To say that "The Bill Gates Problem: The Myth of the Good Billionaire Put to the Test of Reality" is impactful is an understatement.
Investigative journalist Tim Schwab has built a multifaceted and convincing case (even if he sometimes shows excessive zeal) against one of the world's richest men.
Many readers will be surprised by the book's content. After all, for decades, the Microsoft co-founder has been almost universally praised for his achievements in business and technology.
The creation, a quarter-century ago, of the vast Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, endowed with $67.3 billion, significantly reinforced the aura of greatness surrounding him. The success of this book should allow Schwab to modify what he calls the "deeply unbalanced and one-sided discourse" about the Gates Foundation:
"Bill Gates doesn't just give money to fight disease and improve education and agriculture. He uses his immense wealth to acquire political influence, to remake the world according to his narrow worldview," writes Schwab.
Hegemony
On some issues, like education reform in the United States, Mr. Gates's political positions lean toward a center-right free-market approach that Schwab clearly despises, while in other areas, like family planning, the Seattle plutocrat advocates policies opposed by conservatives.
For Schwab, the problem lies not in the programs themselves, but in how Mr. Gates implements them. He explains:
"The simple fact is that Bill Gates has no expertise, training, or education in most of the areas where he asserts himself. And, almost everywhere, he or his foundation have financial interests in the public policies he supports."
He levels several accusations against Mr. Gates and his foundation, including the ever-fluctuating estimates of lives saved through its work. Added to this is the fact that some of the statistics cited by the Foundation come from organizations that have benefited from its funding.
Bill Gates's techniques for courting the media seem to have evolved in sophistication since the days when he invited top business journalists to his mansion for dinner.
The Foundation has generously funded media outlets specializing in particular subjects, which inevitably leads to situations where journalists report on Bill Gates's philanthropic activities without specifying that they have received funds from groups that, ultimately, answer to him.
Over time, the Gates Foundation has grown massively, to the point of employing more than 1,800 people in 2021, employees who seem to enjoy an average compensation of about $250,000.
Excessive bureaucracy and top-down micromanagement are apparently the norm within the organization, where Mr. Gates retains a strong grip.
Disputes over education policy are the source of much of Schwab's ideological animosity toward the billionaire.
Here, his narrow-minded rejection of charter schools and Gates's efforts to try to improve desperately poor American public schools harms his overall argument, as Schwab does not ask hard questions about the reasons for such a crisis in the public education sector.
Similarly, his distrust of the use of GMOs in agriculture—which the Gates Foundation has supported—leads to unconvincing criticism.
Schwab suggests that "if GMO technology is to succeed in poor countries, it is local scientists who should produce the new seeds." This is a curious argument given the relatively limited technological or scientific standards that exist in poor countries.
Population Control
Although he sometimes lets his passions and well-defined ideological vision cloud his judgment, Schwab also shows open-mindedness, as evidenced by his description of the Gates Foundation's work on family planning in developing countries.
In this case, the facts are grim enough that they need no embellishment. The son of a family planning activist, Bill Gates spoke publicly about his personal interest in population control more than 30 years ago.
Schwab explains that in Bill Gates Sr.'s time, what is now called "family planning" was organized "less around women's rights or reproductive justice than as a top-down effort to manage global population growth," and he goes on to describe the dark origins of *Planned Parenthood* and its founder Margaret Sanger's association with white supremacy and eugenics.
Bill Gates is clearly not of the same ilk, but his highly publicized campaign to get 120 million more women to start using contraception certainly recalls a bygone era when a small number of determined activists sought to slow the growth of certain populations.
Bill Gates and his ex-wife Melinda have denied that their intention was to tell people in poor countries to limit their family size.
However, Schwab usefully cites a historian of population control who observes that their foundation's disinterest in funding infertility treatments suggests that so-called family planning services are designed for a specific purpose.
The Gates Foundation does not fund abortion, which Schwab disputes, while suggesting that this decision is likely linked to Mr. Gates's need to maintain good relations with the Republican and Democratic political elites he has assiduously courted over the years.
Just like the Foundation's decision to award a humanitarian prize to Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi in 2019, this shows how cold political calculations guide much of its work.
Not Virtuous
Bill Gates as a human being fares no better in this book than Bill Gates as a businessman, Bill Gates as a policy maker, or Bill Gates as a global philanthropist.
The book begins with an account of how young Bill pressured his close friend and Microsoft co-founder, Paul Allen, to accept a stake in the company lower than what had been previously agreed.
Mr. Schwab then describes a toxic, hyper-competitive culture of bullying that existed within Microsoft and makes clear where he thinks that atmosphere came from.
He details allegations of Mr. Gates's inappropriate behavior toward female employees in a chapter titled "Women," where Mr. Gates's association with the infamous sex offender Jeffrey Epstein is described in detail.
His opulent lifestyle starkly contrasts with how he presents himself as an omniscient problem-solver dedicating his efforts to helping the world's most disadvantaged people.
Schwab poses a fundamental question to the reader.
"If you are religious, can you cite a scripture, doctrine, or holy book that rationalizes or approves this model of wealth and power? Or, if you understand the world through politics, what theory or ideology can you cite that makes sense of Bill Gates and the Gates Foundation, apart from the idea of oligarchy?"
Even if Schwab's political approach is often too simplistic, this question is just and urgent.
George Orwell wrote nearly a century ago that "It is that the worship of money has been raised to the status of a religion. It is perhaps the only true religion, the only felt religion, that remains to us."
The "Money God" he speaks of in "Keep the Aspidistra Flying" is today better embodied by "Money Gods."
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It is not just that too much wealth is concentrated in the highest socio-economic layer. Today's oligarchs are presented as idols whom the young worship and whom the young and old listen to with the greatest reverence when they pontificate.
This naturally leads to an unhealthy political and social dynamic where the role of leader seems to come from those with financial weight, rather than those with a democratic mandate.
Our opposition to this is selective. For the right, George Soros is the bogeyman; for the left, Elon Musk has become the target of particular vitriol.
It would be far wiser to apply the same criteria to any billionaire whose intentions involve steering public policy to an abnormal degree.
In today's democracies, money cannot be used to buy votes, nor should it be used to buy influence, especially from outsiders who have no real connection to a country's citizens.
A certain skepticism toward the wealthy is necessary, and in the case of Bill Gates, that skepticism seems well deserved.
This article was originally published by Life News and then translated by LeCatho | Original Link