But that might change soon. For instance, Ethereum, one of the largest Bitcoin alternatives, is hoping to switch to a more sustainable mining model.
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We should look less at what he or any other beloved billionaire says and more at what they do. Gates was the one that made Oxford to partner with AstraZeneca and take the vaccine the for profit route, which will be impacting the poorer countries the most. All the philantropic pomp aside, he is as bad as, Bezos or Musk.
Interesting. Do you have a source for that? I’m interested in the reasoning behind all of that. There is a ton of disinformation flying around about Bill Gates. So that’s why I ask, I take these simplified accusations with a grain of salt lately because they’re often false 
But I’m open to be proven wrong, that would mean I would’ve learned something new
On topic, he’s not wrong about crypto currencies. They require enormous amounts of power and scale very poorly. This is by design, the computational proof of work is needed to validate transactions (blocks). Bitcoin/blockchain are hyped a lot, let’s not be blinded by that. There are valid reasons to be critical about it.
The Ethereum development sounds promising, but let’s see how this will work in practice. The miner community is quite vocal about it.
I understand, only fair and reasonable request.
Above are some articles thst should give you an idea. Gates is a vulture, maybe a well meaning one, but still, a vulture.
The oxford vaccine was to be open-sourced, but went the commercial route by advice from Gates. It should be more in the public eye, but I suppose we have the conspiracy community to thank for muddying the whole subject with their idiotic ranting.
Similar with other areas his foundation is involved with.
He is not wrong, but nobody who states the obvious is.
Is he actually going to do something about it (climate change) without turning a profit? That is the real question. I think not, is my answer.
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Thank you so much for giving these links! They indeed help to get more informed about this.
I think it’s important to underscore that everyone needs monetary profits to survive and some are better at this game then others. But the focus in my opinion should be on the game, not the players. But I suppose that’s a different discussion.
I’ll have to read more about Gates specifically, most of what I’ve read about him and his charity so far is that it does have a positive effect in the world. But he doesn’t address the systemic problem, which is our infinite growth economy that creates and sustains these problems. So to a certain extent he does not change the status quo.
In your first URL is a nice quote from a transcript, I Googled that one and I came across this article. It gives some more context into that conversation. Because KHN also brings it very vague and simplified, which leaves it up to the reader to fill in the gaps. Which often is then done by our biases.
The Bloomberg article contains more transcripts, basically Oxford lacked funding and support in general. AstraZeneca jumped in with the intentions to keep the vaccine at a low cost. Not sure if they succeeded or not, from your comment I suspect it’s not cheap. But then again I’m always interested in the why question. It’s too easy to fill in the gaps with our biases. It could be a profit motive, or maybe the endeavour was simply very costly for them as well to develop, test and distribute the vaccine. All these factors weigh in.
But for sure I think we can agree that the system here failed. Getting these vaccines out there so quickly was and still is a scientific achievement. But true open collaboration was indeed systemically stagnated because we still have this scarcity-based economy/culture, which limits our collective “group mind” and the sharing of resources.
And when it comes to you or me, that is sadly the case, we have to eak out a living in the current system, the best we can in order to survive, thats our condition. Gates is not limited by the same rule.
We should focus on the game, but we cannot ignore the players, as they are playing on the opposite team. Forgetting or ignoring that fact is counter productive.
I am sure it does, though question is, could it do better and why hasnt it?
Thank you, I will have a look there. I will be open, my disdain for these “philantropists” could be well overly biased and I might be attacking him for no good reason, tho I believe there is billions green paper reasons to call him a parasite, regardless of what he says or does.
In any case the Oxford vaccine debacle, it was a possibility to move forward, but as always, the profit motive took over and we are right where always been. It should work as a reminder that even when 1 million plus is dead, somebody will find a way to turn a buck in this system and we should expect nothing less.
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This is a very good exchange of information, thank you! I would also be the one to find the middle ground on the topic of Bill Gates. With the foundation, his investments, and education he is really trying to help out and does so in many ways. However, philanthropy is the number one way to avoid taxes, while also getting a return on investment, hence ultimately exerting a lot of power. That’s why I would agree with historian Bregman at Davos: “Taxes Taxes Taxes, the rest is bullshit”: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=paaen3b44XY&ab_channel=NowThisNews
Glad to see the skepticism on the blockchain. I do not like it for three reasons:
- It costs an insane amount of energy;
- It again promotes a sort of Wallstreet gambling ethos and is just a new form of money
- It does not even solve (m)any problems.
For 3) I’d like to share this article if you are interested:
Blockchain, the amazing solution for almost nothing - The Correspondent
Concluding with a question to further this great discussion: what problem do you think blockchain can actually solve, that current methods cannot? (I did always feel that there was interesting potential)
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The energy could be taken from renewable sources. The gambling aspect is just another symptom of a culture in decline. I honestly dont know any solutions that are neccesarily only solvable with blockchain. You could make voting and digital contracts potentially easier and better, but then theres other problems that arise. So potentially it solves just as much as it creates new problems.
I remember years back couldnt go a few hours without reading yet another article of what the blockchains can solve, its as if the entire society just turned into a toddler that got a new toy.
I personally believe that in the current system it will jot be allowed to make any meaningful change and in an NLRBE etc, we wont need it or we will have something better for whatever task.
BTC itself is great for those who want to earn some extra cash and arent afraid to loose it all. Is it worth the environment? Arguably not.
Actually, smart contracts on blockchain might be the way to go for a moneyless bartering system, but dont know for sure.
Voting would be a bad idea. The blockchain doesn’t require a sign-up with your email or real name. So how do you know the voters are real? If you hand out identities to people, then there is no privacy. The blockchain is fully transparent, so you cannot vote anonymously. Also, it’s in conflict with EU privacy laws, the right to be forgotten. Blockchain is built as read-only or add new data, but not remove anything.
Yeah, could never go about the issue of loss of anonimity versus voting fraud…
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