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A review by naddie_reads
The Bill Gates Problem: Reckoning with the Myth of the Good Billionaire by Tim Schwab
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.