Hi, I'm from Australia, sorry if this is the wrong place for this. I was reading this profile of Melinda French Gates, ex-wife of Bill Gates, here:
https://www.smh.com.au/lifestyle/life-and-relationships/gigantic-joy-melinda-french-gates-on-her-new-life-after-divorce-20250326-p5lmnp.html
I have a serious question for our American friends.
Melinda Gates is worth approximately US$30 billion apparently. And Mackenzie Scott, ex-wife of Jeff Bezos, is worth US$42 billion. They are both philanthropists, focused on women and girls' welfare.
If they really care so much about women's welfare, why didn't they put their money where their mouth is? This question goes for other progressive billionaires in the US too. If they, along with some of their friends had pooled their money together, they could have bought Twitter (and maybe even mainstream news organizations like The Washington Post).
Twitter was a hugely influential resource for the global center-left, and now it has become a source of far-right indoctrination. Elon Musk took a huge risk when he bought Twitter, but it has paid off for him and the global far-right - not in a monetary sense, but in the sense that they were able to take that space away from the left, which I think was their objective in the first place. The right wing seems to be so much more committed, and willing to spend their money to achieve their political objectives, whereas the left (or center-left, or just democracy-loving people) seem so lame in comparison. What gives?
Originally Posted By u/GrouchyInstance At 2025-04-11 11:47:43 PM | Source
People die because they don’t have money.
Money is access to food and water in a capitalist society. You are talking about a trickle down theory which has no incentive to actually do anything to aid society, and just an excuse to hoard.
I'm not pushing trickle down "economics" here; I'm explicitly talking about the handful of billionaires who do use their money for the benefit of society. Definitely tax them and all other billionaires, but the "billionaires are inherently unethical no matter what they do" logic ignores the reasons billionaires are actually bad for society, which are a lot more insidious than "they have a lot of money while others starve". Responding to "Bill Gates used his money to save 122 million lives" with "Bill Gates is bad because he's a billionaire" is more reminiscent of dogma than critical reasoning.