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"If every person used their resources for the best of society, the world would be a better place!" Sure thing. The problem is, many of those people also burn

by k__ 5y ago

"If every person used their resources for the best of society, the world would be a better place!" Sure thing. The problem is, many of those people also burn money for yachts and spaceships. Plus, to me all this charity stuff seems like a buyout. Gates basically made the world a worse place, before he started to make it better.

Ensorceled 5y ago
And then Gates fought against dropping COVID vaccine patent protection for months. Old habits die hard, I guess.
- bzbarsky 5y ago
  The COVID vaccine patent protections were not constraining vaccine supply, because they were being licensed to anyone with the capacity to produce the vaccines anyway. It sure did make for good grandstanding to speak out against the patents and pretend like getting rid of them would change anything about vaccine availability in practice, though, and lots of people jumped up on that grandstand. So given that dropping the patent protections would not actually help produce more vaccines and given the questions about long-run effects on drug research, opposing the people trying to score easy political points at the expense of actually doing something useful does not seem like a bad choice to me.
whack 5y ago
> The problem is, many of those people also burn money for yachts and spaceships. Sure, but upper-middle-class people also burn money on upscale housing/food/travel etc. The main difference is that billionaires who've signed the giving pledge give a much larger fraction of their income and wealth to causes that help the needy. Also, it seems odd to lump together spaceships with yachts. When anti-intellectuals attack government funding for NASA, we're the first to defend NASA and all the beneficial progress that comes out of funding cutting edge engineering projects. It's disingenuous to then attack people like Bezos when they do the same thing with their own money. > Plus, to me all this charity stuff seems like a buyout. Gates basically made the world a worse place, before he started to make it better. Maybe. I'm certainly not saying that billionaires should be given tax breaks because of their virtuous character. Just pointing out that the needy might ironically be best served by a billionaire tax cut.

by k__ 5y ago

Ensorceled 5y ago

And then Gates fought against dropping COVID vaccine patent protection for months. Old habits die hard, I guess.

bzbarsky 5y ago
The COVID vaccine patent protections were not constraining vaccine supply, because they were being licensed to anyone with the capacity to produce the vaccines anyway. It sure did make for good grandstanding to speak out against the patents and pretend like getting rid of them would change anything about vaccine availability in practice, though, and lots of people jumped up on that grandstand. So given that dropping the patent protections would not actually help produce more vaccines and given the questions about long-run effects on drug research, opposing the people trying to score easy political points at the expense of actually doing something useful does not seem like a bad choice to me.

whack 5y ago

> The problem is, many of those people also burn money for yachts and spaceships. Sure, but upper-middle-class people also burn money on upscale housing/food/travel etc. The main difference is that billionaires who've signed the giving pledge give a much larger fraction of their income and wealth to causes that help the needy. Also, it seems odd to lump together spaceships with yachts. When anti-intellectuals attack government funding for NASA, we're the first to defend NASA and all the beneficial progress that comes out of funding cutting edge engineering projects. It's disingenuous to then attack people like Bezos when they do the same thing with their own money. > Plus, to me all this charity stuff seems like a buyout. Gates basically made the world a worse place, before he started to make it better. Maybe. I'm certainly not saying that billionaires should be given tax breaks because of their virtuous character. Just pointing out that the needy might ironically be best served by a billionaire tax cut.