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chamomiledaydreams's review
challenging
informative
reflective
medium-paced
3.0
I went into this book expecting a breakdown of billionaires as a concept, but I should have known from the title that it would revolve around Bill Gates specifically. I appreciated the book's premise, which explained how a debate about the existence of billionaires was curtailed by the argument that billionaires aren't inherently bad, because Bill Gates is such a good philanthropist.
This book is a response to that debate, disproving Bill Gates' benevolence through a series of chapters that address such varied topics as: sexism and misogyny within the Gates Foundation; foreign aid policies that disregard what people in another country actually want; Bill Gates' role in changing American education through Common Core; his tendency to privatize institutions and prioritize profit, from his preference for charter schools to his dedication to patent rights for vaccines and other medical inventions; and the history of eugenics as it relates to birth control.
This last topic was especially interesting to me, because it addressed how metrics for success (getting X amount of women on birth control) can be harmful to communities, when people aren't given a choice for the types of birth control they want and aren't given the same amount of resources for family planning, should they choose to have kids rather than go on birth control. (If the emphasis is on personal choice and on protecting families' rights to control their own futures, then why can the Gates Foundation choose which type of birth control X amount of people should go on?)
I listened to the audiobook and noticed a couple of odd editing moments that may have been glitches on my end. But those didn't bother me too much; the biggest challenge was holding large numbers in my head and visualizing the many heaps of statistics. I often wished that I could skim the text visually and remind myself of the specific person being described or the year that an event happened in. This book is full of so much information that it's difficult to retain it all, especially in an audio format. But any amount of learning on this topic is useful, so I replayed chapters when I needed to and pressed forward when I knew I wouldn't understand no matter how many times I relistened.
I would recommend this book to anyone interested in debunking the myth of a good billionaire. While Tim Schwab focuses largely on Bill Gates and his use of money, many of the critiques about him tie back to critiques about billionaires and wealth more generally. Here is a quote from the conclusion that exemplifies this: "Is billionaire philanthropy the solution to inequality, or is it an emblem of inequality? Is Bill Gates even a philanthropist?" This book asks its readers whether we should praise people for trying to spend their money benevolently, when our attention would be better focused on wondering whether anyone should be allowed to accrue this kind of wealth in the first place. Should money really grant an individual this much power and influence, and wouldn't all of Bill Gates' wealth be better spent in more democratic ways?
This book is a response to that debate, disproving Bill Gates' benevolence through a series of chapters that address such varied topics as: sexism and misogyny within the Gates Foundation; foreign aid policies that disregard what people in another country actually want; Bill Gates' role in changing American education through Common Core; his tendency to privatize institutions and prioritize profit, from his preference for charter schools to his dedication to patent rights for vaccines and other medical inventions; and the history of eugenics as it relates to birth control.
This last topic was especially interesting to me, because it addressed how metrics for success (getting X amount of women on birth control) can be harmful to communities, when people aren't given a choice for the types of birth control they want and aren't given the same amount of resources for family planning, should they choose to have kids rather than go on birth control. (If the emphasis is on personal choice and on protecting families' rights to control their own futures, then why can the Gates Foundation choose which type of birth control X amount of people should go on?)
I listened to the audiobook and noticed a couple of odd editing moments that may have been glitches on my end. But those didn't bother me too much; the biggest challenge was holding large numbers in my head and visualizing the many heaps of statistics. I often wished that I could skim the text visually and remind myself of the specific person being described or the year that an event happened in. This book is full of so much information that it's difficult to retain it all, especially in an audio format. But any amount of learning on this topic is useful, so I replayed chapters when I needed to and pressed forward when I knew I wouldn't understand no matter how many times I relistened.
I would recommend this book to anyone interested in debunking the myth of a good billionaire. While Tim Schwab focuses largely on Bill Gates and his use of money, many of the critiques about him tie back to critiques about billionaires and wealth more generally. Here is a quote from the conclusion that exemplifies this: "Is billionaire philanthropy the solution to inequality, or is it an emblem of inequality? Is Bill Gates even a philanthropist?" This book asks its readers whether we should praise people for trying to spend their money benevolently, when our attention would be better focused on wondering whether anyone should be allowed to accrue this kind of wealth in the first place. Should money really grant an individual this much power and influence, and wouldn't all of Bill Gates' wealth be better spent in more democratic ways?
flexmentallo's review against another edition
challenging
informative
medium-paced
4.75
A fantastic work of muck-raking journalism that calls into question the reputations of the many, many 'journalists' who have uncritically covered Bill Gates and the Gates Foundation's work over the last twenty years. Schwab is clear and upfront about his biases, and uses them to ask crucial questions -- and more importantly, provide answers -- about why we've let a single oligarch functionally take control of large swaths of major global industries. Essential reading.
on_your_raedar's review against another edition
challenging
emotional
informative
reflective
relaxing
tense
medium-paced
4.5
I'd recommend this read to everyone. I the author did thorough research and it was very eye-opening. I already distrust billionaires, very much live by the "eat the rich" or "starve the rich" lifestyle so keep that in mind. I have to say that this reviewer did an amazing job summarizing and talking about the book. Check it out: https://app.thestorygraph.com/reviews/18c8ae20-976c-459f-92bf-109ffe953892
tomrrandall's review
3.5
I’m sold on the overall direction of the critiques but some of the particular arguments hit better than others
naddie_reads's review
4.25
In writing about Tim Schwab's "The Bill Gates Problem", I'm just going to start with full disclosure of my opinion: there can be no ethical billionaires, much less a 'good' billionaire. IMHO, you can only accumulate billions of dollars by exploitation, be they in terms of resources (countries & environment) or manpower (human beings). Jeff Bezos, Bill Gates, Elon Musk, Warren Buffet, Mark Zuckerberg, Larry Page, Sergei Brin, the Koch brothers et al. are all examples of the kinds of billionaires I'm talking about.
That said, I had given Bill Gates the benefit of the doubt before reading this book since I viewed his involvement with the pandemic vaccination program and his efforts to help with the fight against climate change in good faith. So imagine my dismay at discovering that I've been duped into thinking that billionaires (& to some extent millionaires) can ever be trusted with their words.
Schwab has done a good job at exposing the facts surrounding this myth of the good billionaire because oftentimes we view them through an optimistic lens whenever we hear about all their philanthropic ways. None of the 'philanthropic billionaires' are as famous as Bill & Melinda Gates with their Gates Foundation, and they have spearheaded countless projects with their charity money, the public health & education sectors being the biggest beneficiaries from the foundation.
However, the adage that "nothing comes for free" is so fitting because as revealed by Schwab's investigative journalism into the foundations' activities, it was revealed that the Gates Foundation is just a way for Gates to: (a) evade paying more tax (since US gives tax breaks to charities & nonprofit foundations), (b) use his wealth to lobby for his agenda (amongst others, Gates has pushed for certain vaccines and products because he could profit off the R&D and patents from the researches he helped t fund, and he has also helped fund a few education policies to push for more privatized education), and (c) accumulate more wealth through his nonprofit foundation.
If the last point didn't make you raise your eyebrows, consider the paradox of Gates becoming richer by funding these nonprofit foundations; and consider the many facts that Schwab uncovered from the money trails (and sometimes the lack of it) that showed how Gates has used his tremendous wealth to drive policy changes without accountability since he does so through undemocratic means, i.e. using his dark money to influence the outcomes of certain decisions and researches; consider also that Gates has become the largest private farmland owner in the US, which he can utilize to further his agenda.
There were plenty of hair-raising issues that Schwab had uncovered through three years of investigative work, which he had broken down into 15 chapters that deal with different facets of Gates' supposedly philanthropic work. They showed how the Gates Foundation did not achieve what it had set out to do and has actually worsened things by further exacerbating existing inequalities, all because Bill Gates has the money to do so. Also, the fact that Gates heavily relied on the Big Four consultants (McKinsey was prominent throughout the book) was a major red flag for me; I have ranted exhaustively about these consultants in my review of The Big Con: How the Consulting Industry Weakens our Businesses, Infantilizes our Governments and Warps our Economies, another book that I'd highly recommend.
Overall this was a great read for a first book, but it does have its teething problem, mainly to do with the way this was written; Schwab is no Patrick Radden Keefe, so he does have areas where he can improve, especially when it comes to source citations & the way the narrative is presented. And admittedly this wasn't the most objective book since the title already tells you that Schwab deems Bill Gates as a problem. But TBH if you don't see Gates and the other one-percenters' undue influence on the US government and their meddling 'poorer developing nations' as a problem, then I'm going to assume that the current inequalities do not bother you & that you'd prefer to maintain the status quo because it benefits you.
In short, if you enjoy investigative journalism books in the vein of "Catch and Kill", "Bad Blood", and "Empire of Pain", I can highly recommend picking this one up!
Thank you to Definitely Books & the publisher for providing me with a copy in exchange for an honest review.
That said, I had given Bill Gates the benefit of the doubt before reading this book since I viewed his involvement with the pandemic vaccination program and his efforts to help with the fight against climate change in good faith. So imagine my dismay at discovering that I've been duped into thinking that billionaires (& to some extent millionaires) can ever be trusted with their words.
Schwab has done a good job at exposing the facts surrounding this myth of the good billionaire because oftentimes we view them through an optimistic lens whenever we hear about all their philanthropic ways. None of the 'philanthropic billionaires' are as famous as Bill & Melinda Gates with their Gates Foundation, and they have spearheaded countless projects with their charity money, the public health & education sectors being the biggest beneficiaries from the foundation.
However, the adage that "nothing comes for free" is so fitting because as revealed by Schwab's investigative journalism into the foundations' activities, it was revealed that the Gates Foundation is just a way for Gates to: (a) evade paying more tax (since US gives tax breaks to charities & nonprofit foundations), (b) use his wealth to lobby for his agenda (amongst others, Gates has pushed for certain vaccines and products because he could profit off the R&D and patents from the researches he helped t fund, and he has also helped fund a few education policies to push for more privatized education), and (c) accumulate more wealth through his nonprofit foundation.
If the last point didn't make you raise your eyebrows, consider the paradox of Gates becoming richer by funding these nonprofit foundations; and consider the many facts that Schwab uncovered from the money trails (and sometimes the lack of it) that showed how Gates has used his tremendous wealth to drive policy changes without accountability since he does so through undemocratic means, i.e. using his dark money to influence the outcomes of certain decisions and researches; consider also that Gates has become the largest private farmland owner in the US, which he can utilize to further his agenda.
There were plenty of hair-raising issues that Schwab had uncovered through three years of investigative work, which he had broken down into 15 chapters that deal with different facets of Gates' supposedly philanthropic work. They showed how the Gates Foundation did not achieve what it had set out to do and has actually worsened things by further exacerbating existing inequalities, all because Bill Gates has the money to do so. Also, the fact that Gates heavily relied on the Big Four consultants (McKinsey was prominent throughout the book) was a major red flag for me; I have ranted exhaustively about these consultants in my review of The Big Con: How the Consulting Industry Weakens our Businesses, Infantilizes our Governments and Warps our Economies, another book that I'd highly recommend.
Overall this was a great read for a first book, but it does have its teething problem, mainly to do with the way this was written; Schwab is no Patrick Radden Keefe, so he does have areas where he can improve, especially when it comes to source citations & the way the narrative is presented. And admittedly this wasn't the most objective book since the title already tells you that Schwab deems Bill Gates as a problem. But TBH if you don't see Gates and the other one-percenters' undue influence on the US government and their meddling 'poorer developing nations' as a problem, then I'm going to assume that the current inequalities do not bother you & that you'd prefer to maintain the status quo because it benefits you.
In short, if you enjoy investigative journalism books in the vein of "Catch and Kill", "Bad Blood", and "Empire of Pain", I can highly recommend picking this one up!
Thank you to Definitely Books & the publisher for providing me with a copy in exchange for an honest review.