• Double_A
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      1 year ago

      If the charity itself is doing proper work, that makes sense tbh. I mean, if you had billions to donate, would you give it to some random ass organisation… Or set up your own thing to do things that you personally agree with?

      • AntiOutsideAktion [he/him]@hexbear.net
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        1 year ago

        It’s not a charity. It’s a way to stay in control of all of your money and not pay taxes on it. You pay yourself and your children salaries from it. You have it contract with your profitable businesses. You get to use that money to decide what the world’s ideology is. You get to use it to own a segment of science itself by being where researchers need to go if they want funding. That’s what Bill Gates did with public education the last 10 years. This is how NGOs that go on to hire death squads in South America are created. And in the meantime you spend a few decimal points on a press blitz to make yourself look like a saint.

        • wheresmypillow@lemmy.one
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          1 year ago

          All the while Amazon keeps using the streets we pay for, the USPS we pay for, the GPS we pay for, and on and on. That money should be taxed and returned to us and we should get to decide what it’s for.

          • very_poggers_gay [they/them]@hexbear.net
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            1 year ago

            Solving inequality through taxation in a capitalist system is like being on a boat with a gaping hole in its hull and using spoons to throw that water back in the ocean. The best it can do is slow the inevitable and inspire false hope

      • Ichi_matsu@ttrpg.network
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        1 year ago

        Agreed, and I’m find with the tax deduction if the charity works they do is legit, it’s not like he is paying taxes anyway.

          • RedditWanderer@lemmy.world
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            1 year ago

            This is exactly the issue. He doesn’t “donate” shit. He opens a non-profit that does nothing but funnel his fortune to his children. It’s all a sham. Same as with that other clothing company who “donated” their entire fortune.

            • Kelsenellenelvial@lemmy.ca
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              1 year ago

              Not sure about elsewhere, but in Canada a Charity is a special kind of non-profit that has more public oversight as to how they manage their money, and allowed to write charitable receipts. Non-profits might do some good things, but you don’t get a tax credit for donating money to them, and there’s less oversight of how they’re managed.

        • agent_flounder@lemmy.one
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          1 year ago

          Though I don’t have all day to devote to determining if these sources line up with your claims and if they’re worth a darn but I did attempt to skim.

          Number 1. I dropped my subscription so I can’t view the article. Can you share?

          Source 2. “The Saviorism of Melinda Gates: Eugenics, Philanthrocapitalism, and the Perils of ‘Western’ Feminisms” . This is a senior honors thesis with some pretty big claims and I’m not sure the paper presents a strong enough argument.

          Mind you, Eugenics is evil dog shit steeped in racism, classism and so on. Fuck that shit.

          Anyway, the author attempts to draw a line between making birth control / family planning available (to third world countries) and eugenics via population control of certain groups.

          Their argument traces a very long and winding path of rather tenuous links along the way and I don’t find it very convincing. It seems more like a student grasping for straws to write a paper.

          They seem to be suggesting that forced sterilization, forced sexual segregation, and similar despicable things are equivalent to ultimately voluntary family planning.

          I see the point. If these programs are intended to control certain populations at a national level driven by eugenics, yeah that’s fucked.

          They may have shown it is plausible that this is what the Gates Foundation has been doing but I don’t think they successfully proved it.

          Source 3. Hush money… “Jeffrey Epstein allegedly tried to extort Bill Gates over extramarital affair” … yeah that’s not awesome.

        • Double_A
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          1 year ago

          Sir, this is not your Facebook conspiracy theory group.

          • Hexagons [e/em/eir]@hexbear.net
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            1 year ago

            zifnab’s comment has links to:

            • The Washington Post
            • A paper from Duke University
            • The Guardian

            These seem to me like sources that wouldn’t usually be prominent in facebook conspiracy theory groups.

            Can you please tell me what the issue is with zifnab’s comment? Why do you feel like the comment would be more at home in a facebook conspiracy theory group?

            • UlyssesT [he/him]@hexbear.net
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              1 year ago

              Can you please tell me what the issue is with zifnab’s comment?

              It makes a billionaire “good one” look bad, so they reject it. bootlicker

            • hakase@lemm.ee
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              1 year ago

              “A paper from Duke University”. This is a random, non-peer-reviewed, undergrad honors thesis. Having supervised honors theses myself, they are not exactly the height of sociological research. Also note that the author only proposes “throughlines” between eugenics and Melinda Gates’ work, by definition flimsy and tenuous, at best.

              This is a perfect example of a Facebook conspiracy theory, based on shoddy, non-peer-reviewed, amateur “research”, but appealing to authority by attributing the paper to “Duke University”, with no understanding of the academic context of the paper in question.

              Can you please tell me what the issue is with zifnab’s comment? Why do you feel like the comment would be more at home in a facebook conspiracy theory group?

              Jesus Christ you can smell the hexbear from a mile away. Go sealion somewhere else.

              For anyone else reading this, the problems with the other two “sources” are that the WaPo article is just an opinion piece disguised as “analysis”, and the Guardian source (an editorialized version of a much better Wall Street Journal piece) seems to actually imply that Gates didn’t pay any hush money to Epstein. Either way, it does make it clear that Epstein had nothing to do with Gates’ affair whatsoever, and was just trying to profiteer off it.

              Note the fact that the language used by the hexbear above effectively claims the opposite of what their source implies, and leaves out the fact that there’s no evidence for any of these assertions. Never blindly trust a source from a hexbear. Actually, never trust a “source” from a hexbear at all, for that matter.

              Edit: Also, for anyone reading this, only ever comment on the errors in a hexbear’s sources and arguments - don’t ever actually engage with a hexbear themselves, because your good faith will be wasted on their disingenuousness. This comment is just a fact-checking PSA for anyone who wondered about the reliability (or lack thereof) of the above sources. Note also the bullshit asymmetry principle well at work here.

              • SeventyTwoTrillion [he/him]@hexbear.net
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                1 year ago

                As a moderator of Hexbear, I would like to formally apologize for our users committing the Preconceived Prejudice Bias, link if you’re unfamiliar.

                As we all know, multi-billionaires do not have control of our media institutions and are unable to shut down, directly or indirectly, research and investigations into their activities. They do not have the ability to portray themselves in an extremely positive light. Therefore, you are quite right to assume that all these rumors that they are committing acts like our other users implied are frankly entirely false.

                I generally take a similar tack when arguing against conspiracists in Russia who argue in the Russian media that Russian oligarchs are committing evil acts in support of the war - this is obviously untrue, as if they were, they would surely be reported in reputable journals and peer-reviewed as you rightfully point out must be done before putting ANY information onto the internet. Any accusations against Putin himself are, similarly, completely bizarre - the Russian media rightfully portrays him as a shining beacon of light. All other “accusations” are from discredited media and crank Telegram and Facebook groups that oppose Putin and the oligarchs, and I am working to try and get them shut down. It’s a similar situation in China, as far as I can tell.

                Have a great day, and stay classy, my good friend!

              • 420blazeit69 [he/him]@hexbear.net
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                1 year ago

                appealing to authority by attributing the paper to “Duke University”, with no understanding of the academic context of the paper in question

                Lmao you didn’t even look at the links before dismissing them you dweeb

              • agent_flounder@lemmy.one
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                1 year ago

                Thanks for this. I wasn’t able to read the wapo article but unfortunately devoted time to the second source. It definitely reads like an undergrad thesis paper written by someone trying to make a very tenuous connection at all costs despite a paucity of solid evidence. Kind of the written version of this:

            • agent_flounder@lemmy.one
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              1 year ago

              In addition to being a senior undergrad thesis it’s kind of shit. I don’t know why I spent the time to skim it but I did. I think it can be tossed right out.

      • SomeoneElseMod@feddit.ukOPM
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        1 year ago

        Honestly, I’d go for the middle option: donate to existing charities that appeal to me. I don’t want to run a charity, it sounds like a massive headache.

        • Kelsenellenelvial@lemmy.ca
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          You’re probably a different demographic. I’d guess the kind of people that become billionaires, assuming they actually want to be philanthropic, think that they can do a better job of managing their charities than existing charities would do managing their donations.

          • SomeoneElseMod@feddit.ukOPM
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            1 year ago

            It’s definitely fair to say I’m in the “extremely unlikely to ever be a millionaire, let alone a billionaire” demographic!

      • GarbageShoot [he/him]@hexbear.net
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        1 year ago

        If the charity itself is doing proper work

        And if the charity is donating to other charities that donate to it as part of a money laundering/tax fraud scheme, what would you say?

      • UlyssesT [he/him]@hexbear.net
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        1 year ago

        that makes sense tbh

        It makes so much sense to be a vampire parasite that writes their own kickbacks and gets PR and praise from sycophantic media and bootlicking rubes.

        bootlicker farquaad-point

    • CookieJarObserver@sh.itjust.works
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      1 year ago

      I mean if you donate billions you kinda don’t want someone do a extit scam or it going to some very sketchy places… Tax reduction is a point but pretty far down the list.

      And even if its for tax purposes, the money is then tied to certain purposes and will definitely do more good than as regular taxes. (and its way more than regular taxes)

      Man i hate that guy but this bashing isn’t justified.

      • SomeoneElseMod@feddit.ukOPM
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        1 year ago

        I wasn’t bashing him, just providing additional information as the headline is makes him sound like an altruistic hero “uniting humanity”. He isn’t. He will benefit from this in one way or another or else he wouldn’t do it.