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Bill Gates is a horrible person. (lemmy.world)

submitted 2 days ago by Maerman@lemmy.world to c/opensource@lemmy.ml

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So I just read Bill Gates' 1976 Open Letter To Hobbyists, in which he whines about not making more money from his software. You know, instead of being proud of making software that people wanted to use. And then the bastard went on and made proprietary licences for software the industry standard, holding back innovation and freedom for decades. What a douche canoe.

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[-] UNY0N@lemmy.wtf 2 points 2 days ago

And he is one of the "better" billionaires. He has donated over $100 Billion to help people around the world, which makes him look like a great guy on paper.

I think it's not so much him as a person, but his business decisions in the context of capitalism. That's the real evil, not any one person.

Just to be clear, I'm not defending him or his actions.

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[-] petersr@lemmy.world -3 points 2 days ago

I read his memoir "Source Code". He has had a fascinating life and I still don't understand how such a geeky person turns into cold blooded business as he does. There are still a lot of other billionaire I would shit on before Gates and I really respect his pledge to give away his wealth and his work with charity, but yeah well, I guess he has pretty awful sides still.

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[-] raspberriesareyummy@lemmy.world -5 points 2 days ago

Not to say he's a good person, but contrary to most billionaires, he

actually contributed some technical know-how in building his fortune (still, billionaires should not exist)
did not rape children (as far as we know so far)

Furthermore, he's long gone from Microsoft, so I think your ire is better directed at Satya Nadella and similar totalitarian elitist pieces of shit

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[-] Engywuck@lemmy.zip -3 points 2 days ago* (last edited 2 days ago)

Most people are.

[-] DarrinBrunner@lemmy.world 1 points 2 days ago

It's a continuum, of course, like everything. Most people sit somewhere in the middle, with a few people defining the extremes.

No, most people are not horrible.

[-] Engywuck@lemmy.zip 2 points 2 days ago

It depends on your definition of horrible. Mine is quite broad.

[-] Credibly_Human@lemmy.world 1 points 2 days ago

I doubt you actually believe this, at least if we are understanding the words as written.

Just based on the website we are talking on, I am going to assume we have a few shared moral similarities, at least at a glance.

We think murder, rape, discrimination based on inalienable traits, domestic abuse, religious fanaticism, theft outside of exceptions are wrong.

If we start going down even that quickly thought up list, and just look at surveys from groups throughout the world, we start chunking massive percentages of people off of our "good" list very quickly.

These are nowhere near exact numbers because the point isn't about any specific one of these, but about disqualifying behaviours and points of view.

Most people don't murder, but many support it. Let's just say we are only thinking about people who will murder at some point in their lives, and guesstimate that at 1% off the list.

99% good

Most people don't rape... or do they? How many third world or religiously fanatic nations treat rape as standard, within marriages, on people of lower status, etc.

Even in western nations, the numbers of people who are sexually assaulted by people they know are more like 1 in [single digit number], and then further surveys always reveal that there is probably significant under-reporting going on, with many people unable to believe they were raped, told to be silent, and who ultimately rationalize away the event.

Now you go to countries with religious fanaticism, and many if not most condone rape in some fashion, especially spousal rape.

I would estimate, that the amount of people who rape, extremely roughly guesstimating, is around 1/10th the population, if not higher.

Some will overlap with the murderers of course, but this is just a thought experiment, and I already think this guess is on the low side, so lets move on.

89% good

Discrimination is where we start chunking hard. Even if you try to be charitable here, surveys show that even within western countries many are ok with and regularly discriminate against people for their inalienable traits. You go to poorer countries or countries with less stable situations and this gets even worse.

Lets just guesstimate that of the non overlaps, this takes 3/10 off the list, giving quite a bit of leeway to people with less blatant instances.

59% good

I could keep going but I hope you see the point I am making here and why I think that if just about anyone here sat down and truly pieced together what the average person was like, with whatever their personal list of disqualifiers from being a good person were, they would quickly come to the conclusion, that most people are not good, and could easily come to the conclusion that many were horrible, depending on what horrible meant in that context. Horrible doesn't have to be saved for only hitler just because its not used for someone who steals a candy bar.