
AMA: Bill Gates - dcx
https://www.reddit.com/r/IAmA/comments/aunv58/im_bill_gates_cochair_of_the_bill_melinda_gates/
======
meowface
>I have not written code in a shipping product for a long time but I do write
enough code to understand the new tools like Typescript or Github (shameless
Microsoft plugs).

Cool to see he still tries to stay up to date on new technologies.

~~~
babypuncher
You left out the part of that comment where he solved the tabs v spaces war.

~~~
lucb1e
You left that out, too :-). For anyone else wondering what his answer is:

> I actually do use tabs. It is easy to convert tabs to spaces and vice-versa
> so we shouldn't waste too much time on this issue.

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elektor
Do people derive pleasure from these AMAs? Gates seems to reply with the same
platitudes and non-answers to the point where its hard to tell if it’s him or
the BMGF publicist.

~~~
creato
I skimmed the AMA for a few minutes, and saw him say that:

\- He thought nuclear weapons, bioterrorism, and climate change were the
biggest threats to humanity.

\- He thought paying $10B in capital gains taxes was not enough and he should
have paid more.

Maybe those are platitudes but it's real enough for me.

~~~
reaperducer
_He thought paying $10B in capital gains taxes was not enough and he should
have paid more._

I'm always annoyed when rich people say things like this. I had one say almost
this exact thing to me in an elevator once.

 _There 's nothing stopping him from paying more._ He just writes a check to
"Department of the Treasury" and sends it off to D.C. Problem solved.

But then he doesn't get to passive-aggressively whine about all of his piles
of money that the government won't take from him.

~~~
creato
It's really, really simple, to the point where I suspect that most people that
make the argument you are making are being disingenuous.

Bill Gates is willing to pay more taxes if other billionaires pay more taxes.
If they don't, he isn't.

Just like I think _my_ taxes should be higher, but I'm not going to
voluntarily pay higher taxes, unless others in my tax bracket also pay them.

Even chimpanzees would probably understand and disagree with you [1].

1\.
[https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4451566/](https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4451566/)

~~~
retsibsi
> Even chimpanzees would probably understand and disagree with you

I think it's important to stress the practical side of the argument too,
rather than just appealing to intuitions of fairness.

Bill Gates probably believes (and is probably correct) that for any sum of
money he is willing to part with, he could do more good by directing it toward
carefully selected philanthropic causes than by donating it to the government.
So when acting alone, there's no reason for him to unilaterally pay extra tax,
unless he believes it will have very good indirect effects and/or is just
seeking a PR boost.

He also believes that if people in his class (including him) paid much more in
taxes than they currently do, the world would be a better place than it is
now.

These two beliefs are entirely consistent, for at least two reasons:

* For a lot of people in his class, the likely alternatives are not philanthropy vs. taxes, but non-altruistic spending vs. taxes.

* There are, at least arguably, some things that government is better suited to doing than private charities are. Perhaps these tend to be the kind of large-scale projects that could be funded by higher taxes on all super-rich people, rather than anything that would result from a donation to the government by a single billionaire.

Even if your opinion of government is very low and you disagree with the
second point, the first should be enough to show that his position is
perfectly consistent, and would be even for someone unrealistically altruistic
and willing to be on the wrong end of an unfair situation.

------
iambateman
Hot take: Bill Gates is massively underrated today, compared to how he will be
viewed by history.

When the reckoning of history books happens, I could see him in the running
for “most positive social influence of anyone 1800-2100”.

His humanitarian work is second to none and we can expect 20+ more years of
his direct influence on global policy. The world is a better place thanks to
Mr and Mrs Gates.

~~~
soperj
Not really. You look at Andrew Carnegie who has a similar history, and even a
hundred years out, no one cares. People like Einstein and Picasso are who
lasts. No one really gives a shit about businessmen, regardless of their
philanthropy.

~~~
mrb
Carnegie was worth only $5 billion in inflation-adjusted dollars. Gates is
worth $100 billion, so we can expect him to have a philantropic impact 20
times greater.

~~~
dgacmu
$372 billion for Carnegie in 2014 dollars:
[http://money.com/money/3977798/the-10-richest-people-of-
all-...](http://money.com/money/3977798/the-10-richest-people-of-all-time-2/)

3x gates.

~~~
mrb
They don't calculate his net worth correctly. They calculate his worth based
on a percentage of GDP.

If you actually do the math based on an inflation calculator, you find $5
billion:
[https://www.forbes.com/sites/chloesorvino/2014/07/08/whats-b...](https://www.forbes.com/sites/chloesorvino/2014/07/08/whats-
become-of-them-the-carnegie-family/#16614d9e7b55)

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apo
Can anyone point to a list of problems the Gates foundation has solved through
program(s) it has funded?

Edit: took out some things about Gates and the dual nature of his work at
Microsoft and the Gates Foundation.

~~~
jcomis
it's almost like you've never read a single thing about the organization.
nearly every annual letter and report details their impact.

~~~
dang
Please follow the site guidelines when posting here. Your comment would be
fine with just the second sentence.

[https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html](https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html)

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m23khan
is there a way to be notified about upcoming AMAs on reddit?

~~~
thatguythatname
Here is a link to a Google calendar created by the IAmA team. Not sure how
often it's updated, I assume as they get arranged

[https://calendar.google.com/calendar/embed?src=amaverify@gma...](https://calendar.google.com/calendar/embed?src=amaverify@gmail.com&pli=1)

~~~
jonluca
IAmA mod here - we have a bot that updates it every time a guest schedules a
new AMA, so it should always be up to date. We also manually add events in as
they come from other sources.

Bill likes to do his AmA's as "surprises", though, so we don't usually
schedule those!

~~~
m23khan
thank you guys

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Causality1
I wonder, if Gates was still driving Windows development would Windows 10
still spy on users and restrict their ability to control updates like it does
with Nadella at the helm?

~~~
crumbshot
Automatic updates are a good thing, otherwise far too many machines would be
lagging behind on security fixes.

~~~
worble
Can we stop this tired rhetoric? Yes ideally everyone would keep their system
up to date 100% of the time, however it is not a good thing that users have
that control stripped away from them, especially when these updates can
actually have _adverse_ effects on their systems _cough_ randomly deleting
files _cough_.

I may disapprove of users not updating their systems, but I'll defend to the
death their right to not do so.

~~~
ggggtez
You can already do that. Buy the business edition. Or use Linux and run
windows in a VM. Or block the windows update system in one of a million ways
including firewalling it. If you are really such a power user, you can do what
you want already.

For the millions of others people who don't know how to find facebook without
putting it into google search... yeah the automatic updates are _good_ for
them, and I'm tired of power users thinking their opinions are the only ones
that matter.

~~~
saganus
Do you know where can I buy one license of the business edition?

I recently purchased a Pro license and couldn't find this "LTSB" (I believe
it's called) version.

~~~
DKnoll
It's called Windows 10 Enterprise LTSC 2019 (there was a 2016 version as
well). Without getting into the Byzantine nature of Microsoft licensing for
their enterprise products, I recommend you just use local group policy to set
the 'defer updates' option and put yourself on the Current Branch for Business
release track in your current Windows 10 Pro.

------
marricks
I feel like every other month Gates guest edits the Verge or has an interview
there. Or I see his annual letter all over LinkedIn, or an AMA...

He gets so much exposure I imagine because he’s a “good billionaire trying to
fix the world.” I guess it’s the most we can hope for these days from our
growing class of ultra wealthy, but I really don’t think that means they
should get the right to shout their opinions at us from every corner of the
web.

~~~
aglavine
You'll be surprised how many people ignore Gates Foundation's deep involvement
on ending Polio

~~~
reaperducer
It's at least as any as the number of people who ignore the way George W. Bush
is hailed as a hero for his work stemming the tide of AIDS in Africa.

[https://abcnews.go.com/blogs/politics/2013/04/george-w-
bushs...](https://abcnews.go.com/blogs/politics/2013/04/george-w-bushs-legacy-
on-africa-wins-praise-even-from-foes/)

~~~
metabagel
His ledger is still in the red.

