They’re just making sure their propaganda system will generate the expected results. I’m sure their theories will be even more interesting right before Election Day.
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Before that it was credit cards.
The fact of the matter is, these people really want the world to end and are desperately searching for signs that it is coming. (It never does)
History is full of people like this, because life is hard and apocalyptic religion is easy.
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As a teen in a non-religious blue state, I remember hearing a fellow teen matter-of-factly spout off how Satan is going to register us all with his mark-- via credit cards or chips or tattoos or whatever.
I just remember thinking, “And???” What would be the nonsensical result of this nonsensical premise? But with Revelation, as with other conspiracy theories, it doesnt matter what the actual content is, it’s that the disseminator gets to feel like they have some measure of “control” in their lives, because they alone have a view into this hidden truth.
(I really wish John of Patmos hadn’t had such a good PR organization.)
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Yeah that one.
…on the other hand…
Yeah, but can you actually do any better then getting not-taxed on money you spend on charitable work? Sure if you are at say a 40% tax bracket and spend a billion on making safe drinking water for people in Africa you pay like $400 mill less in taxes, but you also pay over twice that making the safe drinking water. That is a great deal if you were going to drink all that yourself, or if you actually care about people having safe water, but not at all useful if you wanted to cut taxes to afford a mega yacht because you really have less money left for the mega yacht now.
Yeah, could be. Maybe he is just humoring her, although in my experience wives can see through that sort of crap and do get tired of it eventually.
Yeah, could be. I mean just because I wouldn’t give a rats ass about it if I were him doesn’t mean he doesn’t care about his reputation.
However, what is the difference between deciding you have been a terrible person, and you should be a better person by doing good acts and cutting way back on the bad acts, and… deciding others think you are terrible and to be thought of as better by cutting way back on the bad acts and do a lot of good acts?
I mean I feel there is a difference, but mostly because I think if for example I decide not to stab people in the face any more because I don’t like jail, and that I’ll spend all my waking hours volunteering at habitat for humanity…that while I’m doing the good work of framing a house or something if I get pissed off at someone I’ll stab them in the face because I’m not really changed, I just am trying to hide it… but if someone stops doing the bad stuff and consistently does the good stuff for over a decade, maybe they really have changed, regardless of original motivations?
Or maybe that is a load of bull?
Possible, but that seems like a really cost inefficient way to open new markets for MS? When he was running MS he had much more ruthless ways, like seeing some company that had opened a new market and then giving them a lowball offer as the carrot, and as the stick “if you don’t sell we will just develop a similar product and bundle it for free, it may take a few tries to get it right, but it will chew into your business the whole time, and crater your VC/loan prospects starting with our press release at the end of the week, please talk it over with your partners and get back to me by close of business tomorrow” (ok, not really a quote, but a summary of the playbook!).
Yeah, I’m kind of with you on that one. I think he may not have started there, but he is there now. I have no real proof, but then again I’m not a reporter trying to cover a story here, so I think just having a feeling about it is fine as long as I remember it is just a feeling (consistent with the facts I know, but not the only explanation that is constant with those facts).
I’m not so sure. Running the world is a lot of work. Just being rich and playing with a mega yacht and fancy home automation crap and sixty three fancy cars or what not seems like way more fun. In the “lots of work” category is running vanity restaurants, starting a private space program, tackling poverty, and attempting to eradicate diseases.
I’m not that kind of rich, so I don’t know for sure, but I have a feeling I would spend a lot of time just aimlessly spending money on toys before actually feeling like I might maybe want to help people. Oh, and probably almost immediately outsourcing the “I can feel morally good if I donate” by dumping a lot of money on animal charities. It may not be the highest moral value, but I like dogs, and if I had billions of dollars to spend a whole lot of people would get subsidized vet care. (like I think if you have a ton of complex after care to get a dog through a surgery you aren’t very likely to do it if the op was free, and the dog will suffer, but likewise many people can’t afford $5k to $8k in a month on procedures, maybe if they could get those operations for more like $500 they would have enough skin on the game to do the complex after care and could actually afford the op).
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The difference between then and now is that today we have the actual means to destroy ourselves. We’re kind of doing it right now, by “opening the economy” in the midst of a pandemic. Over 100,000 have died. And the current American president, with nuclear weapons at his command, has aligned himself with the white supremacists accelerationists and Christian dominionists who believe in the rapture. The Boxer and the Millerites never had access to the ability to kill us all.
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Um, @Stripes is saying “Why would Gates ‘care’ in the context of the alleged conspiracy theory?” That is, why would he implant chips or whatever.
You seem to be answering the different question of “Why would Gates care to be a philanthropist and eventually give away 99% of his life earnings?”
How about this question:
I am assuming that we can all agree that the concept of Bill Gates using a pandemic to inject tracking microchips into people is so remarkable and utterly stupid that we can all agree that it is clearly and plainly false.
What impacts does it have on the viability of democracy when 40% of voters are stupid, gullible, and ignorant enough to believe crap like this? Can we even have a democracy when that many people are unable to use logic and reason? Where do we go from here? How do we handle this situation?
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I’d argue it’s not an either or? The ultra-wealthy spend lots of time and energy making sure their wealth is taxed at the lowest rate possible, and that sort of… charity washing?.. has become a real gold standard to both polish up one’s reputation (which also has the added benefit of softening up the public to make it easier to get support for how you’d like the political landscape to look). That doesn’t mean that he (or his wife) are not also aware of the issue of water and feel like they can do something positive in that regard.
I will note that he has also publicly gone on record (with Buffet) to say he should pay more in taxes…
Maybe. But if she genuinely cares, it gets her the ability to do some good. It is, after all the Bill and Melinda Gates foundation. She likely spent their marriage putting up with lots of long hours and now is her opportunity to not only do something she might care deeply about, but also to spend more time with her husband, who she presumable loves. Not all marriages are about endless gaslighting and tricking each other into doing shit.
Again, I don’t think it’s an either-or. Gates has the wealth to not give a rats ass what any of his think of him. He’s likely proud of what he sees as his positive accomplishments, but knows that he has a reputation as an asshole (although I’m guessing in reality, Jobs was a much, much bigger asshole).
I’d argue that people changing are rarely so simplistic as it was from within or from without, but rather is a combination of those things.
True, but if he’s getting at the edge cases now, that’s a pretty big admission that MS has already pretty thoroughly saturated many of the markets for software. I’d say that the charity washing feeds into the attempt to get into the few places where MS isn’t dominant, but it’s likely a secondary motivation.
True he might not have, but he might have. People can be assholes and also be genuinely interested in improving society. In fact, given the ideology of capitalism, I’d bet that many capitalists who are ruthless businessmen also see themselves as being positive forces in the world. The entire ideology we are constantly swimming in tells us that being an businessman is the ultimate good, so it’s not a big leap to see them also being interested in charitable work. And most people don’t see themselves as “bad buys” if they’re being dicks. Instead, they see themselves as doing what they have to to grow their businesses or as just having a bad day, or being so important and visionary, that they can act differently than the rest of us. charitable work is their way of maybe making amends and reminding people of their superiority by their very nature.
And no one really does that any way… but some people have vastly more influence than others. And much of the “work” they do is really just delegating authority and being a public face of things. It’s all the smart phds you hire who do all the actual work of creating things and thinking through real world problems, and that’s true whether it’s making software or running a charitable organization.
I don’t think it’s either/or, though. Because Gates doesn’t actually do the work of giving people vaccines or digging a well to help a community. He PAYS people to do that. The work is sitting at a desk and making the top-level decisions that others carry out. Leaves plenty of time for buying shiny gadgets or what have you.
Of course, you can’t do that for lots of people… but you can do it for someone else (or maybe not, I don’t know your networth of course). Sometimes even an extra $50 or $100 bucks can be helpful to someone with these kinds of bills for their pets.
Yes, we’re aware… he noted at the top of his reply to me… it obviously interested him, though.
But as for the chipping… Gates would not care. It’s just another stupid conspiracy theory…
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certainly this is the same 40% that comprises trump’s base. i’m not surprised they are also believers of this bullshit.
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Ok. Sure. Why not? That so many believe it, I mean. Not that it’s true.
I wonder how many of these security-conscious Republicans use a password that is “password”? Can we get a poll on that? I know my boss had one that was “P@ssw0rd”.
All I can say to them is, "You think you aren’t being tracked now?"
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There isn’t so much a liberal conspiracy theory crowd though.
Or the liberal conspiracy theories are just “law enforcement colludes to suppress minorities” and “Donald Trump’s administration is pandering to the ultra-wealthy and stealing from the middle class to do it”. Conspiracy theories are no fun when they come true.
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They have to. If conspiracy theorists could get cleverer they’d die out.
(And a ‘conspiracy’ is the plural noun for a group of dumbasses.)
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I would prefer that when a vaccine becomes available everyone get it as soon as possible, both for humanitarian reasons and the perfectly selfish preference that they not put me at danger (I’m well past 65) as disease carriers.
HOWEVER to the extent that there are people who for whatever reason are dysfunctional enough to refuse the vaccine, I take comfort in knowing that they’re to some extent biased towards being dysfunctional in their politics, since that acts as a Darwinian filter. However inefficient, at least it’s in the right direction – unlike the relative morbidity and mortality of the people who put their lives on the line caring for us.
I don’t know how many of the dead and permanently harmed so far contracted COVID in the line of what they saw as their duty, but it’s not “zero” and even one is too damned many. It would be fewer, probably a lot, if they’d had the logistical support that is the least that we owe them.
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Can they track my chip from a satellite, or do I have to wave my arm next to a scanner until it beeps?
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That’s a level of irony which they could never hope to comprehend.
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If Bill Gates is making the chips then;
- Only ever second version will work,
- The core of them will be stolen from other work with the only difference being which way 'round they go in, &
- They’ll be so bloated that you won’t have any problem seeing them.
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I think @Mindysan33 was making a joke, which I found genuinely amusing, plus also addressing what I said as an aside, which is a pretty efficient way to continue a conversation, and add some levity. Well, also her levity had some interesting points as well.
(I may also be projecting, as I try to sometimes make a joke, and continue the conversation, and like to think sometimes I’m actually funny as I do it, and insightful…but if that was really what she was going for I would give it two thumbs up…and if it wasn’t, I’m hoping nobody corrects me)
Yep. Also, in theory I should be working now, and really didn’t feel like it, so nice distraction!!! (I mean, I may not think it is so nice later when I’m trying to decide if I got enough done to knock it off for the day, but really that is on me for browsing BB, not on you for writing things I can distract myself with)
I may even get time later and come back to respond to some of your writing at length (not that you need to feel obligated to respond to any of my replies).
Well, lets just say right now I didn’t pluck those vet bill numbers out of thin air. So I’m a little light on the disposable income scale. I do have a formerly blind dog that can see in two eyes, and while it is a little touch and go on how long that state will continue things are looking “hopeful” for long term use of at least one eye. After I work my way back from that I’ll go back to donating time (as his recovery currently precludes long drives to do animal transport), and money (when I go back to having some!), although I have been donating to animal shelters and animal rescues as opposed to subsidizing individual’s vet costs.
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Wait… how many eyes does it have? Can it see in all of them?
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