[skandium]

One of the great tragedies of the world is that while he is arguably the philanthropist with the highest positive impact in human history, a significant part of the population seems to still think he is the literal Antichrist.

[larodi]

This statement is so 90s and so BOFH-centered that it is irrelevant to a level of stupidity. Gates has done a lot to prove he's not a cold-hearted mf and compared to all the bros in their prime at the moment, dude, just think of Elon or Larry Ellison, well our man Billy is really very much a bright persona.

[posix_compliant]

Rationally, you're correct. But emotionally, there's a lot of people who don't understand why someone would provide a free service without an ulterior motive. Gates talks about this a bit on the Trevor Noah podcast.

[wongarsu]

Microsoft's company practices under Gates don't help, but they are far from the main issue people have with him nowadays. Most people aren't even aware of the things Microsoft did.

People think he is the antichrist because he promotes vaccines and because there are multiple quotes of him where he explains that he wants to reduce the world's population. By raising the standard of living and giving healthcare to the poor, which empirically seem to cause lower birth rates, but lots of nutjobs assume he tests weaponized vaccines or something like that. And people are distrusting of people who appear too altruistic in general, thinking it's some kind of con (and often they are right).

[hamburglar]

There is a difference between reducing the world’s population and slowing its growth rate. The highest growth rates are necessarily in areas with high mortality. People have more babies to compensate for this mortality. Improve mortality rates and the population growth naturally goes down.

[wongarsu]

Good point, "Reducing population growth" is a more accurate portrayal of what Gates actually said.

But in practice they are the same thing. Almost the entire developed world has a fertility rate below the replacement rate. Even the upper half of developing countries are below replacement rate. If you bring health care, urbanization and the economy across Africa to levels comparable to Russia or Brazil we can expect their birth rate to similarly fall below the replacement rate too.

[larodi]

Well, here's something else he's saying as of like - today

https://www.politico.eu/article/elon-musk-to-blame-for-world...

[turnsout]

Agreed—I spent the 90s idolizing Jobs and despising Gates. But today I have deep respect for Gates and the way he's using his wealth as a positive force in the world. Jobs had better taste and was a more effective product leader, but I'm sorry to say that he sucked as a philanthropist. It's disappointing that he spent ANY of his mental energy at the end of his life building that dumb $100M yacht, rather than focusing on his legacy.

[kmoser]

Better taste? How so, and why does that matter when we're talking about moral character?

[kridsdale1]

I’m making a stretch to find an answer, but there’s an argument to be made to putting great works of art and beauty in to the world counts as an act of bettering humanity. Look at The Vatican for an example. The patronage of that wealth concentration gave us many of mankind’s greatest achievements.

So if you consider Jobs’ boat or Apple Park or the fact that 700M people hold a literal masterpiece of design and engineering in their hands in order to send nudes and memes to each other a work of benevolence then it makes sense.

[turnsout]

It has nothing to do with moral character—just an opinion about Steve Jobs's strengths. Note that taste is subjective.

[el_benhameen]

I think the comment was referring more to the antivax/conspiracy crowd who often mix Gates in with Soros, etc. in their stories. Still plenty of those folks.

[crossroadsguy]

> irrelevant to a level of stupidity

Is that ever?

I am not saying Gates is a monster. So I am not commenting on him. I am commenting on your logic of doing supposed good and hence they becoming good.

When you look at the history of most colonial monsters you will notice is an often repeated trend. Those despicable monster amassing wealth literally on the bodies of natives and then going back home (including some to USA) and buying a "good name" (sometimes literally in the form of those fancy titles and peerages etc).

Oh by the way, Musk and Ellison from your example are benign non-beings compared to pretty much all those "monsters".

I don't know where you are from or where you are now but a lot of world sees "good deeds of good people" with great suspicion.

[mhh__]

The impression I get is that he's just cold hearted but directing it towards charity. Not in an evil sense although perhaps it's lucky.

People like the bill gates of the 90s don't just disappear

[BSOhealth]

My guess would be, actually a very small number of people think he’s the antichrist. Why would anyone other than someone with decades of operating system passion even care who this guy is? They know he’s a rich guy. Big deal. I’d guess most people just live their lives and don’t care about Microsoft monopoly or FOSS or anything. The same can probably be said for his altruism—most people probably have no idea.

[swiftcoder]

The antivax movement has been demonising the medical side of his foundation for decades at this point - I'd wager the folks who weren't born in the 90s are more likely to have heard about that than about the genesis of Windows

[SoftTalker]

The antivax movement is a tiny number of fringe wackos. Normal people are not against normal vaccines, even if some of them had concerns about one recent one in particular.

[kridsdale1]

Tiny fringe whackos yes.

But they were a significant force in electing the current president and his health secretary who is currently endangering whether we all get a flu and Covid booster this autumn.

[jonas21]

16% of American adults believe that vaccines are unsafe [1]. That's 40 million people, which is not exactly a tiny number.

While concerns about the Covid-19 vaccine are highest (24%), significant numbers of people still feel that "normal" vaccines are unsafe, like MMR (9%) and flu (11%).

[1] https://www.annenbergpublicpolicycenter.org/vaccine-confiden...

[SoftTalker]

9% (if accurate) is pretty fringe in my view. Nobody wins anything or has a mandate for changing anything with 9% support.

[swiftcoder]

They are a fringe movement that landed on the incredible PR machine that was "mommy bloggers", parlayed that over into wellness influencers on tiktok/instagram, and figured out how to tie themselves into the web of other conspiracy theories that all fringe wackos believe...

Ever met a flat earther, a Qanon, or a chemtrails guy? I'll put good money they also believe that vaccines cause autism

[Azkron]

For many people "wealthy = evil". And "poor = good". It is easier to demonize someone that is doing better than you than to admit that maybe he is just making better choices.

[keybored]

The poor can be anything. A wealthy person could have worked hard for it. A wealthy person could have also exploited others in order to get wealthy.

Virtually all (meaning systemically) very wealthy people had to exploit others to get to their very wealthy state.

[SwamyM]

Yea, his involvement with the Covid vaccine research seems to have made him a target for a large portion of the GOP/MAGA contingent. They are convinced that he wants to use the vaccine to implant a microchip in everyone and control them.

[wincy]

Huh? You must not hang around middle America, out here people act like Bill Gates wants to vaccinate all of Africa in order to sterilize them and also put microchips in your brain. I guarantee if I asked five random people on the street in Kansas about what they think of Bill Gates, half of them would say “oh right he’s like doing bad stuff with the Illuminati?” or something similar.

[nicce]

But that is not Bill Gates' fault because he hasn't been doing it in reality. I think the difference still matters. Only the restricted set of conspiracy theorists and their audience thinks otherwise.

[macintux]

That ‘restricted set’ is incredibly powerful politically at the moment.

[adamc]

This is true, because Trump caters to them. It isn't clear that their numbers drove this -- I think rather it is a function of their willingness to be completely loyal to him, which is what he craves.

[keybored]

Let’s not Trumpwash history. There are critiques of Bill Gates philanthropy which have no link to anything Trump or his supporters have ever said.

[throwaway5752]

Some people will always believe some dumb shit. There is no tragedy, just the regular condition of many people being ignorant.

He also did awful things in the business world when he was younger. He's no saint, either, he is just a normal, messy person. But he's done more for the poorest and neediest people in the world than most countries.

[coryfklein]

> a significant part of the population seems to still think he is the literal Antichrist.

Beware that you don't fall into the trap of thinking the 1% of the population that makes 90% of the noise on the internet is "significant" or a representative sampling of the population. Most everyone else's views are quite boring and detached from extremism, they just don't shout their moderation on the rooftops.

[oulipo]

I'm not sure he's actually the philanthropist with the "highest positive impact", when looking at the "net value"

he's "extorted" a lot of money from various states by locking and price-gouging, money that would have otherwise been spent on social projects

basically he has done

Gates -> extort money -> fantastic personal wealth -> gave back to organization *he* decides to give too

while the normal path would be

Governments and people have lower spending because they don't need to give Microsoft too much cash -> governments and people decide by themselves how to spend extra money -> there are more, and more diversified, humanitarian actions

[BurningFrog]

A lot of people genuinely believe that all rich people are evil, and that they somehow have stolen their wealth.

That people can create wealth is alien to most people!

They think wealth is money, which leads to a zero sum belief system. That is, if Bill has $200B, he must have taken it from the rest of us.

[sam_lowry_]

He is literally buying indulgence for his earlier sins.

[sailingparrot]

Ah yes, saving millions of kids’ lives through vaccination and virtually eradicating polio is a way to make up for … checks notes… bundling a browser into an OS and not being nice with open source.

Some grass is in need of touching.

[lobotomizer]

More like making up for enabling genocide through critical support for the Israeli and US militaries.

[dekrg]

Yes and Bill Gates is such a good guy that he even remained friends with Jeffrey Epstein after Epstein's conviction. To help children of course. Truly a Bill Gates is a true hero looking out for all the children.

[gambiting]

Do you have any details on the exact nature of their relationship, so we can read up on it?

[dekrg]

You mean aside his wife divorcing him over his relationship with Epstein and it being widely reported in the news? I guess we will never know if Epstein and Gates even knew each other.

For anyone actually curious and unaware there are plenty of new articles that talk about Gates and Epstein, it's not some hidden secret. However it's a topic those who like Gates philanthropy like to ignore and pretend it doesn't exist as can be seen in this thread.

[gambiting]

>>You mean aside his wife divorcing him over his relationship with Epstein

She divorced him over Gates cheating, not over the relationship with Epstein - if I'm wrong please correct me.

>>like to ignore and pretend it doesn't exist

I honestly don't want to, like the other commented said "just google" - so I "just googled" and none of the articles I found suggest they had anything beyond a very superficial relationship where they met a few times. Again, if I'm wrong please correct me.

[foldr]

Not OP, but this information is easily available by Googling ‘Bill Gates Epstein’. I’m not trying to be snarky. It’s just a widely covered news story.

[gambiting]

So I googled exactly that, and what comes up is mostly about Epstein trying to extort gates:

https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2023/may/21/jeffrey-epst...

Gates addressing their relationship:

https://people.com/bill-gates-addresses-jeffrey-epstein-frie... https://www.cnn.com/2021/08/05/business/bill-gates-regrets-j...

Articles saying that they met "sometimes for a few hours":

https://pagesix.com/2025/04/15/celebrity-news/melinda-gates-...

Etc etc.

Nothing (as far as I can see, and tbh I'm not going to read past the first page of google results) suggesting that they were close friends in any meaning of the word.

Like, I don't know what kind of conclusion OP wants people to draw out of this. A lot of people were "friends" with Epstein, since he knew pretty much everyone, there are pictures of him smiling and shaking hands with lots of well known VIPs.

Which is why I asked OP for a source so we can just read about this - the whole "do your whole research" thing is just such an easy cop out because like you said "just google" doesn't really confirm anything, it's just a bunch of news articles from more or less reputable sources.

[knowitnone]

a significant part of Americans are dumb as bricks

[tasuki]

Can't he be both?

[nicce]

I think he is both. Maybe you need to do some evil before you can do some good, because the general evil does whatever necessary to win in competition, and that is challenging. He would have never got the money he has if he didn't do that.

[rendaw]

This is assuming that huge wealth inequality is a given and all we can do is pray for a rare oligarch to give some of that money back to those in need.

Edit: I think it's great that he is doing this, but I don't think it's a good system. Giving money is so hard at scale that you need to set up a corporation just to figure out how to do it, and either it's so hard that they can barely shave away at the amount they have or their MO has evolved to include preserving themselves as an entity. If that wealth were more distributed, the social distance between those in need and those with money would be less.

[nicce]

We don't have general system in place that would somehow prevent this. The world runs on capitalism and everyone needs food and roof. Whoever has the power to give them or take them, has the total power, and can play with the system more they have wealth. Social democracy is some sort of middle-ground but it is not enough, because it is not applied everywhere equally, and it is hard to define what is selfish and non-selfish.

[jayd16]

Laissez-faire capitalism is not synonymous with all forms of capitalism. We could and have in the past curbed runaway wealth and power. Pretending nothing can be done is, at best, ignoring history.

[nicce]

Absolutely something should be done. We just haven't found the method yet and we should keep looking for it.

[jayd16]

We could also decide to live in a society that doesn't allow for such runaway wealth consolidation we need the robber barons' hand-outs to do good. C'est la vie.

[nicce]

We could, but we haven't yet figured it out how to.

[jayd16]

Heavy progressive taxes and subsidized services would go a long way.

[neilv]

Sure you can. You have an equitable society, and when someone inevitably tries to take more than their share (because there will always be sociopaths), you make them stop.

[nicce]

That works only if majority agrees that we put such system in place and enforce it globally in the world. Some could say that communism was a failed attempt for this.

[amelius]

> still think he is the literal Antichrist.

And then I suppose that Steve Jobs is the Christ in this story.

You only have to look at the research output of Microsoft Research to know that it is the other way around. Kind of weird how even smart people get things mixed up.

[mithametacs]

What research?

[amelius]

https://www.nature.com/nature-index/institution-outputs/gene...

[bko]

I could understand some of the criticism for charitable work.

For instance, his foundation pushes birth control in developing nations. On the surface, it look like a just and noble cause.

But imagine how a developed nation would view an act like this on its own people from a foreign body. Imagine some wealthy Chinese national started taking out ads on American television telling Americans to have fewer children and going to poor neighborhoods in the US and handing out free contraceptives.

It's a kind of soft imperialism and social engineering that I imagine a lot of people object to. The guy can't even keep his marriage together and he's insistent on telling people half way around the world how to run their life?

[philosopher1234]

Because, not despite. Let no good deed go unpunished.

[marssaxman]

Al Capone ran a Chicago soup kitchen during the Great Depression, serving hundreds of thousands of free meals. Did this philanthropy absolve him of the harm done while acquiring the fortune which paid for the charity?

[1970-01-01]

Are we talking about Bill putting 5G chips in our vaccines, or are we talking about Bill Gates the total asshole[1]?

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bill_Gates#Treatment_of_collea...

[queuebert]

I didn't realize Xerox had so many employees.

[tootie]

Yeah, and vaccines are a big reason why. He has seen the benefits of mass vaccination first hand and was a big advocate for pandemic prevention before COVID. COVID really broke a lot of people's brains.

[codr7]

Benefits like less people in Africa and more resources for the ruling class?

[pessimizer]

You'd be saying the same thing about Epstein if he hadn't been caught.

What I don't understand is the comradeship I see in people competing to effusively praise oligarchs. Bill Gates fought against technological progress, fought against free and open source software, fought against antitrust, even bribed officials to push out competitors. Why would people pat each other on the back for admiring him?

Even afterwards, when he bought his redemption by showering money upon dubious nonprofits, and by creating other, even more dubious nonprofits - simply paying everyone who could possibly have a problem with him, including dozens of journalistic organizations and hundreds of individual journalists - all of his charitable efforts are still obviously ways to play with various social theories that he has, not to help people.

It takes a real psychopath to accumulate that much power, with so few principles, and then to use it to play games with people's lives. His entertainment and the entertainment of his class is endangering the world.

And I still listen to Michael Jackson, so whatever, but we know that his relationship with Epstein was pretty extensive, and what was said during his divorce (in relation to that) was alarming, as well as the fact that he immediately crumbled and gave her the farm. There's your conspiracy theory; I'm not going to be caught praising a guy for mosquito nets whom I pretty much knew hung out with Epstein for a time as intensely as anyone else did. Epstein was giving away money for elite approval, too.

What's money for if not for patronage? You can't take it with you.

[ipaddr]

He is not the greatest. He is literally taking the playbook from Andrew Carnegie or John D. Rockefeller who amassed great wealth then gave it away. These days you have Warren Buffett or Saros doing the same.

Many in tech were along for the Bill Gates show and felt he was a negative actor to the industry in many ways. The fact that he is taking that wealth and channeling it through charity to achieve what he believes is important worries many on both sides of the political divide because of the enormous amounts of power he has.

Specifically over the foundation: 1. Influence Over Public Policy Criticism: The foundation’s massive financial power allows it to heavily influence public health, education, and agricultural policy, sometimes without democratic oversight.

Example: In education, their support for charter schools and Common Core standards drew criticism for pushing reforms without enough input from teachers and communities.

2. Pharmaceutical and Vaccine Influence Criticism: The foundation has been accused of favoring pharmaceutical-based solutions, sometimes at the expense of broader public health approaches.

Example: Critics argue that funding pharmaceutical companies during vaccine rollouts (especially during COVID-19) prioritized private profits over equitable global access.

3. Corporate Ties Criticism: The foundation has invested in companies that contradict its stated goals (e.g., Coca-Cola, ExxonMobil), raising ethical questions.

Example: Investments in fossil fuel companies were seen as inconsistent with health and development goals.

4. Global South Criticism Criticism: Some argue that Gates Foundation programs in Africa and other regions can be top-down, lacking local input, and continuing a form of “philanthropic colonialism.”

5. Agricultural Interventions Criticism: Through the Alliance for a Green Revolution in Africa (AGRA), the foundation promoted industrial farming and GMOs.

Response: Some say this undermines traditional, sustainable farming practices and increases dependence on multinational corporations for seeds and fertilizers.

6. COVID-19 Vaccine Access Criticism: Gates opposed waiving IP rights for COVID-19 vaccines, which some argued delayed access in poorer countries.

Defense: The foundation claimed that maintaining IP was key to quality and speed, though many public health experts disagreed.

He is an interesting and unique character who achieved much but don't polish those angel wings just yet.

[closewith]

No billionaire will ever be a net positive to society. The wealth he accrued was literally stolen from the labour of millions of people. No token donations at the end of your life will ever remediate that situation.

[cjustin]

I often see this sentiment whenever a billionaire is in conversation, but I don't understand. Can you elaborate on how his wealth was "stolen" from people?

The way I see it, he's wealthy because he founded a wildly successful technology company by first creating something of value (MS-DOS). Microsoft has since grown to be one of the largest companies in the world, which hundreds of thousands of people voluntarily work for in exchange for a high salary, at least for engineers.

[closewith]

In a capitalist society, to a rounding error, most people work out of necessity - to house, clothe, and feed their families. This creates an inherently unequal relationship between capital and labour which is exploited to accrue wealth in the hands of a very few people.

This is literal theft from the working class of the fruits of their labours.

[vinceguidry]

Billionaires become billionaires because of preferential treatment by governments, not out of any kind of merit. There are lots of better things the world could have had, Linux and the software commons would be much much much better if Microsoft hadn't hired all the best software engineers to make proprietary software and if the federal government hadn't coddled it and overlooked its monopolistic practices. The Internet would be a much better place without the likes of Google and Microsoft throwing their weight around.

It's perfectly accurate to say that billionaires steal from the public, it's just that what's being stolen isn't easily quantifiable because it's effectively 'potential'. Think of the constant enshittification of everything and you get a sense for what's being stolen.

[Rebelgecko]

Why did Bill Gates get preferential treatment for his operating system over others like Steve Jobs or Vinod Khosla? Government connections?

[vinceguidry]

Sure. They ask him for government backdoors, to add stuff to it for military purposes. It's quid pro quo. Bill Gates gets to capture the lion's share of the wealth from his government-protected monopoly with all its anti-competitive practices and the public is left out in the cold.

[Rebelgecko]

So other OS's like Sun and MacOS refused to put in backdoors, and that's why Bill Gates is richer?

[Lalabadie]

Correct. When billionaires gain money, they gain it personally. When several billionaires start losing money, it's a recession.

[gambiting]

>> The wealth he accrued was literally stolen from the labour of millions of people.

It's such a weird take I don't even know where to begin. Are you suggesting that all people who worked at Microsoft to make Windows and IE and all their other products had their labour "stolen" from them? If yes, can you expand on that?

What do you do for a living? Do you perform some kind of a job that you get compensated for? If yes, do you also feel like you're being stolen from?

[Nullabillity]

> It's such a weird take I don't even know where to begin. Are you suggesting that all people who worked at Microsoft to make Windows and IE and all their other products had their labour "stolen" from them? If yes, can you expand on that?

We have a metric for the difference between what you charge for something and what you paid to provide it, it's called net income. Here's Microsoft's: https://www.macrotrends.net/stocks/charts/MSFT/microsoft/net...

Elsewhere, we tend to call that embezzlement.

[gambiting]

That's not embezzlement by any definition of the word.

>>What do you do for a living? Do you perform some kind of a job that you get compensated for? If yes, do you also feel like you're being stolen from?

Care to reply to this?

[Nullabillity]

> That's not embezzlement by any definition of the word.

This is just mental gymnastics on the level of "it's not murder when the military does it!".

> Care to reply to this?

No, because it's not relevant to the discussion.

[gambiting]

>>This is just mental gymnastics on the level of "it's not murder when the military does it!".

What definition of embezzlement includes both parties willingly engaging in exchange of labour for financial compensation? I think you are right, there is mental gymnastic happening, just not where you think it is.

>>No, because it's not relevant to the discussion.

How so?

[bombcar]

I don't even think you need to go that far - nobody who is not at least somewhat sociopathic will even become a billionaire (Buffett, that includes you) - because they'll happily step off the rat race at 10 or 100 million.

[pphysch]

Anyone with a truly global perspective will notice multiple elephant-sizes omissions from Gates' statement. The premise that deep, systemic societal issues can be addressed directly while stepping on egg-shells around political topics is laughable. In 2025, you cannot separate starving kids and poverty alleviation from global politics and the world order.

His #1 goal listed is almost offensive when you consider what is happening right now in May 2025 -- an utterly preventable scenario that he can't even mention lest it get "too political" and tar his image.

In other words, it's perfectly valid to be skeptical of his motives, which seem primarily to be around elevating his personal brand and legacy.

[JamesBarney]

> No mom, child, or baby dies of a preventable cause

This goal might offend you but it doesn't offend me, and I don't think his motives (whether it's for legacy or personal brand) matter to me or the mother of a child who didn't shit itself to death because a vaccine for the rotavirus.

[pphysch]

I think you missed the point: Gates is implying an ongoing genocide (including famine) is either unpreventable or simply not worth mentioning.

[haarolean]

It's hard to take him seriously or consider him a good guy. While advocating for the environment, he doesn't hesitate to short tesla, an EV company (questionable nature aside).

There are two possible reasons for this (the 'why' remains -- not enough money?):

- He's admitting he doesn't care about the environmental mission, just the returns

- He thinks tesla is a fraud, but isn't saying it publicly

Either way, it's sus, so it's tough to trust him.

[altruios]

Well it seems obvious why anyone would (and morally should) short tesla... but let me break it down for those in the bleachers with two facts.

Musk 1: behind the presidential podium during the inauguration with the country watching twice did a salute of the enemy of the American people in WW2. And 2: controls the vast majority of tesla shares and is their current CEO.

It is patriotic to short tesla. And Bill Gates clearly cares about the future direction of this country.

[haarolean]

Sure, but the shorting happened in 2022, when Musk wasn't clowning nearly as hard as now. Unless Gates has a time machine, this argument doesn't really stick.

[staticman2]

[flagged]

[tomhow]

Be kind. Don't be snarky. Converse curiously; don't cross-examine. Edit out swipes.

Comments should get more thoughtful and substantive, not less, as a topic gets more divisive.

When disagreeing, please reply to the argument instead of calling names. "That is idiotic; 1 + 1 is 2, not 3" can be shortened to "1 + 1 is 2, not 3."

https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html