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Sure.
Bill Gates and the Gates Foundation will probably eradicate polio.
Before people jump on the bandwagon about how Gates is evil and problematic, that there are no virtuous billionaires, and a government or an NGO or an equivalent should have been the one to do it... I know. But the question was "name one billionaire that's done anything good," and I think it's pretty difficult to argue that eradicating polio isn't good.
On same tone, Warren Buffet.
He has also donated billions in the same charity and largely lives controversy free.
I think it’s pretty difficult to argue that eradicating polio isn’t good.
looks like someone really tried to rise to that challenge, though
However, one can posit that the Gates Foundation is creating a market for vaccines that aren't of interest in the industrialized nations.
I'm not sure that subsequent doses are going to be provided as generously as the first ones.
That's not how vaccines work. The illness is already there, it's not like people get sick after you introduce a vaccine into the system. So the "market" has always been there and every dose administered is great.
The point of eradication is that once a disease is gone, you don't need to vaccinate against it any more. You've probably never been vaccinated against smallpox, for example.
Anything good?
Then all of them. They are human beings, not black holes of pure evil.
I need a source for that.
Mark Cuban is a bit of a wall street asshole, but he’s created a drug company to slash the prices of generic drugs for Americans: https://www.npr.org/2022/01/24/1075344246/mark-cuban-pharmacy#:~:text=Billionaire%20investor%20and%20Dallas%20Mavericks,of%20its%20online%20pharmacy%20Wednesday.
For sure! I wanted to make sure someone chimed in on this. I forwarded it to an elderly hospital roommate who was extremely appreciative.
Good acts do not make a good person. Plenty of billionaires have done good things, but they don't even come close to outweighing the bad.
A good act does not wash out the bad, nor a bad act the good. Each should have its own reward.
This is probably a slightly misguided idea to go after them as bad people because as soon as they do do something "good" you leave the door open for people to think that perhaps on balance they're not so bad after all.
The problem of billionaires being billionaires is itself the chief complaint people should have. It doesn't matter if they're Mr Rogers and Santa Claus combined, because they can choose to be so entirely at will and can be selfish assholes too entirely at will. They can also be other things entirely, given they are actually human beings after all they can try to act on best intentions, but like all humans, with great ignorance or with flawed thinking. When you or I do that the consequences can be terrible, but mostly, we'd be unable to come close to the scale of impact these demi gods can leave in their wake, not to mention the "original sins" that allowed them to become billionaires in the first place leaving a legacy of nasty indirect consequences for society at large.
There's actually a lot of examples of billionaires philanthropy and as you likely expected to point out when people mentioned that, some of those acts hide less pure intention, but undoubtedly they probably really did do some good and that itself is enough to completely undermine your whole point that they never do anything good. The issue is that, with the sheer vast quantity of concentrated wealth and power they can wield, the society that supports them is bereft of a real voice in how it's resources are used. So much of the fruits of our labour end up closed off in private coffers and it undermines public institutions like democratic governments because while we may theoretically have a say in what they do, we legally have no say at all in how a billionaire spends his bucks (and I say his intentionally). They might say we oughtn't since it's their money and no one typically has a say in what the rest of us do with our money but as with most things, there's a point of extreme where this logic becomes perverse.
There’s a lot. In the late 1800s it started becoming something of a tradition for billionaires to move on to philanthropy after their retirement. J.D. Rockefeller was worth several hundred billion dollars in today’s money. He gave away close to 200 billion of it.
A more modern example that people have brought up is Bill Gates.
You conveniently left out the definition of "good" so you can move the goalposts if you don't like the answers you get.
Elon Musk helped mastodon grow
low fucking bar mate
What, do you think they just sit around smoking cigars and laughing evilly all day? Its not that they dont do anything good, their evik acts just offset it.
Whats with Bill Gates?
I would imagine all the billionaires have done something good at least once.
Chuck Freeney. He basically invented "Duty Free" stores and became a billionaire in the process. Then decided he should die "broke" and created The Atlantic Philanthropies secretly staking it with a little over a third of his wealth. In 2020 he closed the organization because he had given away the vast majority of his net worth. Mostly as grants to universities all over the world. He also may have low-key helped fund the IRA.
He's still got enough to live comfortably, and I'm sure his family is set up nicely.
Funding one of the biggest terrorist organisations of the 20th century doesn't sound like a very good thing to do... Same goes for all the other Americans who gave them money without realising they were (are) pretty much universally hated across all Ireland - much like how most Muslims hate IS
Some posts mention people giving away billions in their later life. That sounds great.
However, you need to ask yourself how much of their obscene wealth was created by screwing someone else over? Essentially nobody can get so rich without taking money out of the pockets of other people. You can't just generate money out of thin air.
I dont know her name
Jeff bezos ex wife, who has donated a lot of money to charity
Elon Must did pretty much destroy Twitter?
Brian Acton is the only billionaire I can think of that hasn't been a net negative.
Co-founded WhatsApp, which became popular with few employees. Sold the service at a reasonable rate.
Sold the business for a stupid large sum of money, and generously compensated employees as part of the buyout.
Left the buying company, Facebook, rather than do actions he considered unethical, at great personal expense ($800M).
Proceeded to cofound signal, which is an open, and privacy focused messaging system which he has basically bankrolled while it finds financial stability.
He also has been steadily giving away most of his money to charitable causes.
Billionaires are bad because they get that way by exploiting some combination of workers, customers or society.
In the extremely unlikely circumstance where a handful of people make something fairly priced that nearly everybody wants, and then uses the wealth for good, there's nothing intrinsically wrong with being that person.
Selling messaging to a few billion people for $1 a lifetime is a way to do that.
Chuck Feeney. He gave away everything to charities.
Edit: it was around 8bn.
ITT: people who can't understand the difference between doing something good and being good.
Of course there are plenty of billionaires who have done good things, and pointing out all the ways they are still a shit person doesn't change that. Shitty people occasionally do good things, even if for shitty reasons.
Trick question.
The billionaires who do good don’t want their names attached to their deeds because that defeats the purpose. The point of altruism is you don’t want credit.
(Seriously there aren’t many, though, because if you’re hoarding money, you’re a horrible person.)
In these comments: People who think someone can accumulate obscene personal wealth and then give a small percentage away makes them good. But if someone dares suggest taxing that obscene wealth they are a monster.
MacKenzie Scott, Bezos's ex. She's given more than $14 billion to charity.
This query is counterproductively reductive. Every human alive, even the worst of them, has done at least one good thing. Many even do their bad things because they were misled to believe they were doing an overall good.
The point should be that it doesn't matter what good they've done, because the state of being a billionaire necessarily requires one to have done more net bad to the world than good. You could save a million lives by your own hand, but if you're a billionaire, it is a given that you have destroyed far more lives than that. No billionaire's heart was ever weighed by Anubis and judged worthy of the Field of Reeds.
All of them, without exception, end up as greasy streaks on the gleaming teeth of Ammit.
I have billions of Zimbabwe dollars and I picked up litter for 2 hours a few weeks ago. So there's at least one!
is this a psyop? surely its a psyop
youd probably have a hard time naming one billionaire that hasnt done anything good
theyre still a shit thing to have, practically never got the money they have by being a good person and shouldnt exist in the same world as homeless people, starvation or massively underfunded public projects
Notch made Minecraft.
He's been a little shit since then, but at least Minecraft is pretty cool.
I think his actions as a billionaire are more telling.
Minecraft is just a knock off of Infiniminer anyway and Zachtronics are much more deserving of the billions. Love all their games. What else has Notch done?
Gabe Newell is the least shitty billionaire I can think of, I'm not sure what he does for philanthropy though but at least it doesn't seem like he tries to influence the country for his benefit.
What? They're greedy humans who are doing things that have terrible consequences out of selfishness, not mustache twirling cartoon villains out to destroy the world for destruction's sake. I'm sure every single billionaire in the world has done something good at some point. That doesn't justify the kind of wealth disparity that makes their existence possible though.
Mike Cannon-Brookes (co-founded Atlassian) has set up a 1.5b green fund to invest in green energy projects
A better question might be “name a billionaire that does more good than harm to the world”? Although personally I think that’s an impossibility.
Jack Dorsey bought me lunch once.