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Bill Gates accuses Elon Musk of ‘killing’ children with USAID cuts | “The picture of the world’s richest man killing the world’s poorest children is not a pretty one”
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- Title
- Bill Gates accuses Elon Musk of 'killing' children with USAID cuts
In the past I was the target of great hostility for expressing the notion that it is possible for one billionaire to be worse than another. I even alluded to demonology as a parallel, since in that context it is possible for a demon to be worse than the other even if they are both immoral. Invariably someone will twist my words into a defense of billionaires and attack me for it.
So I'm not going to say it this time. I'll just talk about demons. Some demons are worse than others. I am not saying demons are good, but some of them are more wicked than the rest. I wouldn't dare making a statement about billionaires but demons are quite safe.
Look, I will. Governor Pritzker is a billionaire who had to work as a kid (just like he makes his kids work) and he's doing good shit. Bill Gates has donated a ton of money to charity through his foundation. If we're going to eat the rich or more optimistically tax the rich, I'll be happy when they're not billionaires anymore, but in the meantime, I'll recognize that Musk to Pritzker is a RANGE and I'll take mine at the far left end.
I don't know what to say, this post is about demons, friend.
┐(´ー｀)┌
Like I said, I'll say it. I don't believe in demons.
Whenever I see people make this all-billionaires-are-equally-bad criticism about Bill Gates, I wonder how their own lives-ruined:lives-saved ratio compares to his.
It's not "I would be a better billionaire" but "the distribution of such significant resources should not be at the whims of any one person." He's saved lots of lives, but billionaires represent concentration of wealth that warps the world in ways that are often dangerous to everyone.
Yeah, I don't think I've ever seen anyone say that all billionaires are equally bad, especially not here on Tildes. The existence of billionaires is fundamentally bad regardless of the moral character of any given billionaire, but obviously billionaires are humans who can make choices and choices can be better or worse for other people.
In some modicum of defense of that criticism, even in his acts of helping Gates has made himself (or his foundation to be accurate) one of the biggest donors to groups like the WHO (I want to say second after the now stopped USAID?).
And the corresponding influence was at times wielded in ways that aren't necessarily benevolent and definitely did harm to the ability of poorer countries to vaccinate their populations.
Does that mean Gates didn't contribute immensely to saving uncountable lives? No, he definitely did. But even that comes with a dose of, well if you ask me, evil.
And even if Gates were an absolutely perfect person and always made the best decisions, a world in which we must rely on the personal good character of a few billionaires is a fundamentally unjust one. Some kings were definitely better to their people than others, but that doesn't make absolute monarchy a good system -- and that's honestly the best parallel I can think of to the sheer amount of power that quantity of wealth gives someone.
It feels like a clickbait headline. I wish I could find the full quote but a 5-minute glance/skim of other articles and I came up short. Maybe someone else can find the full quote because it seems like there might be context missing.
Here's another source with the quote, albeit no more direct context:
https://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2025/05/bill-gates-accuses-elon-musk-of-killing-children-with-doge-led-usaid-cuts/
From the WP, the interview was with the Financial Times so it's their conversation with him
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This is an archive link.
Their gift links make you give them an email/account now, but no subscription is required. Sorry I don't have an archive link.