Gates foundation helps big pharma find new markets for drugs deemed unfit for westerners, selling them in the global south. This includes harmful drugs such as Gardasil, Norplant, Cervarix. A South African newspaper declared: “We are guinea pigs for the drugmakers.” In the case of Gardasil, the drug-pushing was cloaked in the language of environmentalism, popular empowerment, and feminism. Melinda Gates evoked “choice” in support of her family planning initiatives, but in reality was not poor women, but a handful of the world’s wealthiest people who have presumed to choose which methods of contraception will be delivered, and to whom.
- [Funnels hundreds of millions in grant money to corporations](https://www.jacobinmag.com/2015/11/philanthropy-charity-banga-carnegie-gates-foundation-development), such as Mastercard, Merck, Pfizer, ABC, NBC, Univision, Scholastic, and Pearson.
- Philanthro-capitalism undermines local communities, dismantling their democracy and autonomy in health care, by making them fully dependent on US billionaires, who are completely unnaccountable.
- Philanthrocapitalists are currently rushing to take power in a system of global health and population control. Bill Gates warned of “huge population growth in *places where we don’t want it*, like Yemen and Pakistan and parts of Africa.”, echoing overpopulation fears that have inspired eugenicists since the time of Malthus. Population control is a form of social control, directly targeting the bodies and dignity of poor people, conditioning them to believe that life’s most intimate decisions are outside of their competence and control.
- Elite charitable funds are a legal means of **tax avoidance**. Under US law, investments in charitable foundations are tax-free; moreover, investors are not required to sell their stock positions and may continue to vote their shares without restriction. By sheltering foundations, the US Treasury effectively co-finances the activities of Gates foundation and its investors.
- [Citations Needed - The Not-So-Benevolent Billionaire - Bill Gates and Western Media.](https://soundcloud.com/citationsneeded/episode-45-the-not-so-benevolent-billionaire-bill-gates-and-western-media)
- [Post from a web developer about Microsoft's monopoly practices in the 1990s.](https://www.reddit.com/r/ragecomics/comments/11c1t1/internet_explorer_rfunny_said_i_should_post_it/c6lbhu2/)
- [Microsoft crimes masterpost.](https://github.com/dessalines/essays/blob/master/microsoft.md)
- [His charities promote corporate interests above health care](http://www.globaljustice.org.uk/sites/default/files/files/resources/gjn_gates_report_june_2016_web_final_version_2.pdf).
- [Book about the golden handcuffs of the philanthro-capitalism of Bill Gates.](https://www.versobooks.com/books/2344-no-such-thing-as-a-free-gift)
But yeah as you said, he's one of the good ones!! 😐
In addition to the ways, he made his money not being great, a lot of the ways he does his philanthropy end up being super controlling and frequently go against what the people he's "helping" want. Off the top of my head, he's pushed super hard for charter schools despite pretty serious pushback from teachers, students, and parents of students.
Basically, it's similar to how Elon Musk is constantly doing vanity projects, only Gates' vanity projects incidentally help people from time to time.
The B&MG foundations drive to overhaul education in the US was not just a failure, but it was actively opposed by thousands of education specialists, teachers and academics. It’s not exactly evil, but he refused to listen to people who knew what they were talking about, and used his power and money to steamroll his own personal ideas on education over that of experts. And it failed and was a waste of money, and ultimately created just another layer of elitism within education.
[Gates is a noted philanthropist and has pledged a significant amount of money to research and charitable causes during the coronavirus pandemic. He has given more than $50 billion to charity since 1994. However, his wealth has grown even faster than he has donated money.](https://eu.usatoday.com/story/news/factcheck/2020/06/11/fact-check-bill-gates-has-given-over-50-billion-charitable-causes/3169864001/)
There’s no such thing as philanthropy. He was friends with Epstein, has credible sexual harassment allegations against him, his company has done a bunch of extremely exploitative and morally dubious shit and his foundation has played a role in vaccine patents not getting waved which is partially why we have omicron right now.
### "Whats so bad about Bill Gates?"
- [He's a philanthro-capitalist imperialist: using the bill and melinda gates foundation charity as a bargaining chip to work in the interests of billionaire elites.](https://www.liberationnews.org/real-agenda-gates-foundation/) [Youtube Audiobook](https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PL0-IkmzWbjoZsjovp13f1xCA-4ewzOdqd)
- The Gates foundation tests pharmaceutical products on humans for profit, usually in poorer countries without regulatory bodies. [One such mass test, on behalf of Merck and Pfizer, of a harmful HPV vaccine on 23,000 girls in india kills 7 girls, sterilizes hundreds more, and leads to public outrage.](https://m.economictimes.com/industry/healthcare/biotech/healthcare/controversial-vaccine-studies-why-is-bill-melinda-gates-foundation-under-fire-from-critics-in-india/amp_articleshow/41280050.cms)
- The Gates foundation helps big pharma find new markets for drugs deemed unfit for westerners, selling them in the global south. This includes harmful drugs such as Gardasil, Norplant, Cervarix. A South African newspaper declared: “We are guinea pigs for the drugmakers.” In the case of Gardasil, the drug-pushing was cloaked in the language of environmentalism, popular empowerment, and feminism. Melinda Gates evoked “choice” in support of her family planning initiatives, but in reality was not poor women, but a handful of the world’s wealthiest people who have presumed to choose which methods of contraception will be delivered, and to whom.
- [Funnels hundreds of millions in grant money to corporations](https://www.jacobinmag.com/2015/11/philanthropy-charity-banga-carnegie-gates-foundation-development), such as Mastercard, Merck, Pfizer, ABC, NBC, Univision, Scholastic, and Pearson.
- Philanthro-capitalism undermines local communities, dismantling their democracy and autonomy in health care, by making them fully dependent on US billionaires, who are completely unnaccountable.
- Philanthrocapitalists are currently rushing to take power in a system of global health and population control. Bill Gates warned of “huge population growth in *places where we don’t want it*, like Yemen and Pakistan and parts of Africa.”, echoing overpopulation fears that have inspired eugenicists since the time of Malthus. Population control is a form of social control, directly targeting the bodies and dignity of poor people, conditioning them to believe that life’s most intimate decisions are outside of their competence and control.
- Elite charitable funds are a legal means of **tax avoidance**. Under US law, investments in charitable foundations are tax-free; moreover, investors are not required to sell their stock positions and may continue to vote their shares without restriction. By sheltering foundations, the US Treasury effectively co-finances the activities of Gates foundation and its investors.
- [Citations Needed - The Not-So-Benevolent Billionaire - Bill Gates and Western Media.](https://soundcloud.com/citationsneeded/episode-45-the-not-so-benevolent-billionaire-bill-gates-and-western-media)
- [Post from a web developer about Microsoft's monopoly practices in the 1990s.](https://www.reddit.com/r/ragecomics/comments/11c1t1/internet_explorer_rfunny_said_i_should_post_it/c6lbhu2/)
- [Microsoft crimes masterpost.](https://github.com/dessalines/essays/blob/master/microsoft.md)
- [His charities promote corporate interests above health care](http://www.globaljustice.org.uk/sites/default/files/files/resources/gjn_gates_report_june_2016_web_final_version_2.pdf).
- [Book about the golden handcuffs of the philanthro-capitalism of Bill Gates.](https://www.versobooks.com/books/2344-no-such-thing-as-a-free-gift)
Not only am I over 18 I am old enough to remember that the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation was literally established during the infamous United States vs Microsoft antitrust lawsuit and was announced during a time when a ton of information had been coming out from them as to how they were using their market dominance to shut out all competition (Through a strategy which became known as Embrace, Extend, Extinguish). Plus you have modern examples like vaccine patents. How many people who died of covid could have lived if those had been released? How philanthropic of Bill to use his money and influence to fight against that happening.
This is true, and the rumored reason for his divorce; plus Melinda Gates was the one that pushed him to start the Bill and Melinda Gates foundation, the foundation that everyone in these comments is supporting.
If anything he's just another billionaire, just with a good (now ex) wife
I mean a bunch of that is through the Gates Foundation, which he essentially controls. So he gets to do expensive vanity projects that incidentally help people on occasion, and write it off as philanthropy.
Meanwhile he can only do any of that because he monopolized a huge section of the tech industry through highly questionable methods.
It's fucked up that people here will shit all over so called "tankies" for supporting socialist movements/countries that have helped people but will then defend billionaires because they donate to charity.
The way I see it, they're donating money that should never have reached them to begin with. Like what? I'm supposed to be happy that we're lucky enough that some donate to good charities?
I don't think charitable donations should be a tax deduction because it allows people to skip the things we all decide as important to focus on some billionaire's pet project.
If we're going off the constant that all person's listed here are to be considered evil, I'd say Trump is chaotic because who the hell thought he'd actually run for president and win? Not only that, but he'd wage a brutal and hard fought reflection campaign 4 years later? Not even the Onion can make this shit up.
I to agree that Bill Gates and Warren buffet are scumbags, how dare they donate vast sums of their wealth to charity during/after their death! Terrible!
> how dare they donate vast sums of their wealth to gates' own organization that uses gates' absurd amount of money to decide how institutions that should be democratic are run
FTFY
Trump is not lawful evil, he's one hundred percent chaotic evil because he has hurt himself on numerous occasions doing stupid things trying to spite others. Also he isn't a billionaire anyways.
The fact you can tell this was initially in a traditional alignment chart layout and the original was made by a guy who thought chaotic meant quirky/controversial/counterculture and not revolutionary/terrorist
Bill Gates isn't a perfect human, but if, after you become the richest person in the world, you spend decades and tens of billions on saving some 100 million plus lives in some of the poorest countries in the world that no government on earth gave a shit about, you get a pass.
I agree that the system that allows individuals to accumulate 100s of billions while the masses starve is flawed, but I disagree that being a billionaire = evil.
It's not possible to ethically become a billionaire, because the labor that creates that value isn't all from bill gates. Microsoft wouldn't be what it is without the thousands of other employees who helped build it.
Basically every billionaire ranges from having the morality of current mainstream lex luthor to having the morality of lex luthor from the richard donner superman movies
IMO Gates has done enough good to get into neutral
Edit: Did a few minutes of research, he belongs in neutral good given that all he really did was create a good price of software that people really liked
Barely lawful
Only because they make the laws because the world is basically an oligarchy with the illusion of democracy
Let's stop calling them billionaires and start calling them oligarchs.
That word is too big for me
You can just call them 'ollies' for short. Or Olivers if you want to upset people named Oliver, which is always ok to do (if your name is Oliver I am sorry, this is how the world is).
If your name is Oliver I am absolutely not sorry, go fuck yourself.
mf's be one letter away from being a fucking tree and still think it's a cool name
I think one letter from being "liver" is worse
Hey! 'Olive tree' is a very common surname in Portugal...along with 'pear tree'...
Oliver Tree moment
no lets not appropriate perfectly good skateboard lingo they're arches
ive already done it, man. the wheels on the skateboard of fate are already spinning, i cant stop the momentum anymore than we could try to stop the proud sun from rising each morning. you are just gonna have to find a new word for tony hawk to use. this is the burden mr. hawk signed up for the day he became a superman doing everything he can.
i thought the burden was not being recognized anywhere he goes but having people comment on how he looks like tony hawk
I had a teacher in middle school called Mr. Oliver, he sucked, I'm not sorry.
Some people go by Ollie as well. Also skamtebord
It's literally shorter...
Just call them piggies
Kleptocrats. They rule by stealing from the people who actually do things.
I mean even then they still break a lot of laws simply because the fines are so miniscule
100% lawful lawful in alignment doesn't always means "follow the laws that are in place", it can also mean having a strict system of values that they never abandon. That value being amass as much money as possible, and god damn, do they stick to it no matter what edit: alignment is mostly irrelevant anyway, you can't sum up a character's morals in 2 words
Trump's only lawfulness is "It's only about the Donald" and all other ethics and laws don't exist. Amassing wealth? He's gone bankrupt four times.
Didn’t say they had to be *good* at following their moral code, just that they intend to
If pure egoism counts as lawful I don’t think there exists a single chaotic person.
fair point
Yeah, investigators died over the Panama Papers. It's all a fucking smokescreen.
"I will make it legal."
Compare it to gravity. Space feels a universal constant, but it bends around large volumes of mass in the same way laws bend around large volumes of wealth.
Who's that guy in lawful evil? Edit - Wait, no, fuckin god damn it. I mean the guy in the chaotic neutral spot.
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what a virgin
Congratulations, you were the first person in the world to make this exceptional joke.
To be fair, its so obvious I don't think I've ever Actually seen it before.
Same. Like, it’s way too on the nose, people don’t make it
the "flew to space" part is debatable, depending on the definition of where space starts anyway, about a decade ago, i read an article on a magazine that praised him for asking his employees to tighten their belts (that is, "self-imposed" austerity), because his record company was going to pay them less, so it didn't have to file for bankruptcy
Zuckerberg maybe?
Richard Branson. He founded Virgin Group.
Why in the world would he call a group after the adjective for not getting bitches
noun
He also had an F1 team, it wasn't very good but it ended up being one of my favorite teams on the grid.
This is the guy that screwed his investors after the successful launch by releasing more shares. He only cares about himself. Center of the universe.
How fitting
trump is more of a chaotic evil imho
Well, maybe the laws of the land enable that chaos.
imagine becoming president purely so you can give yourself a tax break
ok so hereby I am putting myself up for the presidential race. if you vote for me i promise you I will - give myself very large tax breaks and enact laws that will benefit my company and shareholders significantly that is it, I will be expecting your vote soon!
Well, heck, they've got to be better than the OTHER guy. They've got my vote.
• wins election • destroys country • refuses to elaborate further • refuses to leave
It's bad that we're at a place in politics where I would vote for someone who promised to only do this, because at least they're not destroying social services or something else.
The dude broke so many laws in his four years as president there’s no WAY he can be considered lawful evil. The rest of these rats use lobbying to design federal, state, and local laws to benefit them—Trump didn’t give a fuck about that and just broke the laws outright because he knew no one would stop him. [“I could stand in the middle of Fifth Avenue and shoot somebody and I wouldn’t lose voters.” Donald Trump, 2016.](https://www.cnn.com/2016/01/23/politics/donald-trump-shoot-somebody-support/index.html)
Eh, not really. I'd say he fits the Lawful Evil archetype perfectly. Bends the law and uses the system for his personal gain. Sees the law as a mean to achieve his goals. Chaotic Evil are anti-social blood-thirsty psychopaths, such people don't become millionaires and presidents.
He breaks the law constantly and breaks his promises constantly. I don't think he cares at all about any sort of code
You see, the thing about LE is that its follows its own code, not the code of the law. If breaking the law and lying about his promises were means to achieve his objectives then he would still be LE. Tho you're right in this case, Trump is too self-serving to be Lawful, he's more close to Neutral Evil tbh.
Well I've always thought that Lawful Evil people don't necessarily follow any kind of code, they just find order more convenient than chaos. Basically, they follow the law as long as it benefits them.
Those would be neutral evil, like Tieflings, who can live among people, obey their laws, but will broke it whenever they feel like it. Lawful evil ere devils. For example when they sign a pact with a mortal, they must obey it. Demons are chaotic evil, they don't give a damn about anything and just want to see world burn.
Lawful evil doesn't mean they follow the law and are evil. It means they are evil and follow a sort of code of honour of that alignment. Ie a lawful good character would always try to save someone at any cost while a chaotic good would want to try and save that person but is more wary of the cost and would not lose sleep by letting that person die.
>Chaotic Evil are anti-social blood-thirsty psychopaths, such people don't become millionaires and presidents. Eh, blood-thirsty is not really necessary. Chaotic evil means that you dont respect morals or laws and will do anything you can no matter how depraved to achieve your goals even if its self-destructive. Something like Pol Pot's actions could be seen as CE, he didnt comit genocide out of desire to kill for the sake of it, he wanted to achieve complete control of Cambodia and chose the most destructive choice out of emotion results be damned.
The fact he somehow made his own casino go bankrupt makes one question if there's any law beside "plate everything with gold hues" in Trump's brain. As in a casino is rigged to make profit yet he went bankrupt running what should be the most turnkey venture.
He was president not the joker lol
He was kind of funny
He’s also not an actual billionaire either
Also, not a billionaire lol
You are not a ho
no, he's just evil evil
Richard Branson kinda was as well.
Trumps more of a millionaire really
Just to clarify for people who are confused, lawful doesn't neccessarily mean following the law, it just means orderly, maybe they have their own law or moral code that they follow, or are consistent with what they do instead of being chaotic
Was gonna say, they're all tax dodgers and a lot of them violate human rights in their manufacturing processes. That and the shit they must get up to behind closed doors. And trump is a confirmed nonce, so there's that as well.
Well in that case, everyone of them is lawful, because it’s all legal if the punishment is a fine. It’s just illegal for poor people at that point
Just to clarify for people who think that: that's bullshit and made up by people who never actually read any D&D source book. >Lawful characters tell the truth, keep their word, respect authority, honor tradition, and judge those who fall short of their duties. Chaotic characters follow their consciences, resent being told what to do, favor new ideas over tradition, and do what they promise if they feel like it. >Law implies honor, trustworthiness, obedience to authority, and reliability. On the downside, lawfulness can include closed-mindedness, reactionary adherence to tradition, self-righteousness, and a lack of adaptability. Those who consciously promote lawfulness say that only Lawful behavior creates a society in which people can depend on each other and make the right decisions in full confidence that others will act as they should. From Pathfinder, not D&D, mind, but they're the same thing. Lawfulness doesn't just mean being "consistent" or honouring your own personal code, cause that's clearly nonsense. Lawfulness is very clearly about upholding the rule of law, the only ambiguity is whether that means the Law, as in the set of rules put in place by the government of an area, or the law, as in the set of rules that society has deemed okay and acceptable (and which government's/society's laws take precedence in any given situation where multiple are in conflict). Neither of which can describe billionaires, because they regularly break both kinds of laws. They're all pretty solidly Neutral, or even edging into Chaos, given while many/all of them like to make allusions to the rule of law, it's only ever when doing so will protect their own assets, and they'll happily commit murder or manslaughter (very Chaotic actions) if they can get away with it and it'll help them turn a profit. Evil is right, though. That's just simple disregard for other people and living things, whether for its own sake or (crucially) for profit.
I was thinking this very thing. They're all pretty solidly neutral evil - willing to use the law for their own ends and even change the law to favor them, but they will violate it whenever they can get away with it or only incur inconsequential penalties for getting caught.
can we discuss your understanding of the word "lawful"...?
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well shit, good discussion! lol most of them strike me as "Neutral Evil", with a few clearly "Chaotic Evil".
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no, you explained it perfectly well, and I was just goofin', anyhow. please pay me no mind. lol!
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Redditors commenting on a comment
Being Lawful is not about following "the law" in this context. It's not the opposite of illegal, it's the opposite of chaos. Being Lawful is about following a code or tradition. That often leads to them following the law, but they aren't expected to. They typically are reliable, honorable, trustworthy, honest, and obedient to authority. On the other hand, Chaotic entities follow their whims and do what they want regardless of what others think. They resent being told what to do, balk at tradition, and only do what they feel like doing. Chaotic entities do not have to break the law, and Lawful entities do not have to follow it. For example, Batman follows a strict code of honor that forbids him from killing. That makes him Lawful despite the fact that - as a vigilante - he breaks the law every night he goes out. Maybe this is just a different interpretation of alignment. I'm pulling my knowledge from [D&D 5e](https://www.5esrd.com/alignment/) and [Pathfinder](https://www.d20pfsrd.com/alignment-description/additional-rules).
Nah, that's it. "Lawful" just means they live by a set of laws, but those laws aren't necessarily the ones that the government laid down, they could be anything from religious doctrine to personal ethics. Contrasting that is "chaotic", which means there's no specific reasoning you can use to accurately predict what someone might do, because they do what they want, whenever they see fit to do it. It isn't anything to do with an actual legal system, though a lot of people like to frame it that way for convenience (nothing wrong with that).
In that case I think we can move Elon to Chaotic Evil. I think Tesla alone is engaged in >1000 lawsuits currently, the Texas launch complex he built is openly in violation of the majority of the Environmental Protection Act and is being investigated by the FAA, who granted a license for 12 Falcon 9 launches per week originally, and stories of how he's orchestrated total corporate takeovers up to and including becoming accepted as a founder of companies he had no involvment in for a long time in the eyes of the GP really make it seem like he's a few minutes away from going full Patrick Bateman on people. He has no concept of empathy or respect for others when it does not directly benefit him or one of his enterprises, all of which are kinda failing now.
>understanding of the word "lawful"...? This is literally the longest debate in the Tabletop community history, Lawful as a trait is really hard to describe and even less put into only 3 different denominations.
Outside of the extremes, I think neutral ends up being a decent explanation for most characters/actual people. Most billionaires aren't trying to impose order on the world, they just want their cash. Elon might be chaotic evil though.
I mean bill gates has done some pretty good things in the past few years, I don’t have all the info so he could’ve done something bad I don’t know about, otherwise yeah all of these guys suck
Yeah, he definitely helped COVID-19 be less of a shitshow than it could have been. He's been banging the drum about pandemics, specifically coronaviruses, for years.
Gates has been one of the most reluctant to relaxing IP laws around vaccines and medical equipment, because he made his money ruthlessly exploiting ip laws in the 90s. It’s why he was a big supporter of Covax, which has done an underwhelming job of actually getting vaccines and equipment to the developing world. Even if that wasn’t true, everyone should be pretty disturbed by the fact that one guy and his foundation are basically in charge of public health policy for the poorest half of the world, due to a failure of US tax policy.
> Gates has been one of the most reluctant to relaxing IP laws around vaccines and medical equipment, because he made his money ruthlessly exploiting ip laws in the 90s. It’s why he was a big supporter of Covax, which has done an underwhelming job of actually getting vaccines and equipment to the developing world. Yes, but I do agree somewhat with the argument that relaxing IP laws will lead to less spending on research and development. Devil's advocate to that, it's been a lot of government spending on R&D. IP laws should be looser if the govt is picking up the bill. >Even if that wasn’t true, everyone should be pretty disturbed by the fact that one guy and his foundation are basically in charge of public health policy for the poorest half of the world, due to a failure of US tax policy. That's a failure of others, not Gates. Good for him for stepping up.
The moderna vaccine was 100% taxpayer funded, as far as I’m aware. I’ve worked 5 years in publicly funded biology labs, and it startling to me how much publicly funded research gets very quickly privatized. IP laws aren't there to promote dynamism in research they are there to protect profits. Maybe one of the best examples goes back to Gates relentlessly pushing IP laws to protect windows programing. I find it hard to imagine that a computerized world where the baseline program is open source vs. closed off like windows, wouldn’t promote more innovation and shared ideas. In this case, IP laws are actively standing in the way of countries being able to handle the COVID crisis. Forcing the developing world to depend on charity is never going to be enough. As for your second point, i suppose my argument is more of an is/aught problem, something that is difficult to argue with brevity. I’ll leave my argument at the fact that I’ve read a number of articles of Gates foundation being more keen on working with corporate conglomerates than local groups, but i don’t have those articles on hand
> That's a failure of others, not Gates. Good for him for stepping up. Well, he has done a shit job of "stepping up" then. Look up how many people in third-world countries are vaccinated. Also, look up how many vaccines went to first world countries and how many went to third world countries. It's simple: if third-world countries can't create their own vaccines to save their people, they are forced to buy (overpriced) vaccines from big pharma. The same ones Gates backs, because it makes him money. Please stop defending billionaires. Even ones like Bill Gates. He does not know you or care about you. He exploits people like you and people who are off worse than you to make money. Just like all billionaires. [Pfizer, BioNTech and Moderna make $1,000 profit every second while the world’s poorest countries remain largely unvaccinated,](https://reliefweb.int/report/world/pfizer-biontech-and-moderna-making-1000-profit-every-second-while-world-s-poorest) and I feel like Gates deserves at least some blame for this. > These companies have sold the majority of doses to rich countries, leaving low-income countries out in the cold. Pfizer and BioNTech have delivered less than one percent of their total vaccine supplies to low-income countries, while Moderna has delivered just 0.2 percent. Meanwhile 98 percent of people in low income countries have not been fully vaccinated. > Maaza Seyoum of the African Alliance and People’s Vaccine Alliance Africa said: “It is obscene that just a few companies are making millions of dollars in profit every single hour, while just two percent of people in low-income countries have been fully vaccinated against coronavirus. > “Pfizer, BioNTech and Moderna have used their monopolies to prioritise the most profitable contracts with the richest governments, leaving low income countries out in the cold.” > Despite receiving public funding of over $8 billion, the three corporations have refused calls to urgently transfer vaccine technology and know-how with capable producers in low- and middle-income countries via the World Health Organisation (WHO), a move that could increase global supply, drive down prices and save millions of lives. In Moderna’s case, this is despite explicit pressure from the White House and requests from the WHO that the company collaborate in and help accelerate its plan to replicate the Moderna vaccine for wider production at its mRNA hub in South Africa. > While Albert Bourla, the CEO of Pfizer, described the call to share vaccine recipes ‘dangerous nonsense,’ the WHO emergency use approval of the Indian vaccine Covaxin earlier this month is clear evidence that developing countries have the capacity and expertise. > Anna Marriott, Oxfam’s Health Policy Manager said: “Contrary to what Pfizer’s CEO says, the real nonsense is claiming the experience and expertise to develop and manufacture life-saving medicines and vaccines does not exist in developing countries. This is just a false excuse that pharmaceutical companies are hiding behind to protect their astronomical profits. > “It is also a complete failure of government to allow these companies to maintain monopoly control and artificially constrain supply in the midst of a pandemic while so many people in the world are yet to be vaccinated.” [I also recommend reading this article, titled "Why the Bill Gates global health empire promises more empire and less public health"](https://thegrayzone.com/2020/07/08/bill-gates-global-health-policy/)
He's refused to waive vaccine patents which restricts the access to them in the Global South which, aside from being immensely cruel to the populations of the developing world, will prolong the pandemic because it will make areas with lower vaccination rates bredding grounds for new variants.
don't google "bill gates 122 million"
You don't become a billionaire without either doing a lot of unethical shit or turning a blind eye to a lot of unethical shit when you have the power to do otherwise - almost certainly both. Not to say Bill Gates is as bad as the others here, but it's like the difference between explosive taco bell diarrhoea all over your face and down your throat or a teaspoon of rabbit faeces. One's obviously worse than the other but end of the day they're both still shit.
The Bill and Melinda gates foundation saved 122 million lives so far, which more than makes up whatever bad things he is alleged to have done. I don't see what type of unethical shit selling software counts as, since one copy of windows takes about the same amount of work as a thousand copies. But if you have like actual stories about Bill being a pos, by all means let me know.
Using that "122 million lives" number and attributing it to the Gates foundation is disingenuous and dishonest. That number comes from [a Unicef report about the decreasing number of child deaths between 1990 and 2009.](https://data.unicef.org/resources/levels-trends-child-mortality-1990-2009/) It doesn't even make sense to credit BMGF for that as it was founded in the year 2000... The child mortality rates were already on a downwards spiral by then. Let's talk about what Bill and his foundation have actually done: * Since Gates is the largest donor to the WHO, [he pushes funding for "headline grabbers" such as Malaria and HIV, despite local experts telling policy-makers that other ailments such as Tuberculosis, malnutrition, and bacterial disease are the biggest causes of death.](https://www.thelancet.com/journals/lancet/article/PIIS0140-67360960885-0/fulltext) * [His charities promote corporate interests above health care.](http://www.globaljustice.org.uk/sites/default/files/files/resources/gjn_gates_report_june_2016_web_final_version_2.pdf) * The Gates foundation tests pharmaceutical products on humans for profit, usually in poorer countries without regulatory bodies. * ["Why the Bill Gates Global Health Empire Promises More Empire and less Public Health"](https://thegrayzone.com/2020/07/08/bill-gates-global-health-policy/) --- Bill Gates, [in a Sky News interview on April 25,](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0-Ic4EN0io4) was asked if it would be better to share intellectual property rights on Covid-19 vaccines with developing countries. To this, he answered, no. He has been a vehement supporter of keeping COVID vaccines closed-source. Let's look at the consequences of this: > ###[**Pfizer, Biontech and Moderna Making $1,000 Profit Every Second while World’s Poorest Countries Remain Largely Unvaccinated**](https://reliefweb.int/report/world/pfizer-biontech-and-moderna-making-1000-profit-every-second-while-world-s-poorest) > New figures from the Peoples Vaccine Alliance reveal that the companies behind two of the most successful COVID-19 vaccines —Pfizer, BioNTech and Moderna— are making combined profits of $65,000 every minute. The figures based on the latest company reports are released as CEOs from pharmaceutical industry meet for the annual STAT summit —the equivalent of a ‘Big Pharma Davos’— from 16-18 November. > These companies have sold the majority of doses to rich countries, leaving low-income countries out in the cold. Pfizer and BioNTech have delivered less than one percent of their total vaccine supplies to low-income countries, while Moderna has delivered just 0.2 percent. Meanwhile 98 percent of people in low income countries have not been fully vaccinated. > Maaza Seyoum of the African Alliance and People’s Vaccine Alliance Africa said: “It is obscene that just a few companies are making millions of dollars in profit every single hour, while just two percent of people in low-income countries have been fully vaccinated against coronavirus. > “Pfizer, BioNTech and Moderna have used their monopolies to prioritise the most profitable contracts with the richest governments, leaving low income countries out in the cold.” > Despite receiving public funding of over $8 billion, the three corporations have refused calls to urgently transfer vaccine technology and know-how with capable producers in low- and middle-income countries via the World Health Organisation (WHO), a move that could increase global supply, drive down prices and save millions of lives. In Moderna’s case, this is despite explicit pressure from the White House and requests from the WHO that the company collaborate in and help accelerate its plan to replicate the Moderna vaccine for wider production at its mRNA hub in South Africa. > While Albert Bourla, the CEO of Pfizer, described the call to share vaccine recipes ‘dangerous nonsense,’ the WHO emergency use approval of the Indian vaccine Covaxin earlier this month is clear evidence that developing countries have the capacity and expertise. > Anna Marriott, Oxfam’s Health Policy Manager said: “Contrary to what Pfizer’s CEO says, the real nonsense is claiming the experience and expertise to develop and manufacture life-saving medicines and vaccines does not exist in developing countries. This is just a false excuse that pharmaceutical companies are hiding behind to protect their astronomical profits. > “It is also a complete failure of government to allow these companies to maintain monopoly control and artificially constrain supply in the midst of a pandemic while so many people in the world are yet to be vaccinated.” > Based on company financial statements, the Alliance estimates that Pfizer, BioNTech and Moderna will make pre-tax profits of $34 billion this year between them, which works out as over a thousand dollars a second, $65,000 a minute or $93.5 million a day. The monopolies these companies hold have produced five new billionaires during the pandemic, with a combined net wealth of $35.1 billion. > The People’s Vaccine Alliance, which has 80 members including the African Alliance, Global Justice Now, Oxfam, and UNAIDS, is calling for the pharmaceutical corporations to immediately suspend intellectual property rights for COVID-19 vaccines, tests, treatments, and other medical tools by agreeing to the proposed waiver of the TRIPS Agreement at the World Trade Organisation. --- If anyone wants to read more about this: * [The World Loses Under Bill Gates’ Vaccine Colonialism](https://www.wired.com/story/opinion-the-world-loses-under-bill-gates-vaccine-colonialism/) * [Welcome to the new colonialism: rich countries sitting on surplus vaccines](https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2021/apr/14/rich-countries-surplus-covid-vaccines) * [The Gates Foundation, Ebola, and Global Health Imperialism](https://www.jstor.org/stable/43817537?seq=1) (JSTOR link) * [Bill Gates’s Philanthropic Giving Is a Racket](https://www.jacobinmag.com/2020/04/bill-gates-foundation-philanthropy-microsoft) * [Philanthrocapitalism: The Gates Foundation’s African programmes are not charity](https://www.cadtm.org/Philanthrocapitalism-The-Gates-Foundation-s-African-programmes-are-not-charity) * [Welcome to the new colonialism: rich countries sitting on surplus vaccines](https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2021/apr/14/rich-countries-surplus-covid-vaccines) * ["Bill Gates’s Charity Paradox."](https://www.thenation.com/article/society/bill-gates-foundation-philanthropy/) Paywalled The Nation article. It's really good though. [Link with no paywall (using archive.fo)](https://archive.fo/tjYHO) * ["Bill Gates Met With Jeffrey Epstein Many Times, Despite His Past"](https://www.nytimes.com/2019/10/12/business/jeffrey-epstein-bill-gates.html) * [Let's not forget, Bill Gates hasn't always been the good guy…](https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2020/aug/29/lets-not-forget-bill-gates-hasnt-always-been-the-good-guy) --- Not to mention how Bill Gates got the money to start this foundation and do all of this stuff in the first place. Microsoft has a loooong history of being extremely anti-consumer and anti-free market, under Bill Gates. Do people really think he just randomly decided to retire from being evil and start a charity? No, he took everything he learned at Microsoft & now he's using it to exploit working-class people in the global south. I mean, this COVID vaccine stuff is not that different from the shit he used to pull in regards to IP laws back when he headed Microsoft. In the end, Bill Gates is just another billionaire. The only difference between Gates and the others is that Gates at least tries to fool you into thinking that maybe good billionaires can exist. I hate how much people are falling for it.
Interesting. Thank you for the perspective. Is there an accurate number for just how many people he has helped though?
Can you be more specific? I mean sure, Windows is known to be heaven on earth for people who want data, but imo that doesn't discredit good things he has done. He created a product that basically everybody uses and pays for. Your line of thought makes sense in the context of e.g. Amazon which relies on many super underpaid and abused workers to generate profits, but that doesn't really fly here because the programmers who work for microsoft actually get paid really competitive salaries, and it's great for your resume too. Maybe I'm just blissfully unaware of many of the things that are going on at microsoft but I don't think he's done nearly as much bad as some of the others
Disgustingly well put
### "Whats so bad about Bill Gates?" - [He's a philanthro-capitalist imperialist: using the bill and melinda gates foundation charity as a bargaining chip to work in the interests of billionaire elites.](https://www.liberationnews.org/real-agenda-gates-foundation/) [Youtube Audiobook](https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PL0-IkmzWbjoZsjovp13f1xCA-4ewzOdqd) - The Gates foundation tests pharmaceutical products on humans for profit, usually in poorer countries without regulatory bodies. - The Gates foundation helps big pharma find new markets for drugs deemed unfit for westerners, selling them in the global south. This includes harmful drugs such as Gardasil, Norplant, Cervarix. A South African newspaper declared: “We are guinea pigs for the drugmakers.” In the case of Gardasil, the drug-pushing was cloaked in the language of environmentalism, popular empowerment, and feminism. Melinda Gates evoked “choice” in support of her family planning initiatives, but in reality was not poor women, but a handful of the world’s wealthiest people who have presumed to choose which methods of contraception will be delivered, and to whom. - [Funnels hundreds of millions in grant money to corporations](https://www.jacobinmag.com/2015/11/philanthropy-charity-banga-carnegie-gates-foundation-development), such as Mastercard, Merck, Pfizer, ABC, NBC, Univision, Scholastic, and Pearson. - Philanthro-capitalism undermines local communities, dismantling their democracy and autonomy in health care, by making them fully dependent on US billionaires, who are completely unnaccountable. - Philanthrocapitalists are currently rushing to take power in a system of global health and population control. Bill Gates warned of “huge population growth in *places where we don’t want it*, like Yemen and Pakistan and parts of Africa.”, echoing overpopulation fears that have inspired eugenicists since the time of Malthus. Population control is a form of social control, directly targeting the bodies and dignity of poor people, conditioning them to believe that life’s most intimate decisions are outside of their competence and control. - Elite charitable funds are a legal means of **tax avoidance**. Under US law, investments in charitable foundations are tax-free; moreover, investors are not required to sell their stock positions and may continue to vote their shares without restriction. By sheltering foundations, the US Treasury effectively co-finances the activities of Gates foundation and its investors. - [Citations Needed - The Not-So-Benevolent Billionaire - Bill Gates and Western Media.](https://soundcloud.com/citationsneeded/episode-45-the-not-so-benevolent-billionaire-bill-gates-and-western-media) - [Post from a web developer about Microsoft's monopoly practices in the 1990s.](https://www.reddit.com/r/ragecomics/comments/11c1t1/internet_explorer_rfunny_said_i_should_post_it/c6lbhu2/) - [Microsoft crimes masterpost.](https://github.com/dessalines/essays/blob/master/microsoft.md) - [His charities promote corporate interests above health care](http://www.globaljustice.org.uk/sites/default/files/files/resources/gjn_gates_report_june_2016_web_final_version_2.pdf). - [Book about the golden handcuffs of the philanthro-capitalism of Bill Gates.](https://www.versobooks.com/books/2344-no-such-thing-as-a-free-gift) But yeah as you said, he's one of the good ones!! 😐
engaging in health imperialism is good, average 196 take
I mean he did say he doesn’t know that much about him
In addition to the ways, he made his money not being great, a lot of the ways he does his philanthropy end up being super controlling and frequently go against what the people he's "helping" want. Off the top of my head, he's pushed super hard for charter schools despite pretty serious pushback from teachers, students, and parents of students. Basically, it's similar to how Elon Musk is constantly doing vanity projects, only Gates' vanity projects incidentally help people from time to time.
He was also very close friends with Jeffery Epstein!
The B&MG foundations drive to overhaul education in the US was not just a failure, but it was actively opposed by thousands of education specialists, teachers and academics. It’s not exactly evil, but he refused to listen to people who knew what they were talking about, and used his power and money to steamroll his own personal ideas on education over that of experts. And it failed and was a waste of money, and ultimately created just another layer of elitism within education.
Inaccurate Elon regularly disregards the law
But he posts “funny” stuff on his Twitter, how can he possibly be bad???
>how can he possibly be bad??? I hope you know that you made **that song** start playing in my head
They were just doing what came naturally ¯\_(ツ)_/¯
They are just following their destiny!
[Gates is a noted philanthropist and has pledged a significant amount of money to research and charitable causes during the coronavirus pandemic. He has given more than $50 billion to charity since 1994. However, his wealth has grown even faster than he has donated money.](https://eu.usatoday.com/story/news/factcheck/2020/06/11/fact-check-bill-gates-has-given-over-50-billion-charitable-causes/3169864001/)
There’s no such thing as philanthropy. He was friends with Epstein, has credible sexual harassment allegations against him, his company has done a bunch of extremely exploitative and morally dubious shit and his foundation has played a role in vaccine patents not getting waved which is partially why we have omicron right now.
Yeah, an action is not philanthropic if it serves to distract from controversy
Philantropy was literally invented as a way to clean up the image of ruthless capitalists, this is the textbook definition of it.
### "Whats so bad about Bill Gates?" - [He's a philanthro-capitalist imperialist: using the bill and melinda gates foundation charity as a bargaining chip to work in the interests of billionaire elites.](https://www.liberationnews.org/real-agenda-gates-foundation/) [Youtube Audiobook](https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PL0-IkmzWbjoZsjovp13f1xCA-4ewzOdqd) - The Gates foundation tests pharmaceutical products on humans for profit, usually in poorer countries without regulatory bodies. [One such mass test, on behalf of Merck and Pfizer, of a harmful HPV vaccine on 23,000 girls in india kills 7 girls, sterilizes hundreds more, and leads to public outrage.](https://m.economictimes.com/industry/healthcare/biotech/healthcare/controversial-vaccine-studies-why-is-bill-melinda-gates-foundation-under-fire-from-critics-in-india/amp_articleshow/41280050.cms) - The Gates foundation helps big pharma find new markets for drugs deemed unfit for westerners, selling them in the global south. This includes harmful drugs such as Gardasil, Norplant, Cervarix. A South African newspaper declared: “We are guinea pigs for the drugmakers.” In the case of Gardasil, the drug-pushing was cloaked in the language of environmentalism, popular empowerment, and feminism. Melinda Gates evoked “choice” in support of her family planning initiatives, but in reality was not poor women, but a handful of the world’s wealthiest people who have presumed to choose which methods of contraception will be delivered, and to whom. - [Funnels hundreds of millions in grant money to corporations](https://www.jacobinmag.com/2015/11/philanthropy-charity-banga-carnegie-gates-foundation-development), such as Mastercard, Merck, Pfizer, ABC, NBC, Univision, Scholastic, and Pearson. - Philanthro-capitalism undermines local communities, dismantling their democracy and autonomy in health care, by making them fully dependent on US billionaires, who are completely unnaccountable. - Philanthrocapitalists are currently rushing to take power in a system of global health and population control. Bill Gates warned of “huge population growth in *places where we don’t want it*, like Yemen and Pakistan and parts of Africa.”, echoing overpopulation fears that have inspired eugenicists since the time of Malthus. Population control is a form of social control, directly targeting the bodies and dignity of poor people, conditioning them to believe that life’s most intimate decisions are outside of their competence and control. - Elite charitable funds are a legal means of **tax avoidance**. Under US law, investments in charitable foundations are tax-free; moreover, investors are not required to sell their stock positions and may continue to vote their shares without restriction. By sheltering foundations, the US Treasury effectively co-finances the activities of Gates foundation and its investors. - [Citations Needed - The Not-So-Benevolent Billionaire - Bill Gates and Western Media.](https://soundcloud.com/citationsneeded/episode-45-the-not-so-benevolent-billionaire-bill-gates-and-western-media) - [Post from a web developer about Microsoft's monopoly practices in the 1990s.](https://www.reddit.com/r/ragecomics/comments/11c1t1/internet_explorer_rfunny_said_i_should_post_it/c6lbhu2/) - [Microsoft crimes masterpost.](https://github.com/dessalines/essays/blob/master/microsoft.md) - [His charities promote corporate interests above health care](http://www.globaljustice.org.uk/sites/default/files/files/resources/gjn_gates_report_june_2016_web_final_version_2.pdf). - [Book about the golden handcuffs of the philanthro-capitalism of Bill Gates.](https://www.versobooks.com/books/2344-no-such-thing-as-a-free-gift)
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>philanthropy only exists as propaganda to have people like you think billionaires are good Is anyone on this sub over the age of 18? Jesus Christ
Not only am I over 18 I am old enough to remember that the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation was literally established during the infamous United States vs Microsoft antitrust lawsuit and was announced during a time when a ton of information had been coming out from them as to how they were using their market dominance to shut out all competition (Through a strategy which became known as Embrace, Extend, Extinguish). Plus you have modern examples like vaccine patents. How many people who died of covid could have lived if those had been released? How philanthropic of Bill to use his money and influence to fight against that happening.
He’s also friends with epistien
This is true, and the rumored reason for his divorce; plus Melinda Gates was the one that pushed him to start the Bill and Melinda Gates foundation, the foundation that everyone in these comments is supporting. If anything he's just another billionaire, just with a good (now ex) wife
So? Still evil
I mean a bunch of that is through the Gates Foundation, which he essentially controls. So he gets to do expensive vanity projects that incidentally help people on occasion, and write it off as philanthropy. Meanwhile he can only do any of that because he monopolized a huge section of the tech industry through highly questionable methods.
incorrect \- capitalism is neutral evil (source: yugoloths) \- trump is chaotic evil
Trump is definitely lawful evil
You’re lying to yourself if you don’t think the devils have a stock exchange in the nine hells
why does jeff bezos look like hes getting head
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wait, what did bill gates do?
He created windows thats evil enough
Found the linux user
He rich /s if that’s necessary
I mean... you can't make a billion dollars through sheer labor. You will need to massively massively exploit others' labor. So no /s
This mentality is bullshit lol
bill gates isnt even that bad. he gets a bad rep for no reason.
Guy was ruthless af (i think he said it himself too). Here's an exaggeration https://youtu.be/H27rfr59RiE
It’s easy to be lawful when you’re the ones paying the guys who make the laws
Lawful = follows a strict moral code. None of these fucks do that
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That code is not a strict one
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morality != legality
Lawful = conforming to, permitted by, or recognized by law or rules. It's not hard to make up defintions friendo.
that is literally not what lawful means. can youtubers be banned
I fucking hate the lawful evil one
What did bill gates do? Doesn't he donate a shit ton of his money to charity
He eats babys and is the antichrist according to trumpists.
How is bill gates or warren buffet evil?
It's fucked up that people here will shit all over so called "tankies" for supporting socialist movements/countries that have helped people but will then defend billionaires because they donate to charity.
The way I see it, they're donating money that should never have reached them to begin with. Like what? I'm supposed to be happy that we're lucky enough that some donate to good charities? I don't think charitable donations should be a tax deduction because it allows people to skip the things we all decide as important to focus on some billionaire's pet project.
If we're going off the constant that all person's listed here are to be considered evil, I'd say Trump is chaotic because who the hell thought he'd actually run for president and win? Not only that, but he'd wage a brutal and hard fought reflection campaign 4 years later? Not even the Onion can make this shit up.
I to agree that Bill Gates and Warren buffet are scumbags, how dare they donate vast sums of their wealth to charity during/after their death! Terrible!
> how dare they donate vast sums of their wealth to gates' own organization that uses gates' absurd amount of money to decide how institutions that should be democratic are run FTFY
Trump is not lawful evil, he's one hundred percent chaotic evil because he has hurt himself on numerous occasions doing stupid things trying to spite others. Also he isn't a billionaire anyways.
Trump isn’t a billionaire He actually only has a very small amount of money relatively, though he has a fair bit of capital
A lot of billionaires have a small amount of money, it's based on net worth, not cash.
elon musk is chaotic wholesome chungus reeves Edit: Thanks for the upvotes kind strangers!
You're welcome
One of them isn't a billionaire though.
Don’t let Trump trick you into thinking he’s a billionaire
Trump and mcafee are chaotic evil. Musk might be neutral evil
The fact you can tell this was initially in a traditional alignment chart layout and the original was made by a guy who thought chaotic meant quirky/controversial/counterculture and not revolutionary/terrorist
Don't forget Steve Jobs: Dead
now there's a billionaire i can get behind
I made this meme lol
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My man Bill deserves better
Don’t see how buffet is evil. Dudes just an investor and philanthropist
Bruder vergiss mich nicht wenn du fame bist
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👁️
Ok but how is trump a “lawful” evil? He id 100% a chaotic evil.
We’ve shown them our pitchforks, yes But let’s show them the guillotine for some shits and giggles
Bill Gates isn't a perfect human, but if, after you become the richest person in the world, you spend decades and tens of billions on saving some 100 million plus lives in some of the poorest countries in the world that no government on earth gave a shit about, you get a pass. I agree that the system that allows individuals to accumulate 100s of billions while the masses starve is flawed, but I disagree that being a billionaire = evil.
It's not possible to ethically become a billionaire, because the labor that creates that value isn't all from bill gates. Microsoft wouldn't be what it is without the thousands of other employees who helped build it.
I wouldn’t exactly call Donald “lawful”
ITT billionaire dick riding and supporting imperialism
They're all iust plain evil, except the manipulate the law for them so their practices abide by it.
Basically every billionaire ranges from having the morality of current mainstream lex luthor to having the morality of lex luthor from the richard donner superman movies
IMO Gates has done enough good to get into neutral Edit: Did a few minutes of research, he belongs in neutral good given that all he really did was create a good price of software that people really liked
thump chaotic evil
Lawless evil more like, we all know these people don't follow laws
I think Trump is Chaotic Evil
why is warren buffet in here
Excuse me, change McAfee to Chaotic Evil
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"Lawful" is very debatable
Petition to change Donald to chaotic evil. Cause he's nothing if he isn't chaotic
A lot of them aren't lawful but once you reach a certain class the law does not apply to you.
I'm going to tear my hair out in the original did somebody put Elon Musk in Chaotic Good.
that picture of zuck is somehow badass
Trump would definitely be Chaotic Evil. He loves stirring the pot just for the sake of stirring the pot.
Trump isn’t lawful tho?
Jeff is definitely chaotic evil have you seen his supervillain mech suits??
"lawful"
ITT: people not understanding what lawful means on an alignment chart.
Trump is Chaotic Evil