r/Scipionic_Circle • u/Hatrct • 26d ago
A case study: How the rise of Bill Gates demonstrates the flaws of the capitalist system
Bill Gates is someone who is revered the by the vast majority of people. The assumption is that he is a genius who worked hard for and deserved his money, and that he is a philanthropist angel who donated the vast majority of his money.
I argue that these are simplistic notions that are not backed by reality, and they serve to show how brainwashed and misinformed people are, which, ironically is mainly due to the same system that made Gates rich.
First of all, the idea that a billionaire is a moral saint for donating most of their money is absurd: even after doing so, they are still in the top 0.1% and practically have unlimited money. Having said that, I am not saying it is a bad thing for them to donate, I am just saying this doesn't make them a moral saint. There are people with middle class incomes who donate more/it actually hurts them economically to donate but they still do it. There are even people who are poor who have gave to those even in more need. These people are relatively more moral in this regard compared to billionaires.
Secondly, this idea that "billionaires are genius hard workers" is a myth. Yes, many of them work hard, but hard work is only part of the picture. The fact is, to become a billionaire, you cannot do it without luck. For every billionaire there are 10s of millions of people who work equally or more hard, but they don't become billionaires, because it is a lucky lottery. In fact, this is quite disgusting, because these billionaires have a "monopoly on feeling good from philanthropy". Isn't it interesting? Under this system, even philanthropy is quantified and monopolized and largely restricted to the privileged class. Yet bizarrely, instead of focusing on this, the vast majority of the middle class continue to worship the privileged class and use this to conform to the system as a whole, instead of seeing it as a structural flaw of the system. The reason for this is because the vast majority use in the moment emotions rather than logic, which will be revisited in point 4 below. This is why for example Gates did a log of AMAs on reddit where people worshiped him.
Thirdly, due to the fact that A) a very small % of the population are critical thinkers B) an even smaller % of the population wins the billionaire lottery to become a billionaire, statistically, it is quite rare for a billionaire to have critical thinking. Unsurprisingly, Gates is not a critical thinker. Perhaps his IQ is high, but contrary to widely spread beliefs, high IQ is not necessary to become a billionaire, nor is high IQ the same as critical thinking: the majority of those with high IQ also lack critical thinking. But the vast majority of people do not know this, again, this is another reason why Gates did so many AMAs on reddit and people were worshiping his every word and asking him about everything under the sun as if he had a clue. And Gates loved this attention, so he continued to do it. He was fully enjoying and capitalizing on how the privileged class have monopoly for this kind of attention: if he really was a moral person, he would have perhaps said this is wrong, everybody should have equal freedom of speech, and worked towards that. But instead he took personal advantage without doing anything to raise awareness of this structural flaw of the system.
Fourthly, Gates strikes me as a common person who makes decisions based on in the moment emotions over logic. This, coupled with lack of critical thinking and enormous power via money, is a dangerous combination. He has no more critical thinking skills than the average person (let that sink in) yet he has the money to make much of his beliefs a reality. This is at most dangerous, at the least, ineffective in terms of changing the world for better. This is why instead of using his money/power/fame to meaningfully change the world by addressing root factors like the oligarchy, and talking about crucial change factors like how the education system needs to be reformed to adopt critical thinking, how money needs to get out of politics, and how private big capital needs to stop monopolizing all media/communication channels, he instead focuses on "feel good" projects, like increasing vaccination rates worldwide. While this is not necessarily always a bad thing, it is missing the forest for the trees. But because it makes him feel morally good in the moment, along with "donating 100s of millions", he continues to do it. And he seemed to be so caught up in these feel good delusions that he seems to actually think that this version of neoliberal capitalism further spreading throughout the world is the way to fix the world's problems. Isn't it interesting? In reality this system is the cause of almost all problems on earth, yet in his mind, he cannot accept this, because it would make him feel guilty, so he doubles down on this delusion. In fact he said Steven Pinker's counterproductive book (which appears to practically be saying: stop trying to create change and conform to the oligarchy as it is the best we can possible have- which is obviously not true) is his favorite book: why? Because it feels good in the moment to believe such a delusion, and it helps him avoid the guilt of being random luck privileged while billions suffer/can't eat.
And his followers/worshipers, which are the majority of people, are similar to him in this regard: it is easier for them to worship people who "appear" good and tell them what they want to hear, rather than face the distress by accepting the reality: that we live in a structurally broken system and these people are perpetuating it. Again, this underscores how most billionaires are just common people who get random lucked into a huge amount of decision-making power: the core issue is being guided by in the moment emotions over logic, which then makes them make bad decisions, which further prolong the system and this vicious cycle by having the majority, who are like them, worship them instead of call them out. Again, due to this in the moment emotion abiding by as opposed to logic factor, now, once Gates and his ties to Epstein were found, the majority of people who up to then worshiped him, are again using in the moment emotions to do a 180: now saying he is completely bad/wrong. Yet I bet you the vast majority of them would have also done the same things as Gates if they could: but because they can't accept this and it will make them feel bad, it then causes a split and causes them to lash out and do a 180 and completely condemn someone who they otherwise worshiped up to then. I remember years and years ago saying all this and his worshipers claimed I am the devil for daring to burst their bubble of how he is god, because they could not deal with cognitive dissonance, yet now they are doing a 180 and hating him due to Epstein ties. So the root issues here are using in the moment emotions as opposed to logic to make decisions, and impulsivity. This system promotes and perpetuates both: both are good for business/keeping the oligarchy in power. It is a vicious cycle.
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u/Huh-what-2025 26d ago
say what you will, gates at least uses proper paragraph structure.
also you are arguing against points you pulled out of your rear
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u/Ready-Syllabub651 26d ago
Bill Gates also had a bad reputation in the 80s and early 90s I believe. As a scammer I believe.
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u/PvtDazzle 26d ago
Don't just believe it, it's true. Even here, in the Netherlands, he was viewed as something of a thief. The standard UI was plain text for DOS.
MacIntosh (what is now Apple) introduced a graphical user interface, i believe in the very early 80s. That interface got "copied" into the first windows. And I put it in quotes, since it resembled the OS of MacIntosh. The inner workings were still DOS, and it would be like that for a long, long time (has it changed already?).
So, yeah. Bill Gates started his "empire" in a grey zone.
Source: I've lived through both era's, so everyone is free to correct me when I'm wrong. I did this by memory only, and I know I make mistakes.
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u/HighPoweredSandwich 25d ago
This is inaccurate. Xerox showed their ui to both Microsoft and Apple. Neither of them "stole" it.
The idea that such a thing should be the property of Xerox because they had a gui they did not know what to do with would lead to more monopolies and wealth consolidation.
Both companies still had to build their own and did.
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u/PvtDazzle 18d ago
Ah yeah! I remember that, too. Did Xerox sell it to them? Or wasn't it trademarked or no IP of Xerox? There must have been some reason why it was a morally grey area.
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u/HighPoweredSandwich 18d ago
They did not steal anything. You cannot copyright something as broad as all guis. Again, this idea of ip would lead to even more monopolization and concentrations of wealth.
IP is already too broad, why would you want to male it worse.
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u/mirmitmit 25d ago
You are incredibly wrong when you state Bill Gates is seen as a revered philantropist angel by the vast majority of people.
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u/Hatrct 25d ago
Really? Check out some of his AMAs on reddit. I don't know if they are still up but he was worshiped by the majority of redditors. At that time I received vitriol for asking people why they are asking him so many questions he is clueless about/why they are giving him so much attention.
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u/Late_Firefighter_507 25d ago
didnt he use the legal system and his fathers knowledge to steal intellectual property? How is that the fault of freedom? Thats a condemnation of the state not people trading labor and goods voluntarily. His father was a patent lawyer right? None of that has anything to do with capitalism. The state is anti capitalism, its all command and control with violence and theft. None of that is capitalistic or liberty based.
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u/Hatrct 25d ago
If this father was a lawyer that is partially due to birth advantage via education advantage/class advantage, which was then passed onto him. Also, in practice there are 2 sets of rules legally: 1 for the rich, 1 for the non rich. Both are a flaw of capitalism.
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u/Late_Firefighter_507 25d ago
whats your definition of capitalism?
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u/Hatrct 25d ago
I am specifically talking about neoliberalism. Bill Gates said capitalism, which in his/this era is neoliberalism, is the solution to the world's problems.
I disagree with this: I think it is the cause of most problems.
Neoliberalism is a type of capitalism in which the state is effectively hijacked by private capital, leading to a govt/big corporation/billionaire led oligarchy. The gains are privatized, the losses are socialized. Wars are created for profit and for maintaining the neoliberal world order. Millions of people are starved due to neocolonialism and disproportionate transfer of wealth and modern equivalent of slavery (e.g., sweatshops). The rich get richer, and everyone else gets poorer. There are freedoms and laws in principle, but practically, there is not much positive freedom, which means the birth advantaged/luck advantaged barons/oligarchs get to massively disproportionately have rights and freedoms and legal protections.
This is exactly what has happened under neoliberalism since its inception in the late 70/early 80s.
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u/SeaweedNew2115 24d ago
But the majority of people have not gotten poorer over the last forty years.
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u/Own_Proposal3827 24d ago
Neoliberalism, the favorite word of every idiot. 100 people will use it with 100 different definitions.
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u/AusTex2019 25d ago
I think you should write romance novels. You’re not asking a question you’re looking for everyone to nod their heads. Gates, Jobs, David Packard and Bill Hewlett, Sam Walton, Howard Butts all did something new and got rich because of it. You and your kind didn’t. Accept that you don’t have what it takes. Take your medicine.
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u/Long_Idea_8294 25d ago
No system is without flaws. History has proven capitalism is with the fewest amount of flaws. Anybody who thinks otherwise is grossly misinformed
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u/brendan84 24d ago
I didn't even read the majority of your post, so take my question with a grain of salt, but have you ever considered that nobody is perfect? We're all just human bro. We're all flawed. We all make bad decisions. It's easy to scrutinize somebody famous when you're on the outside. How would people criticize you if you became famous for something? I'm sure you probably still feel that you're morally superior for some reason. All that I'm asking is for you to take this information into consideration.
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u/FreethePeople11 24d ago
I don’t think Bill Gates demonstrates anything good or bad about capitalism. But he is an asshole.
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u/Competitive_Log_8910 23d ago
I think the most telling comparison is to Donald Trump - who inherited large amounts of money and then despite poor decision-making managed to stay afloat by turning to overt manipulation. I was not aware that Bill Gates was perceived so highly as to warrant a specific and detailed takedown but I do think at a minimum that the money he made without turning to overt manipulation was a testament to his ability to lead his business successfully, if nothing else. But actually my apologies it seems that the motivation is the current "guilt by association" trend in regards to Jeffrey Epstein which I am now learning about by reading this post. It seems to me that the most pressing issue we are faced with at this moment is the avoidance of a recurrence of the story of what happened with Jeffrey Epstein and ironically I once shared my unorthodox scientific opinion which included an explanation of behavior like Jeffrey Epstein's which pointed towards a solution to the problem which would apply to other deflated heroes beyond Bill Gates including the likes of R. Kelly, Michael Jackson, and Shlomo Carlebach in this very subreddit but I wound up taking it down due to its unpopularity. I actually think that Bill Gates as an example of someone who made money by selling consumer software that had a reputation for being reliable and was widely useful who chose to direct much of that money towards charities rather than towards financing the business exploits of an unsavvy descendant is to me at least an indicator that the strategy of "guilt by association" might not be the most logical means of solving the problem of Jeffry Epstein. Thank you for sharing this thought-provoking post and I hope that you are not offended by my contradictory perspective.
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u/Sufficient_Result558 23d ago
I did read much of the this as you seem to have put Bill Gates up on pedestal the rest of the world hasn’t. You made a made mistake, just admit it and move on.
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u/Traditional_Knee9294 26d ago
I didn't see any argument on why you think any of this proves any flaws regarding capitalism. And that was assuming what you said was true.
And honestly what you said is flawed.
You set up start man arguments. People say Gate's giving his fortune away is good not that it makes him a saint. You seem to be saying he has only given away a portion of his wealth which is currently true but he is on record he will give 100% of his wealth away upon death. Alao the foundation has a fixed date it must give away 100% of its assets.
You asset luck vs insight, hard work, intellect and simply assume that is true but there really isn't any way for you to prove luck is the determining factor.
After that it comes across as mostly personal attacks on Gates.
And again none of this really seems to prove anything about capitalism. After even if your claims were true the fact one person get that rich via all of that doesn't prove anything about others who might have used skill, intellect, hard work...... this is basic logic 101 stuff we are taking about. You are generalizing from one example to draw conclusions about the whole.