Tuesday, February 16, 2010

A Possibly Inconvenient Question For Bill & Melinda Gates

The Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation has released figures boasting that their disease prevention measures in Africa have saved approximately 7 million lives so far. Sounds like good news. But now that the lives have been saved, now come other questions. I.E. What have the saved lives been saved for?What are their prospects? How will they eat? How will they work? How will they be shelterd? What will we do with their children who Bill and Melinda will presumbably save also?

Have Bill and Melinda thought through the whole process of creation which includes maintenance and death?I suspect no.

"Fools rush in where wise men fear to tread".

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Friday, November 21, 2008

Citizen Buffett

Orson Welles' character Citizen Kane gives it up with his last word ," Rosebud". It was a reference to his boyhood sled and happier times. The "Rosebud" decal on the sled pointed to the promise of spring in the midst of winters gloom.

Warren Buffett's recent autobiography is titled "Snowball". It refers to the compounding of wealth through the dynamic of buying sound companies and never selling. This is Buffett's version of reflection on happier times now that he's nearer the end of his career. Eh!

Buffett has pledged his fortune to charities. Buffett will use his wealth to help many people who sadly shouldn't have been born. These people now suffer deprivation. They will be helped by a man who spent his whole life accumulating more than he needed.

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Friday, June 27, 2008

Bill Gates : Hung Up On Redundant Humans

Bill Gates retires today at age 52. He's one of the wealthiest at app. $52 billion. He plans to spend the rest of his life giving away the money that he spent the first part of his life accumulating. I wonder. When did it occur to him that making money as a goal was not all it was cracked up to be? He's joined in his philanthropic plans by the worlds richest-Warren Buffett. Like Bill, he is giving all his money away and will use Bill's personal foundation as the executor. Presumably Warren has second thoughts about wealth as a goal .But he is somewhat suspect. Because at 78 of years age, he is running up against the "can't take it with you" proverb.

How and where is the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation going to spend the combined philanthropic fortune? It looks like Bill is headed back to Africa. We all came out of Africa some 50,000 years ago. Bill is a descendant of one of the more adventuresome primates that left Africa. He's going back to help the more "stay at home" Africans that never left the continent.

Malnutrition is the biggest killer in Africa. Bill plans on spending the bulk of the money on feeding the underfed. And then what Bill? It's easier to have children than to feed children. The stay at home Africans never quite grasped that truism. It's ironic. Bill Gates has become fabulously wealthy by replacing hard-working people with software and effectively making them redundant. But now he wants to spend the profit from that enterprise in a de facto breeding program of particularly redundant people who can't feed their own redundant children.

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