this post was submitted on 23 Dec 2023
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[–] Gullible@sh.itjust.works 19 points 10 months ago (3 children)

Bill gates from behind with the ~~steel chair~~ polio vaccination program.

[–] julietOscarEcho@sh.itjust.works 8 points 10 months ago (1 children)

Kicking malaria's butt too right. Sure you don't get to be a billionaire without exploitation. But I doubt I'd be smart enough to organise philanthropy as well as they seem to be. So props to them for caring?

[–] Gullible@sh.itjust.works 15 points 10 months ago (1 children)

As long as no one idolizes him, I’d say compliments are fine. I’ll never trust a billionaire, but I still appreciate when they do right. Social media causing hero worship to all but die among the reasonable has been its only positive.

[–] julietOscarEcho@sh.itjust.works 1 points 10 months ago (1 children)

That's an interesting line to draw from social media. Depends who you view as the reasonable I guess but I'm not sure I follow. Got any material that fleshes it out?

[–] Gullible@sh.itjust.works 2 points 10 months ago

It’s just a consequence of the disillusionment that social media can provide. The mask dropping to reveal a full confederate uniform and a barely obscured bruised child is a common reason to avoid personally handling your twitter as a celebrity and yet it continues to happen. Kids a few decades ago would have had no ability to learn that their heroes were colossal douches, now they say so themselves. Loudly. It comes in waves, and most recently the muskitos. And thus,

[–] Misanthrope@lemmy.ml 5 points 10 months ago

Bill Gates is still a bastard. Here's an episode of Tech Won't Save Us that features an interview with the author of "The Bill Gates Problem".

https://audio.buzzsprout.com/1si7b1vx1g5ei3rwrd8kqmhrw0f2?response-content-disposition=inline&

[–] lseif@sopuli.xyz 0 points 10 months ago

still a billionare. fight me

[–] Randomunemployment@lemmings.world 17 points 10 months ago (1 children)

Interesting note 20th century millionaires tried to tackle societal ills by making various utopia like projects. Hershey tried to make I think 3 cities (USA, Brazil, maybe Cuba) were he tried to control the populace. They all failed except maybe, USA the city is a tourist trap and major hospital. I think Spain had another with a long City, and a more modern example is Dubai with ..... Basically all of Dubai. Or California currently has a project being run by several tech people.

[–] Krauerking@lemy.lol 6 points 10 months ago (1 children)

Well I will say Hershey USA has a combination of local farms to feed the populace and generate the products for the factory, a public pond and picnic grounds that also provides water pressure for the city by being a giant lifted open water reservoir, and he funded the arts and built free entertainment for his employees that he paid them to help build.

It was pretty good for the time period and his fund continues to fund one of the best orphanage programs. It pivoting to tourism is the unfortunate result of the USA believing in pretty much only the service economy.

A lot of the other 20th century Uber rich built public stuff mostly to buy positive opinion and get regulators/employees off their back. Hershey is a fully functioning company town still 100 years later. Not a lot of those around. But it certainly has issues cause of course, nothing is perfect or lasts perfect.

[–] Randomunemployment@lemmings.world 2 points 10 months ago (1 children)

I forgot the source but there was a YouTuber that did a deep dive. It boiled down to Hershey being forced to pivot his goals. If I remember correctly he started with strict moral and civil planning and then it got progressively ness strict growing into an actual city.

[–] Krauerking@lemy.lol 2 points 10 months ago (1 children)

Oh deeply devout quaker style Catholic, you do everything for the sake of good hard work and labor. Gotta accept a little bit of time period appropriateness.

[–] Randomunemployment@lemmings.world 2 points 10 months ago (1 children)

I am so sorry but I do not understand your comment. If you want an example of being forced to change. Hershey initially wanted the city to be a dry City, that didn't last long.

[–] Krauerking@lemy.lol 3 points 10 months ago

I'm from the area I know a lot about Hershey. But I meant he was a quaker esque religious descendant, which I know realize might not mean a lot outside of the US, people who were the predominant religious zealouts who founded the USA out of not wanting to be near all the hippies.

Specifically he was a Mennenite which probably means even less, so think Amish if you know that, or deeply devout conservative jew that believes in more suffering as being needed to love God. Interesting group. Even if he was progressive that background doesn't let you get too far away I would think.

[–] Spacehooks@reddthat.com 10 points 10 months ago (1 children)

Didn't brainiac do the same with krypton?

[–] spudwart@spudwart.com 4 points 10 months ago (1 children)

Brainiac artificially increases the value of his knowledge from planets by genociding said planets.

So yeah, exactly the same.

[–] Spacehooks@reddthat.com 1 points 10 months ago (1 children)

Oh for some reason I thought krypton was overly dependent on him and that led to its destruction. My Memories are very hazy on that.

[–] spudwart@spudwart.com 3 points 10 months ago (1 children)

They were overly dependent on him and believed when he said everything was fine. Not only was it not fine, but he was the reason it blew up.

[–] Spacehooks@reddthat.com 2 points 10 months ago

Ok so it was as I remember. Thanks.