Asklemmy

Sure.

Bill Gates and the Gates Foundation will probably eradicate polio.

Before people jump on the bandwagon about how Gates is evil and problematic, that there are no virtuous billionaires, and a government or an NGO or an equivalent should have been the one to do it... I know. But the question was "name one billionaire that's done anything good," and I think it's pretty difficult to argue that eradicating polio isn't good.

It's pretty easy to come up with some things billionaires have done that are good. Bill Gates funding cures and prevention of diseases in the third world is one that comes to mind.

Now, if we're talking about finding an example of a billionaire whose life is on balance a good thing for humanity...that's pretty much impossible.

A single good thing that a single billionaire has done? The Gates foundation fighting malaria. I think that's good.

Mark Cuban is a bit of a wall street asshole, but he’s created a drug company to slash the prices of generic drugs for Americans: https://www.npr.org/2022/01/24/1075344246/mark-cuban-pharmacy#:~:text=Billionaire%20investor%20and%20Dallas%20Mavericks,of%20its%20online%20pharmacy%20Wednesday.

Didn't one of the Koch brothers die? That was pretty cool.

The submarine dude that got rid of a few more in one go?

Anything good?

Then all of them. They are human beings, not black holes of pure evil.

Good acts do not make a good person. Plenty of billionaires have done good things, but they don't even come close to outweighing the bad.

Paul Allen funded a bunch of scientific and medical research, as well as quite a few museums and other public works around Seattle. He was the largest private donor to the fight against Ebola in Africa.

Sergey Brin is a big Wikimedia contributor, as came out a few years back when their donor list leaked.

Most/all of them have done good things. A better question is are there any that have done enough good to outweigh the bad

You conveniently left out the definition of "good" so you can move the goalposts if you don't like the answers you get.

Elon Musk helped mastodon grow

There’s a lot. In the late 1800s it started becoming something of a tradition for billionaires to move on to philanthropy after their retirement. J.D. Rockefeller was worth several hundred billion dollars in today’s money. He gave away close to 200 billion of it.

A more modern example that people have brought up is Bill Gates.

This is probably a slightly misguided idea to go after them as bad people because as soon as they do do something "good" you leave the door open for people to think that perhaps on balance they're not so bad after all.

The problem of billionaires being billionaires is itself the chief complaint people should have. It doesn't matter if they're Mr Rogers and Santa Claus combined, because they can choose to be so entirely at will and can be selfish assholes too entirely at will. They can also be other things entirely, given they are actually human beings after all they can try to act on best intentions, but like all humans, with great ignorance or with flawed thinking. When you or I do that the consequences can be terrible, but mostly, we'd be unable to come close to the scale of impact these demi gods can leave in their wake, not to mention the "original sins" that allowed them to become billionaires in the first place leaving a legacy of nasty indirect consequences for society at large.

There's actually a lot of examples of billionaires philanthropy and as you likely expected to point out when people mentioned that, some of those acts hide less pure intention, but undoubtedly they probably really did do some good and that itself is enough to completely undermine your whole point that they never do anything good. The issue is that, with the sheer vast quantity of concentrated wealth and power they can wield, the society that supports them is bereft of a real voice in how it's resources are used. So much of the fruits of our labour end up closed off in private coffers and it undermines public institutions like democratic governments because while we may theoretically have a say in what they do, we legally have no say at all in how a billionaire spends his bucks (and I say his intentionally). They might say we oughtn't since it's their money and no one typically has a say in what the rest of us do with our money but as with most things, there's a point of extreme where this logic becomes perverse.

Before anyone jumps on me, billionaires suck, without exception, for reasons I don't really need to go into here, you've all heard them a million times over, and whatever good they do does not offset that in the slightest. None of them probably have been or will be a net positive influence in the world.

That said, you can probably pick out a few good things that any individual billionaire has done (and you can absolutely feel free to debate their motivations for doing those things, many of them I'm sure we're done for tax reasons, vanity, etc.)

Some of the old robber barons like Rockefeller and Carnegie (Carnegie was not technically a billionaire, but if you adjusted his wealth for inflation he would be the richest person today by a pretty comfortable margin) funded a lot of universities, libraries, etc.

Bill Gates has done some good work with vaccines despite his shitty business practices with Microsoft.

Musk is overall a shithead, I don't like him, I don't like his companies, I don't even like his vehicles. That said, I think it's pretty fair to say that Tesla has helped (though he is not solely responsible) to kick open the door for EVs to start gaining wider acceptance and adoption. And SpaceX is doing some exciting stuff, though again I dislike a lot of their methods, disagree with a few of their goals, don't like how they're run as a company, etc. But long-term I think we need to have our eyes to the stars, whether it's for settling on other worlds, mining asteroids, asteroid defense, or if I dare dream it, building a Dyson sphere, or just for scientific advancement for it's own sake, and unfortunately SpaceX is one of the major players in that field now.

Bezos hasn't done anything too flashy that comes to my mind, and like musk he is also a shithead that I dislike for pretty much the exact same reasons, excuse me for not repeating them, but he does have and donate to quite a few charities.

Again, none of that is enough to offset the shitty things they do, but I'd be surprised if you could find any very rich people who haven't at least donated to a handful of charities.

An older example is Andrew Carnegie https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Andrew_Carnegie who worked hard to create...

"The Carnegie Library, Carnegie Hall, Carnegie Institution for Science, Carnegie Corporation of New York, Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, Carnegie Mellon University, Carnegie Trust for the Universities of Scotland, Carnegie United Kingdom Trust, Carnegie Foundation for the Advancement of Teaching, Carnegie Council for Ethics in International Affairs, Carnegie Museums of Pittsburgh, and the Carnegie Hero Fund"

He helped a lot with anti-imperialism and education, he's a large reason why there are public libraries in America, establishing 3,000 of them. He also helped space exploration by helping fund the 100-inch hooker telescope.

What, do you think they just sit around smoking cigars and laughing evilly all day? Its not that they dont do anything good, their evik acts just offset it.

Elon musk he is slowly destroying twitter

Chuck Freeney. He basically invented "Duty Free" stores and became a billionaire in the process. Then decided he should die "broke" and created The Atlantic Philanthropies secretly staking it with a little over a third of his wealth. In 2020 he closed the organization because he had given away the vast majority of his net worth. Mostly as grants to universities all over the world. He also may have low-key helped fund the IRA.

He's still got enough to live comfortably, and I'm sure his family is set up nicely.

I dont know her name

Jeff bezos ex wife, who has donated a lot of money to charity

Whats with Bill Gates?

Chuck Feeney. He gave away everything to charities.

Edit: it was around 8bn.

I would imagine all the billionaires have done something good at least once.

Elon Must did pretty much destroy Twitter?

I have billions of Zimbabwe dollars and I picked up litter for 2 hours a few weeks ago. So there's at least one!

I believe all billionaires have done something good. I don't think that makes them good people due to the staggering amount of wealth they withhold from the population.

Doing good things, doesn't make you a good person. Donating millions is nothing when you have billions.

If I had to choose a specific, I'd say Bill Gates. I've never fact checked it but I've heard he set up multiple charities and donates for helping children, seems like a great thing to do.

Gabe Newell is the least shitty billionaire I can think of, I'm not sure what he does for philanthropy though but at least it doesn't seem like he tries to influence the country for his benefit.

Bill Gates is the obvious answer. He's done a ton of good things through the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bill_%26_Melinda_Gates_Foundation

ITT: people who can't understand the difference between doing something good and being good.

Of course there are plenty of billionaires who have done good things, and pointing out all the ways they are still a shit person doesn't change that. Shitty people occasionally do good things, even if for shitty reasons.

Bill gates and Warren Buffet have both argued for higher taxes on the wealthy and have donated millions to solve social problems.

Brian Acton is the only billionaire I can think of that hasn't been a net negative.

Co-founded WhatsApp, which became popular with few employees. Sold the service at a reasonable rate.
Sold the business for a stupid large sum of money, and generously compensated employees as part of the buyout.
Left the buying company, Facebook, rather than do actions he considered unethical, at great personal expense ($800M).

Proceeded to cofound signal, which is an open, and privacy focused messaging system which he has basically bankrolled while it finds financial stability.

He also has been steadily giving away most of his money to charitable causes.

Billionaires are bad because they get that way by exploiting some combination of workers, customers or society.
In the extremely unlikely circumstance where a handful of people make something fairly priced that nearly everybody wants, and then uses the wealth for good, there's nothing intrinsically wrong with being that person.
Selling messaging to a few billion people for $1 a lifetime is a way to do that.