[johndhi]

Where do you guys come up with these ideas?

Simply having a lot of money makes someone evil? Why? They are obviously all quite competitive in business but the philanthropy they've done is pretty crazy. Gates for example is giving away hundreds of billions of dollars. What does it even matter if he's compassionate or not if he's doing that?

[jacquesm]

> Where do you guys come up with these ideas?

By thinking.

[shimman]

Thinking, experiencing the world, knowing that throughout our entire history of a species that tales of "excess greed" were also cautionary tales on how greed ruins society throughout the entire world.

[johndhi]

Excess greed is a different thing than excess wealth. Bill gates is giving away all of that wealth - is that a greedy action?

[_DeadFred_]

My working class family members always gave 10% to charity (kind of the standard social contract in the US for giving) when that 10% made up a huge percentage of the money it takes for them to live a very basic life. Compare that to billionaires who have more money than they could ever spend and the percentage they have given:

Zuckerberg 2.1%. Ballmer 3.7% Bezos 1.6% Sergey Brin 2.5% Michael Dell 2.6% Ken Griffin 5%

https://www.forbes.com/sites/forbeswealthteam/2025/02/03/ame...

[triceratops]

> the philanthropy they've done is pretty crazy

If philanthropy and normal living expenses (even assuming billionaire living standards) were the only things super-rich people spent money on that's fine. Unfortunately they use it to directly influence politics and society.

Wealth, like celestial bodies, has a gravitational field.

[Otterly99]

In general (not always, but it is mostly true) philantropy from billionaires and very profitable companies tend to be overshadowed by how much they profit from a system biased toward enriching them (see: The divide by Jason Hickel). A small metaphor to illustrate: are you a philantropist if you film yourself giving away 100$ to homeless people but make tens of thousands from posting the video?

[cratermoon]

If you gave away as much money proportionately, you'd have about 75 fewer dollars in your pocket.

Tell me again how generous billionaires are.

[johndhi]

Gates has pledged 200 billion - 99 pct of his wealth - and has already given 60 billion (close to half of it). Is that generous or not?

[toomuchtodo]

Because it's about power, control, and influence. The wealth is just the tool. Melinda French and MacKenzie Scott are true philanthropists, Gates and Bezos are just status chasers. "Look at me!" "Please clap." and so on. There are only ~3000 billionaires in the world, so I am not too concerned about broad support for them in a world with 8-10 billion people.

"Fuck you" money is fine, we all strive for freedom during our lifetime as humans. "Fuck everyone" money is not a welcome target, imho. That's unelected power. Its easy to not be a billionaire of course: philanthropy. But do most billionaires? They do not. They hold tightly to their power.

"Why does it even matter?" Because many of us do not want to be ruled or governed by these people, who by all indications, are not fond of other humans and see them as a resource to exploit and control. I assure you, I have no envy for these people and their wealth, I am allergic to what it would take to accumulate and maintain it (as a high empathy, high justice sensitivity human). I know what enough is. This is self preservation from a class of predator.

> Where do you guys come up with these ideas?

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Theory_of_mind

https://medium.com/roaring-rivers/are-all-billionaires-socio... | https://archive.today/nX2Fh

https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/interactive/2025/bil... | https://archive.today/Gb2RF

https://www.forbes.com/sites/ellamalmgren/2025/09/09/america... | https://archive.today/nLx78

https://www.google.com/search?q=billionaires+sociopaths