So giving up their wealth is not psychopathic while working to hording one at the same time is not psychopathic? Does he help to spread out the wealth while spending billions to save millions of children in Africa?
Pussification in America: Political Correctness is Gay
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iannis
Musty Nester
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You know before he left Microsoft I would have said yes.
But after he's left and Microsoft's behavior since then, I have to think maybe he wasn't the driving evil.
Not that I think he's all that sane, either. The Gates Foundation sort of smells like he's trying to buy his way into heaven. But you know what? Even if he is... so fucking what? If it helps self-sustaining african agriculture, infrastructure, and to consign malaria to the fate of polio I think maybe Jesus should give him a pass.
But after he's left and Microsoft's behavior since then, I have to think maybe he wasn't the driving evil.
Not that I think he's all that sane, either. The Gates Foundation sort of smells like he's trying to buy his way into heaven. But you know what? Even if he is... so fucking what? If it helps self-sustaining african agriculture, infrastructure, and to consign malaria to the fate of polio I think maybe Jesus should give him a pass.
Tanoomba
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That wasalmostEnglish, but I'll answer anyway:
It doesn't count as "hoarding" wealth when you're giving most of it away.
Edit: I'll go one step further and say that if all the top 0.5 percenters "pulled a Gates" and gave the majority of their wealth away, I would have zero problem with them.
But he still horded tons, still maintains millions as his network and live a luxury that no man could dream of?
So you want people to give up their earnings? Their properties? How will you achieve this? How much is enough for anyone and who should be the judge of that?
Tanoomba
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What part of "He gave away most of his wealth" don't you understand? The problem with hoarding wealth is that it benefits noone but you. Bill Gates did tremendous good with the wealth he gave back. This is what separates psychopaths from non-psychopaths. Bill gates realized he would have been a right asshole to keep more money than even he and his family could ever make use of in several lifetimes, so he did something about it.
So what? How much is enough for you? 10%? 20%? Who is going to be the judge of "giving up most?"
I would suggest Lithose's solution to solving income inequality, which is a functional and well-crafted capitalism and appeal to rationality instead of "giving up wealth herp derp he is a good guy herp derp."
Gavinmad
Mr. Poopybutthole
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It's amazing how in Tanoomba land, one single act of charity redeems you from a life of evil and cures your lifelong struggle with Antisocial Personality Disorder.
Almost like a Catholicism. Pay your indulgence and your way to heaven is set!
Eomer
Trakanon Raider
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Fair enough, I don't disagree that wealth is even more skewed than income. However most of the discussion about "the 1%" was specifically about income, and not necessarily wealth, because income relates more to taxation and that was what the debate was really about. And I was also specifically responding to khalid, who had mentioned his brother's income.Tanoomba_sl said:
Regardless though, if your cut off line is the top 1% for either wealth or income, that's not cutting things fine enough. Most of those people, by either metric, are not vulture capitalists. If you want to start talking about the 0.1% or the 0.01%, then I might start to agree with you that they're mostly bankers and financiers. I'm still not going to agree they're psychopaths though, because again, that's just retarded.
Tanoomba isn't particularly stupid. He's just a communist. There is a long tradition of misusing that word, particularly by Americans, but he's echoing the arguments you can read every single day in Euro media. Though they often call themselves liberals these days and for some reason many don't realize they have the same arguments as was written inManifest der Kommunistischen Partei.
Gavinmad
Mr. Poopybutthole
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Tanoomba
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I probably just skimmed that, but I've been consistently impressed with the level of reflection present in Lithose's posts so I have little doubt that his solution is a good one. By the way, my solution was never "The wealthy should give up their wealth". I'm merely saying that if more of the obscenely wealthy demonstrated Gates' level of generosity, I wouldn't see them as psychopaths.
You know, if I said anything this stupid the "retard" comments would come raining down upon me. I'd just like you to notice that I'm taking the high road.
Well, you got me there. I referenced the 1% because they've already been getting a lot of attention since the Occupy Wall Street movement, but in fact it would have been much more accurate to focus on the richest end of the 1%. It was actually kind of a silly oversight, since it's ridiculous for me to think that 1 out of 100 people could amass that much wealth and cause that much damage, and for that I apologize. Having said that, I wonder how that graph I posted would change if the huge chunk of wealth already allocated to the 1% would be further divided into fractions. If anything, that would make an already hugely exaggerated imbalance even more obscenely exaggerated, which would only cement their positions as psychopaths in my mind. I think maybe the issue is you're considering psychopathy as some kind of rarely-occurring mental disorder while I'm seeing it as a society-created behavioral pattern, but until we can get the 0.1% (or 0.01% or whatever) to take a psychopathy diagnostic, it's kind of moot to argue.
I never considered myself a communist, but after reading a bit about it on the politics thread, I gotta admit I can get behind some of those principles. Too bad the reputation it has across North America prevents people from getting a better understanding of what it's really about.
That's why you call yourself liberal in the US and avoid the reputation that comes with it. Considering what communism has done to so many European countries they really had to change their approach here. We still have a lot of hardcore ones though. You could read yesterday on the front page of the largest newspaper that our country is a great one because the womens' national soccer team is coached by a communist. I doubt that'll happen in the US for some time, but who knows.
fanaskin
Well known agitator
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The money that he donated he still controls and manages, he has spent less than 10% of the money he "donated" to himself. the rest he invested in the stock market. I think it's important to keep mentioning that. let's not forget the tax breaks he got in compensation for donating money to himself.