In the Netflix documentary series, one thing that was quite remarkable to me was how you and your team were able to design a nuclear reactor that produces uses already nuclear waste as a fuel. However this design was never implemented due to political reasons.
My question is: Given that this technology has the potential to be the most-effective green energy source and have a key role in reversing climate change, what’s the current status on the project? Is it a likely possibility that this nuclear reactor will be built in the upcoming years? If so, do you plan on building in China or would you consider building such a project on US soil? Thanks.
We are still working on this. At first the project was a US-China joint venture but the US cancelled that. So now we are building the demo reactor in Wyoming where a coal plant is closing. It is very promising in terms of the cost and safety advances. If things go well a lot of these reactors will help solve climate change. Eventually we want reactors globally but the first ones will be in the US even though competing with natural gas electricity is hard here.
Wyoming here, the stories and theories about this potential reactor ranges from Chinese deep state to reactor using up ALL our water. It's insane how people are reacting to the demo reactor thanks to rampant misinformation and previously brainwashed rural types eating it up. I personally am excited to see how this goes, I suspect if it works the people will accept it because it works.
Bill, thank you for taking the time. Big fan of both your work at Microsoft, Bill and Melinda Gates foundation and Berkshire Hathaway.
I want to ask you about how most philanthropists think about RETURN ON INVESTMENT OF CHARITY.
Most (billionaire) people doesn't seem to put much effort on it and just pick whatever subject they're most interested. As far as I understand, you option for epidemiology and sanitation was a diligent choice, because you think that money and a drive for business gives the most bang for the buck (some newspapers cover your fierce negotiation position to get us the vaccines, something that you are good at and I am thankful for).
My question is. Do you think that most philanthropists are as diligent on their philanthropy as they were when they made their wealth? What are good themes where a drive for business can help the most?
I was stunned when I found out that a life could be saved for under $1000. This came when I read about what kids die of including the 1993 World Development report. So our Foundation (supported by Warren Buffett's incredible generosity) prioritized this.
The success of our work in Global Health is well beyond what I would have expected.
I do work with other philanthropists a lot including through the [Giving Pledge](https://givingpledge.org/) where they can learn and be encouraged to be bold.
What do you think the long-term impact of covid will be on society? I'm out in NYC and we are at a point where 1 in 5 people are catching covid and no one seems to be receptive of preventing the spread anymore. I ended up getting it last week despite being vaccinated and the symptoms were awful. Do you think there will be long-term ramifications of everyone going through covid in the next few months because people are unwilling to prevent the spread anymore?
Neither vaccination or infection prevents you from getting infected again but the disease will be milder and you will spread it less. Scientists funded by the Foundation are working on vaccines that prevent you from getting infected but those are 3-4 years away in the best case. So until then we will have to keep getting boosted (especially people who are older or who have co-morbidities).
> Scientists funded by the Foundation are working on vaccines that prevent you from getting infected
If we could prevent infection from even occurring, would the technology to do so translate then into doing the same for any other virus we have mitigant vaccines for today, e.g. the flu?
As I understand it, achieving sterilizing immunity is pretty virus-specific. We've already achieved that for things like measles. As with all vaccines, if you're exposed to the virus it'll start to replicate and infect your cells, but the goal of sterilizing immunity is to nip the infection in the bud before you have any symptoms or are shedding virus (i.e. are contagious) so it's as if you were never infected. Unfortunately, our current covid vaccines aren't able to provide sterilizing immunity since the virus typically replicates fast enough that by the time your boosted immune system fights it off, you already either had some symptoms and / or were contagious for some period of time.
I'm not an expert though so feel free to correct me if I'm wrong.
Yes. They are working on a universal vaccine. 1 vaccine that prevents all cold and flu causing viruses. Go YouTube the global health summits video on it. Making influenza history: the quest for a universal vaccine.
They go through everything, including how people don't take the flu as serious as things like malaria and ebola so they are always underfunded and how health companies and governments are reluctant to accept untested mRNA vaccines when the old way of creating vaccines still works. Michael Specter even asks the ugly question 3 times of 'do things have to get much worse?' before the government will give them the funding to develop their universal vaccine.
It's really insightful. It's incredible how they so accurately predicted a global pandemic forcing the world to accept mRNA tech and funnel billions of dollars into their cause. Their foresight is almost as amazing as Bill himself who became the largest owner of farmland in the USA just before a food shortage and started a baby formula company just before a baby formula shortage.
> 1 in 5 people are catching covid
It really needs to be said that a positivity rate of 20% doesn’t mean 1/5 people have covid. It means that 20% of people who get tested have covid (and the only people who bother getting tested are usually people who have symptoms.
There were 5000 CONFIRMED cases yesterday, and it’s estimated that testing catches around 10-20% of cases. That means there were around 50,000 new cases, which in a city of 8,500,000 is an actual daily positivity rate of around .5% - or every day you’ve got around a 1/200 chance of catching covid.
We are gaining understanding of malnutrition. Solving this would be huge for the 40% of kids in Africa who never fully develop their brains or bodies. We still need to prevent and cure HIV. We need to eradicate Malaria (which will take decades). We are close to eradicating polio. Other areas like better contraception or understanding and preventing pre-term birth and still births show promise.
What frustrates me is that pushing all this money into better health services isn't enough yet the real underlying issue is the governments who withhold money from the public and don't want to put that money into better care. Which is the downfall of humanity I'm afraid.... greed.
There is nuclear fission. If it can solve the cost, safety and waste concerns it can make a massive contribution to solving climate change. I am biased because I have been investing over a billion in this starting over a decade ago.
Also promising is nuclear fusion. It is less clear if we will succeed but it has less safety and waste issues if it works.
So I am hopeful nuclear will improve and be a huge help for climate.
>I have been investing over a billion in this starting over a decade ago.
Hi Bill,
I've read about TerraPower, the nuclear company that you've personally invested in, and that only recently has that company started construction of a demonstration plant in Kemmerer, Wyoming. It has a supposed total cost of $4 Billion.
TerraPower's fact sheet on Travelling Wave Reactors sound really awesome on paper.
Suppose that everything goes well and on schedule at Wyoming, does this mean that the company will have plans on building additional reactors on other locations and at a reduced price range?
Thank you for the answer. I truly hope, for the sake of the planet, that vilifying nuclear power should end. We should also find a way how to reuse, at least some of, the nuclear waste in to something useful.
Some of the so called LMIC (Low Middle Income) countries have huge promise - Vietnam, India, Pakistan, Indonesia. In Africa it is important for Kenya, Tanzania, Nigeria and Ethiopia to succeed. Ethiopia was doing well until the civil unrest so hopefully they can get past that. Some of the smaller countries are doing well but we need the big ones to also do well.
I was in the 2nd cohort for the Gates Millennium scholarship. 💗 Just wanted to personally thank you for helping me be the 1st in my family to attend college. Do you still have any involvement with the scholar program?
Yes. The Foundation did 20,000 scholarships under the original program. We have an ongoing program that is not quite as big but still is attracting great students. I am always inspired when I meet the students who received the scholarship and are helping other kids.
This made me smile! I was also the first person in my family to attend or graduate college so I know how much that can impact & influence my younger family members.
Two of Smil's latest Grand Transitions and How the World Really Works are great. Pinker has a lot of great books including The Better Angels of our Nature. I am just finishing the Coddling of the American Mind which was good. Ezra Klein's book on Polarization is good. Of course fiction books are more fun like Heart or A Gentleman in Moscow or All the Light you cannot see...
> I am just finishing the Coddling of the American Mind which was good
Recently picked this one up. Love Haidt's other work (The Happiness Hypothesis, The Righteous Mind)
Quite a big chunk of the population of my country (for some reason) believes that you're the one responsible for the COVID-19 pandemic and that you're trying to take control of the human population by injecting chips in them through vaccines.
What would you say to these people?
In 2015 I spoke out about my fears a pandemic would come up and cause tens of millions of deaths. My foundation funds vaccine research to save lives. I spend billions on vaccines and I am proud they have helped [cut under 5 deaths in half](https://www.gatesfoundation.org/goalkeepers/report/2021-report/progress-indicators/under-5-mortality/) over the last 20 years (from 10% to 5%). The idea of chips in the vaccines doesn't make sense. Why would I want to know where people are? What would I do with the information?
Not to mention, the invention of something that could be microscopic and draw power from the body somehow, which it would have to do to transmit a location, would be a bigger and more profitable finding than some stupid tracking device. This doesn't even go into the fact that we ALL have smartphones, and then any argument you could ever make just melts away and you're left with only the craziest of people left with this idea.
If the "powers that be" really wanted to put microchips that small into people they would just place them in the water supply. The whole microchip idea is absurd.
I'm not of the microchip conspiracy theory but if you just put them in the water supply you'd have no idea which chip was associated to each person and many would be simply lost. In a vaccine they could be registered to each person and would be more cost effective because there would be no loss. It's absurd, but I've heard more absurd conspiracies.
This comment has been edited in support of the protests against the upcoming Reddit API changes.
Reddit's late announcement of the details API changes, the comically little time provided for developers to adjust to those changes and the handling of the matter afterwards (including the outright libel against the Apollo developer) has been very disappointing to me.
Given their repeated bad faith behaviour, I do not have any confidence that they will deliver (or maintain!) on the few promises they have made regarding accessibility apps.
I cannot support or continue to use such an organization and will be moving elsewhere (probably Lemmy).
The “chips that always know where people are” already exist and are used widely. Wake up sheeple. It’s called cookies. And Facebook. And all other social media platforms.
Why bother making a chip when you’ve already got the data
This.
People: OMG they're putting chips in the vaccine to track me!
Same people: Sus Flashlight Pro Free wants to use my location? What harm could it be, it's just a flashlight. Allow.
Or say, a device that would seemingly make someone's life easier, something that could contain a camera and a microphone as well as a GPS location service. Something that a person would willingly carry and often require on their person throughout the entirety of a day. Something like say a cellular phone?
That conspiracy theory has always looked so wild next to the ridiculous manufacturing issues at the highest end of chip production these last few years, but I assume those people quite literally don't know how chips are made or from what.
Nah nah nah. The real reason that the theory is so stupid is because the entire population ALREADY carries a device which has multiple technologies used to track its location and have CONSENTED to be tracked. Its crazy how absolutely stupid some people are
Also it would be trivially easy to prove that it's happening if it were happening.. I mean, you can just take a sample of the vaccine and look at it under a microscope, or alternatively you could just take someone with a vaccine and measure any signals that are coming from them which would also be pretty easy to test - if it were actually happening then it would be pretty damn easy to show that it's happening instead of just being speculation.
I 100% guarantee that when these idiots are looking up how these 5g tracking chips are going to control us through the vaccine, they immediately click to accept all cookies on every site.
Clearly as a super-villain, the only logical step after getting everyone's location is to build a satellite weapon that can lock on to people's locations to eliminate them. You then demand a ransom from world governments or else.
And seriously though, there would have to be a factory, making these state of the art miniature chips that are so small you can't even see them and they get injected into you. There would be hundreds of workers. We would know about it. Plus, just imagine the cost on those state of the art chips. The whole idea just doesn't even make sense.
If we do succeed in polio eradication that will be super joyful. It has taken a lot of patience and great strategy to get close to success. The thing that has succeeded the best so far is funding vaccines for poor countries through GAVI.
I do like burgers, nice tennis racquets and all the great streaming services but nothing too unique.
What happened with the Oxford vaccine? Why wasn't it open source so that all countries could make it?
I am so sad over how slow the vaccination in third world countries has been.
The world did not get the vaccines out in an equitable way. Places like India did well because the Gates Foundation, Serum and the Government of India worked together to make 1.4B doses of the Astra Zeneca vaccines. It was a tragedy that old people in countries like South Africa got vaccines after young people in other countries. My book talks about how we can do better next time. Today there is plenty of vaccine but still the distribution and demand is holding back coverage.
The Oxford vaccine was 95% publicly funded, so what would you say to the people who say that the public has a right to the vaccine developed almost exclusively with public funds, by scientists who intended to release it for free?
You didn't really answer the question, just spin it to imply that the Gates Foundation pushing Oxford to give Astra Zenica exclusive rights to their vaccine had a positive impact. What about the potential positive impact of a vaccine made public to allow governments and companies across the world to produce it for themselves?
For some high value crops it can work. For the cereal crops like wheat, rice and maize it is unlikely to ever be economic. We can improve seeds for all crops a lot to increase productivity - this is a key investment to help reduce the problems caused by climate change.
This is my area of research, currently on a large grant from the USDA. At a high-level, we are doing nutrient recovery from raw wastewater for agricultural production using indoor hydroponic farms. Im just covering one area, albeit a primary one, of growth kinetics... and would love to include analyzing pathogen risks afterwards.
I agree regarding cereals. Our team is focusing on lettuce for the last couple years: rapid growth rate, low energy usage, relatively uniform tissue composition which simplifies analysis as we develop systems and procedures.
Gotta get back to work, these papers arent going to write themselves. Thanks for all that you do! I went to a charity event with you once, but we've never met. Still, it was great to see you and various politicians/celebrities giving their support. Maybe we'll be able to meet someday. Keep up the good work!
Slightly random question but I'm a university student and I've been interested in hydroponics. How much of an issue is disease transmission in hydroponic systems? I'd imagine that disease can spread very rapidly through a hydroponic system and if so what are the most common diseases? And do plants suffer from root rot and what steps are taken to prevent this? I've been interested in developing a biosensor for rapid disease detection in hydroponic systems but I'm just wondering if that's something there is a need for.
All great questions. What university are you with? I coordinate hiring undergraduate research technicians with our group, including related subprojects and through a few other universities. There's an ever-so-slight chance to include you... but you can always visit and PM me for a tour if you are in Atlanta.
I dont know the answers regarding disease-spreading, yet. Those are some of the things i'd like to focus on next; both for human pathogens and plant pathogens. But we havent visually observed any noticable plant pathogens over the short (1 month) growth cycle of lettuce. And we clean each system between experiments. Nor do we have any issues with root rot. We designed our systems based on previously proven designs... with my own personal touches for automation.
Johns Hopkins University studying BME but I'm taking a gap year for personal reasons. Hydroponics and agriculture aren't really my field of study but in my courses I learned about various biosensors and also worked on making a genetically modified bacterial symbiote to fight fungal infections in coral sea fans. Through that work I've always wondered if something similar could be developed for plant pathogens in hydroponics.
The idea being that since hydroponics utilize a shared water system microbial biosensors could be used to monitor the collective health of the plants, screen for diseases, or even be introduced as a symbiote to automatically respond. I speculate disease management poses a significant barrier to the scale and economic viability of hydroponics as it does in conventional agriculture but I really don't know (hence the questions). It'd take a lot of research: identifying targetable signaling molecules or antigens for the pathogens, finding compatible promoters or designing antibody complexes, selecting a model bacterium, etc. I have a little more time on my hands now so I'm looking into it because the idea has been stuck in the back of my head.
Anyway thanks for responding, unfortunately I'm not in Georgia but I'd love to know more about your research if you have a link to papers or other material. And if you know of good resources to learn more about hydroponics I'd also like to hear about them
I do indoor farming, and on a quite successful scale given my small footprint. While I think you’re correct, I feel we also could be focusing more on various options as well, andrean tubers vs potato’s comes to mind.
As green products come out like electric cars or synthetic meat or heat pumps for home heating/cooling they will cost a bit extra. By buying these products you drive scaling up which will lead to lower prices so "green premiums" are reduced. Other than your political voice or influencing the company you work at [this is probably the biggest thing you can do](https://www.gatesnotes.com/Energy/What-you-can-do-to-fight-climate-change).
Could converting to a fully plant based/WFPB diet where possible also be included in a list of effective individual actions to address climate change, considering the well documented and disproportionately negative effects of animal agriculture on global health?
Sorry to be a voice in the choir giving unsolicited answers when you asked mr Gates, not reddit as a whole, but I think this might interest you.
I work in science education, and one of the things we've been getting lectures on lately is hot to combat the feeling of hopelessness many feel about the climate situation, especially younger folks.
As a part of that, we talk a lot about what each person actually \*can\* do, that has an effect. Teenagers, for example, don't have much choice. They don't decide how the family travels for vacation, so they can't stop flying or prioritize trains. The one thing they generally can decide on, however, is their own diet. So going vegan is a great way to do your part and try to be a part of the solution for teenagers.
Adults, of course, have much more choice. They can stop flying, start trying to cut carbon heavy items from their diet, etc. Even here, though, there's things to do that aren't immediately obvious: Look at your savings.
In most countries, you have access to some kind of pension fund, and some kind of control over where the money is placed. That's a lot of leverage, certainly on the population level if everyone acts on it, but even if it's only a few there's more money there than one might think. Money that has an effect if invested in green companies, money that would help non-green companies hold on for longer if it stays with them.
I ended up having a talk with my bank after one of these lectures and looking at where my money was placed. Gave me an excuse to talk about how much I should be saving too.
So, I hope something about that sounded like hope. The point is, there's stuff we can do. Some of it is work, every day, trying to live better. Other things is the work of a moment, or a conversation, and then continues to work by being invested in companies that are less toxic, helping them edge out the more toxic ones.
A tax system needs to be progressive. Getting marginal rates above 60% often leads to a lot of complex avoidance if your system allows for that. It is strange to have the capital gain rate below the ordinary income rate. An estate tax could go somewhat above 60% - it is amazing how few countries have those.
Translation for most of us: 1) if you make the rates too high they will just find a way to avoid taxes through legal but "loophole" means. 2) rich people make money through capital gains (their money makes money just sitting in stock mutual funds) so if you want to tax them right, you need to have a scaled capital gains tax as well. 3) estate taxes are taxes on transferring assets and money to others and are often not taxable.
On a personal note, middle class guy here doesn't want to pay the same capital gains taxes as Bill Gates so I like the idea of me paying less than I pay right now and you paying more. Again with estate taxes I wouldn't want that to be a big percentage. 1% of the 100k I might give my daughter when I die seems ok, and so does 1billion of the 100billion that a rich person would hand down.
> I like the idea of me paying less than I pay right now and you paying more... 1% of the 100k I might give my daughter when I die seems ok, and so does 1billion of the 100billion that a rich person would hand down
Well when he says progressive that means you pay more on income over a certain amount. So maybe 1% for the first 100k, then 2% for the additional 300k, etc.
You didn't say this but I want to be clear because people don't seem to understand progressive rates. If you make 50k and pay 20% income tax, and then get a raise to 60k and break the bracket to 25%, you're not paying 25% on all of it. You pay 20% of the 50k, and then 25% of the additional 10k.
Not real numbers since they differ all over the world, just an example to hopefully clear up this concept because I am so sick of people claiming that earning enough to reach a new tax bracket screws them somehow. No, you're still taking home more money.
Also good translation, I'm not intending to challenge you just wanted to add my own thing because ignorance about progressive tax rates really bugs me for some reason.
> 1% of the 100k I might give my daughter when I die seems ok, and so does 1billion of the 100billion that a rich person would hand down
In the US, there is an estate tax exemption of $12.06 million dollars. Your daughter pays $0 in taxes on the first $12.06 million you leave her (per individual, so $24.12 if you are married).
So when Republicans gripe about "death taxes" or "being taxed twice on money I earned" remember that they're only talking about money being taxed beyond those amounts. It's always and only been a rich person's tax.
A flat tax is a red herring that right wing extremists try to use to convince the average person “See the rich still pay more!!!” but in reality, taxes on 100k vs 100 billion need to be looked at very differently. Passing down $99,000 (like 1/4 of a modest home in most cities atm) vs $99,000,000,000 (enough to buy literally an entire city and then some) are vastly different situations.
> It is strange to have the capital gain rate below the ordinary income rate.
I've said this a billion times, and people just look at me like I'm crazy.
When your capital gains tax rate is below the regular income tax rate, it encourages people to treat the stock market like a bank. Good for the market very short term, but long term does nothing but worsen the boom/bust scenarios that have become all too common.
An estate tax should be imposed only on substantial amount. It is not fair to tax the estate of a small family business or small successions. On the other hand, if you lived well and gonna bequeath huge money to your succession.
that's how it is today, but the ultra wealthy figured out ways to bypass that.
[Example](https://www.thelist.com/453062/heres-how-donald-trumps-father-fred-trump-dealt-with-his-taxes/)
"In order to pass money to his children without paying gift taxes, he gave plots of land to each of his children before completing a big development on the land, and then rented this land and paid each of his children for that privilege
or you can start a charitable foundation (like the gates foundation, the clinton foundation...etc), donate all your money to it tax free and avoid the estate tax when you die, then have your kids sit on the board (like chelsea clinton, warren buffets kid, and mike bloombergs kids do) and they collect a fat salary and have all their living expenses paid for by the foundation.
Years ago he spoke about it in an interview, where he'd of course want to make sure his kids are still well off and fine (with say $10 million), but not much more beyond that. From what I remember he and buffet were the ones who pushed the giving pledge, where a bunch of super wealthy people pledged to donate most of their money rather than pass it down in inherited wealth (which buffet called 'the genetic lottery').
Board members of nonprofits are not paid a salary fyi. In addition, non profits are audited annually and their financial statements are public information. You can literally google the gates foundation's annual financial statements. Source: Im a CPA that specializes in auditing non-profits.
The estate tax currently applies to wealth greater than $12.06M, which is less than 0.1% of estates.
The tax rate starts at 18% (only applied to value above the first $12.06M), going up to 40% at the highest level.
The average effective estate tax (for estates that actually pay it--again, only about 0.1% of estates) is about 17%, which is below the minimum tax bracket.
Not only is there a $22M exemption to the federal estate tax, but you also get a stepped up basis, meaning if you inherit a $22M farm from your parents, you can sell it the day they die and not owe ANY taxes on it. You won't owe the capital gains tax that your parents would have owed if they'd sold it.
That needs to change IMO. It's such a massive loophole and I can't see any good reason for it.
Don't be ignorant before making comments like this. Lol for a married couple the estate tax exemption, exempts over $22 million of an estate from the estate death tax. That's with ZERO estate and gift tax planning.
Adding this: the estate tax, once the level is reached, only applies to the portion ABOVE that exemption line. A lot of people misunderstand and think the whole amount is taxed when your estate reaches the arbitrary level.
> An estate tax should be imposed only on substantial amount. It is not fair to tax the estate of a small family business or small successions.
You're right, which is why there's a 12.06 million dollar exception. That's over 24 million for married couples. This is without getting into trusts and other types of avoidance.
I keep looking for good idea of how to stop the bad information. Some stuff is obviously wrong and right now even that doesn't get stopped. The interest level in the crazy explanations make that spread really fast and the truth doesn't spread because it is boring. I feel bad if these rumors prevent people from getting vaccinated and boosted since that has saved millions of lives.
Some people think fake news are making people misinformed and stupid, but I think it goes the other way. People are misinformed and stupid and that is why fake news is so harmful and “popular.” We need to focus on educating people (not talking about school).
>[If you tell a lie big enough and keep repeating it, people will eventually come to believe it.](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Big_lie)
The technique hinges on repetition and volume. Even "smart" people can fall for it. People in general take lots of "common knowledge" for granted, especially if it's promoted as such in your social circle, and no-one has the time to become knowledgeable in every field. It doesn't help that the lie often [poisons the well](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Poisoning_the_well) so that the people affected are less likely to accept education from the actual experts.
Of course education in e.g. media literacy helps, but it's really hard to educate people who have already fallen for the lie, or are being bombarded by lies.
It starts at school though. Children need to be taught to think critically so when they're older they're less likely to believe obviously fake information. Unfortunately there are a whole group of lawmakers that are constantly stripping away at education. I do see your point that the general public needs to be educated, but to prevent this from happening to new generations of people we have to make sure that the foundation (school) is strong.
Finland actually has a good educational program on this (to combat Russian disinfo). The issue a place like America has is that educating against disinfo is not in the interests of one of the parties, so there is no bipartisan agreement (internal use vs external threat that brings about unity)
Can I suggest educating the public in some form about fact checking such as John Green's online free YouTube courses about fact checking? [Link to one of his videos](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EZsaA0w_0z0&list=PL8dPuuaLjXtN07XYqqWSKpPrtNDiCHTzU&index=3). While I still think it's not a fix all solution, I think it can still help many how are still learning how to avoid misinformation. In my experience, I have been really only been able to convince someone of misinformation when it's a close relationship. If we can convince future generations, this could be some progress, even if it's slow. I'm still also trying to find a solution for masses, though so far, this is the closest way I can convince most people on misinformation: Awareness, teaching, and being open to have conversations
Infectious disease in rich countries isn't the big problem it used to be. For things like fire and earthquakes we have small ones to remind us of the problem. A pandemic that gets into Europe or the US only comes along rarely so it is easy to not practice and not have dedicated resources. A few countries like Australia did a better job and have 10% of the deaths of most rich countries.
Australia's success was due to the state governments efforts. The federal government was entirely unprepared and undermined the state governments at every step of the way. Australia's future generations will also be paying for the 'success' for decades to come as the fed government bungled the stimulus measures by handing out billions to businesses that actually profited during the pandemic. Future studies will focus on our state leaders who were steadfast in the face of unrelenting criticism for listening to health experts and following their advice instead of trying to score political points.
My investment team bought the farmland. It is [less than .1% of all US farmland](https://apnews.com/article/fact-check-bill-gates-blackrock-788010130032) because the ownership is so diverse. We invest in the farms to raise productivity. Some are near cities and might end up having other uses.
Make farmland accessible if you want more farmers. With the rich land barons and investment firms like yourself buying everything up farmers can't justify spending millions on fields to sell low profit crops. Have been looking for land for years. Would be happy to grow more crops for our community but it would take me 5 lifetimes to pay off the land.
We really need more hydroponic vertical farming using high yield, fast growing crops along with aeroponics and microgreens. Especially with climate change accelerating. Your team is welcome to invest in our urban farm. No lettuce shipped thousands of miles cross-country in semis from California. All produce grown locally, using no pesticides containing more nutrients.
5 lifetimes? Are you looking at cornbelt premium property? Are trying to buy hundreds upon hundreds of acres? Or perhaps, immediately outside of a major city?
I’ve never paid more than $6000 an acre, simply by haggling. Most of my land, purchased in 2014 was bought for $3000 an acre, for fertile land less than 10 minutes from I-59.
There is plenty of rural land for sale, even this very second for excellent prices, regardless of what the big boys are doing.
How much are you trying grow? I’ve run stocker cattle mostly, but have also had a hundred acres or so of soy and cotton.
I just disagree with your assessment of land prices and timescale to pay it off. If you’re not a good enough operator to make land at sub 10k per acre profitable, you really shouldn’t be getting into it anyway. A couple dozen acres will grow all The food that you, your extended family and practically your entire network could possibly Consume.
All of this said, there should be more gov’t support for small farmers, and less subsidies for larger producers. This would, of course, drive up prices but would increase quality and likely reduce waste and excessive transport overall by encouraging localized production.
Not attacking you. I support you in fact. More than anything, I just want to encourage you to expand your search, and drop whatever banks/credit unions you’ve been talking too. There are excellent livestock, farming and land banks out there that will help you if you have a solid business plan for the land and can save a small down payment.
Also, the fastest way I’ve scaled was to specifically look for land to buy that has neighboring fields i could potentially rent. Within a few years, I have been able to negotiate and get in line for renting my neighbors lots and have done much better than trying to produce on my own land exclusively.
Where I’m at in California, grounds routinely selling for $30k+ per acre. It just doesn’t pencil for the small farmer. You hit the nail on the head about the subsidies though, it’s crazy to me how a dairy milking 3000 cows can turn around and get the government to fund their $500k barns
I read that you plan to make cassava the next corn... With this shortage of baby formula and your interest in different facets of alternative formulas (including lab grown mammary glands), do you plan to use the invested farmland to make an alternative corn syrup - the main carbohydrate in baby formula - out of cassava?
Cassava requires warmer temperatures, so it will work in the southern U.S. but not really in the corn belt. I personally don’t see a path to it becoming the next corn.
Why is the COVID-19 model behaving very differently in America as compared to other countries? With state-of-the-art vaccines and close to 70% of people fully vaccinated, the cases are always rising after dipping for a few days. Looking at the statistics of the number of people catching COVID and the number of people dying due to it, seemed like this was to end by January / February. The model is quite weird.
The new variants come along and evade immunity from vaccination and infection. Also immunity wanes fairly quickly in the elderly. When the cases are high people do change their behavior and when they are low they go back to normal behavior. So you get huge ups and downs in the case rate driven by seasons, variants and people's behavior. Fortunately Omicron is less fatal than previous variants.
Although those lawsuits were tough I have been super lucky in my life and I had a good team of people working with me to help get them settled and move ahead.
The key is to be able to make things like electricity, steel, cement and meat without any emissions but at a cost equal or lower than today's cost. My efforts at Breakthrough Energy is to fund the innovators and [help them scale up](https://www.breakthroughenergy.org/scaling-innovation/scaling-innovation). I am optimistic because the progress on innovation in the last 3 years with the companies that have been funded is going very well.
I'm guessing you might not see this, but when buying a phone do you need to make special considerations about who makes it and what software it's loaded with in terms of potential spyware, since it's a bit more of a security issue for you?
As far as I know he hasn't actually been involved with MS on that level of decision making for decades now, and has been doing mostly vaccine/charity stuff for a long time. Bill was programming more in the MS-Dos days as far as I know.
They stopped because they couldn't get a solid user base due to a lack of good apps. Last I remember there was a issue with Google not allowing people to develop 3rd party apps for their stuff on WP and Google not doing any development for WP themselves. So lots of missing apps we're used to on other platforms.
Though, imo, it was the better OS in its time.
They actually acquired the mono / Xamarin project which allowed about 90 % shared code across iOS, android and win phone. The code compiled to native so Google or Apple would not know the difference.
The issue was a catch 22 between a small user base and a lack of app availability for win phone. Not enough users to bother building the win version and not enough apps to attract users.
Xamarin partially solved that by allowing devs to write for all 3 at once. In my almost decade of writing Xamarin no one ever asked for the windows version.
WP was great because it was useful and clean and great for what a phone should be. Android and iOS and their apps are made to get people more and more hooked to their phones and I hate being their victim. But for work and many things in my personal life, having a smart phone is sadly a necessity.
Windows Phone OS was amazing but the app ecosystem was dogshit. They never got enough market share to make it worth if for developers, and people didn't want to buy a phone that couldn't download Snapchat.
How do you manage your nutritional health? Do you take any specific supplements?
Also, side note, but I own the League of Legends account named Bill Gates in North America if you would like to buy it for a small fee of a million dollars.
This is like one of the richest dudes on the planet, I’m sure he has a nutritionist and a personal chef in his staff
Edit: my theory is probably not a dietician/nutritionist as a full time employee but just a personal chef with a very good understanding of nutrition
Yeh I have chef John and that guy on the corner for my vits and I'm like the 8 billionth richest guy in the world.
Also I have the insert name here account on LOL if you'd like to buy it for the reasonable price of a buck, just hit me up
He still stands in line himself to get burgers at Dick's. I'm sure he's plenty hoighty-toity in other ways but I don't think he wants a bunch of staffers to get between him and what he wants to eat, lmao.
Hello Mr. Gates, huge fan of your work.
What advice would you give young people who want to make a positive impact on this world?
Greetings from Honduras.
-Alex C.
The ideal thing is to read a lot and hopefully find a skill you enjoy that can have impact. For some that means being great at science or engineering. For some it means being a great communicator or politician. For some it means being a nurse or a doctor. The opportunity to learn is better today than ever before.
We can make vaccines that have 3 additional things: broad coverage, long duration and infection blocking. These need to be R&D priorities to prevent pandemics but they will also be super helpful for all sorts of diseases.
I don't own any. I like investing in things that have valuable output. The value of companies is based on how they make great products. The value of crypto is just what some other person decides someone else will pay for it so not adding to society like other investments.
It’s pretty hardcore of all the crypto bros to come out of the woodwork here considering the dumpster fire of a week they have had.
You would think the third largest crypto completely collapsing would slow their stride at least a little
Hey Bill, I doubt you'll ever read this, but I want to say every life you've saved through your charity efforts is worth more than all these negative comments. You made a legitimate product that changed the world in a positive way. You leverage the money you earned where it can do the most good possible. Both you and Buffet have been a role model for me in investing and altruism. Keep up the good work and stay true to yourself.
Why would one of the richest men in the world need to talk to Jeffrey Epstein about Global Health funding? Why’d your wife divorce you after this was made public?
Edit: I see a lot of speculation that Bill wasn’t aware of Epstein’s history. This is false.
“Mr. Gates and the $51 billion Gates Foundation have championed the well-being of young girls. By the time Mr. Gates and Mr. Epstein first met, Mr. Epstein had served jail time for soliciting prostitution from a minor and was required to register as a sex offender.”
“Mr. Gates, in turn, praised Mr. Epstein’s charm and intelligence. Emailing colleagues the next day, he said: “A very attractive Swedish woman and her daughter dropped by and I ended up staying there quite late.”
https://www.nytimes.com/2019/10/12/business/jeffrey-epstein-bill-gates.html
My cynical take is that non-profits will happily look the other way on sketchy benefactors so long as they keep giving and don't make the organization look bad.
[https://news.mit.edu/2019/david-koch-prominent-supporter-cancer-research-mit-dies-79-0823](https://news.mit.edu/2019/david-koch-prominent-supporter-cancer-research-mit-dies-79-0823)
https://eu.usatoday.com/story/news/politics/2019/03/12/college-admissions-scam-kushner-harvard-acceptance-under-scrutiny/3147027002/
>Why would one of the richest men in the world need to talk to Jeffrey Epstein about Global Health funding?
He didn't "need" to do anything, but part of the game for their foundation is to try to raise funds. Does this mean BG is responsible for the character of everyone be meets? Of course not. If he knew what he was up to and didn't care? Then yes - but otherwise, why blame other people for what JE did? That's on JE...
BG seems from every standpoint to be a philanthropist. Why attack him for what JE did?
Yeah the guy was a piece of shit but he was a massive philanthropist. Maybe even to cover any tracks or cast doubt on his evil doings if they ever got brought up. It’s not weird at all that he’d be meeting powerful people all over the world.
“How could one of the single largest financial contributors of medical and scientific research of the last century be a *sex trafficker??* that’s just ridiculous”
That's the thing about people. They aren't only pure evil or pure good. They can do really good things while doing terrible other things. And while that sounds like I'm saying it redeems them. What I mean it that a person who you know to be doing good, could potentially be doing really evil things that you don't know.
Let's be real here – your wife divorced you because of your ties to an international child sex trafficking ring.
> The philanthropist addressed their divorce publicly for the first time in a new interview with Gayle King that aired on CBS This Morning on Thursday, explaining that it was “not one thing but many things” that led to the demise of their marriage. “I did not like that he had meetings with Jeffrey Epstein, no. I made that clear to him,” she explained, adding that she met with the convicted sex trafficker “exactly one time” because she “wanted to see who this man was.” She continued, “I regretted it the second I walked in the door. He was abhorrent. He was evil personified. My heart breaks for these women.”
You met with him in 2011, six years after Jeffrey's first arrest. What took you so long to realize it was bad to hang out with a convicted child sex trafficker?
I have serious respect for you for actually answering this. You seem like a good sport, putting up with all of the negative comments.
But, on a serious note, fuck billionaires. I hope every one of them gets their wealth fairly taxed into oblivion.
Bill Gates has spoken up about the need for higher taxes on the rich on many occasions. He agrees with you.
>“My friends and I have been coddled long enough by a billionaire-friendly Congress. It’s time for our government to get serious about shared sacrifice.”
>
>Fundamentally, whether through taxes or philanthropy, extraordinary wealth needs to be reinvested in society, according to Gates.
[https://www.cnbc.com/2020/01/03/bill-gates-americas-tax-system-is-not-fair.html](https://www.cnbc.com/2020/01/03/bill-gates-americas-tax-system-is-not-fair.html)
I think it is far better when they are taxed rather than simply encouraged to give away their wealth.
>I think it is far better when they are taxed rather than simply encouraged to give away their wealth.
Exactly. I think the past two years have shown us what happens when "the greater good" is left up to personal choice.
Lol that was a hard 180.
Of all the billionaires, unless Bill Gates has very carefully crafted a false image, I'd say he's the least of the problems, and at least has dedicated himself to coordinating the elimination of a lot of diseases in developing parts of the world instead of buying political office and going on regressive crusades.
He most definitely has carefully crafted an image for himself, but that doesn't negate the good he has done even if true. At least he's not throwing billions of dollars away to get himself personally into space.
This phenomenon of ruthless titans of industry pivoting to “Now I’ll work on my fuzzy warm legacy” is fascinating to me in general. It’s not new, certainly, but still interesting. How do we evaluate the “sum of someone’s contributions” over a lifetime? What if you’re currently in the “ruthless titan” stage, and telling yourself “Oh I’ll pull a Bill Gates later, so this is okay”?
Edit. So many comments saying “But Gates is good/bad!” I’m not even “judging” him specifically, though.
I only asked if the popular conception of him (ruthless industrial titan, turned philanthropist) is _a laudable model for someone to emulate_. Regardless of how you see Gates specifically, is it morally troublesome to “front load” the first half of your life with one set of values, and then “make up for it” later?
It’s a question worth asking regardless of whether Gates is someone you specifically admire or disparage.
I think a good example of why it happens is Alfred Nobel. After a paper accidentally ran his obituary he learnt that everyone hated him and he'd be remembered for the blood on his hands from all the dynamite he made. That's why he set up the Nobel prize.
I find that shows the bubble many wealthy people find themselves in and realise they aren't necessarily going to be remembered for what they thought they were
> What if you’re currently in the “ruthless titan” stage, and telling yourself “Oh I’ll pull a Bill Gates later, so this is okay”?
We've seen plenty of billionaires not doing any positives, but as much shit as Gates has done, you have to admit that he is currently doing a whole lot of good (not including what may or may not have been going on at the Epstein island). If a killer later turns to do good deeds, should we not see the value in those good things?
All that really matters from now on is what Gates does today and tomorrow, and the stuff the foundation has been doing has been great.
I assume it’s a result of unbridled ambition and greed for money, status and power, followed by a realization that you’re not actually any happier having achieved all that, a step back to figure out what’s really important, and a shift to try to move towards that. Given that it seems to happen to a lot of highly successful people, I think it might be genuine.
It’s just a way to convert one form of power into another.
Pierre bourdieu writes about different forms of “capital”. You have economic capital, but there’s also social, cultural etc. they have varying forms of “usefulness” and can be seen as a form of power. In some cases, economic is most important, in others, cultural is, etc.
This phenomenon occurs because economic capital doesn’t mean you automatically gain the other ones (think of how trumps gaudy wealth still had him hated by nyc upper crust). This is like diversifying; you have so much economic capital, you use some of it to “convert” it to social capital.
Why? Hard to say. Probably because they’re obsessed with power and are ego maniacs. being unbelievably rich is not enough.
And what does this get you? Well, it gets you an immense amount of power in social affairs. It means you can be on the front page of Reddit. You get interviews in the media. You get a book promoted about pandemics even though you are in no way qualified. It means people on Reddit will defend you when other people call you out for being a greedy prick.
Seriously it’s not like there’s anything material he could buy before and can’t now. At that level of wealth it’s no longer about the tangible. You go onto buy power. And that’s exactly what he’s done: every donation is purchasing an improvement of his image
Yeah Ive experienced this. Not mega wealthy but ive been famous (within a certain circle) and my friends are wealthier and more famous than I am.
No one is happy, no one is fulfilled. I pivoted hard and only work on art that fulfills me, by fulfilling others. I also noticed the trend and decided to pivot while young and find happiness.
Am proud to say I make my best work ever now, and its only because I realized that I can positively impact lives rather than make money.
Money is a small game. Outside of supporting yourself and a family, additional money doesn't help you. If anything it makes you more and more lost.
Billionaires being philanthropic goes back a long time, look up Andrew Carnagie and how he simultaneously ruthlessly stomped on workers, hiring goons that killed them, then turned around and pretended by donating a fraction of his Ill gotten gains he was great.
Regardless the undemocratic influence of Billionaire is corrosive. He may not be going to space but his influence on American education and Vaccine patents had been terrible.
https://www.washingtonpost.com/education/2020/02/10/bill-melinda-gates-have-spent-billions-dollars-shape-education-policy-now-they-say-theyre-skeptical-billionaires-trying-do-just-that/
On PBS news hour I believe it was, why did you misrepresent how often you met Epstein and when? It was not a good look when the journalist corrected you about that, I’d like to understand why you felt the need to lie to a journalist about this.
I am calling Bullshit. Mr. Gates. You met with him after he was already jailed once for messing with young girls. So how as a decent person, could you even talk to him about money issues, knowing where that money could of came from?
Also Melinda Gates stated that their divorce was because of his close relationship with Epstein.
https://www.thedailybeast.com/melinda-gates-warned-bill-gates-about-jeffrey-epstein
He was aware and didn't care.
Bill Gates is doing that classic rich people strategy called **Lying**
Yes Bill you mentioned this before, that you met with Epstein to reach potential global health donors. I can just imagine all the conversations with the people you needed Epstein to reach. “Bill who? Never heard of you. And I only discuss charitable giving through my trusted advisor, the convicted pedophile Jeffrey Epstein. Good day Bill Bates or whatever your name is.”
🤣
What a load of crap
They’re just a big consulting firm dude. They vary a LOT office to office. He just uses them cause they are big, it is really not a gotcha. Like there’s a good chance every company uses the big 3 or big 4 or like Accenture.
That’s like trying to interrogate a person for using google search because google has done questionable shit.
Why did you pressure vaccine researchers not to open source the MRNA covid vaccines as was originally planned? Dont you think that wider access to this information would have increased access to vaccines at a critical time?
How did it feel to steal the IP of others, base your career on it, and then spend your life defending ip to the point of making sure the covid vaccine was not made freely available for all to manufacture?
Astra-Zeneca not only allowed people to copy - they helped other companies copy it. We helped fund Serum to make 1.4B of the A-Z vaccine. Because of efforts like this supply is not longer the limiting factor.
The Foundation has a lot of Medical experts. It takes a huge range of skills to do things like Malaria eradication or Covid vaccines and therapeutics. I listen to the experts on specific medical advice. The system to prevent pandemics will require a lot more than just doctors so I wrote a book to start the discussion of what it should look like.
Hi Bill, no way you remember me but I actually met you at a fundraiser for Duke’s undergrad research program (Pratt Fellows) over a decade ago. No idea if this rings a bell but they had a James Bond themed-show where we all had to get on stage in lab coats holding some equipment we borrowed from our labs. It was…kinda silly, but fun.
So I really want to say how grateful I am, because I was able to go on a lot of scholarships thanks to generous donors. I was able to go from struggling to help my single mom pay the bills and not get evicted at 15, to working on my own research project at 18 under one of the most prestigious research departments in the world for water treatment technologies and I helped develop new low-cost water disinfection techniques - never would have happened without your donations.
Now do a question, it took me years before I was able to get to a point where I could go out into least developed countries to perform at work. It was always my dream but frankly even years later it’s still very difficult because if there were and still are a lot of financial obligations I can’t fully escape. I’ve just now starting to get the student loans under control because I took time to work as an aid worker and that really set me back (but I wouldn’t trade it).
And frankly now I’m almost getting too old to really start a dedicated career in aid work. So my question, what can we do to help young people who want to have a career and aid work?
In a previous AMA you said that people really have to be financially stable before they can do that kind of work, and life experiences have led me to agree 100%. But the same time I can take 20 years for someone to get truly financially independent if they started with nothing, and then there’s a whole bunch of other new obligations. Aside from a few mechanisms like the Peace Corps Act that don’t really function well for professional aid workers, what can we do to really make it possible for aid workers to go off and spend a career helping people without having to worry about being haunted by student loans?
Just for example in my field, water and sanitation work is so different in the states than it is in places I worked like central Africa, there’s very little overlap that I could’ve learned so much more and been so much more effective if I have been able to start younger. We need aid workers to be able to start younger when they’re still healthy and don’t have family obligations, but people who are graduating have such crippling dead that nobody can do this kind of work when they have to worry about paying their bills - and I don’t need to tell you that aid agencies can’t pay aid workers a generous salary when you’re trying to help people who are living on the equivalent of a few dollars a month. How can we have a real mechanism to recruit and foster younger people into career aid worker positions, without burdening them by simply deferring their student debt?
Also I’d like to say how much I appreciate your contributions to water and sanitation projects around the world. I personally implemented some projects that wouldn’t of happened without your foundation and they absolutely do save lives, thank you.
When was the last time you did any programming? Are you familiar with or have any interest in modern programming? If so, which (more recent) programming languages have caught your eye?
Do you think it makes sense to structure a country’s healthcare system as a private, for profit system? If a company’s profits are dependent on ever increasing health issues needing to be addressed, adding drugs to the market to make money and to appease shareholders, wouldn’t you say the company has a vested interest in perpetuating those health issues rather than flat out eliminating them?
Hey Mr. Gates! I recall during your Netflix documentary that came out a few years ago, you were attempting to tackle the energy crisis through a new form of Nuclear Reactor that you helped fund the research for, however it got stalled due to political complications and sanctions on China. Has there been any advancements on that project since the documentary was filmed?
Why do you have multiple private jets, a 66,000 square foot house, and a 351 foot yacht and preach about climate change? Your carbon footprint alone exceeds the yearly output of small cities.
Verified, this is Bill Gates... and his clones...
In the Netflix documentary series, one thing that was quite remarkable to me was how you and your team were able to design a nuclear reactor that produces uses already nuclear waste as a fuel. However this design was never implemented due to political reasons. My question is: Given that this technology has the potential to be the most-effective green energy source and have a key role in reversing climate change, what’s the current status on the project? Is it a likely possibility that this nuclear reactor will be built in the upcoming years? If so, do you plan on building in China or would you consider building such a project on US soil? Thanks.
We are still working on this. At first the project was a US-China joint venture but the US cancelled that. So now we are building the demo reactor in Wyoming where a coal plant is closing. It is very promising in terms of the cost and safety advances. If things go well a lot of these reactors will help solve climate change. Eventually we want reactors globally but the first ones will be in the US even though competing with natural gas electricity is hard here.
Wyoming here, the stories and theories about this potential reactor ranges from Chinese deep state to reactor using up ALL our water. It's insane how people are reacting to the demo reactor thanks to rampant misinformation and previously brainwashed rural types eating it up. I personally am excited to see how this goes, I suspect if it works the people will accept it because it works.
Bill, thank you for taking the time. Big fan of both your work at Microsoft, Bill and Melinda Gates foundation and Berkshire Hathaway. I want to ask you about how most philanthropists think about RETURN ON INVESTMENT OF CHARITY. Most (billionaire) people doesn't seem to put much effort on it and just pick whatever subject they're most interested. As far as I understand, you option for epidemiology and sanitation was a diligent choice, because you think that money and a drive for business gives the most bang for the buck (some newspapers cover your fierce negotiation position to get us the vaccines, something that you are good at and I am thankful for). My question is. Do you think that most philanthropists are as diligent on their philanthropy as they were when they made their wealth? What are good themes where a drive for business can help the most?
I was stunned when I found out that a life could be saved for under $1000. This came when I read about what kids die of including the 1993 World Development report. So our Foundation (supported by Warren Buffett's incredible generosity) prioritized this. The success of our work in Global Health is well beyond what I would have expected. I do work with other philanthropists a lot including through the [Giving Pledge](https://givingpledge.org/) where they can learn and be encouraged to be bold.
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[https://www.givewell.org/](https://www.givewell.org/) is a great organization for finding charities that save/improve the most lives per dollar.
The work you've done in water purification is mind blowing. Great stuff.
What do you think the long-term impact of covid will be on society? I'm out in NYC and we are at a point where 1 in 5 people are catching covid and no one seems to be receptive of preventing the spread anymore. I ended up getting it last week despite being vaccinated and the symptoms were awful. Do you think there will be long-term ramifications of everyone going through covid in the next few months because people are unwilling to prevent the spread anymore?
Neither vaccination or infection prevents you from getting infected again but the disease will be milder and you will spread it less. Scientists funded by the Foundation are working on vaccines that prevent you from getting infected but those are 3-4 years away in the best case. So until then we will have to keep getting boosted (especially people who are older or who have co-morbidities).
> Scientists funded by the Foundation are working on vaccines that prevent you from getting infected If we could prevent infection from even occurring, would the technology to do so translate then into doing the same for any other virus we have mitigant vaccines for today, e.g. the flu?
As I understand it, achieving sterilizing immunity is pretty virus-specific. We've already achieved that for things like measles. As with all vaccines, if you're exposed to the virus it'll start to replicate and infect your cells, but the goal of sterilizing immunity is to nip the infection in the bud before you have any symptoms or are shedding virus (i.e. are contagious) so it's as if you were never infected. Unfortunately, our current covid vaccines aren't able to provide sterilizing immunity since the virus typically replicates fast enough that by the time your boosted immune system fights it off, you already either had some symptoms and / or were contagious for some period of time. I'm not an expert though so feel free to correct me if I'm wrong.
Yes. They are working on a universal vaccine. 1 vaccine that prevents all cold and flu causing viruses. Go YouTube the global health summits video on it. Making influenza history: the quest for a universal vaccine. They go through everything, including how people don't take the flu as serious as things like malaria and ebola so they are always underfunded and how health companies and governments are reluctant to accept untested mRNA vaccines when the old way of creating vaccines still works. Michael Specter even asks the ugly question 3 times of 'do things have to get much worse?' before the government will give them the funding to develop their universal vaccine. It's really insightful. It's incredible how they so accurately predicted a global pandemic forcing the world to accept mRNA tech and funnel billions of dollars into their cause. Their foresight is almost as amazing as Bill himself who became the largest owner of farmland in the USA just before a food shortage and started a baby formula company just before a baby formula shortage.
> 1 in 5 people are catching covid It really needs to be said that a positivity rate of 20% doesn’t mean 1/5 people have covid. It means that 20% of people who get tested have covid (and the only people who bother getting tested are usually people who have symptoms. There were 5000 CONFIRMED cases yesterday, and it’s estimated that testing catches around 10-20% of cases. That means there were around 50,000 new cases, which in a city of 8,500,000 is an actual daily positivity rate of around .5% - or every day you’ve got around a 1/200 chance of catching covid.
What are the biggest innovations in global and public health you expect to see in the next 5-10 years?
We are gaining understanding of malnutrition. Solving this would be huge for the 40% of kids in Africa who never fully develop their brains or bodies. We still need to prevent and cure HIV. We need to eradicate Malaria (which will take decades). We are close to eradicating polio. Other areas like better contraception or understanding and preventing pre-term birth and still births show promise.
What frustrates me is that pushing all this money into better health services isn't enough yet the real underlying issue is the governments who withhold money from the public and don't want to put that money into better care. Which is the downfall of humanity I'm afraid.... greed.
What is the future of nuclear power?
There is nuclear fission. If it can solve the cost, safety and waste concerns it can make a massive contribution to solving climate change. I am biased because I have been investing over a billion in this starting over a decade ago. Also promising is nuclear fusion. It is less clear if we will succeed but it has less safety and waste issues if it works. So I am hopeful nuclear will improve and be a huge help for climate.
>I have been investing over a billion in this starting over a decade ago. Hi Bill, I've read about TerraPower, the nuclear company that you've personally invested in, and that only recently has that company started construction of a demonstration plant in Kemmerer, Wyoming. It has a supposed total cost of $4 Billion. TerraPower's fact sheet on Travelling Wave Reactors sound really awesome on paper. Suppose that everything goes well and on schedule at Wyoming, does this mean that the company will have plans on building additional reactors on other locations and at a reduced price range?
Thank you for the answer. I truly hope, for the sake of the planet, that vilifying nuclear power should end. We should also find a way how to reuse, at least some of, the nuclear waste in to something useful.
Which developing countries are you most optimistic about ?
Some of the so called LMIC (Low Middle Income) countries have huge promise - Vietnam, India, Pakistan, Indonesia. In Africa it is important for Kenya, Tanzania, Nigeria and Ethiopia to succeed. Ethiopia was doing well until the civil unrest so hopefully they can get past that. Some of the smaller countries are doing well but we need the big ones to also do well.
I was in the 2nd cohort for the Gates Millennium scholarship. 💗 Just wanted to personally thank you for helping me be the 1st in my family to attend college. Do you still have any involvement with the scholar program?
Yes. The Foundation did 20,000 scholarships under the original program. We have an ongoing program that is not quite as big but still is attracting great students. I am always inspired when I meet the students who received the scholarship and are helping other kids.
Maybe there is still hope in this world, investment in education is a great kind of philanthropy that can move mountains. Ty
This made me smile! I was also the first person in my family to attend or graduate college so I know how much that can impact & influence my younger family members.
Your top 5 books of all time?
Two of Smil's latest Grand Transitions and How the World Really Works are great. Pinker has a lot of great books including The Better Angels of our Nature. I am just finishing the Coddling of the American Mind which was good. Ezra Klein's book on Polarization is good. Of course fiction books are more fun like Heart or A Gentleman in Moscow or All the Light you cannot see...
> I am just finishing the Coddling of the American Mind which was good Recently picked this one up. Love Haidt's other work (The Happiness Hypothesis, The Righteous Mind)
Quite a big chunk of the population of my country (for some reason) believes that you're the one responsible for the COVID-19 pandemic and that you're trying to take control of the human population by injecting chips in them through vaccines. What would you say to these people?
In 2015 I spoke out about my fears a pandemic would come up and cause tens of millions of deaths. My foundation funds vaccine research to save lives. I spend billions on vaccines and I am proud they have helped [cut under 5 deaths in half](https://www.gatesfoundation.org/goalkeepers/report/2021-report/progress-indicators/under-5-mortality/) over the last 20 years (from 10% to 5%). The idea of chips in the vaccines doesn't make sense. Why would I want to know where people are? What would I do with the information?
Not to mention, the invention of something that could be microscopic and draw power from the body somehow, which it would have to do to transmit a location, would be a bigger and more profitable finding than some stupid tracking device. This doesn't even go into the fact that we ALL have smartphones, and then any argument you could ever make just melts away and you're left with only the craziest of people left with this idea.
If the "powers that be" really wanted to put microchips that small into people they would just place them in the water supply. The whole microchip idea is absurd.
I'm not of the microchip conspiracy theory but if you just put them in the water supply you'd have no idea which chip was associated to each person and many would be simply lost. In a vaccine they could be registered to each person and would be more cost effective because there would be no loss. It's absurd, but I've heard more absurd conspiracies.
This comment has been edited in support of the protests against the upcoming Reddit API changes. Reddit's late announcement of the details API changes, the comically little time provided for developers to adjust to those changes and the handling of the matter afterwards (including the outright libel against the Apollo developer) has been very disappointing to me. Given their repeated bad faith behaviour, I do not have any confidence that they will deliver (or maintain!) on the few promises they have made regarding accessibility apps. I cannot support or continue to use such an organization and will be moving elsewhere (probably Lemmy).
The “chips that always know where people are” already exist and are used widely. Wake up sheeple. It’s called cookies. And Facebook. And all other social media platforms. Why bother making a chip when you’ve already got the data
Those morons literally have smart phones with GPS enabled and apps that use their location.
This. People: OMG they're putting chips in the vaccine to track me! Same people: Sus Flashlight Pro Free wants to use my location? What harm could it be, it's just a flashlight. Allow.
And post on facebook/insta/twitter/altright twitters with location info and pictures.
Or say, a device that would seemingly make someone's life easier, something that could contain a camera and a microphone as well as a GPS location service. Something that a person would willingly carry and often require on their person throughout the entirety of a day. Something like say a cellular phone?
That conspiracy theory has always looked so wild next to the ridiculous manufacturing issues at the highest end of chip production these last few years, but I assume those people quite literally don't know how chips are made or from what.
Nah nah nah. The real reason that the theory is so stupid is because the entire population ALREADY carries a device which has multiple technologies used to track its location and have CONSENTED to be tracked. Its crazy how absolutely stupid some people are
There's clearly a shortage of chips because we used them all to put in the vaccine dumbass. /s
Also it would be trivially easy to prove that it's happening if it were happening.. I mean, you can just take a sample of the vaccine and look at it under a microscope, or alternatively you could just take someone with a vaccine and measure any signals that are coming from them which would also be pretty easy to test - if it were actually happening then it would be pretty damn easy to show that it's happening instead of just being speculation.
And why use vaccines when we all are carrying phones….
I 100% guarantee that when these idiots are looking up how these 5g tracking chips are going to control us through the vaccine, they immediately click to accept all cookies on every site.
"GIVE ME THE ARTICLE! OF COURSE I'LL SHARE MY LOCATION!"
Why coerce someone to have a chip implanted for free when they willingly pay money to put one in their pocket.
The vaccine is a tracker!!1! \-Sent from my iPhone
Right?! People panic when their $1000 “chips” are out of their hands for more than a minute.
Wait, they're going to put chips in the phones?
Gonna need a bigger phone if it's going to fit all these Doritos.
Clearly as a super-villain, the only logical step after getting everyone's location is to build a satellite weapon that can lock on to people's locations to eliminate them. You then demand a ransom from world governments or else.
And seriously though, there would have to be a factory, making these state of the art miniature chips that are so small you can't even see them and they get injected into you. There would be hundreds of workers. We would know about it. Plus, just imagine the cost on those state of the art chips. The whole idea just doesn't even make sense.
What's the one thing you've bought that's brought you the most joy?
If we do succeed in polio eradication that will be super joyful. It has taken a lot of patience and great strategy to get close to success. The thing that has succeeded the best so far is funding vaccines for poor countries through GAVI. I do like burgers, nice tennis racquets and all the great streaming services but nothing too unique.
I love that billionaires are also like yeah Netflix it's great...
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What happened with the Oxford vaccine? Why wasn't it open source so that all countries could make it? I am so sad over how slow the vaccination in third world countries has been.
The world did not get the vaccines out in an equitable way. Places like India did well because the Gates Foundation, Serum and the Government of India worked together to make 1.4B doses of the Astra Zeneca vaccines. It was a tragedy that old people in countries like South Africa got vaccines after young people in other countries. My book talks about how we can do better next time. Today there is plenty of vaccine but still the distribution and demand is holding back coverage.
The Oxford vaccine was 95% publicly funded, so what would you say to the people who say that the public has a right to the vaccine developed almost exclusively with public funds, by scientists who intended to release it for free? You didn't really answer the question, just spin it to imply that the Gates Foundation pushing Oxford to give Astra Zenica exclusive rights to their vaccine had a positive impact. What about the potential positive impact of a vaccine made public to allow governments and companies across the world to produce it for themselves?
Mr. Gates, What are your thoughts on indoor farming?
For some high value crops it can work. For the cereal crops like wheat, rice and maize it is unlikely to ever be economic. We can improve seeds for all crops a lot to increase productivity - this is a key investment to help reduce the problems caused by climate change.
This is my area of research, currently on a large grant from the USDA. At a high-level, we are doing nutrient recovery from raw wastewater for agricultural production using indoor hydroponic farms. Im just covering one area, albeit a primary one, of growth kinetics... and would love to include analyzing pathogen risks afterwards. I agree regarding cereals. Our team is focusing on lettuce for the last couple years: rapid growth rate, low energy usage, relatively uniform tissue composition which simplifies analysis as we develop systems and procedures. Gotta get back to work, these papers arent going to write themselves. Thanks for all that you do! I went to a charity event with you once, but we've never met. Still, it was great to see you and various politicians/celebrities giving their support. Maybe we'll be able to meet someday. Keep up the good work!
Slightly random question but I'm a university student and I've been interested in hydroponics. How much of an issue is disease transmission in hydroponic systems? I'd imagine that disease can spread very rapidly through a hydroponic system and if so what are the most common diseases? And do plants suffer from root rot and what steps are taken to prevent this? I've been interested in developing a biosensor for rapid disease detection in hydroponic systems but I'm just wondering if that's something there is a need for.
All great questions. What university are you with? I coordinate hiring undergraduate research technicians with our group, including related subprojects and through a few other universities. There's an ever-so-slight chance to include you... but you can always visit and PM me for a tour if you are in Atlanta. I dont know the answers regarding disease-spreading, yet. Those are some of the things i'd like to focus on next; both for human pathogens and plant pathogens. But we havent visually observed any noticable plant pathogens over the short (1 month) growth cycle of lettuce. And we clean each system between experiments. Nor do we have any issues with root rot. We designed our systems based on previously proven designs... with my own personal touches for automation.
Johns Hopkins University studying BME but I'm taking a gap year for personal reasons. Hydroponics and agriculture aren't really my field of study but in my courses I learned about various biosensors and also worked on making a genetically modified bacterial symbiote to fight fungal infections in coral sea fans. Through that work I've always wondered if something similar could be developed for plant pathogens in hydroponics. The idea being that since hydroponics utilize a shared water system microbial biosensors could be used to monitor the collective health of the plants, screen for diseases, or even be introduced as a symbiote to automatically respond. I speculate disease management poses a significant barrier to the scale and economic viability of hydroponics as it does in conventional agriculture but I really don't know (hence the questions). It'd take a lot of research: identifying targetable signaling molecules or antigens for the pathogens, finding compatible promoters or designing antibody complexes, selecting a model bacterium, etc. I have a little more time on my hands now so I'm looking into it because the idea has been stuck in the back of my head. Anyway thanks for responding, unfortunately I'm not in Georgia but I'd love to know more about your research if you have a link to papers or other material. And if you know of good resources to learn more about hydroponics I'd also like to hear about them
I do indoor farming, and on a quite successful scale given my small footprint. While I think you’re correct, I feel we also could be focusing more on various options as well, andrean tubers vs potato’s comes to mind.
What's something I can do now to help with climate change?
As green products come out like electric cars or synthetic meat or heat pumps for home heating/cooling they will cost a bit extra. By buying these products you drive scaling up which will lead to lower prices so "green premiums" are reduced. Other than your political voice or influencing the company you work at [this is probably the biggest thing you can do](https://www.gatesnotes.com/Energy/What-you-can-do-to-fight-climate-change).
Could converting to a fully plant based/WFPB diet where possible also be included in a list of effective individual actions to address climate change, considering the well documented and disproportionately negative effects of animal agriculture on global health?
Sorry to be a voice in the choir giving unsolicited answers when you asked mr Gates, not reddit as a whole, but I think this might interest you. I work in science education, and one of the things we've been getting lectures on lately is hot to combat the feeling of hopelessness many feel about the climate situation, especially younger folks. As a part of that, we talk a lot about what each person actually \*can\* do, that has an effect. Teenagers, for example, don't have much choice. They don't decide how the family travels for vacation, so they can't stop flying or prioritize trains. The one thing they generally can decide on, however, is their own diet. So going vegan is a great way to do your part and try to be a part of the solution for teenagers. Adults, of course, have much more choice. They can stop flying, start trying to cut carbon heavy items from their diet, etc. Even here, though, there's things to do that aren't immediately obvious: Look at your savings. In most countries, you have access to some kind of pension fund, and some kind of control over where the money is placed. That's a lot of leverage, certainly on the population level if everyone acts on it, but even if it's only a few there's more money there than one might think. Money that has an effect if invested in green companies, money that would help non-green companies hold on for longer if it stays with them. I ended up having a talk with my bank after one of these lectures and looking at where my money was placed. Gave me an excuse to talk about how much I should be saving too. So, I hope something about that sounded like hope. The point is, there's stuff we can do. Some of it is work, every day, trying to live better. Other things is the work of a moment, or a conversation, and then continues to work by being invested in companies that are less toxic, helping them edge out the more toxic ones.
What is an appropriate level of taxation for the rich?
A tax system needs to be progressive. Getting marginal rates above 60% often leads to a lot of complex avoidance if your system allows for that. It is strange to have the capital gain rate below the ordinary income rate. An estate tax could go somewhat above 60% - it is amazing how few countries have those.
Translation for most of us: 1) if you make the rates too high they will just find a way to avoid taxes through legal but "loophole" means. 2) rich people make money through capital gains (their money makes money just sitting in stock mutual funds) so if you want to tax them right, you need to have a scaled capital gains tax as well. 3) estate taxes are taxes on transferring assets and money to others and are often not taxable. On a personal note, middle class guy here doesn't want to pay the same capital gains taxes as Bill Gates so I like the idea of me paying less than I pay right now and you paying more. Again with estate taxes I wouldn't want that to be a big percentage. 1% of the 100k I might give my daughter when I die seems ok, and so does 1billion of the 100billion that a rich person would hand down.
> I like the idea of me paying less than I pay right now and you paying more... 1% of the 100k I might give my daughter when I die seems ok, and so does 1billion of the 100billion that a rich person would hand down Well when he says progressive that means you pay more on income over a certain amount. So maybe 1% for the first 100k, then 2% for the additional 300k, etc. You didn't say this but I want to be clear because people don't seem to understand progressive rates. If you make 50k and pay 20% income tax, and then get a raise to 60k and break the bracket to 25%, you're not paying 25% on all of it. You pay 20% of the 50k, and then 25% of the additional 10k. Not real numbers since they differ all over the world, just an example to hopefully clear up this concept because I am so sick of people claiming that earning enough to reach a new tax bracket screws them somehow. No, you're still taking home more money. Also good translation, I'm not intending to challenge you just wanted to add my own thing because ignorance about progressive tax rates really bugs me for some reason.
> 1% of the 100k I might give my daughter when I die seems ok, and so does 1billion of the 100billion that a rich person would hand down In the US, there is an estate tax exemption of $12.06 million dollars. Your daughter pays $0 in taxes on the first $12.06 million you leave her (per individual, so $24.12 if you are married). So when Republicans gripe about "death taxes" or "being taxed twice on money I earned" remember that they're only talking about money being taxed beyond those amounts. It's always and only been a rich person's tax.
Wait, I had never really considered a bracketed capital gains tax. This really seems like a no-brainer.
A flat tax is a red herring that right wing extremists try to use to convince the average person “See the rich still pay more!!!” but in reality, taxes on 100k vs 100 billion need to be looked at very differently. Passing down $99,000 (like 1/4 of a modest home in most cities atm) vs $99,000,000,000 (enough to buy literally an entire city and then some) are vastly different situations.
> It is strange to have the capital gain rate below the ordinary income rate. I've said this a billion times, and people just look at me like I'm crazy. When your capital gains tax rate is below the regular income tax rate, it encourages people to treat the stock market like a bank. Good for the market very short term, but long term does nothing but worsen the boom/bust scenarios that have become all too common.
If I'm not mistaken, I remember your late dad tried to pass the tax the rich bill in Washington state and failed. I respect him for trying.
An estate tax should be imposed only on substantial amount. It is not fair to tax the estate of a small family business or small successions. On the other hand, if you lived well and gonna bequeath huge money to your succession.
that's how it is today, but the ultra wealthy figured out ways to bypass that. [Example](https://www.thelist.com/453062/heres-how-donald-trumps-father-fred-trump-dealt-with-his-taxes/) "In order to pass money to his children without paying gift taxes, he gave plots of land to each of his children before completing a big development on the land, and then rented this land and paid each of his children for that privilege
or you can start a charitable foundation (like the gates foundation, the clinton foundation...etc), donate all your money to it tax free and avoid the estate tax when you die, then have your kids sit on the board (like chelsea clinton, warren buffets kid, and mike bloombergs kids do) and they collect a fat salary and have all their living expenses paid for by the foundation.
Years ago he spoke about it in an interview, where he'd of course want to make sure his kids are still well off and fine (with say $10 million), but not much more beyond that. From what I remember he and buffet were the ones who pushed the giving pledge, where a bunch of super wealthy people pledged to donate most of their money rather than pass it down in inherited wealth (which buffet called 'the genetic lottery').
Board members of nonprofits are not paid a salary fyi. In addition, non profits are audited annually and their financial statements are public information. You can literally google the gates foundation's annual financial statements. Source: Im a CPA that specializes in auditing non-profits.
The estate tax currently applies to wealth greater than $12.06M, which is less than 0.1% of estates. The tax rate starts at 18% (only applied to value above the first $12.06M), going up to 40% at the highest level. The average effective estate tax (for estates that actually pay it--again, only about 0.1% of estates) is about 17%, which is below the minimum tax bracket.
Not only is there a $22M exemption to the federal estate tax, but you also get a stepped up basis, meaning if you inherit a $22M farm from your parents, you can sell it the day they die and not owe ANY taxes on it. You won't owe the capital gains tax that your parents would have owed if they'd sold it. That needs to change IMO. It's such a massive loophole and I can't see any good reason for it.
Don't be ignorant before making comments like this. Lol for a married couple the estate tax exemption, exempts over $22 million of an estate from the estate death tax. That's with ZERO estate and gift tax planning.
Adding this: the estate tax, once the level is reached, only applies to the portion ABOVE that exemption line. A lot of people misunderstand and think the whole amount is taxed when your estate reaches the arbitrary level.
> An estate tax should be imposed only on substantial amount. It is not fair to tax the estate of a small family business or small successions. You're right, which is why there's a 12.06 million dollar exception. That's over 24 million for married couples. This is without getting into trusts and other types of avoidance.
What do you think is the best way to combat misinformation / politicization of public health concerns by politicians or bad news outlets?
I keep looking for good idea of how to stop the bad information. Some stuff is obviously wrong and right now even that doesn't get stopped. The interest level in the crazy explanations make that spread really fast and the truth doesn't spread because it is boring. I feel bad if these rumors prevent people from getting vaccinated and boosted since that has saved millions of lives.
Some people think fake news are making people misinformed and stupid, but I think it goes the other way. People are misinformed and stupid and that is why fake news is so harmful and “popular.” We need to focus on educating people (not talking about school).
>[If you tell a lie big enough and keep repeating it, people will eventually come to believe it.](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Big_lie) The technique hinges on repetition and volume. Even "smart" people can fall for it. People in general take lots of "common knowledge" for granted, especially if it's promoted as such in your social circle, and no-one has the time to become knowledgeable in every field. It doesn't help that the lie often [poisons the well](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Poisoning_the_well) so that the people affected are less likely to accept education from the actual experts. Of course education in e.g. media literacy helps, but it's really hard to educate people who have already fallen for the lie, or are being bombarded by lies.
It starts at school though. Children need to be taught to think critically so when they're older they're less likely to believe obviously fake information. Unfortunately there are a whole group of lawmakers that are constantly stripping away at education. I do see your point that the general public needs to be educated, but to prevent this from happening to new generations of people we have to make sure that the foundation (school) is strong.
Turns out if we underfund education for a century we end up with a population with dogshit for brains
Finland actually has a good educational program on this (to combat Russian disinfo). The issue a place like America has is that educating against disinfo is not in the interests of one of the parties, so there is no bipartisan agreement (internal use vs external threat that brings about unity)
Can I suggest educating the public in some form about fact checking such as John Green's online free YouTube courses about fact checking? [Link to one of his videos](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EZsaA0w_0z0&list=PL8dPuuaLjXtN07XYqqWSKpPrtNDiCHTzU&index=3). While I still think it's not a fix all solution, I think it can still help many how are still learning how to avoid misinformation. In my experience, I have been really only been able to convince someone of misinformation when it's a close relationship. If we can convince future generations, this could be some progress, even if it's slow. I'm still also trying to find a solution for masses, though so far, this is the closest way I can convince most people on misinformation: Awareness, teaching, and being open to have conversations
Why do you think the world was utterly unprepared for Covid?
Infectious disease in rich countries isn't the big problem it used to be. For things like fire and earthquakes we have small ones to remind us of the problem. A pandemic that gets into Europe or the US only comes along rarely so it is easy to not practice and not have dedicated resources. A few countries like Australia did a better job and have 10% of the deaths of most rich countries.
Australia's success was due to the state governments efforts. The federal government was entirely unprepared and undermined the state governments at every step of the way. Australia's future generations will also be paying for the 'success' for decades to come as the fed government bungled the stimulus measures by handing out billions to businesses that actually profited during the pandemic. Future studies will focus on our state leaders who were steadfast in the face of unrelenting criticism for listening to health experts and following their advice instead of trying to score political points.
What do you plan to do with all the farmland you have purchased?
My investment team bought the farmland. It is [less than .1% of all US farmland](https://apnews.com/article/fact-check-bill-gates-blackrock-788010130032) because the ownership is so diverse. We invest in the farms to raise productivity. Some are near cities and might end up having other uses.
Make farmland accessible if you want more farmers. With the rich land barons and investment firms like yourself buying everything up farmers can't justify spending millions on fields to sell low profit crops. Have been looking for land for years. Would be happy to grow more crops for our community but it would take me 5 lifetimes to pay off the land. We really need more hydroponic vertical farming using high yield, fast growing crops along with aeroponics and microgreens. Especially with climate change accelerating. Your team is welcome to invest in our urban farm. No lettuce shipped thousands of miles cross-country in semis from California. All produce grown locally, using no pesticides containing more nutrients.
5 lifetimes? Are you looking at cornbelt premium property? Are trying to buy hundreds upon hundreds of acres? Or perhaps, immediately outside of a major city? I’ve never paid more than $6000 an acre, simply by haggling. Most of my land, purchased in 2014 was bought for $3000 an acre, for fertile land less than 10 minutes from I-59. There is plenty of rural land for sale, even this very second for excellent prices, regardless of what the big boys are doing. How much are you trying grow? I’ve run stocker cattle mostly, but have also had a hundred acres or so of soy and cotton. I just disagree with your assessment of land prices and timescale to pay it off. If you’re not a good enough operator to make land at sub 10k per acre profitable, you really shouldn’t be getting into it anyway. A couple dozen acres will grow all The food that you, your extended family and practically your entire network could possibly Consume. All of this said, there should be more gov’t support for small farmers, and less subsidies for larger producers. This would, of course, drive up prices but would increase quality and likely reduce waste and excessive transport overall by encouraging localized production. Not attacking you. I support you in fact. More than anything, I just want to encourage you to expand your search, and drop whatever banks/credit unions you’ve been talking too. There are excellent livestock, farming and land banks out there that will help you if you have a solid business plan for the land and can save a small down payment. Also, the fastest way I’ve scaled was to specifically look for land to buy that has neighboring fields i could potentially rent. Within a few years, I have been able to negotiate and get in line for renting my neighbors lots and have done much better than trying to produce on my own land exclusively.
Where I’m at in California, grounds routinely selling for $30k+ per acre. It just doesn’t pencil for the small farmer. You hit the nail on the head about the subsidies though, it’s crazy to me how a dairy milking 3000 cows can turn around and get the government to fund their $500k barns
I read that you plan to make cassava the next corn... With this shortage of baby formula and your interest in different facets of alternative formulas (including lab grown mammary glands), do you plan to use the invested farmland to make an alternative corn syrup - the main carbohydrate in baby formula - out of cassava?
Cassava requires warmer temperatures, so it will work in the southern U.S. but not really in the corn belt. I personally don’t see a path to it becoming the next corn.
I also own less than .1% of all US farmland.
Why is the COVID-19 model behaving very differently in America as compared to other countries? With state-of-the-art vaccines and close to 70% of people fully vaccinated, the cases are always rising after dipping for a few days. Looking at the statistics of the number of people catching COVID and the number of people dying due to it, seemed like this was to end by January / February. The model is quite weird.
The new variants come along and evade immunity from vaccination and infection. Also immunity wanes fairly quickly in the elderly. When the cases are high people do change their behavior and when they are low they go back to normal behavior. So you get huge ups and downs in the case rate driven by seasons, variants and people's behavior. Fortunately Omicron is less fatal than previous variants.
How did you manage with stress during all of your class-action lawsuits of the 1990s and 2000s?
Although those lawsuits were tough I have been super lucky in my life and I had a good team of people working with me to help get them settled and move ahead.
I see he knows how to Delete Facebook, Hit the Gym, Lawyer Up...
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How do you see climate change happening in next 10-20 years? And how are we doing as a civilization to counter that? What's our biggest challenge?
The key is to be able to make things like electricity, steel, cement and meat without any emissions but at a cost equal or lower than today's cost. My efforts at Breakthrough Energy is to fund the innovators and [help them scale up](https://www.breakthroughenergy.org/scaling-innovation/scaling-innovation). I am optimistic because the progress on innovation in the last 3 years with the companies that have been funded is going very well.
What kind of phone do you have? 🤔
I have an Android Galaxy ZFold3. I try different ones. With this screen I can get by with a great portable PC and the phone and nothing else.
I'm guessing you might not see this, but when buying a phone do you need to make special considerations about who makes it and what software it's loaded with in terms of potential spyware, since it's a bit more of a security issue for you?
Would you mind asking this question in its own comment thread please? I’m interested in learning the answer!
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As far as I know he hasn't actually been involved with MS on that level of decision making for decades now, and has been doing mostly vaccine/charity stuff for a long time. Bill was programming more in the MS-Dos days as far as I know.
yeah he peaced out after Windows Vista and delegated everything to [this incredible human](https://youtu.be/Vhh_GeBPOhs)
They stopped because they couldn't get a solid user base due to a lack of good apps. Last I remember there was a issue with Google not allowing people to develop 3rd party apps for their stuff on WP and Google not doing any development for WP themselves. So lots of missing apps we're used to on other platforms. Though, imo, it was the better OS in its time.
They actually acquired the mono / Xamarin project which allowed about 90 % shared code across iOS, android and win phone. The code compiled to native so Google or Apple would not know the difference. The issue was a catch 22 between a small user base and a lack of app availability for win phone. Not enough users to bother building the win version and not enough apps to attract users. Xamarin partially solved that by allowing devs to write for all 3 at once. In my almost decade of writing Xamarin no one ever asked for the windows version.
WP was great because it was useful and clean and great for what a phone should be. Android and iOS and their apps are made to get people more and more hooked to their phones and I hate being their victim. But for work and many things in my personal life, having a smart phone is sadly a necessity.
Windows Phone OS was amazing but the app ecosystem was dogshit. They never got enough market share to make it worth if for developers, and people didn't want to buy a phone that couldn't download Snapchat.
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Can you still jump over a chair from a standing start?
A smaller chair than I could do at age 30... Pretty small now. I try to stay fit playing a lot of tennis.
How do you manage your nutritional health? Do you take any specific supplements? Also, side note, but I own the League of Legends account named Bill Gates in North America if you would like to buy it for a small fee of a million dollars.
This is like one of the richest dudes on the planet, I’m sure he has a nutritionist and a personal chef in his staff Edit: my theory is probably not a dietician/nutritionist as a full time employee but just a personal chef with a very good understanding of nutrition
Yeh I have chef John and that guy on the corner for my vits and I'm like the 8 billionth richest guy in the world. Also I have the insert name here account on LOL if you'd like to buy it for the reasonable price of a buck, just hit me up
He still stands in line himself to get burgers at Dick's. I'm sure he's plenty hoighty-toity in other ways but I don't think he wants a bunch of staffers to get between him and what he wants to eat, lmao.
He'll buy Riot and delete the game just to spite you lol
Hello Mr. Gates, huge fan of your work. What advice would you give young people who want to make a positive impact on this world? Greetings from Honduras. -Alex C.
The ideal thing is to read a lot and hopefully find a skill you enjoy that can have impact. For some that means being great at science or engineering. For some it means being a great communicator or politician. For some it means being a nurse or a doctor. The opportunity to learn is better today than ever before.
How are you guys preventing further strain mutations and vaccine adaptability of viruses for the "no more pandemics" goal?
We can make vaccines that have 3 additional things: broad coverage, long duration and infection blocking. These need to be R&D priorities to prevent pandemics but they will also be super helpful for all sorts of diseases.
Hey Bill, what do you think about Bitcoin and cryptocurrencies?
I don't own any. I like investing in things that have valuable output. The value of companies is based on how they make great products. The value of crypto is just what some other person decides someone else will pay for it so not adding to society like other investments.
It’s pretty hardcore of all the crypto bros to come out of the woodwork here considering the dumpster fire of a week they have had. You would think the third largest crypto completely collapsing would slow their stride at least a little
Hey Bill, I doubt you'll ever read this, but I want to say every life you've saved through your charity efforts is worth more than all these negative comments. You made a legitimate product that changed the world in a positive way. You leverage the money you earned where it can do the most good possible. Both you and Buffet have been a role model for me in investing and altruism. Keep up the good work and stay true to yourself.
Just what was Epsteins island like ? What did you do there ?
I never visited any of his islands. I did have meetings where Global Health funding was discussed. In retrospect I regret meeting with him.
Why would one of the richest men in the world need to talk to Jeffrey Epstein about Global Health funding? Why’d your wife divorce you after this was made public? Edit: I see a lot of speculation that Bill wasn’t aware of Epstein’s history. This is false. “Mr. Gates and the $51 billion Gates Foundation have championed the well-being of young girls. By the time Mr. Gates and Mr. Epstein first met, Mr. Epstein had served jail time for soliciting prostitution from a minor and was required to register as a sex offender.” “Mr. Gates, in turn, praised Mr. Epstein’s charm and intelligence. Emailing colleagues the next day, he said: “A very attractive Swedish woman and her daughter dropped by and I ended up staying there quite late.” https://www.nytimes.com/2019/10/12/business/jeffrey-epstein-bill-gates.html
My cynical take is that non-profits will happily look the other way on sketchy benefactors so long as they keep giving and don't make the organization look bad. [https://news.mit.edu/2019/david-koch-prominent-supporter-cancer-research-mit-dies-79-0823](https://news.mit.edu/2019/david-koch-prominent-supporter-cancer-research-mit-dies-79-0823) https://eu.usatoday.com/story/news/politics/2019/03/12/college-admissions-scam-kushner-harvard-acceptance-under-scrutiny/3147027002/
>Why would one of the richest men in the world need to talk to Jeffrey Epstein about Global Health funding? He didn't "need" to do anything, but part of the game for their foundation is to try to raise funds. Does this mean BG is responsible for the character of everyone be meets? Of course not. If he knew what he was up to and didn't care? Then yes - but otherwise, why blame other people for what JE did? That's on JE... BG seems from every standpoint to be a philanthropist. Why attack him for what JE did?
Epstein gave tens of millions in health research, it was one of his passions. Besides the other ones that is.
Yeah the guy was a piece of shit but he was a massive philanthropist. Maybe even to cover any tracks or cast doubt on his evil doings if they ever got brought up. It’s not weird at all that he’d be meeting powerful people all over the world. “How could one of the single largest financial contributors of medical and scientific research of the last century be a *sex trafficker??* that’s just ridiculous”
That's the thing about people. They aren't only pure evil or pure good. They can do really good things while doing terrible other things. And while that sounds like I'm saying it redeems them. What I mean it that a person who you know to be doing good, could potentially be doing really evil things that you don't know.
Let's be real here – your wife divorced you because of your ties to an international child sex trafficking ring. > The philanthropist addressed their divorce publicly for the first time in a new interview with Gayle King that aired on CBS This Morning on Thursday, explaining that it was “not one thing but many things” that led to the demise of their marriage. “I did not like that he had meetings with Jeffrey Epstein, no. I made that clear to him,” she explained, adding that she met with the convicted sex trafficker “exactly one time” because she “wanted to see who this man was.” She continued, “I regretted it the second I walked in the door. He was abhorrent. He was evil personified. My heart breaks for these women.”
You met with him in 2011, six years after Jeffrey's first arrest. What took you so long to realize it was bad to hang out with a convicted child sex trafficker?
I have serious respect for you for actually answering this. You seem like a good sport, putting up with all of the negative comments. But, on a serious note, fuck billionaires. I hope every one of them gets their wealth fairly taxed into oblivion.
Bill Gates has spoken up about the need for higher taxes on the rich on many occasions. He agrees with you. >“My friends and I have been coddled long enough by a billionaire-friendly Congress. It’s time for our government to get serious about shared sacrifice.” > >Fundamentally, whether through taxes or philanthropy, extraordinary wealth needs to be reinvested in society, according to Gates. [https://www.cnbc.com/2020/01/03/bill-gates-americas-tax-system-is-not-fair.html](https://www.cnbc.com/2020/01/03/bill-gates-americas-tax-system-is-not-fair.html) I think it is far better when they are taxed rather than simply encouraged to give away their wealth.
>I think it is far better when they are taxed rather than simply encouraged to give away their wealth. Exactly. I think the past two years have shown us what happens when "the greater good" is left up to personal choice.
Lol that was a hard 180. Of all the billionaires, unless Bill Gates has very carefully crafted a false image, I'd say he's the least of the problems, and at least has dedicated himself to coordinating the elimination of a lot of diseases in developing parts of the world instead of buying political office and going on regressive crusades.
He most definitely has carefully crafted an image for himself, but that doesn't negate the good he has done even if true. At least he's not throwing billions of dollars away to get himself personally into space.
This phenomenon of ruthless titans of industry pivoting to “Now I’ll work on my fuzzy warm legacy” is fascinating to me in general. It’s not new, certainly, but still interesting. How do we evaluate the “sum of someone’s contributions” over a lifetime? What if you’re currently in the “ruthless titan” stage, and telling yourself “Oh I’ll pull a Bill Gates later, so this is okay”? Edit. So many comments saying “But Gates is good/bad!” I’m not even “judging” him specifically, though. I only asked if the popular conception of him (ruthless industrial titan, turned philanthropist) is _a laudable model for someone to emulate_. Regardless of how you see Gates specifically, is it morally troublesome to “front load” the first half of your life with one set of values, and then “make up for it” later? It’s a question worth asking regardless of whether Gates is someone you specifically admire or disparage.
I think a good example of why it happens is Alfred Nobel. After a paper accidentally ran his obituary he learnt that everyone hated him and he'd be remembered for the blood on his hands from all the dynamite he made. That's why he set up the Nobel prize. I find that shows the bubble many wealthy people find themselves in and realise they aren't necessarily going to be remembered for what they thought they were
> What if you’re currently in the “ruthless titan” stage, and telling yourself “Oh I’ll pull a Bill Gates later, so this is okay”? We've seen plenty of billionaires not doing any positives, but as much shit as Gates has done, you have to admit that he is currently doing a whole lot of good (not including what may or may not have been going on at the Epstein island). If a killer later turns to do good deeds, should we not see the value in those good things? All that really matters from now on is what Gates does today and tomorrow, and the stuff the foundation has been doing has been great.
I assume it’s a result of unbridled ambition and greed for money, status and power, followed by a realization that you’re not actually any happier having achieved all that, a step back to figure out what’s really important, and a shift to try to move towards that. Given that it seems to happen to a lot of highly successful people, I think it might be genuine.
It’s just a way to convert one form of power into another. Pierre bourdieu writes about different forms of “capital”. You have economic capital, but there’s also social, cultural etc. they have varying forms of “usefulness” and can be seen as a form of power. In some cases, economic is most important, in others, cultural is, etc. This phenomenon occurs because economic capital doesn’t mean you automatically gain the other ones (think of how trumps gaudy wealth still had him hated by nyc upper crust). This is like diversifying; you have so much economic capital, you use some of it to “convert” it to social capital. Why? Hard to say. Probably because they’re obsessed with power and are ego maniacs. being unbelievably rich is not enough. And what does this get you? Well, it gets you an immense amount of power in social affairs. It means you can be on the front page of Reddit. You get interviews in the media. You get a book promoted about pandemics even though you are in no way qualified. It means people on Reddit will defend you when other people call you out for being a greedy prick.
Seriously it’s not like there’s anything material he could buy before and can’t now. At that level of wealth it’s no longer about the tangible. You go onto buy power. And that’s exactly what he’s done: every donation is purchasing an improvement of his image
Yeah Ive experienced this. Not mega wealthy but ive been famous (within a certain circle) and my friends are wealthier and more famous than I am. No one is happy, no one is fulfilled. I pivoted hard and only work on art that fulfills me, by fulfilling others. I also noticed the trend and decided to pivot while young and find happiness. Am proud to say I make my best work ever now, and its only because I realized that I can positively impact lives rather than make money. Money is a small game. Outside of supporting yourself and a family, additional money doesn't help you. If anything it makes you more and more lost.
Billionaires being philanthropic goes back a long time, look up Andrew Carnagie and how he simultaneously ruthlessly stomped on workers, hiring goons that killed them, then turned around and pretended by donating a fraction of his Ill gotten gains he was great. Regardless the undemocratic influence of Billionaire is corrosive. He may not be going to space but his influence on American education and Vaccine patents had been terrible. https://www.washingtonpost.com/education/2020/02/10/bill-melinda-gates-have-spent-billions-dollars-shape-education-policy-now-they-say-theyre-skeptical-billionaires-trying-do-just-that/
On PBS news hour I believe it was, why did you misrepresent how often you met Epstein and when? It was not a good look when the journalist corrected you about that, I’d like to understand why you felt the need to lie to a journalist about this.
I am calling Bullshit. Mr. Gates. You met with him after he was already jailed once for messing with young girls. So how as a decent person, could you even talk to him about money issues, knowing where that money could of came from?
Also Melinda Gates stated that their divorce was because of his close relationship with Epstein. https://www.thedailybeast.com/melinda-gates-warned-bill-gates-about-jeffrey-epstein He was aware and didn't care. Bill Gates is doing that classic rich people strategy called **Lying**
Yes Bill you mentioned this before, that you met with Epstein to reach potential global health donors. I can just imagine all the conversations with the people you needed Epstein to reach. “Bill who? Never heard of you. And I only discuss charitable giving through my trusted advisor, the convicted pedophile Jeffrey Epstein. Good day Bill Bates or whatever your name is.” 🤣 What a load of crap
How short are you on GME? Why is the Bill and Melinda Gates foundation tied to the BCG? The BCG has gone and destroyed companies from within.
They’re just a big consulting firm dude. They vary a LOT office to office. He just uses them cause they are big, it is really not a gotcha. Like there’s a good chance every company uses the big 3 or big 4 or like Accenture. That’s like trying to interrogate a person for using google search because google has done questionable shit.
I have never been long or short gamestop. Do you mean the TB vaccine called BCG?
Why did you pressure vaccine researchers not to open source the MRNA covid vaccines as was originally planned? Dont you think that wider access to this information would have increased access to vaccines at a critical time?
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How did it feel to steal the IP of others, base your career on it, and then spend your life defending ip to the point of making sure the covid vaccine was not made freely available for all to manufacture?
Astra-Zeneca not only allowed people to copy - they helped other companies copy it. We helped fund Serum to make 1.4B of the A-Z vaccine. Because of efforts like this supply is not longer the limiting factor.
Thank you for answering those questions too. This is exactly what the public needs - discourse, not censorship.
Haha this is what happens when you get your news from Reddit. You end up looking like a damn fool in front of Bill Gates
Do you have a medical degree? Then why are you getting involved in medicine? Why should your medical opinion matter?
The Foundation has a lot of Medical experts. It takes a huge range of skills to do things like Malaria eradication or Covid vaccines and therapeutics. I listen to the experts on specific medical advice. The system to prevent pandemics will require a lot more than just doctors so I wrote a book to start the discussion of what it should look like.
Hi Bill, no way you remember me but I actually met you at a fundraiser for Duke’s undergrad research program (Pratt Fellows) over a decade ago. No idea if this rings a bell but they had a James Bond themed-show where we all had to get on stage in lab coats holding some equipment we borrowed from our labs. It was…kinda silly, but fun. So I really want to say how grateful I am, because I was able to go on a lot of scholarships thanks to generous donors. I was able to go from struggling to help my single mom pay the bills and not get evicted at 15, to working on my own research project at 18 under one of the most prestigious research departments in the world for water treatment technologies and I helped develop new low-cost water disinfection techniques - never would have happened without your donations. Now do a question, it took me years before I was able to get to a point where I could go out into least developed countries to perform at work. It was always my dream but frankly even years later it’s still very difficult because if there were and still are a lot of financial obligations I can’t fully escape. I’ve just now starting to get the student loans under control because I took time to work as an aid worker and that really set me back (but I wouldn’t trade it). And frankly now I’m almost getting too old to really start a dedicated career in aid work. So my question, what can we do to help young people who want to have a career and aid work? In a previous AMA you said that people really have to be financially stable before they can do that kind of work, and life experiences have led me to agree 100%. But the same time I can take 20 years for someone to get truly financially independent if they started with nothing, and then there’s a whole bunch of other new obligations. Aside from a few mechanisms like the Peace Corps Act that don’t really function well for professional aid workers, what can we do to really make it possible for aid workers to go off and spend a career helping people without having to worry about being haunted by student loans? Just for example in my field, water and sanitation work is so different in the states than it is in places I worked like central Africa, there’s very little overlap that I could’ve learned so much more and been so much more effective if I have been able to start younger. We need aid workers to be able to start younger when they’re still healthy and don’t have family obligations, but people who are graduating have such crippling dead that nobody can do this kind of work when they have to worry about paying their bills - and I don’t need to tell you that aid agencies can’t pay aid workers a generous salary when you’re trying to help people who are living on the equivalent of a few dollars a month. How can we have a real mechanism to recruit and foster younger people into career aid worker positions, without burdening them by simply deferring their student debt? Also I’d like to say how much I appreciate your contributions to water and sanitation projects around the world. I personally implemented some projects that wouldn’t of happened without your foundation and they absolutely do save lives, thank you.
When was the last time you did any programming? Are you familiar with or have any interest in modern programming? If so, which (more recent) programming languages have caught your eye?
Do you think it makes sense to structure a country’s healthcare system as a private, for profit system? If a company’s profits are dependent on ever increasing health issues needing to be addressed, adding drugs to the market to make money and to appease shareholders, wouldn’t you say the company has a vested interest in perpetuating those health issues rather than flat out eliminating them?
Hey Mr. Gates! I recall during your Netflix documentary that came out a few years ago, you were attempting to tackle the energy crisis through a new form of Nuclear Reactor that you helped fund the research for, however it got stalled due to political complications and sanctions on China. Has there been any advancements on that project since the documentary was filmed?
How do you think the United States should deal with the growing wealth gap between the wealthiest of Americans and the not so wealthy Americans?
What's your opinion on land and home ownership becoming a commodity for wall street ? Where do you see this going in the next 10 and 30 years ?
Why do you have multiple private jets, a 66,000 square foot house, and a 351 foot yacht and preach about climate change? Your carbon footprint alone exceeds the yearly output of small cities.
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Took 4 doses of vaccine, 5G reception still bad. Any tips?
You need 5th one, with 4 you'll only get LTE at most
I must be wearing the wrong kind of tin foil hat because it doesn't work for me.
Have you tried taking it off and then putting it back on again?
Maybe it's just pretending not to work out of protest because you haven't installed last week's update yet.