this post was submitted on 24 May 2026
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Me for Bill Gates and Mark Cuban, back when everyone loved them. Bill Gates was basically idolized on reddit, partaking on reddit santa and all that.
The rehabilitation of Bill Gates's image after he left MicroSoft was mind blowing. Like here's the most capitalist capitalist in the world, the Elon Musk of the 90s/early 00s, and otherwise progressive people were fawning over him because he did a little philanthropy at the behest of his wife.
It's like listening to gamers talk about Windows being an OS with such wide compatibility, when the only reason for that is market share forcing everyone else to bend to it and write Windows drivers for everything.
And I still wonder where we'd be in computing if MS hadn't anointed Intel and their old-timey architecture as the winner of the CPU wars.
Ballmer dripping with sweat and screaming did wonders in the "taking eyes off Bill" department.
Gates was smart but mostly he is just another selfish manipulator with a huge hole in his soul. Home computers were new and he made them less than they could have been to keep his company on top. He lied he stole and in the end tried to convince everyone he was a decent person. Everyone else is just catching up.
They weren't old enough to remember what a prick Bill was. Him being a retired philanthropist is standard whitewashing
Yep. He is doing the Rockefeller to buy his legacy. Tossing coins to children for photo ops and building libraries and schools to put his name on.
Mark Cuban is a difficult one. He has reduced drug prices to the cost plus a profit margin (which is low*) and so its like "Wow somebody cares!" And this has benefited thousands. But then he says I might fund a new venture and sell Cost Plus Drugs one day; So really he doesn't care, he's looking for a big buyer to come in and offer a huge payout to stop the big pharma company losses.
Of all the billionaires to worry about, Mark Cuban is way down the list. If we put him under a microscope, we can find things to complain about, but there are so many other better places to direct our wary eye.
I think from a Utilitarian approach, Bill Gates still falls into a net positive effect on the world. His foundation alone has saved millions of lives by nearly wiping out Polio and Guinea Worm, and severely reducing Polio. And you can try to argue that it isn't him personally doing these things, but the dedicated people working at his foundation, but it's his name on it, it's his money funding it, and if he didn't exist the foundation wouldn't exist.
But I get it. Not everyone is a Utilitarian, and he's done a lot of shitty things that are hard to overlook.
Melinda pretty much made him do it and he's making sure to profit off his charitable efforts too.
Plus he's got the whole Epstein friendship to whitewash.
Also his father steered him into philanthropy.
But he did make the turn and has followed up and lived it. I think it’s perfectly fine to give the man some credit.
He certainly stole intellectual property and made substandard software to build his fortune, but when I compare this to someone like Andrew Carnegie these look like pretty minor crimes.