Well it looks like Bill Gates had his wife for advice, and apparently his not following it played a part in ending his marriage.
What a bizarre turn of events that would be if THIS was the thing that got investigated.
> Respondents Diane Monson and Angel Raich use marijuana that has never been bought or sold, that has never crossed state lines, and that has had no demonstrable effect on the national market for marijuana. If Congress can regulate this under the Commerce Clause, then it can regulate virtually anything – and the federal Government is no longer one of limited and enumerated powers.
Democracy (limited terms), taxation and anti-monopoly regulation are examples that show a path to cure the disease.
Nobody should be trusted with too much power for too long.
If you don't think officeholders that are randomly chosen amateurs in the field that are guaranteed to be out of it in short time aren't very often going to be extremely vulnerable to manipulation by people whose interests are stronger, more permanent, and durable, then you haven't thought things through very well, IMO.
[0] https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/217981747-lottocracy
The current system of oligarch patronage is bad, but at least it keeps the train mostly on the rails.
Japan, a heavily bureaucratized country, systematically moves junior and mid-tier staff around in some departments to minimize the possibility of nest-feathering and empire-building, although I would not say it's perfect by a long way.
Introducing term limits only forces the wealth and power to change it's face periodically. It is addressing a symptom, not the cause.
At least one constitutional scholar has argued that campaign finance reform strikes closer to the root of the problem ( https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rootstrikers ) by enabling interested regular folk to afford to run for office. I would add some form of ranked choice voting to that, which permits folks to vote for a third party candidate without "wasting" their vote or throwing the race to an opponent. As well as the https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Equal-time_rule and https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fairness_doctrine
Similarly in a lottocracy you'd want everyone to be a capable leader when their name is picked from the hat. As the professor I listened to put it, lottocracy makes you think what a democracy really values. Is it about everyone's voice being heard, or is there another goal we should care about more? Not an easy question to answer.
Not quite. Private education is not prohibited in Finland, but for-profit basic education is prohibited and private education is pretty rare.
https://www.aacrao.org/edge/emergent-news/private-education-...
I think it's a nice idea, but I'm not sure how we get from here to there
If you can find good leaders by random draw, that means the average citizen is a good leader, which would seem to suggest that the average citizen should be a reasonable an hard-to-dupe judge of good leaders, and therefore that elections also work well.
If elections don't work well to select leaders, that's a pretty good piece of evidence that sortition won't, either.
OTOH, the particular failures of sortition and elections may be different, and using a system where both are used for different veto points might be net less problematic than either alone. Consider a bicameral legislature with one house chosen by elections and the other by sortition, for instance.
(OTOH, there is plenty of solid evidence in comparative government of how to do electoral democracy better and people in the US don't seem too interested in that, which is probably a better focus for immediate reform than relatively untested, on a large scale, ideas about avoiding electoral democracy.)
Then you get "at least approx. top 1%" -- but it's still not necessarily an entrenched elite.
In any case, you might be interested in Georgism, which is an anti-monopoly ideology most famously associated with very Strong Opinions on taxation of land and natural resources and untaxing production, along with taxation on pollution and negative externalities.
My impression is that sortition is very much in vogue within Georgist circles.
...and even there, it's terribly corrupted. There are all kinds of bizarre ways that people are excluded from juries which bias the result. One commonly-cited example is that people who report moral objections to capital punishment are excluded from being empaneled on a federal jury, under the pretext that because capital punishment is legal under federal law, they'd be unable to carry out the gammut of their duties. Of course this has the convenient result of dramatically biasing juries in favor of the state.
There's also no commonly-implemented proof-of-randomness for selection. We're told that people are randomly selected and get a notice in the mail, but there's no public event where one can go and watch a number tumbler generate the entropy used to select names from the voter rolls, etc.
Easiest out from jury duty ever, and if the judge want's to be a bltch and force me on anyway, well, let's just say that if the law is immoral than the defendant is going to walk.
Have you actually said that during voir dire, or is this a hypothetical?
It's an extraprocedural consequence of how the system is designed to function, the same way the right to revolution is an extralegal option in the Union. Yeah, you can know it and apply it - but don't say it out loud if you want to show any semblance of virtuosity.
Also best of luck being random... https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bertrand_paradox_(probability) and The Problem of Priors.
In this case: Do we use IQ tests? Do we use random numbers and allow babies to win?
If you want to be traumatized about statistics, I like this video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xy6xXEhbGa0
Absolutely. The source of most of the corruption I see in the world today is wealth, and specifically wealthy people paying people off to get their own way. If there was less wealth inequality there'd be much less scope for this.
Note: I believe this would be the case even if the money was literally burnt/disappeated rather than being given to the government (not that I suggest that's what we do).
Politics has it's fair share of corruption too. But at least in my country (the UK) it's the lesser evil. And even if you look at a country like the US where there is a lot more political corruption, the source of a lot of that seems to be private money influencing elections.
Here's what I say: how about both? Or neither? I think the scope of the problem is defined too narrowly so far in this particular thread.
*Or say, 10 dollars, since a donor's dollar is leveraged
You fundamentally misunderstand the relationship.
The donors donate because the politician will then direct more money at the donors interests.
I spend $1mil on lobbying, $1mil on bunk science at labs I fund or astro turf'd grass roots support (something the government can point to to justify their action), $1mil on donations I get a preferential change in law or rule, or perhaps even government investment in my industry, that lets my business make billions, bringing back say $6mil in profit to me personally. Repeat for all my other business activities.
Politician, political appointees and regulatory agencies pet interests only matter insofar as I get better value for my money by choose one who's interests align.
No need to literally burn the money, either: just use the entirety of that increased tax revenue on paying down the national debt, and lower the debt ceiling by the exact same amount so it can't go back up. This is an even better deal if you think "interest rates are too high, the Fed should cut a lot more". It all fits. And we managed this throughout the 1990s.
That's why computers never became an industry, they just kept getting cheaper every year so nobody bought them. If only computing power had kept getting more expensive every year, we might have some kind of tech industry!
The one part of your comment with which I certainly agree is:
> Note: I believe this would be the case even if the money was literally burnt/disappeated rather than being given to the government (not that I suggest that's what we do).
...except, I am perhaps prepared to suggest actually implementing such a system, at least as an experiment.
Removing spending power from places where it's concentrated seems to have obvious benefits, but giving it to the state (the entity in which political power is maximally concentrated, at least with respect to the legitimate initiation of violence) seems like it's moving the power dynamic in the wrong direction.
A sufficiently strong progressive taxation regime would obviously have this effect, assuming you could actually enforce it. For example, if you taxed 99% of earnings above $10 million that would greatly reduce the wealth of the ultra-wealthy, even without taking into account how that money was redistributed.
That's obviously an extreme, and I'm not suggesting we do exactly that. But 80% tax rates were common as recently as the late 20th century, and coincidentally there were much lower rates of wealth inequality during this time.
The question is,
> even without taking into account how that money was redistributed.
...if you're taking money from people earning $11 million, and giving it instead of the military and prison industrial complexes, obviously you've concentrated, rather than diluting power.
I think there's a real question about how possible it is for a taxation regime to ever have a progressive effect inside the belly of empire.
Lol. No wonder your country is such a fucking shit show, people believe this.
This is so wrong, its not expensive to bribe politicians so higher taxes wouldn't stop this at all. The problem is that its possible to bribe politicians, meaning government has too much power, taxes would make that worse not better. And even more important most bribes doesn't come from individuals, it comes from super PACs and corporations, and those would exist regardless how much you tax rich people.
What you need is a less centralized government so its harder to bribe a few key people to get what you want, and a more direct democracy that can eliminate politicians that takes bribes.
When voters can't punish bad politicians since the incumbents has so much power to draw voting lines and decide who is on the ballots then corruption will always escalate out of control.
It's like, if you want to sell your cyanide penis pills under big government, you need to bribe someone. If you want to sell them under small government, you just... you just sell them, that's what.
There may be ways to design a government where power is better distributed, e.g. using sortition, but ultimately it needs to be richer and more powerful than its wealthiest citizens, otherwise these wealthy citizens will assess, correctly, that when push comes to shove, the laws won't apply to them, and they do not need the government's permission to do what they want.
Moreover -- why would low-level elites (think: entrepreneurs, small business owners, etc.) stay in nation N if it was more profitable to do business in nation B -- recall this is precisely the type of person that is often most mobile and internationalized.
> moves power from the people to the government
In a functioning democracy, the government is the people. If the government is against the people, it's not a functioning democracy.
And needless to say, a non-functioning democracy is not a proof that the concept of democracy doesn't work.
If 100 people were about to embark on a journey on a ship, what makes you think 51 of them know who should run the ship if none of them have ever even been on a ship?
The US, for example, apportions representatives and votes for President in a way that overweights less populated states, and there are various aspects of parliamentary systems that help avoid landing in a two-party system where a simple majority gets the say in everything—they force compromise and coalition building among disparate groups. Additionally, Constitutional systems will enumerate the rights of its citizens such that they cannot simply be taken away by a simple majority of any body.
Democratic countries are also basically never "pure" democracies where everyone votes on every decision as in your Plato's ship analogy—we elect people who audition for the role of running the ship, ostensibly those among the people who are best suited to the task.
Everyone wants taxes to go up on everyone making more than them, and for their own taxes to go down. The problem is this is a collective negotiation, not a discussion about what to ask the genie for when we rub the lamp. If the middle class wants to decrease their own taxes (which is the political issue that objectively affects them the most, and how they lose their power), then they are going to have to meet the wealthy half way. Idealism is the enemy of the the common sense, rational, self-interested move.
> And needless to say, a non-functioning democracy is not a proof that the concept of democracy doesn't work.
Yes, democracy is a good idea precisely because imperfect implementations of it work well. If it worked in theory and not in practice, then it wouldn't be a good idea. Contrast it to communism, which is literally an info-hazard. If you try to bring it in to existence, you won't achieve your goal, and the system you do create will be much worse for you. Even if it works in theory, it's a bad idea because it doesn't work in practice.
That is a different debate. I think what the parent means is that taxing the rich is a way to prevent them from becoming too powerful.
I do agree that it should be illegal to be too powerful. One should not be more powerful than an entire country, it makes no sense.
That's not true at all. I make a good salary as a software engineer, I absolutely think I ought to be taxed a little more than I am, and would gladly pay that money to live in the better society I believe that would create.
I believe this attitude is pretty common in many parts of the world.
That being said, I do think the extremes of wealth (there is a big difference between a millionaire and a billionaire) have a particularly detrimental effect on society by completely distorting our economic system (there can be no such thing as a free market when such a small number of individuals control such a large proportion of the spending power).
This confusion is precisely why the middle class has less power than ever before. You and many others have been sold a meme that your tax dollars are in service to a greater good, and you are a bad person if you recognize this to be a scam.
At an individual level, for each person in the middle class, 90% of the social programs they pay for are negative EV for them personally. It would be better for each of them if they just kept what they earned, and didn't expect to get it back "later" or "when they really need it" whenever that is. This is an empirical, testable claim, and the math will be slightly different for each person. You should check for yourself.
If everyone turned off the news, and totally ignored the messaging around taxes and government programs and just looked at their own cash inflows and outflows to/from the government, the middle class would retain far more power than they do.
Are you only counting material benefit that you personally get from the government rather than the benefit that other less well off people get in your calculations? Because if my tax dollars enable otherwise less well off people to live a lifestyle closer to my own, then I would consider that a benefit to me and a large part of the intended outcome of that taxation.
That's a very big 'if'. Less well off people have to pay taxes too, such as payroll taxes on their labor income, or sales taxes on essential purchases that amount to a large fraction of what they spend money on. And government redistribution is extremely inefficient. They'd be far better off if most of these taxes were done away with for lower-income folks, letting them keep far more of what they earn from their work.
Well I'd certainly be in favour of a more progressive taxation system that taxes higher earners more and lower earners less, and puts more emphasis on wealth and income (incl. capita gains) taxes and less on sales taxes.
But I'm also realistic that as a software engineer, my salary is above the average, and thus in such a setup I'd likely end up paying more.
This whole "expected value" concept when taken to the extreme is just rationalist patter. It's a useful exercise when you're running a business, but there is more to life than fiscal efficiency. Empiricism, when taken to an extreme, is as dystopian as anything else.
90% of those social programs are what keep us from being killed in the street for our watches and jewelry. They keep people less fortunate than us from becoming desperate. They level the playing field so our children aren't all victims of the circumstances of their birth. By those metrics, which are my preferred metrics and not the size of my paycheck, they are a huge benefit.
Also one could argue that the US military is the world's largest social service program in that it provides jobs for a large part of the country that otherwise has no prospects for a good life.
The federal government does have a system to accept gifts which you might want to check out: https://fiscal.treasury.gov/public/gifts-to-government.html
Whether your gift will make a better society, I can't know - much like your taxes you have very little control over what the money is going to be used for.
>...(there can be no such thing as a free market when such a small number of individuals control such a large proportion of the spending power).
A free market is generally considered a system where there are voluntary exchanges between buyers and sellers based on mutual benefit. It seems odd to claim that since there are some very wealthy people in the country that somehow a consumer can't buy bread from a baker, etc. Maybe you can expand a bit on how you are defining free market.
That doesn't change the state of the negotiation, which is that cutting taxes for the middle class will also require cutting them for the wealthy. If you optimize for your own personal notion of fairness, or retribution, you may very well fail to coordinate in your own self-interest.
That's basically my main argument for replacing election-based democracy by lottery-based democracy. Electing the right representatives is a coordination problem in and of itself, a process which the wealthy are already quite adept at manipulating, so we might as well cut the middle man and pick a random representative sample of the population instead, who can then coordinate properly.
If that were a viable model for the real world, we could make existing elections just as tamper-proof.
Neither our democracy nor our position as a world power survived capitalism eating itself and everything else. We are down to single individuals holding more nominal wealth than whole continents, and the worship of the billionaire has replaced the worship of Jesus Christ for most Americans, a palace cult committing national suicide on your behalf. If you want any of the things that America pitched as its merits in fighting for influence in the Cold War, you want this situation over with.
Let them eat three commas and not a penny more. When you become a billionaire we give you a medal and confiscate every dollar above 1 billion. Using a carrier strike group if necessary.
It sure sounds tough though! Literal war with people for being successful, how much time have you spent on this line of thought?
We haven't passed a budget in almost 30 years, we've been routinely filibustering nearly all legislation for 15 (breaking the gameplay loop for electoral democracy), we're unilaterally withdrawing from trade and military alliances week by week. We have fascist armies on the streets pulling people from their cars and houses. Our leaders openly brag about their corruption and a good fraction of our people praise them for it simply because it pisses other people off.
We are allegedly about to "Federalize Elections" and also enter a war with Iran that a supermajority of voters do not want.
In terms of state capacity, in terms of our agency in the world, in terms of what we historically regarded as our legacy and our culture and our material security and our institutions, we are in freefall. And it is mostly down to having far too much wealth concentrated in far too few people.
Just not, you know, a space program and a larger military than Krushchev's reporting to you personally.
The U.S. are a republic not a democracy. The people vote for the government but are not expected to be directly involved with it after the fact.
This is unwanted, first because it produces individuals powerful enough to topple the people’s will, and second because it is not in the interest of society for wealth to be accumulated rather than moving.
By first principles you need a system to limit accumulation and redistribute it. That’s taxation.
The money not being extracted from the right places, or not being distributed where it should, is a sign that the government is unwilling or incapable or working for the people.
It is the people’s collective responsibility to prevent and fix that problem.
I'd also feel a lot better about "Elon gets $200B payout", because he gets $2B and $198B goes to tax payers -- seems pretty fair. $2B is still more than anyone ever needs to live a lavish life of luxury and/or start any reasonable self-business, or buy off any politicians.
The only way a wealth imbalance can occur is that someone sits on wealth and that it continues to compound. The top 1% have wealth greater than the bottom 95% of the population combined. I don't see why its more moral for someone to sit on investments than to have the money distributed to others to spend.
In one case, the money goes to whichever investment the individual favors (e.g. buying tons of gold). In the "redistribute" scenario, it goes to improving the lives of many millions of people in real tangible ways, and creating a more equitable and balanced society and social trust.
The top 1% of the US hold roughly 30% of all the wealth. That's roughly the same as the bottom 90% of the population. I understand there are implementation issues, but I'm merely calling out the obvious immorality of "90% of people should scrape to get by while trustfund kid lives in 4th mansion, because 'market efficiency'".
The critical insight is that this doesn't actually work. When we say Jeff Bezos is worth $200B, we don't mean that he has $200B of money that's locked up in a vault when it could be redistributed. We mean that there are a variety of productive businesses in the world - for Bezos, mostly Amazon - which he holds ownership claims to. The vast majority of wealth in the modern US isn't money, and can only be converted to money by finding people with lots of money and selling them the right to sit on the investments instead.
Of course I would. It shouldn't be up to Elon how that money (and the capital/labour they command) gets spent. It should be up to all of us. And if I want it spent on libraries or healthcare instead of space exploration then I should get my equal say in that.
How is it different from me looking at my neighbor in his bigger house with his nicer car and deciding that those should be mine instead? Or my neighbor with a smaller house wanting my stuff?
Making the government resistant to manipulation is a distinct problem. It's a game theory/mechanism design problem, and its solution doesn't require taking in lots of money. Giving the government more power/money causes people to spend more effort to manipulate it, so any weaknesses are exploited to the fullest extent.
> and second because it is not in the interest of society for wealth to be accumulated rather than moving.
This reveals a significant misunderstanding of how capital works in an economy. None of the billionaires that come up when you type in "billionaires" into Google have access to liquid cash anywhere near the number that shows up next to their face. Their money is invested in productive projects, it's paying salaries and invested in equipment. Concentrating capital is what allows a civilization to take on big projects. As a society we want big projects to be paid for by individuals bearing the risk (skin in the game). In a free-market, capital concentrates in individuals who, empirically, know how to use it well. Spending other people's money is a great way to make sure that money is spent frivolously. You can criticize luxury spending all you want, and taxing that is something most people consider "fair", but you aren't speaking for anyone economically literate when you say that you don't want capital to concentrate. I want it to concentrate as much as it does naturally.
Taxes are much lower in Belarus and Russia vs western Europe, and they're much more authoritarian, coupled with third world tier public services outside of their capitals.
How about taxing the...Government ?
For example: I am a teacher. I run for office. I win. Now, as a consequence of my win, my tax bracket for the rest of my life, is 100% after i exceed the higher of either: a) my elected official salary, OR b) the average last 5 years of W2 income, OR c) the average last 2 years of W2 income.
You'd delete inmediately all the grifters getting into government to be rich. And because those narcissists griefters people would self select themselves out of the running; it gives breathing room to those willing to actually do their DUTY for country. Those willing to sacrifice lifetime income.
This is pathway to the less charismatic, but more duty-oriented people that would not mind working in the govt and also do a good job. Under these rules, you dont care if I stay in govt forever, either. Limited terms have no point, when you can't grift.
This also takes care of those pesky post-election speaking fees, as well!
If taxes go up on everyone, the rich are still the ones that manipulate the government, but now they have control over more tax revenue. If taxes go down for everyone, the rich are still the ones that can manipulate the government, but now the government has less revenue and can't cause as much damage.
This is absolutely false, especially in the US. Progressive tax brackets, breaks for the rich, and targeted changes for capital vs. income, deductions, etc. are the norm. Tax rate change is _always_ selective.
Of course there's the cause and effect issue -- does the high corruption cause lower tax, or do the lower taxes enable the corruption.
Who is saying YOUR taxes or MY taxes should go up? Our taxes should go down. Billionaires should be taxed more instead.
Is it? Here's another version I like even more that unsettles democracy dogmatics: power attracts the corrupt.
An ill intentioned participant in power will not have unlimited time to do that much damage. A good intentioned participant will not have too much time to become corrupted.
The downside is that a good intentioned ruler, may not have enough time to accomplish their good vision. But my thesis is that is a reasonable price to pay to avoid the opposite. A malicious ruler with infinite time to complete their destructive plan.
The operation of the revolving door would seem to imply otherwise. You set up a situation where politicians are not just expected but required to leave office and then need a job in the private sector. Are they then inclined to do things while in office that make it more or less likely that they get a lucrative gig as soon as their term is up?
> A malicious ruler with infinite time to complete their destructive plan.
The assumption is that the ruler is the elected official. What do you do if the malicious ruler is a corporation and the elected official is just a fungible subordinate?
Group A invests millions of dollars into your campaign.
You go into politics in a debt to Group A that you feel obligated to repay.
You give favorable treatment to Group A in your political career.
Group A provides a lucrative contract to you after you leave politics so that they have a good reputation with the other politicians they finance.
The problem is elections aren't just about donations. Suppose you're not a fan of Zuck/Musk/whoever, or pick your least favorite media conglomerate. Is limiting their financial contributions to a campaign going to meaningfully reduce their influence? Of course not, because it mainly comes from controlling the feed or the reporting, so limiting money is primarily to the detriment of their opponents. This is one of the reasons you hear some talk about "campaign finance" from the media industry -- it lets billion dollar media corporations pretend they're defending the little guy when they're really trying to cement an asymmetric advantage in influencing politics because they can de facto donate airtime rather than money. But they have a mixed incentive, because they're also the ones getting money from the ads and don't actually want the spigot closed, which is probably why it's more talk than action.
And then there's this:
> Group A provides a lucrative contract to you after you leave politics so that they have a good reputation with the other politicians they finance.
Which isn't campaign finance at all. It's also kind of a hard problem, because after someone leaves office, it's reasonably expected that they're going to work somewhere, but then how are you supposed to tell if they're getting a fat paycheck because they're currently providing a valuable service or because they were previously providing a valuable service? It's not like they're going to put "deferred bribe" in the memo field of the check.
>> power attracts the corrupt
> hence why limited terms are a prerequisite for functioning democracies.
But if you want to take Vienna, take Vienna! Embrace limited power
Limited government power is often rightfully challenged as being unbalanced to the tremendous power of non-government entities such as corporations. However, this claim elides that the power and charter of any particular entity is downstream of what is granted and enabled by government functions. Less government power makes for less powerful corporations.
However, once everything is cut down a few notches, will the remaining power still attract the "corrupt?" Yes, power, status and other social markers will still exist and act like a bug lamp for sociopaths. But on the plus side they won't be as able, as you say, "to do that much damage."
0. https://www.ribbonfarm.com/2009/10/07/the-gervais-principle-...
You have this already without term limits. An elected officeholder is given more than enough resources to be enabled to perform her duties, if she wants to. It's a matter of willingness, term limits aren't making things worse than they might otherwise be.
Not that there is any specific number we can attach to this, but yes, there are actual idealists who then abused their powers and we know that because there is ample historical evidence of it.
On top of that I know some people personally who were part of the 68 student movement who also have been true idealists in their youth, but since them became defenders of their own order.
(Granted, in e.g. the Ottoman Empire and Imperial China, it was frequently the case that there were dozens of princelings who were, de facto, pitted against each other in contests for the throne. That definitely selected for ambition, brutality, and a willingness to get one's hands dirty.)
A shattering bow
A burning flame
A gaping wolf
A screeching pig
A rootless tree
A mounting sea
A flying spear
A falling wave
One night's ice
A coiled serpent
A bride's bed-talk
or a breaking sword
A bear's play
or a child of a king.
(Odin listing up some of the things a wise man never trusts, in stanza 85 and 86 of Hávamál)
That's not what the Crusader Kings series tells me. Or Brett Devereaux's description of pre-industrial states as a "Red Queen's race" where the strong had to devour the weak to stay ahead of the competition.
In the real world, there was (and is!) an incredible power game over who decides over what, who gets to live, who must abdicate, how much the real power lies with the King and how much with aristocracy or the Church and so on. It's a constant rebalancing of power factors.
The trouble with representative democracy is that it always selects for the most power-hungry of its denizens.
And now we're in the midst of a situation that Polybius would immediately recognize: The crossroads where one path leads to rule by entrenched and corrupt oligarchs, at least as bad as any of the court eunuchs of old, and where the other path leads to ochlocracy. I'd take my chances with the latter, especially in this era where direct democracy is possible, but I'm afraid that's not likely how things are going to turn out.
I'm a bit confused; assuming you are aiming at the US situation with this, I kinda fail to see a clear contrast between entrenched oligarchy and ochlocracy.
Isn't the Trump side a pretty good example of combining both?
Riling up the masses, promoting selfish "got mine" attitude from the top down, partial and weaponized use of the law are basically textbook fits for mob rule?
On the other hand, if you put Harrison or Waltz on a "entrenched oligarch" scale, there is no way they weight as heavy as Trump and his cronies in the current administration, at least in my view? Both of them did an actual job instead of just enjoying a life in the spotlight funded by generational wealth and the work of others...
I'm very interested in conflicting viewpoints-- if you disagree with my perspective, please tell me how instead of just downvoting!
I’m not sure exactly what you mean by Brits “voting against the status quo”. That’s what happens any time you change from one party to another in a democracy. Wouldn’t it be more worrying if everyone kept voting for the same party and same policies all the time?
Gordon Brown did an interview with a member of the public and forgot to take his microphone off when he got in the car. He said (in private) he'd just spoken to a biggoted woman. That was broadcast and it lost him the election.
https://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/politics/bigotgate-gor...
This… well, I’d urge you to read some English history. I’m choosing English because it’s the one I know best.
It is a litany of power struggles, of brother and sister plotting to kill aunt, uncle and father, nephew cousin, niece and anybody else. Of factionalism in court, bloody takeovers and power struggles. Noble houses vying for position as the monarch’s favoured ones, taking land and riches from less favoured houses, or winning it back. Scions of noble houses at war with each other over succession. Monarchs slaughtering potential usurpers. 9 day monarchies as one successor is positioned against another when the old king died, all based on religious backing…
There were long periods of stability under certain monarchs too, but often these coincide with periods of extrinsic conflict. Sometimes their wars of adventure would come close to bankrupting the country. Other times their choice of who to marry (or divorce) would cause massive loss of life.
They very much select for the power hungry, the venal, the egotistical and those capable of subterfuge and great violence to their own blood.
They think we just need more LKYs, or really, AI systems controlling everything. A benevolent dictatorial AI running society is exactly what all the futurists think is coming. Go read Orions Arm.
In monarchies you’d often end up with kings and people in line for the throne being murdered and all kinds of palace intrigue to select for the most conniving psychopath.
In theocratic systems you get hypocrite self dealing priests.
In socialist and communist systems you get an aristocracy of political pull where high ranking bureaucrats are basically identical to our billionaires and political elites.
I’m not aware of any system that durably protects against being taken over by deranged dark triad personalities. Democracy’s virtue is that it provides some way to clean house without destroying the stability of the whole system, at least when it works.
Because democracy at least pretends to give power to the people. Except letting a few individuals wield enough wealth and power to buy media, politicians and judges is completely antagonistic to the basic ideals of democracy, and not many realize this (yet).
> I’m not aware of any system that [...]
Liberal democracy is better than feudalism, I see no reason why our systems of governance can't be improved further. And, at least to me, the obvious path forward is to keep any of those "deranged dark triad personalities" from gaining too much power, maybe by limiting the amount of wealth any single individual can hold unto.
It took a disease killing a massive portion of the working population to weaken feudalism in Western Europe.
And don’t underestimate the portion of population that yearn to be peasants.
Erm... sure, but I don't see what that has to do with my comment? Transitions between political systems are rarely pleasant and are usually motivated by crisis.
> And don’t underestimate the portion of population that yearn to be peasants.
I don't buy that. People learn submission, it is not inherent to the human mind.
The closest we can get is striving to elevate our cultural and spiritual level as individuals, family, friends, neighbours and strangers.
The entire power of the psychopaths in charge all stem from corrupting normal people, and the more that can be avoided, the less power they have.
But it is difficult, because they corrupt our strongest feelings: fear, greed, pride, laziness, desire, community.
Millions of young men have died in senseless wars because they didn't want to be seen as "cowards", they thought of their "honour". Who remembers them now?
Who even thinks about the thousands of young soldiers dying in the battlefields in Ukraine? Why is Trump the only leader who talks about their deaths?
Billions of people are paying taxes to support their psychopath rulers, because of simple fear. If everybody stopped tomorrow, the world would be liberated. But people are held in fear.
We should strive for extremely limited power by our public representatives, so their corruption impact is reduced to a minimum. But not only limited power, but also limited budget access, as an extension to limit that power. And that actually means reduced taxation.
But at the same time, the budget for justice system needs to increase. It should be most probably the strongest branch of the government. Delayed justice is one of the most common ways of injustice.
Corruption within private companies is irrelevant, as the main ones to suffer from it are usually shareholders. Government has no say in that. That is unless companies break the law, and that's why a strong Justice system is necessary. With a reduced size of the state there's also way less risk of private companies and individuals to corrupt public representatives.
Monopolies are not always a negative outcome on a free market if the company in Monopoly situation reaches that position by offering better products within the law. However they can be specially dangerous when they're artificially created by the Government (e.g. allocation of a common resource to a specific company --> corruption almost always follows).
The judical branch should very much NOT be a part of the government itself, but a fully separate branch.
> Corruption within private companies is irrelevant, as the main ones to suffer from it are usually shareholders.
As we have seen in the past, we have the same, if not worse, power imbalances in private companies as in the public sector. I would therefore not call it irrelevant, but agree that the Justice system can help here if appropriatly staffed.
> Monopolies are not always a negative outcome on a free market if the company in Monopoly situation reaches that position by offering better products within the law. However they can be specially dangerous when they're artificially created by the Government (e.g. allocation of a common resource to a specific company --> corruption almost always follows).
Do you have a single example for a company who did not over time monetized its monopoly power to the detriment of the customer?
If you don't give that entirely separate branch any executive power, it cannot enforce its rulings. If you do give it separate executive power, there is nothing to rein it in when it becomes corrupt.
But Prosecutorial would have to be its own branch to avoid the current SCOTUS crushing on the "unitary executive" theory.
This is not a theoretical problem. Prosecuting politicians is a preferred approach in dysfunctional democracies, like Pakistan: https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/cly77v0n8e9o
Try to put yourself in the shoes of an FBI agent tasked with investigating this same case. The accused are very wealthy very powerful people with deep pockets. They can and will take action against you, if you're revealed to be chasing after them. Plus, their network of allies is so vast, that you cannot even trust your superiors or other government agencies to back you up. And indeed that is exactly what happened here.
I'll have some of whatever you're smoking.
It's not that useful separating public and private when there are revolving doors and the people who run the companies bribe — sorry, lobby — politicians. It's an incredibly intimate relationship
As for budget, a country needs money to do stuff; if they don't have money they can't do stuff. Stuff can range from having the world's biggest army (several times over) to providing free education to everyone (the great social equalizer IMO, as in social mobility).
As for your justice argument, it depends - if power corrupts, wouldn't giving more power to justice corrupt them as well? You see what's happening in the US with various law enforcement branches getting A Lot Of Money - militarization of local police force for example, meaning they have the means to apply more violence.
TL;DR, governments and justice systems need a clear description of what they can and cannot do, and checks, balances and consequences when they don't.
> Corruption within private companies is irrelevant, as the main ones to suffer from it are usually shareholders.
This ignores the vast majority of anyone involved in a private company - the customers. Or even the not-customers that are still affected by what a private company does (think e.g. pollution), but that's where as you say the law should come in.
And a few millions of people suffering because they're being misled into buying "wellness" solutions.
And a few hundreds of millions of people around the world suffering the effects of local pollution and clean water laws being skirted.
And a few billion folks who are gonna suffer the effects of climate change.
etc...
Other than the 6-7 billion humans who suffer due to private company corruption, it's basically only the shareholders.
God forbid a representative being reelected but there is no problem with a billionaire destabilizing dozens of democracies and around the world.
Libertarianism is just the blind worship of people who have money.
You're not going to solve this problem with a 'strong justice system', you're going to solve it by making sure no one can get that wealthy in the first place. I mean we're literally in a topic about Jeffry Epstein who is so deeply connected to everything that it would make your average TV show seem like a hack.
https://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/2026/03/pam-bondi-trump...
This could be quite good for competition, but would probably hurt sectors a lot that have high fixed costs/barriers of entry and need to compete with (foreign) unlimited-size companies.
I do think that this could fix or at least vastly improve some really difficult problems: The whole judiciary is IMO blatantly unjust right now, because higher wealth can basically buy you better outcomes, democratic representation is flawed because wealth/donations buy you access to politicians (or allows you to enter politics yourself) and even national public opinion on anything is essentially for sale to a degree via profit-driven media.
Such wealth-gap limiting could be possibly achieved by progressive taxation that rises logarithmically with revenue for companies and individual wealth (giving a strong incentive to split up wealth, and no leeway via declaring zero profits): Think 1% of revenue under 1M, 2% under 10M, ...
I'm very curious how a nation that made strong efforts in that direction would fare.
Not all corruption is obvious though. Sometimes you think you are doing the right thing, "just need to bend the rules slightly over here". It is all for a "good cause". I feel like I am as much worried about people who are the righteous wrong, as much as people who are just out there trying to grift to make a buck.
One of the best businessmen I have known is Paul Orfalea, broadly known as Kinko. When he couldn't hold a job he started a company, he focused on trying to make things work for employees and customers alike, and it grew. When he sold Kinko's Copies it had a record of serving not only individuals well, but also the broader society as capitalist enterprise ideally should. And he got five billion out of that deal, which he shared with this family. Now I am supposed to believe that this is all a horrible tale of darkness cursing us all because there was some boundary that he accidentally blew through with his extensive business success. In all honesty the one who sounds corrupted and disconnected here is you.
Taxation is the system where innocent people are forced to pay enormous amounts of money to the rich, powerful, corrupt. The whole basis for the Babylon system is taxation. Epstein and associates are able to thrive thanks to taxation. It has always been from the poor to the rich, never the other way around. Why do you think kings invented taxation in the first place?
War bonds covered about half the costs.
Roosevelt was not shy about taxation, before or during the war.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Revenue_Act_of_1935
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Revenue_Act_of_1937
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Revenue_Act_of_1942
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Individual_Income_Tax_Act_of_1...
"A 5% Victory tax on all individual incomes over $624 was created, with postwar credit."
Even the famous/infamous billionaires never come out against income tax for normal people. At most they're against taxation of themselves.
When did you hear the owner of a bank or a large hedge fund or a major industry talk against income taxes which the poor pay?
The rich are 100% pro taxes. It funnels money to themselves from the population, and keeps competition down.
Doubt it would have changed anything for Bill. There's a pattern there and this is just a piece of that pattern.
I get the sense that Bill does care about money, and so does Larry Summers, so Mom's advice probably wouldn't have done much there.
'...a short jail stint in one’s past for “soliciting prostitution” simply doesn’t sound disqualifying, according to the secular liberal morality that most academics hold, unless you researched the details, which most didn’t.'
Uh. Really?
(I repeat for emphasis, since I know people will bring it up if I don't, that the ages of the people Epstein solicited and the circumstances under which he solicited them were not as widely known at the time.)
“Secular liberal morality” here plays the same role as “cultural Marxism” elsewhere: neither exists concretely as an actual entity, but if you abstract away enough of the details you can still point to it like a bogeyman or a cryptid.
Peter Says: You think Bill Gates or Larry Summers would have listened to your Mom’s advice?
Scott Says: Peter #1: If she was their mom, maybe they would!
Bill and Melinda Gates foundation are also behind Common Core and basically ruined public education in the US.
The foundation is a way for Bill to keep doing what he likes without having to pay taxes on it, he's just done a better job of repairing his image than Larry.
And yeah, it's got Melinda's name on it, but let's face it, virtually all the money is from Bill/Microsoft.
From the article: an already-approved vaccine (by FDA and others) was given to children via a trial run by an NGO (PATH) and was funded by BMGF. The trial was apparently run unethically, and in addition a year or so later it was found that girls administered the vaccine had possibly experienced adverse events, some very serious.
(Based on the article alone) it’s very likely that BMGF would have been totally hands off in overseeing the trial, and would certainly have had strict agreements with PATH. If there were indeed ethical breaches, I’m sure BMGF was very unhappy about this. Moreover, while we of course shouldn’t ignore the safety findings, attributing events causally to the vaccination against the standard background rate of events in a particular population is rife with uncertainty.
And of course, the trial potentially being unethically run doesn’t make the (already- and still-approved) vaccine more dangerous… but does make it easier to whip up sensation and clicks for articles, especially if there’s a big rich US Foundation also tangentially involved.
People remember that Bill Gates played the game and won, and the damage he caused was mostly limited to the economic sphere and to other people playing the same game. That's why they are willing to give Gates a chance to redeem himself by using his money for good.
He was a Harvard dropout, but not some poor kid.
Bill Gates was always rich. But with Micro$oft's success, he became a lot lot richer later.
His mom sat on some major committee at IBM. She had significant clout there.
That's how Bill even got the chance to pitch a new OS when the IBM big bosses were looking to unleash their new PCs.
Do you really think they just yanked a school dropout from the streets into their boardroom to decide important business future for their company?
Paul Allen had started Microsoft with Bill Gates. It was Bill's mom who pitched Microsoft as a potential partner to IBM's CEO John Opel.
Bill Gates scouted and found a chap (Tim Paterson) having a working prototype called 86-DOS. And Bill purchased it (with his family money), rebranded it as PC-DOS and sold it to IBM (but he cunningly kept the copyright as he rightly figured that other manufacturers would clone the IBM PC hardware and would need a DOS for their PCs (thus, he later licensed the new OS to non-IBM PCs as MS-DOS)). I daresay his mom was instrumental in such cunning dealmaking.
>That's why they are willing to give Gates a chance to redeem himself by using his money for good. The problem is that he is using his wealth for some shady stuff, so it is not good.
Bill Gates's name is mentioned in the Epstein files, for some unsavory links to that child molestor.
And his BGMF (Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation) got banned in India from funding local NGOs, because a Parliamentary committee indicted BGMF's involvement and funding for shady and shoddy vaccine trials on tens of thousands of poor Indian tribal children without informed consent and under false aegis.
Be careful whom you consider your heroes. They may not be all they seem to be.
Think about it as a noble way to spend your HN karma
I have been using HN for some time, but I don't really know how it works.
People seem to be downvoting my comments that reveal some hard truths, but I don't see any downvote button when browsing HN conversations.
Anyway, I don't intend to downvote anyone. Let people have their own opinions and say, but is there anyway I can find out who is deliberately downvoting my comments?
But I feel that if my account gets restricted or suspended on HN because of downvotes on my comments that merely state some hard truths, then so be it.
It would be a judgement on HN, not on me.
I will simply go elsewhere to speak up the truths..
Someone has to speak for those innocents whose voices have forever been silenced by evil people.
One time I joked about blocking a domain which would have embarrassed a notorious colour revolution organisation and the next day the domain was snatched up by the named gang.
And that particular Reddit account got banned.
Even whole subreddits are taken over by shady admins, and totally weaponised. e.g., r/India is filled with anti-India hate posts and malicious misinformation, because that subreddit is controlled by Pakistani admins.
I was actually glad when my Reddit user account got banned for speaking some truths about history of my nation, LOL.
Lot less stress on HN, it is more peaceful, simple, and informative, I like it.
Interesting you don't mention Iran. Trump has been building up forces in the region for a few weeks and is on the verge of invading, in an exact mirror of Russia invading Ukraine.
Follow up question: do you buy indulgences?
Melinda also, of course, did work for their joint foundation before she left. Since leaving, she shifted her philanthropic focus more to US women's health and reproductive rights.
Bill has committed to giving away nearly all his wealth (99%) over the next 19 years. Melinda is still committed to giving away over 50% of her wealth over her lifetime.
I don't see any evidence that Melinda was the primary driver for Bill's philanthropy.
Where one side provided all the money, the other side provided the direction.
Both were necessary. Weird huh?
How would you do it? Do you have a way to earn his trust, a service to offer him that he values a lot, a way to steal from him, or anything like that?
Melania apparently managed to do it with true love and kindness. Are you capable of sincerely loving Bill Gates for a period of several years, or fake it in a perfectly convincing way for several years?
Him giving her STDs and then trying to sneak antibiotics in her food without her noticing would have been grounds all by itself.
Like, actual facts.
- https://www.justice.gov/atr/us-v-microsoft-courts-findings-f...
- https://www.justice.gov/atr/us-v-microsoft-courts-findings-f...
- https://www.justice.gov/atr/us-v-microsoft-courts-findings-f...
- https://www.justice.gov/atr/us-v-microsoft-courts-findings-f...
- https://www.justice.gov/atr/us-v-microsoft-courts-findings-f...
- https://birdhouse.org/beos/byte/30-bootloader/
- http://www.catb.org/~esr/halloween/
One would have had to try very hard to avoid ever hearing about Microsoft's behavior in the '90s.
FWIW, Bill Gates is one of the people I would have pointed to as one of the less disreputable modern billionaires, and finding out that Melinda divorced him over his Epstein connections really soured my opinion of him.
I think OP has a point, it's very difficult to accumulate vast wealth without behaving ruthlessly and being kind of an asshole when it comes to making tough profit-over-people decisions.
These guys don’t want to be remembered for the awful behaviors they had in their personal and business life. They’re extremely conceited and concerned with their image.
It's just one more method of buying good feelings and trying to buy good will while being in control of large numbers of people.
He wants to feel like he's doing good and using money to give him that feeling.
I'd rather have better men had that money to spend and his victims both personal and business leave him penniless and alone at the end.
https://www.forbes.com/billionaires/ ranks him at #13 wealthiest in the world with $108B net worth.
He's donated about half his fortune, and 60% of that to his own org.
1. Donate 5-10% of their fortune to random unobjectionable charities.
2. Don't abuse children.
3. Stay off Twitter.
Because they don't want to be beloved, they want to turn people into dinosaurs. (to adapt the Spiderman quote)
Using words like "Big Pharma" to make working on vaccines look like something awful is also a poor rhetoric device.
It would be nice if you had a second source on the trials you referenced in India as it is not clear who the blame lies with.
Capital research isn't a serious source as they clearly have their own anti-vax agenda.
>Saying that Gates "has no qualms in killing children..." is quite a stretch.
Nah, you can whitewash an unscrupulous billionaire's sins all you want, but you cannot hide the truths.
> Using words like "Big Pharma" to make working on vaccines look like something awful is also a poor rhetoric device.
It is an undeniable fact that Western Big Pharma companies and partners are doing illegal or unethical clinical trials and rogue experiments on underprivileged communities in poor nations. If you really want to poke that bear, I will share horror stories (with links) of what Western Big Pharma is doing in Africa and elsewhere, but it will have to be a separated conversation, since this thread is about the crimes of Bill Gates.
> working on vaccines look like something awful
The dilemma is not who is working on vaccines. The real question is : are they safe, and are they even proven to work?
First go take a deep dive to understand what "clinical trial" of a drug is all about. It is Development stage of the drug. This means the drug is risky because it is unproven and untested on a wider audience.
The HPV experiments in India by Bill Gates organizations (BMGF and PATH) have been indicted in Parliamentary committee investigation & report and local/police investigations. Links below.
> It would be nice if you had a second source on the trials you referenced in India as it is not clear who the blame lies with.
HN users have become lazy to do the research homework on topics they argue about, it's sad. But I'll ease your comfort further, see the citations/official-links and relevant info below.
-------
The facts are all already proven. Since you find it hard to do research homework on subjects you argue about, let me ease your comfort further by sharing more links and evidence.
---------
It's all Documented in the Indian Parliamentary committee report on HPV vaccines. It is all in public domain.
Indian Parliament Comes Down Hard on Cervical Cancer Trial: https://www.science.org/content/article/indian-parliament-co...
PDF - Full and Final Report of PATH - HSRII: https://www.hsrii.org/wp-content/uploads/2014/07/72.pdf
"The Committee finds the entire matter very intriguing and fishy. The choice of countries and population groups; the monopolistic nature, at that point of time, of the product being pushed; the unlimited market potential and opportunities in the universal immunization progammes of the respective countries are all pointers to a well planned scheme to commercially exploit a situation. Had PATH been successful in getting the HPV vaccine included in the universal immunization programme of the concerned countries, this would have generated windfall profit for the manufacturer(s) by way of automatic sale, year after year, without any promotional or marketing expenses. It is well known that once introduced into the immunization programme it becomes politically impossible to stop any vaccination. To achieve this end effortlessly without going through the arduous and strictly regulated route of clinical trials, PATH resorted to an element of subterfuge by calling the clinical trials as “Observational Studies” or “Demonstration Project” and various such expressions. Thus, the interest, safety and well being of subjects were completely jeopardized by PATH by using self-determined and selfservicing nomenclature which is not only highly deplorable but a serious breach of law of the land. The Committee is not aware about the strategy followed by PATH in the remaining three countries viz. Uganda, Vietnam and Peru. The Government should take up the matter with the Governments of these countries through diplomatic channels to know the truth of the matter and take appropriate necessary action, accordingly. The Committee would also like to be apprised of the responses of these countries in the matter."
PDF - Trials and tribulations: an expose of the HPV vaccine trials by the 72nd Parliamentary Standing Committee Report: https://biswaroop.com/wp-content/uploads/2024/07/Trial-Tribu...
Final Report of the Committee appointed by the Govt. of India, (vide notification No. V.25011/160/2010-HR dated 15th April, 2010,) to enquire into “Alleged irregularities in the conduct of studies using Human Papilloma Virus (HPV) vaccine” by PATH in India: https://www.icmr.gov.in/icmrobject/static/icmr/dist/images/p...
"A Global Project, titled “HPV Vaccine: evidence for Impact”, a population based, post-licensure study of HPV vaccine for prevention of Cancer cervix has been being carried out by PATH (Programme for Appropriate Technology in Health), an international NGO, in the districts of Khammam of Andhra Pradesh (AP) and Vadodra of Gujarat in India since 2007. It was implemented in collaboration with the Indian Council of Medical Research and State Governments of AP and Gujarat. Besides India, the project has also been carried out in Peru, Uganda and Vietnam. The project is funded by a grant from Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation and donation of HPV vaccine by the manufacturers, viz. GSK and MSD to PATH."
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And the consequences on Gates Foundation have also happened in India.
India’s Ban on Foreign Money for Health Group Hits Gates Foundation: https://www.nytimes.com/2017/04/20/world/asia/india-health-n...
Now as for your dear hero Bill Gates, and "whether there was indeed a hushed up medical disaster in India caused by the Gates foundation", just hear it from the horse's mouth..
"Microsoft co-founder Bill Gates has landed in hot water after referring to India as “a kind of laboratory to try things” during a podcast with LinkedIn co-founder Reid Hoffman. His remarks, while intended to highlight India's progress and its collaboration with the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, have revived a controversial 2009 clinical trial -- funded by Gates' foundation -- which killed seven tribal schoolgirls and left many others severely ill."
https://www.ndtv.com/world-news/bill-gates-laboratory-remark...
"In 2013, India’s Parliamentary Standing Committee on Health and Family Welfare, comprising of members across political lines, held the BMGF-funded Program for Appropriate Technology in Health (PATH) guilty of violating regulatory and ethical norms laid down by the Indian and U.S. governments for clinical trials. The committee investigated the role of the BMGF and PATH in the trial of HPV vaccines on children in Khammam district of Andhra Pradesh and Vadodra district of Gujarat, during which seven children died. It uncovered ethical failings in the study and the subsequent investigation. The government of India responded by restricting the BMGF from country’s immunization program."
https://www.newsweek.com/foreign-funding-threatened-india-mo...
> basically his entire fortune
If I give away 50% of my fortune my entire life falls apart and I am struggling. If I give away 10% it is going to hurt.
But Gates? He gives away 99% of his money and he's still a billionaire. His life isn't really going to change in any meaningful way. His money still generates tens or hundreds of millions of dollars a year without him lifting a finger. He gives away 99.9% of his money and he's still worth $100m and again, his life effectively does not change, making now only millions of dollars a year doing nothing.
Don't get me wrong, I am glad he's giving his money away and this is far better than Ellison or plenty of others, but that doesn't absolve their crimes/behavior. There's definitely a hierarchy of wrongness, being a cheater is definitely better than being a pedo cheater but neither is good or an excuse. The dude was associating with a known sex trafficker. Definitely not an "ops, I didn't know", his wife definitely knew and told him...
For example, the typical tax structure is to put assets into a foundation. That allows the assets to grow and earn income without being taxed. The only requirement is that 5% of the asset pool has to be used on the stated goal of the foundation. That might sound good but it also includes costs like "administration" so, say, having your family as employees. There are limits to this but it's still somewhat of a slush fund.
That charity can be used for political influence. A foundation can't donate to candidates or PACs but can instead, for example, fund a think tank from which policy is created or influenced. That think tank will employ people while their party is out of the White House and otherwise nurture people who will go into the administration when their party returns to power.
Also, a large foundation such as this wields influence just by its size, by choosing what to fund and where. It can exact generous conditions from governments. Those conditions can extend to companies the foundation's benefactors have an interest in.
All of this is about influence. Governments are accountable to their people. Outsized private foundations are accountable to no one.
I guess I'm not cut out to be a "big shot". I opened the DAF, but use the money for actually donating to charitable organizations to which I have no other connection.
Put a dollar figure on your daughter, sister, mother.
Now you get it.
I’ll give you the creation of the country but modern democracy was not born in the USA. Your overall point is still valid though.
Basically the post-WWII period was a golden age for all of the above because the middle class of returning soldiers was there, and it was as power and wealth consolidated in the 80s and onward that there was less and less interest and agreement about spending on stuff other the essentials (which turned out to be mostly just defense).
So really it's a two pronged thing:
* the wealthy need to pay much more, and the government needs to invest that in services that benefit the middle class (education, health care, energy & transportation infrastructure) and also which keep people from falling out of the middle class (social safety net, consumer protections).
* eventually there's a critical mass of middle class people comfortable enough to look out their windows and feel concern about pollution, the poor, etc, and then you ultimately get a combination of individual action, NGOs, and government programmes that meet the very needs that are noticed and lobbied for.
But I think the issue is that many advocates want to jump directly from "more taxes on the rich" to "gov't spends directly on my pet issue", and if you miss the second step, you're never going to get the willpower to either raise the taxes or direct the money into environmental initiatives or whatever else.
Yes, I don't love that he puts out hits like that on solar and wind in his effort to promote nuclear as a sole solution, but I still find his larger arguments around the dynamics of environmentalism as a movement persuasive.
I think some of it is the psychology that government is incompetent and will just waste the money anyway ("let Bill keep his money and build toilets in Africa himself, at least he'll get it done"), and the best way to fight that is probably what Carney is trying to do right now: kick off a bunch of ambitious programmes to build new things like pipelines, rail, airport expansions, etc on an accelerated timeline. Perhaps if people see visible progress they'll be more open to saying yeah okay, I'm all right with paying more to live in a country where we get stuff done.
Gates has always been a piece of shit. For example, when Paul Allen got diagnosed with cancer, Gates and Ballmer tried to screw him out of Microsoft stock that he owned (this was roughly 1982-ish?).
You're a shit person if you try to screw over your "friend" like this. You're a shit person squared if you do it when they just got diagnosed with cancer.
There is nothing at all you can do that could ever overcome the harm of helping that man, participating in his business, and calling him a friend.
I don't care if Jesus Christ himself comes down and says Bill Gates is solely responsible for the ending of all suffering.
Raping kids is Bad. Enslaving kids to rape is Bad. This is as clear as you can get in real human society to being The Bad Guy, and Bill Gates spent his precious, limited time on this earth helping him, legitimizing him, and participating in his influence peddling and child rape and slavery
Bill Gates is a piece of shit.
He took more from the society than he gave back. And when you take from society, you're not supposed to decide alone how to redistribute. That's the issue
So he is no longer a billionaire? And donating to what charity, The Gates Foundation? The one that he controls? The one that he uses to push his ideological stances and repeatedly fails to help anyone? Just look how successful his work on improving education system in America was. What a sacrifice it was for him...
Their work to clean water and cure diseases has saved millions of lives. They know what they are good at and they've decided to double down on that.
It's only hard if you don't want to help anyone and your only goal is to push charter schools(by any other name) by any means necessary.
>Their work to clean water and cure diseases has saved millions of lives. They know what they are good at and they've decided to double down on that.
They helped so many people by not allowing them getting covid vaccine or by fighting generics? Also their "good" deeds weren't without negative consequences that could be avoided if someone actually listened to people they were "helping".
Why are charter schools bad? What is the ostensible easy way to improve US education that you know for sure will work?
I am a big supporter of public schools, but I also understand that only allowing rich parents to opt out of public schools can lead to some very bad outcomes as schools don't have to respond directly to public pressure.
Recently the Seattle public schools reverted some very bad decisions because so many parents in Seattle pulled their kids out of public schools to go to private, at such a high numbers it started to cause budget issues.
That was only possible because the so many parents here can afford to do that.
Another example is with how many schools stopped using phonics for reading and an entire generation of kids ended up with poor reading skills. No marketplace of ideas means even if parents wanted to have their kid learn phonics, only rich parents could afford to switch to private schools. Even today Seattle schools is just slowly switching back to phonics (my local school is a pilot for returning to phonics! Year later!)
Same goes for 1:1 laptop usage. Evidence now shows that every school that moves to one to one laptops (a dedicated laptop for every kid in every classroom) has educational outcomes plummet. It will take years of concerted effort by parents to get those laptops out of public schools (to be fair, took years of effort to get them into the schools....) and break the contracts to school district has with technology providers.
Having all the kids in the city go to a single School district has many huge benefits that lift everybody up, and a well-funded public school system is essential to democracy.
But there are also issues with putting all your eggs in one basket.
I don't think anyone has a good solution to these problems.
He's still doing his work on philanthropy which is IMO a good thing.
The one counterexample to my point that I'd think of is Hitler. And _technically_ he did do good things for Germany as well, the bad just overwhelmingly outshines the good in this case.
Yeah everyone forgets, he killed Hitler. That was a huge win for Germany. But no one ever gives him the credit.
I’m not a fan of MSFT but there are worse uses of the money he made from the company.
I think it’s a bit unfair to categorize all of his contributions to charity as “not charitable”.
Compare that to Elon Musk, who uses his Musk Foundation as a tax shelter, only spending from it for a private school for his children.
Because it's almost impossible to not help someone if he just throw wads of money at random. What important is how many people weren't saved because he decided to be a middle man in all of it?
At some point it stops being a philanthropy when it makes lives of people he tries to "help" worse. Like his actions have a ulterior motives...
A few states published their Common Core guidelines. I looked at one state, and the curriculum goals looked no different than the things that I learned when I was a kid. It seemed completely ordinary. I remain baffled about why it was so controversial.
I have a kid in school and a math degree so I have some knowledge of this.
Don't get me wrong. I was one of the successful ones, but I think math education is in need of reform. In fact I would reform it quite radically.
It sounds a bit cartoon villainy, but honestly, I see no reason to doubt that he said this. Everything points to these people being casually desperate to be let into ever innermore circles. Even now that this particularly ugly circle is blown open, notice that they still simply do not talk about what their fellow insiders did except in vague generalities.
Except for the parts involving criminal coverups. That seems to plague close-nit groups at any level of society, e.g. world religions, police, finance, families, etc.
Back to your main point, mafia operates similarly. In fact, there is not much difference between the two. What is Larry Summers not saying there is that being part of this circle is making this circle more powerful. Them not talking about what they know is itself "influencing powerful people and outcomes".
[0] Link: https://www.lewissociety.org/innerring/
[1] HN discussion: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=38696764
That's assuming Bill Gates didn't know what he was doing. Sadly, it sounds like he knew exactly what he was doing.
Disgusting nature aside, I can't help but be amazed as to how someone can be so well connected. What sort of skills did Epstein have that managed to have so many people on speed dial?
How do you get in a position to correspond with presidents, royals, celebrities and getting them all hooked on you?
Amazing indeed.
This is/was one of such groups.
How do you become omniconnected? You offer people a good time. How do you have repeat customers? You offer them a too good time. Why the disgusting acts? Because mere sex isn't scandalous enough.
Sometimes you do it because you've been commissioned to do it to a specific person. Sometimes you do it on spec because you think you can sell it. There is no one goal or ideology or theme to it other than it's gotta be nasty enough to blackmail a target.
There are after all multiple people being "given" girlfriends or contacts for social networking, shown in the Epstein files.
Most obvious example is of course Donald Trump with Melania.
The answer may be disturbing.
If the choice for Mossad was either risk Epstein exposing that Israel was essentially running a state-sponsored underage sex trafficking ring, or kill him before he can do that, you know what they'd choose.
There is one answer: Epstein was protected by state forces, not that of U.S. but of its closest "ally" (more like master at this point).
Not that they need it that much today, anyway. AIPAC sponsors almost all of U.S. congress, check out how much your congressmen and women received from AIPAC here: https://www.trackaipac.com/congress
This is a bog-standard white nationalist trope (“ZOG”), gussied up with current affairs.
Epstein avoided the consequences of his actions because he was a wealthy, powerful man surrounded by other wealthy, powerful men (who in turn stand to lose a great deal by having their behavior exposed). Not because the Jews secretly run the world.
This is the most-interesting bit. The introducer put this up front. Maybe it's Nigerian-prince scame logic? Or maybe there really is that much sympathy for pedophiles in Silicon Valley [1].
[1] https://www.nytimes.com/2026/02/05/business/epstein-investme...
So given that it anyway comes out sooner or later it's better to be upfront about it as that can create a feeling of trust. It can create misconceptions like "if he where unserious he would have hidden that he works for Epstein" etc.
At the same time it acts as filter, people with a upstanding moral compass will directly say no and you don't wast time on trying to recruit them.
Lastly for people which some but not robust morals iff you can convince them to work with you and they start having doubts you now have the argument that "you told them upfront about the issue and they where okay with it, and bailing not would make them look like a very unreliable business partner affecting their carrier beyond this situation". To be clear I'm not saying that this is "true", but that this argument presented carefully in the right way at the right time can be effective to manipulate people _even if not true_.
I think it's pretty well established now that powerful people in and outside the Valley considered to think that Epstein was a useful contact knowing his "personal situation" rather well and sometimes explicitly referring to it. Suspect it's possible to have innocently accepted an introduction to him or even advice from him in the 2010s because he wasn't that famous at the time, but it seems like they were motivated to minimise that possibility. Even easier to add people to the list you can blackmail in future if you don't even have to arrange island visits for them
Helping poor children from Africa, investing in AI, and burning CDs with dolphin sounds. A classic.
The actual lesson is not "listen to your mom", but "character matters". It doesn't matter how much someone agrees with you, how smart they are, how rich they are, how many great ideas they have etc etc. A rotten character will eventually rot everything around it. Techines/nerds/geeks get so enamoured with ideas they tend to not even see the kind of people ideas come from.
"great proposal„ however, it needs to be more around deception alice -bob. communication. virus hacking, battle between defense and infiltration.. computation is already looked at in various fields. camoflauge , mimickry, signal processing, and its non random nature, misinformation. ( the anti- truth - but right answer for the moment ).. computation does not involve defending against interception, a key area for biological systems, if a predator breaks the code, it usually can accumulate its preys free energy at a discount . self deception, ( necessary to prevent accidental disclosure of inate algorithms. WE need more hackers , also interested in biological hacking , security, etc."
Damn! I once worked with a guy that was exactly like this. Not just writing but his style of speech irl was like that, incoherent loosely bound ideas around one topic. Ironically, the harder he tried to appear smart the more idiotic were the things that spewed out of his mouth.
We were working with GPUs, trying to find ways to optimize GPU code, he called the team for an informal meeting and told us dead serious, "Why can't you just like, ..., remove the GPUs from the server, then crack them open, turn them outside out and put them back in to see if they perform better". :O
I don't know if this has a name, I just thought the guy had schizophrenia. So glad I moved on from that place.
* He has money
* People want a share of his money
* He has enough people to tell him stuff to make his bullshit seem to have some connection with reality
* Anybody who argues with his stupid bullshit is no longer welcome and gets no chance to get a share of his money
I don' know what "turn them outside out" but it sounds like they are suggesting removing and replacing the heatsink. Funnily enough, replacing thermal paste can improve temperatures [1].
[1] https://www.xda-developers.com/finally-replaced-gpu-thermal-...
computation does not involve defending against interception, a key area for biological systems,. He is confused about software/programming/hacking. Hacking absolutely involves intercepting messages e.g., man in the middle attack. I have no idea what he thinks biological systems is; does he think that bacteria/viruses intercept chemical messages that our brain sends to different organs in our body?
if a predator breaks the code, it usually can accumulate its preys free energy at a discount. Free energy -- yuck -- that is what happens when scientists give a terrible name to "usable work" or "usable energy". Free energy is about the usable work you can get out of a e.g., coal powered steam engine. He is mixing physics/thermodynamics with biology.
Don't let the label fool you. Thermodynamics is the study of energy flows at the fundamental level, not only heat.
Someone[3] mentioned how he sounded in an interview and I went and found his conversation with Steve Bannon. My daughter just went back to sleep and I'm not one for listening to stuff anyway so I sent it through Voxtral and put it through a visualizer[1] so I could read it and I can see why someone might want to listen to him.
He name-drops famous people a lot, definitely farms those connections and so on, but the things he mentions do reveal a systems-level comprehension of many concepts and how they affect each other. And he does it by describing these things in a simple way that must have been easy for them to understand. Personally, I think it obscures a lot of the detail but it has the flavour of the insight porn genre that was once popular.
A few of the examples are that he describes the subprime crisis as originating in Clinton-era home-ownership reform that pressured government lenders to essentially back many subprime mortgages (expanded during the Bush-era). Then he talks about mark-to-market accounting and how that accelerated (maybe even was one of the causes) of the 2008 crisis. That is sort of true, which is why new rules allow for some kinds of assets to be valued differently[2].
Anyway, unlike others here I don't think he's incoherent or stupid or whatever. The crimes he was convicted and about to be convicted for are pretty horrific but I think people are treating him like some kind of moron when I don't think that's accurate. I'm not saying this to praise the guy or defend him. I just don't think it's true.
0: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FpWEc-LMT10
1: https://viz.roshangeorge.dev/voxtral-viewer/?t=jeffrey-epste...
2: https://viewpoint.pwc.com/dt/us/en/pwc/accounting_guides/loa...
But I think that's incorrect. The lynchpin of the subprime crisis was really the repeal of the Glass-Steagall act in 1998, which made sure that consumer-facing banks had strict limits on how much they could be leveraged in their investments. This set them apart from investment banks which were allowed to take bigger risks.
Then, a bunch of financial fuckery in new kinds derivatives generated the idea that they had "solved" the risk factor of subprime mortgages and that they could open the floodgates on accepting any and all mortgages without doing any of the traditional underwriting. They sliced them into tranches using a magic formula which nobody understood and sold them off. The ratings agencies helped by stamping this garbage with top grades and tricking institutional investors into holding the bag.
The result was that when it all imploded the US consumers were the ones who got hosed -- because those consumer banks were over-leveraged in these bad investments.
It was criminal activity all the way. It was conspiracy to make billions of the short-term commissions on all the mortgage transaction activity, while sticking someone else with the toxic waste.
It was not a simple policy decision from the 90's. That narrative is just another way for the oligarchs to rewrite history and evade responsibility. Ensuring that we'll learn nothing and they can do this all over again once people forget.
Claude suggested an interesting pattern: on several topics, Epstein starts with some medium level concept (not naive, but not expert-level), then distracts with a metaphor or a short anecdote, then drops some hint that he has great authority on the subject ("I was in the room", "I had insider knowledge") and finally changes subject or claims that nobody really knows, without ever going deeper.
Bill Gates was known for making PMs and tech lead type people scared, often literally so, by going deep into technical details.
Elon Musk sometimes also talks a lot of details, to the point of actual rocket engineers working for him being impressed. At the same time, it is sometimes painfully obvious that he hasn't got the basics even remotely correct.
I'm not saying that Epstein was like that, but the fact that these three people used to hang out isn't surprising, they're likely to be socially compatible.
i mean working in tech you haven't run into that CTO or vp eng who snowjobs the c-suite with a word salad of hot button technical terms that don't quite add up?
hell ive even interviewed developer candidates for positions who are like this.
Yeah, it's on my comment.
But I have read some of his emails, and all of the ones I have seen are full of spelling, punctuation, grammar and capitalization errors. I would not gotten out of sixth grade if I wrote like that.
I'm not asking you to believe me on this, but sharing it more as an anecdote of: something on the surface is sometimes not the reality of what's underneath.
(Also not saying I believe this at all, just relating an anecdote).
I'd more focus on the ideas being expressed being incoherent. Spelling is surface level, but that word salad made no sense.
I kinda assumed that was (at least partly) a "flex," basically doing something dumb to show you're such hot stuff you can get away with it. It's like Sam Altman writing in lowercase all the time.
A failing math teacher at a New York prep school leading to a job at Bear Stearns and then as a wealth manager for billionaires... let's say it doesn't add up unless there were other reasons than his own ambitions and organization skills.
Mossad or the Russians engineered his life.
It very much all adds up if you view Epstein as a financial genius in terms of financial crimes.
This idea he was some intelligence created stooge is just absurd. I would suspect he was an intelligence asset exactly because of his ability to launder money and commit financial crimes. His wealth came from taking a cut. The size of his wealth was a reflection of the amount of financial crimes committed. That level of financial crime is how you get a sweetheart deal to keep those crimes in the shadows.
Also the kind of thing that would get you suicided. This podcast/social media narrative that he was a created intelligence asset to blackmail the rich and powerful is probably misdirection to not focus on the actual financial crimes. The cover up has been executed to perfection considering the misdirection narratives have taken on a life of their own and we know basically nothing about the financial crimes he commited.
I can spell correctly in a few different languages without having to think about it. I suspect you can, too. I can do a lot of math in my head that Jeffery Epstein probably couldn't have done with a calculator. I'm not a billionaire, though, and I never will be. The kind of smart - "street smart", it's sometimes called - that makes you that kind of rich is a different kind of smart that shows up as being a competent writer. Make no mistake, though, it wasn't stupidity or incompetence that got him where he was.
Usually meaning the revenues and results are there .. although everything about their personal or professional ethos disgusts me.
Eh. From time to time you’ll have that one brilliant but grossly tangential asset on a team who leaves you wondering if they’re manic or cracked out from the weekend.
Who’s in infrastructure and hasn’t sent a few sleep-deprived and cringey status updates out at 6am :D
Okay okay okay fine, it’s an internet comment section I don’t have to be PC. I think this one’s coke.
So they then hear someone who speaks like that, with a fast cadence and Andrew Tate's "Confidence" TM, and are inclined to think "yeah, the guy looks like he knows what he's talking about".
But for people who have minimal knowledge about the thing, it's evident that said person is just stupid.
To them, actually learning a "normal" topic is a distraction. Their game is finding and exploiting weaknesses.
Some people will be attracted by the menu, some people won't realise what's happening until they see the video they're starring in.
Either way, you own them.
The grammar police as well as PC became a thing and now everyone is expected to construct paragraphs of text without any grammatical errors otherwise you're mobbed and lynched.
Just because you're expecting full pronunciation doesn't mean others do. I'd rather write with laziness and short hand than having to punctuate a whole paragraph and bore the person to death like this paragraph.
The fact that Scott here was able to find that information and cut ties shows how corrupt every powerful person that didn't do that was. Sorry billionaires and politicians, you don't come out looking clean being friendly to the known pedophile pimp.
Is Scott referring to this Charles Harper, of the Templeton Foundation, dedicated to the science of theology?
http://capabilities.templeton.org/2006/interview/c_harper.ht...
You're completely wrong, as I've pointed out below. "Especially girls" because they probably couldn't find boys with a cervix (HPV causes cervical cancer)
Impossible to take these hysterical takes serious, do better.
You have not shown this so far. The article that you believe supports this claim does not.
There is a lot of reasons to do a vaccine trial in India instead of the US, and a very likely one is simply cost.
If you want to accuse Gates of trying to murder Indian girls instead of Americans, then you have to show the actual harm, that there was known and disproportionate danger before the trial, and that the trial was done in India because of that danger.
So far you demonstrated none of those.
Also, please use asterisks (instead of caps lock) for emphasis (=> https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html).
No need for American children to die or suffer due to risky unproven drugs (made by Western Big Pharma in partnership with American billionaires) as clinical trials, when it is far cheaper for the American billionaires and their Western Big Pharma coterie to just coerce those unproven risky drugs on tens of thousands of unsuspecting poor Indian minor girls without informed consent under guise of "study" (rather than "clinical trials" with all the constraints, medical insurance, scrutiny, requisite approvals, etc. mandated for clinical trials of drugs in development).
Who cares if poor Indians die, eh, is that your take? Let billionaire Bill Gates party with his child molesting pals on island getaway with their captive trafficked minor girls, while his risky unproven drugs kill or hurt minor girls in some poorer country across the world.
Yeah, we are able to connect the dots now, thanks.
Here's my TLDR: Evil is, as evil does.
https://mediabiasfactcheck.com/the-economic-times/
I'm hardly a fan of Gates, btw.
Just do a Google search: "bill gates foundation india tribal girls deaths vaccine trials".
Some truths are not hidden. They are merely eclipsed by other noise.
Like I said earlier: Evil is, as evil does.
"An Indian government committee and subsequent investigations concluded that the seven deaths were most probably unrelated to the vaccine itself. The reported causes included drowning, snake bite, intentional ingestion of poisonous substances (suicide), malaria, brain hemorrhage, and viral fever."
This was in a trail for the HPV virus so presumably they wanted subjects who were not yet sexually active. Girls were chosen because HPV can affect the cervix. So you vaccinate them, and then follow them up for maybe 15 years and see how it turns out.
Enrolling young children in a trail like is always going to ethically hard to justify. And it's well possible they chose India instead of California for this reason. However the protocol makes sense.
I worked in clinical trails for years, believe me the LAST thing anyone wants is problems like these because you'll end up losing billions.
To market something in EU or USA you need EMEA or FDA approval. They will check every single piece of paper and can tank your entire decades long project.
Respectfully, you're blowing this way out of proportion, this is just more "billionaire hysteria"
What sources are there on the hospitalisations?
All the necessary information in this context are in public domain. Google is your friend.
And I behoove you to read my other comments on this topic, before raising questions you haven't bothered to search answers for by yourself.
---------
It's all Documented in the Indian Parliamentary committee report on HPV vaccines. It is all in public domain.
Indian Parliament Comes Down Hard on Cervical Cancer Trial: https://www.science.org/content/article/indian-parliament-co...
PDF - Full and Final Report of PATH - HSRII: https://www.hsrii.org/wp-content/uploads/2014/07/72.pdf
"The Committee finds the entire matter very intriguing and fishy. The choice of countries and population groups; the monopolistic nature, at that point of time, of the product being pushed; the unlimited market potential and opportunities in the universal immunization progammes of the respective countries are all pointers to a well planned scheme to commercially exploit a situation. Had PATH been successful in getting the HPV vaccine included in the universal immunization programme of the concerned countries, this would have generated windfall profit for the manufacturer(s) by way of automatic sale, year after year, without any promotional or marketing expenses. It is well known that once introduced into the immunization programme it becomes politically impossible to stop any vaccination. To achieve this end effortlessly without going through the arduous and strictly regulated route of clinical trials, PATH resorted to an element of subterfuge by calling the clinical trials as “Observational Studies” or “Demonstration Project” and various such expressions. Thus, the interest, safety and well being of subjects were completely jeopardized by PATH by using self-determined and selfservicing nomenclature which is not only highly deplorable but a serious breach of law of the land. The Committee is not aware about the strategy followed by PATH in the remaining three countries viz. Uganda, Vietnam and Peru. The Government should take up the matter with the Governments of these countries through diplomatic channels to know the truth of the matter and take appropriate necessary action, accordingly. The Committee would also like to be apprised of the responses of these countries in the matter."
PDF - Trials and tribulations: an expose of the HPV vaccine trials by the 72nd Parliamentary Standing Committee Report: https://biswaroop.com/wp-content/uploads/2024/07/Trial-Tribu...
Final Report of the Committee appointed by the Govt. of India, (vide notification No. V.25011/160/2010-HR dated 15th April, 2010,) to enquire into “Alleged irregularities in the conduct of studies using Human Papilloma Virus (HPV) vaccine” by PATH in India: https://www.icmr.gov.in/icmrobject/static/icmr/dist/images/p...
"A Global Project, titled “HPV Vaccine: evidence for Impact”, a population based, post-licensure study of HPV vaccine for prevention of Cancer cervix has been being carried out by PATH (Programme for Appropriate Technology in Health), an international NGO, in the districts of Khammam of Andhra Pradesh (AP) and Vadodra of Gujarat in India since 2007. It was implemented in collaboration with the Indian Council of Medical Research and State Governments of AP and Gujarat. Besides India, the project has also been carried out in Peru, Uganda and Vietnam. The project is funded by a grant from Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation and donation of HPV vaccine by the manufacturers, viz. GSK and MSD to PATH."
---------
And the consequences on Gates Foundation have also happened in India.
India’s Ban on Foreign Money for Health Group Hits Gates Foundation: https://www.nytimes.com/2017/04/20/world/asia/india-health-n...
Now as for your dear hero Bill Gates, "whether there truly was some hushed up medical disaster in India caused by the Gates foundation", just hear it from the horse's mouth..
"Microsoft co-founder Bill Gates has landed in hot water after referring to India as “a kind of laboratory to try things” during a podcast with LinkedIn co-founder Reid Hoffman. His remarks, while intended to highlight India's progress and its collaboration with the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, have revived a controversial 2009 clinical trial -- funded by Gates' foundation -- which killed seven tribal schoolgirls and left many others severely ill."
https://www.ndtv.com/world-news/bill-gates-laboratory-remark...
"In 2013, India’s Parliamentary Standing Committee on Health and Family Welfare, comprising of members across political lines, held the BMGF-funded Program for Appropriate Technology in Health (PATH) guilty of violating regulatory and ethical norms laid down by the Indian and U.S. governments for clinical trials. The committee investigated the role of the BMGF and PATH in the trial of HPV vaccines on children in Khammam district of Andhra Pradesh and Vadodra district of Gujarat, during which seven children died. It uncovered ethical failings in the study and the subsequent investigation. The government of India responded by restricting the BMGF from country’s immunization program."
https://www.newsweek.com/foreign-funding-threatened-india-mo...
> So answer me honestly: Did that same billionaire (Bill Gates) and his organisation (Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation) do the same exact trials in his home country (USA)? "clinical trials of unproven vaccines on thousands of poor minor girls, without consent of then and their parents"
This accusation is toothless. You would need to show two things:
- There were actual unacceptable risks or side-effects from the vaccine under test (your article completely fails to show this, and if you believe it does, then you are simply a victim of clickbait formulations)
- The study was done in India because of risks to subjects deemed unacceptable in the US (and not simply because it was cheaper)
What the article does show is that there was shoddy handling of consent. Which is valid criticism! But it is also somewhat unsurprising given the low literacy rate at that time and place. And this alone is simply not sufficient foundation for your accusations.
1. Why were these Clinical trials of HPV vaccines on tens of thousands of minor Indian girls disguised as a "study" (rather than "clinical trials", which is what they were, shoddy and dangerous its implementation and execution certainly was). 2. Why did MGMF (Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation) and its NGO PATH (which led this study, nay, clinical trial) not do repatriations to the affected victims? Why was no medical insurance and other safety/precautionary mechanisms arranged for an experimental drug being administered to tens of thousands of minors? 3. Why did PATH and BGMF not get the INFORMED CONSENT from the minors (patients) and parents? What were they trying to hide? 4. "Clinical trials" means the HPV drug was still in Development stage. Do you understand what that means?
If you don't, you have no business defending such unethical malpractices that avoid such culpability and responsibilities for clinical trials of dangerous drugs.
If you say yes, then you'll also agree that the drug makers and organisers of clinical trials knew the drug can have serious side effects (since it was supposedly a vaccine for cervical cancer). Did they inform the Indian children and their parents about any serious risks/dangers, before administration of this drug to those minors? -- Answer is No.
So WHY did BMGF and PATH not take INFORMED CONSENT before giving a dangerous experimental drug? Why were the minor patients MISLED on what they were being given? Why was no medical insurance provided to the patients unsuspectingly undergoing this risky experiment? -- Answer is obvious. It is because they KNEW the drug is dangerous and risky. But they went ahead, and gave it secretively to tens of thousands of minor girls.
> What the article does show is that there was shoddy handling of consent. Which is valid criticism!
5. Why are clinical trials of an experimental (under-development) drug NOT being completed in the country (USA) of its invention on same kind of target audience (minor girls), but instead they are being conducted halfway across the world away on Indian children (minor girls) WITHOUT INFORMED CONSENT (from them and their parents)?
6. Is it okay to avoid doing clinical trial in home country with consent, but ethical to do it in another nation on poor unsuspecting minors without consent?
> But it is also somewhat unsurprising given the low literacy rate at that time and place. And this alone is simply not sufficient foundation for your accusations.
7. Are you really claiming that Bill Gates, his Foundation staff, their partner organisations (PATH, etc.) and the medical staff who were all involved in this unethical clinical trials of unproven drug, were all uneducated and unaware of the risks?! If so, you are lying and condoning evil.
>Your article is careful to never explicitly state correlation between the vaccine and those seven girls deaths. Without such a link, your argument falls apart.
8. The Parliamentary committee's report clearly indicted the HPV vaccines as a causative factor for some of the deaths and hospitalizations (with severe adverse effects). It also indicted the PATH (NGO that led the clinical trials), government body (ICMR), health ministry, and confirmed that BGMF (Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation) was involved in the funding of PATH for this specific clinical trials (under guise of "study") of HPV vaccines manufactured by Merck and GSK.
I can throw more and more facts and links here. But you already know the game is up, don't you?
Trials where also done both in the US, Europe and a bunch of other countries (see https://www.clinicaltrialsregister.eu/ctr-search/search?quer...).
> So WHY did BMGF and PATH not take INFORMED CONSENT before giving a dangerous experimental drug? Why were the minor patients MISLED on what they were being given? Why was no medical insurance provided to the patients unsuspectingly undergoing this risky experiment?
First: Your only source that you keep citing found no harm in trial patients linked to the drug. What they did found was a shoddy consent process, with high likelihood driven by efforts to keep costs low.
What your own source primarily blames are local regulators allowing this.
> 6. Is it okay to avoid doing clinical trial in home country with consent, but ethical to do it in another nation on poor unsuspecting minors without consent?
First: absolutely yes. If it is ethical to do a trial in one country, it is ethical to do it elsewhere. Why wouldn't it?
Secondly, clinical trials on Gardasil were done in both the US and Europe before 2008 (see source above).
> I can throw more and more facts and links here. But you already know the game is up, don't you?
I just explained how the sources you cited so far are insufficient to sustain your conclusions and accusations.
But this sentence alone makes me highly suspicious that you have your view set in stone, and that you are cherrypicking and misreading facts to fit it.
This is foolish. You should always ask yourself what information would be necessary to change your view-- my personal conclusion is that nothing really could, because you want to sustain your witchhunt more than you want to know the truth.
Personally, I came into this somewhat curious if there truly was some hushed up medical disaster in India caused by the Gates foundation, but by now my answer is a pretty conclusive no.
But your own report contradicts this, and finds the deaths unrelated.
You also argue that Gates is suspect, because HPV vaccine trials were only done in India. This is also false, I sourced that already in the previous response, you did not comment on it.
You keep coming back to the same Indian Parliamentary committee report, which explicitly finds that the girls deaths are completely unrelated or "unlikely related" to the vaccine, and then keep accusing the study of "killing schoolgirls".
You are either arguing in bad faith or lying to yourself here.
Unless you can actually state with a straight face what kind of evidence would change your outlook ("Gates responsible for harmful study"), I see no point in continuing this argument.
Don't kill or hurt poor people in other countries with those evil experiments ("clinical trials" disguised as "study", unproven drugs given to tens of thousands of minors, without informed consent and under false aegis), just because you are wealthy and powerful so you think you can get away with such crimes there (by bribing the officials of the poorer nation, paying off to silence the families of the dead victims, etc.).
Evil is, as evil does.
Alrighty then..
1. Page 15 - text in bold: https://www.hsrii.org/wp-content/uploads/2014/07/72.pdf
2. Page 7 - first paragraph: https://www.icmr.gov.in/icmrobject/static/icmr/dist/images/p...
Now I challenge you to connect those 2 dots I just spoonfed you, and give their gist here, truthfully, if you dare..
1. HPV vaccine deaths: India's Parliamentary panel Parliament panel indicts PATH organization, health officials. PATH bypassed ethics and rules while conducting clinical trials for vaccine which was administered to girls, says panel.
Tens of thousands of minor girls were given HPV vaccines under false aegis and without informed consent. Several patients died, more than hundred minor girls were hospitalized with adverse effects from the vaccines.
"The interest, safety and well being of subjects were completely jeopardized by PATH by using self-determined and selfservicing nomenclature which is not only highly deplorable but a serious breach of law of the land."
"Had PATH been successful in getting the HPV vaccine included in the universal immunization programme of the concerned countries, this would have generated windfall profit for the manufacturer(s) by way of automatic sale, year after year, without any promotional or marketing expenses."
"The Committee feels that there was serious dereliction of duty by many of the Institutions and individuals involved. The Committee observes that ICMR representatives, instead of ensuring highest levels of ethical standards in research studies, apparently acted at the behest of the PATH in promoting the interests of manufacturers of the HPV Vaccine."
2. The PATH agency was funded by the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation (BMGF), says final report by panel.
You like to be caught at lies, don't you?
HPV vaccine deaths in India: Parliament panel indicts PATH, health officials. Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation (BMGF) funded agency (PATH) bypassed ethics and rules while conducting clinical trials for vaccine which was administered to girls, says parliamentary panel.
https://www.downtoearth.org.in/environment/hpv-vaccine-death...
India’s Ban on Foreign Money for Health Group Hits Gates Foundation: https://www.nytimes.com/2017/04/20/world/asia/india-health-n...
The art of Gatescrashing democracy: Journalist Tim Schwab says his book probing the Gates Foundation is a case study for the larger problem of extreme wealth and how it threatens democracy: https://www.thehindu.com/opinion/interview/journalist-tim-sc...
Out of 10 000, how many children usually die before adulthood?
Would you consider them too to be a forgettable statistic of healthy innocents who died in evil experiments by unscrupulous billionaires and their greedy nexus of Big Pharma ?
Those who condone and support evil, are no better themselves.
Edit: the "claims" in the article that you so frivolously discard as "weak" are from the police & Supreme Court investigations and special committee investigation & report into the deaths and hospitalizations of hundreds of tribal girls after they recieved the HPV vaccine funded by Gates Foundation. I guess you will accept claims only if they come from the Gates Foundation. *shrugs*
It was not.
e.g., India's huge e-Commerce industry is controlled by and dominated by 2 US giants: Amazon and Walmart (which acquired India's biggest e-commerce platform Flipkart, and then threw out its founders (Bansal Brothers)).
e.g., India's automobile industry is dominated by foreign heavyweights: Toyota, Volvo, Hyundai, Suzuki, Mercedes Benz, etc.
e.g., American Big Pharma companies controlled significant volume of Indian agriculture. e.g., Monsanto and PepsiCo owned patents in GM seeds that allowed them to control India's lucrative Cotton and Potato agriculture. They got this control by systematically dismantling India's native seed breeds in these vital rich crops, and then hybridising the best of those seeds and getting patents on them, so the Indian farmers were forced to buy these GM seeds.
e.g., PETA (an NGO) lobbied and used powerful lawyers in courts, to get bans done on traditional cattle festivals in India : Jallikattu (Tamil Nadu state), Kambala (Karnataka state), and Maramadi (Kerala state). The reason for this was ulterior. India's native cow breeds produce A2 milk protein, which is missing in many foreign cow breeds. Unable to compete with India's high-quality nutrient-rich cow milk, the Western powers-that-be got their puppet PETA to ban the traditional Indian cattle festivals that had been in vogue since many centuries as competitive and comparitive ways to identify and breed best specimens of bulls and cows. Thankfully, mass protests by Indians overturned these bans. The same PETA and its alliee have been instrumental in getting court-imposed bans done on Indian festivals : kite flying, Holi, Diwali crackers bursting, etc. Their aim is to obstruct and destroy Indian culture and traditions, so Indians will move away from their ancient traditional roots and become converts of Western religions and consumers of Western products/ideologies (e.g., clothes, festivals, entertainment content, etc.).
This is why Trump tried to impose 500% tariffs on India, because India's PM (Modi) refused to allow American/Western companies to get more deeper clutches and control on India's vital industries: agriculture, diary, food, etc.
It is a war for India's future. And powerful forces (such as Bill Gates, George Soros, egc.) are arraigned against India, to make it a weak and puppet state, under Western control and exploitation.
It is basically Colonisation, disguised as tariffs and "investments".
> Five were evidently unrelated to the vaccine: One girl drowned in a quarry; another died from a snake bite; two committed suicide by ingesting pesticides; and one died from complications of malaria. The causes of death for the other two girls were less certain: one possibly from pyrexia, or high fever, and a second from a suspected cerebral hemorrhage. Government investigators concluded that pyrexia was "very unlikely" to be related to the vaccine, and likewise they considered a link between stroke and the vaccine as "unlikely."
End of discussion.
1. Parliamentary report: PATH is indicted for HPV vaccine related crimes : Page 15 - text in bold: https://www.hsrii.org/wp-content/uploads/2014/07/72.pdf
2. Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation funded PATH: Page 7 - first paragraph: https://www.icmr.gov.in/icmrobject/static/icmr/dist/images/p...
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Summary:
1. HPV vaccine deaths: India's Parliamentary panel Parliament panel indicts PATH organization, health officials. PATH bypassed ethics and rules while conducting clinical trials for vaccine which was administered to girls, says panel.
Tens of thousands of minor girls were given HPV vaccines under false aegis and without informed consent. Several patients died, more than hundred minor girls were hospitalized with adverse effects from the vaccines.
"The interest, safety and well being of subjects were completely jeopardized by PATH by using self-determined and selfservicing nomenclature which is not only highly deplorable but a serious breach of law of the land."
"Had PATH been successful in getting the HPV vaccine included in the universal immunization programme of the concerned countries, this would have generated windfall profit for the manufacturer(s) by way of automatic sale, year after year, without any promotional or marketing expenses."
"The Committee feels that there was serious dereliction of duty by many of the Institutions and individuals involved. The Committee observes that ICMR representatives, instead of ensuring highest levels of ethical standards in research studies, apparently acted at the behest of the PATH in promoting the interests of manufacturers of the HPV Vaccine."
2. The PATH agency was funded by the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation (BMGF), says final report by panel.
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HPV vaccine deaths in India: Parliament panel indicts PATH, health officials. Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation (BMGF) funded agency (PATH) bypassed ethics and rules while conducting clinical trials for vaccine which was administered to girls, says parliamentary panel.
https://www.downtoearth.org.in/environment/hpv-vaccine-death...
India’s Ban on Foreign Money for Health Group Hits Gates Foundation: https://www.nytimes.com/2017/04/20/world/asia/india-health-n...
The art of Gatescrashing democracy: Journalist Tim Schwab says his book probing the Gates Foundation is a case study for the larger problem of extreme wealth and how it threatens democracy: https://www.thehindu.com/opinion/interview/journalist-tim-sc...
To be the devil's advocate, it can be difficult to explain informed consent in the case of mental incapacity or whatever. In that case, a responsible adult can sign.
> Answer me honestly: Did that same billionaire (Bill Gates) and his organization (Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation) do the same exact trials in his home country (USA)? "clinical trials of unproven vaccines on thousands of poor minor girls, without consent of then and their parents"
As far as I know not so yes that's correct.
I said before they might have gone to those regions in India to bypass strict ethical committees in the west. And yes, that's definitely questionable.
The thing you completely ignore is that none of the deaths were because of the vaccine.
Yes, there have been problems with FDA. But modern medicine is mostly completely safe, so if the whole system was riddled by fraud this wouldn't be possible.
One day you or someone close to you may need life saving treatments and then you'll be thankful for the pharma industry.
Don't kill or hurt poor people in other countries with those evil experiments ("clinical trials" disguised as "study", unproven drugs given to tens of thousands of minors, without informed consent and under false aegis), just because you are wealthy and powerful so you think you can get away with such crimes there (by bribing the officials of the poorer nation, paying off to silence the families of the dead victims, etc.).
Evil is, as evil does.
Hey. Fuck them. At least most of us are not greedy corrupt fucks. Or died in prison as a consequence of our own sins.
may be somebody would train a model on the Epstein and his associates emails/etc. which would allow to research the workings of the such psychopaths' minds
You will find them to be quite reflective of humanity, with all its good and its bad.
Israel LOVES when people mix up the two. I believe they even intentionally do it and promote it.
It forces non Israeli Jews to identify with the government of Israel, expanding their power beyond their boarders.
I genuinely feel bad for Jewish people. The government of Israel is happy to conflate the two at their expense.
- Where did he get his money from?
- Who's interests are served by this whole dodgy setup?
- The Trump connection.
- The Trump Russia connection.
Maybe I imagine but it all seems aligned.
You're right that people on social media aren't talking about it very much for some reason but that doesn't mean that it isn't being talked about in American media.
This is driving me up the wall. Look, I know part of this talk/accusation [about Mossad] is coming from Nazi/antisemitic circles, so people being hesitant to engage makes a bit of sense. But come on, it's not a stretch to consider. The idea that the US would let a Russian operation go unchecked like that is completely bonkers.
What's missing is definitive proof, so far at least. I think you're conflating the two. Evidence and proof are different things - see [2] for a good example of this conflation used the other way.
Anyway, yeah, you can very seriously consider this based on the evidence already out there. Considering the stakes, it would be kinda silly not to imo.
0 - https://www.commondreams.org/news/epstein-israeli-intelligen...
1 - https://www.justice.gov/epstein/files/DataSet%209/EFTA000903...
2 - @NormalIsandNws on X:
“Here is the proof Epstein was a Russian asset:
- his girlfriend was the daughter of a Mossad agent
- one of his best friends was Israel's lawyer
- another of his best friends was a former Israeli prime minister
- he met with the current Israeli prime minister
- a senior Israeli spy would stay at his house for weeks at a time
- a friend invited him to bring his girls to Israel
- he fled to Israel when he was charged with sex crimes against a minor
- he was pictured wearing an IDF shirt
- he was funded by pro-Israel fanatics
- he worked for the Rothschilds
- he donated to pro-Israel student groups
- he was responsible for the Wexner group's "pro-Israel philanthropy"
- he supported Israeli settlement projects
- his friends were all Zionists
- he scathingly referred to non -Jews as "goyim"
- he was involved in Israeli diplomacy efforts
- he brokered security deals for Israel
- he aimed to profit from regime changes in the Middle East
- a former Israeli intelligence officer said he ran a honeypot for Israel
- his business partner confirmed he ran a honeypot for Israel
- one of his victims confirmed he ran a honeypot for Israel
As you can see, all of this was done for the benefit of Russia. There is no other explanation.”
These are not the same, even if the government of Israel deliberately conflates them.
I think we need to start calling out this deliberate attempt from the Israeli government to correlate the two.
Actually the person who was trying to help him was until this week the UK ambassador to the US Peter Mandelson. He had to resign this week due to the emails. He previously spent decades attacking the UK Labour's left like Corbyn and trying to make the party more amenable to the type of people Epstein hung around with.
Odd that this very American American, with heavy Israeli contacts and some UK contacts is claimed to be associated with Russia with little evidence. He's American through and through (or failing that, Israeli aligned).
You might be thinking of his stepping down from the House of Lords (upper house of UK parliament) which did happen recently.
Also look up Israel’s relationship with pedophilia (being a safe haven for the accused and convicted). You’ll find plenty of Jewish in isreal media sources reporting on this.
Must be russia.
Bill Gates and his Foundation have a bad rep long before his Epstein link came into the news.
Who better to collude with a known child trafficker/molester, than one who has no qualms in killing children via illegal vaccines/drugs to help his nexus with Big Pharma.
Bill & Melinda Gates' Foundation's evil illegal "vaccine trials" on tribal children (especially girls) in India (without the consent of them and their parents) directly caused the deaths of several children, hospitalizations of scores of such innocent victims, and it was a huge conspiracy and controversy that was uncovered during investigations by Supreme Court and police.
https://m.economictimes.com/industry/healthcare/biotech/heal...
The Gates Foundation operates like a monopolistic unethical pharmaceutical company (as a weapon and Think Tank of Big Pharma) under the guise of a charitable NGO or grantmaker.
https://capitalresearch.org/article/bill-gates-big-philanthr...
It is pure evil to give experimental drugs to poor people (especially children) without proper consent and close scrutiny.
It is not the first time that Gates Foundation has been caught red-handed dealing experimental drugs to poor people, without their consent. This has happened before too.
But if you want unbelievable horror stories, you should find out why Big Pharma companies are camped in Africa - they are doing all sorts of awful experiments on the poor illiterate masses there.
https://www.theatlantic.com/health/archive/2013/02/testing-d...
At least, the current Indian government is a patriotic one, and it is trying its best to fight against such foreign evils. But the past governments were corrupt, and hands-in-glove with such powerful megacorporations up to no good.
https://www.newsweek.com/foreign-funding-threatened-india-mo...
https://www.nytimes.com/2017/04/20/world/asia/india-health-n...
Slowly though, the world is waking up to the reality of what subversive malicious evils these so-called humanitarian billionaires have really been doing, under the guise of charity.
A different Jeffrey, mind.
Not sure how he's meant to come back from this.
Do you know how many times I’ve appeared in the files? Zero. It’s very easy to not appear in them. 99.999999% of people didn’t.
In general, Epstein was fond of "collecting" scientists who might entertain his clientele and house guests at parties.
Ne pas comprende? That means that the blackmail was used to ensure definiteness of otherwise variable elements. If we were in Ancient Greece, it wouldn't be pedophilia (then, a "good") it would have been "chthonic excess"- or "ideological heresy"- based blackmail. The architects of this twistedness merely used the tools available that leveraged the age we live in.
So, that bacchic excess (beyond such needed for blackmail)? Human nature in secret succumbed to unchecked desires, itself a predictable outcome. The OG plan was not "evil" per se (ensure predictability of unpredictable system), it was pragmatic, but the implementation, necessarily became evil and the evil was normalized and justified by the "importance" of the plan to the stability of the playmakers.
The banality of evil, eh?
I'm kind of disappointed that my name is not in there. (Well the name is in there but not as my name. When you have a last name that has been in the top 5 in the US for over 230 years and a first name that was top 20 when people in the age group most likely to be in those files were born, you get a lot of false positives).
The bar to ending up in those files for perfectly innocent reasons is pretty low. Epstein was involved in a lot of legitimate things, probably to draw attention away from the illegitimate things.
Do some interesting research that gets some attention in the popular science press and Epstein might want to talk about funding you. Write an interesting book or article that comes to his attention and he might mention it in an email. Heck, write an interesting answer on Quora and you might end up in the files, because Epstein was subscribed to Quora's digest email.
If even 5% of what 15 year old tzs planned to accomplish with his life had happened, I'd be in there in at least one of those innocent ways. It highlights how mundane my life turned out.
A very strange action to take for someone who claims to have no recollection of the meeting.
Our story of this sort comes from when my partner interviewed at Theranos (!) long before the collapse or any public recognition, related the super-creepy interview process, and I was like "sounds like a big no to me." When the Theranos story blew up it was like "oh boy".
"black ops or bullshit?"
It is from an extremely articulate and intelligent Epstein victim, that is only speaking out after the DOJ, either trough incompetence or most likely via malicious compliance, had her personal information in the released files.