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this post was submitted on 19 Mar 2024
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I know general consensus is fuck billionaires, and I'm not exactly desputing that, but I work in IT for a rural school district and a donation from her foundation allowed the district to set up a foundation and now 50 of our students can attend a local community College on full scholarship each year.
To be fair, she took a billionaire’s (Jeff Bezos) money and is now redistributing $38b of his wealth. She’s one of the good ones.
It was her money too, as she was a core founding member of Amazon, but until their divorce it was locked up in shares.
It does sure seem like she wanted to give a lot of it away, probably for a long time. I'm glad his midlife crisis is helping so many people.
But imagine he would've been able to gain even more interest on that 4% she stole!
This is a devastating loss.
If you look into the matter, she very much helped to earn that money. It's hers, not taken from anyone.
Nobody actually earns that much, and I doubt that her labor directly created that much real value.
Well if we ignore all the exploitation of workers and public infastructure/resources we can say they earned their money.
The exception that proves the rule.
That's not what that means.
I don't think I've ever agreed with any usage of that phrase, correct or incorrect. People just use it to dismiss counter-evidence to their pet theories.
Why would you disagree with correct usage?
Because she is simply an "exception." Use of the phrase would require there to be a general understanding that "billionaires are bad except when...", but the prevailing notion is simply that "billionaires are bad." Therefore, she is an "exception", and a good one at that, not an "exception that proves the rule".
edit Oops, replied to the wrong one, but leaving this here because I'm lazy. I am the rule.
I'm not sure what the tone/intention was here but I'll take it as a normal question. I disagree because I think people use it as an easy way to improperly dismiss evidence that disagrees with their views, even when they use it correctly in a sentence.
Can you provide an example of correct usage that does this?
I think we have a mismatch of definitions. By "correct usage", I mean it's grammatically correct, but not necessarily that the exception does actually "prove the rule". Anything that fits the sentence but doesn't actually provide a rule-proving exception is what I'm referring to as "incorrect usage".
Although come to think of it, I don't think any exception can prove a rule by itself, actually. The only time it would work is if the entity enforcing the rule explicitly calls something out as an exception-- in which case, the thing proving the rule is that they acknowledged the rule by explicitly calling something an exception.
The definition you provided in the second paragraph is the correct usage.
Oh, okay. I guess that works, but in that case people use it incorrectly nearly every time.
Yeah, that's part of the problem.
Iirc, the word "prove" in this context is the archaic definition "test" e.g. the proving ground. This would imply the original meaning of the phrase is in fact the opposite of how it is normally used today: "the exception proves the rule "means 'an exception tests [whether or not it is] a rule.' As you say, people now use it in this strange fashion where the existence of counter evidence somehow proves the point
Ooh that's interesting
She's strategically working on no longer being a billionaire.
And we could do the same without the billionaires. Since they don't create value, we can skip the part where the money goes to them, and directly support our communities. Eliminate billionaires as a drain on our society.
I see both sides of this. I agree with you in principle, but practically the US can't get its shit together. Would you trust the government with an influx of cash? They'd probably turn it into weapons.
The thing I like most about what she is doing unlike other billionaire philanthropists is that her money is given with no strings attached.
Sure, it's great, but I'd rather them not have to beg for it and instead take the money they're leaching from society by force. They should just be forced to give that money in taxes, not have the schools beg for scraps.
This is the answer. Philanthropy is great and all. But how awesome would it be if philanthropy wasn't needed. And who tends to make philanthropy necessary? The wealthy and billionaires taking far more than their share.
Whilst commendable, that is not the job of billionaires.
Other countries have free access to adult education. Some are even paid to attend