Comments

1

Gates has great tasteful sweaters!
At least he's not spending his multi-billions on 10 yachts!

2

These three white men with money have god complexes.

3

Look, their "wealth" only means something if you actually agree with their valuations.

Things only have value if other people agree they have value.

As oil and coal are learning.

4

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FpL6Fwu0wkw

5

femmunism was right there...

8

Most small businesses that employ half of America are gonna be bankrupt by the end of May. How in the world do they think they’ll be able to return to our regularly scheduled kleptonomy when there won’t be anything for most people to go back to.

Also, a third to half of Americans won’t be able to make their rent/mortgage payment on May 1 (May Day!). That in itself is gonna cause a raging financial crisis.

There’s a cascade failure in progress and we have the worst possible greedy psychopaths in charge. It’s the end of American capitalism, going out like a massive, chain-reaction car crash.

10

@ 9,

Wrong about what? No small business can go months on end without revenues, especially if they have employees and rent due. Millions couldn’t make their April rent/mortgage payment, and it’s gotten much worse since then.

The total failure of trickle down eCONomics is well-documented, and 70% of our eCONomy is consumer spending. The result is a trickle-up apocalypse.

Wall $treet and the billionaire oligarchs are sucking directly from the Treasury’s teats with QE Infinity, so they’re laughing all the way. The rest of us are in for a catastrophic deflationary shock.

12

@7 wow u must be a blast at parties

13

"... the elaboration of the species-specific features from this bond is human cooperative behaviors."

Well, we know where the Trolls are on that one.
Unless by cooperative you mean war mongering.

16

@15 ... -- while trolls trivalize* human cooperative behaviors.

It's Hard af to steal someone's Resources or Labor whilst thoroughly engaging in human cooperative behaviors

*dismiss disparage belittle denigrate mock ridicule deride dismiss vilify discredit defame condemn revile malign slur discredit dismiss abuse and condemn

17

Charles keeps trying to save Marxism, long after its corpse has rotted.

18

@16
And pandemics!
And other natural disasters - hurricanes, tornadoes, and earthquakes!

20

I don't know Bill Gates, but I knew his mother (insomuch as she was a professional woman who had to deal with a flunky like me on many occasions) and a better person you would be hard-pressed to find. Both Mary Gates and Bill Gates Sr. came from modest backgrounds and believed in public service. I'm just sorry that Mary left us before her son achieved the apex of his power and wealth. The Gates Foundation does great things, but a Gates Foundation with Mary Gates as part of it would be amazing.

21

@19, yeah, right. Or if Gates had spent that money building massive statues of himself--y'know like the Crazy Horse Memorial but actually completed--just think of all the skilled artists he could have employed. Or imagine hundreds of Easter Island-like statues, but wearing glasses and tasteful sweaters. The people who gets saved by those malaria and dengue fever drugs are eventually going to die, but the row of Bill Gates Easter Island statues could live on for hundreds of years.

Anyway, I'm just popping on this thread to mention that I caught Gates Sunday night on that idiot Fareed Zakaria's CNN show, and it was just remarkable the eggshells Gates would walk on to avoid acknowledging any culpability on China's part. You know China's powerful when it has one of the richest men in human history totally by the balls.

22

There is no saving this form of capitalism. Individualistic consumer culture is a game of chicken with our environment, and neither capital nor consumers show any signs of easing off the gas or turning the wheel. We have a couple of good years left, five livable years left, and 10 years before systemic collapse of the food web.

Covid was a dry run for the changes we need to make to avoid that fate, and we flunked, especially in the US.

23

"And when he had opened the third seal, I heard the third beast say, Come and see. And I beheld, and lo a black horse; and he that sat on him had a pair of balances in his hand. And I heard a voice in the midst of the four beasts say, A measure of wheat for a penny, and three measures of barley for a penny; and see thou hurt not the oil and the wine.”

25

Momunism = moms who are communists?

26

Just a few months ago, Gates suggested he might vote for Trump if Sanders got the nomination (and no this isn't a belated endorsement of Sanders - just sayin...).

Just a few years ago, when asked why he opposed paying higher taxes, he said, basically...because he didn't want to.

The fact we're allowing people of dubious moral character to be moral leaders in this mess is proverbially shocking, but not surprising (where I live it's the closet-case local urgent care doctor dispensing public health advice while not accepting Medicaid). What can Bill Gates do to really help? Support an emergency wealth tax in the double digits on people like himself (90% sounds about right - that was roughly the marginal tax rate for the highest earners in the Truman, Eisenhower years), and call for an immediate and permanent end to the longstanding practice of using perma-temps at Microsoft, among other things.


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