Look, people cheat for lots of reasons.
People keep bad company for lots of reasons.
None of this on its own is necessarily worth completely condemning a person … but come on. Gates’s confirmed affair and reported attempts to inappropriately pursue other employees within his workplaces both show an ongoing pattern of bad behavior and are the result of a disgustingly unequal power balance.
He was the most powerful person at Microsoft, his name is on the building at the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, and he’s one of the richest men in the world.
His advances not only appear to have violated the terms of his marriage, but also put the women he approached in an impossible situation of having to tell their boss no — and risk any potential personal and professional consequences that may come with it.
As for the Epstein connection, well, Gates reportedly struck up his relationship with Epstein after Epstein was convicted of soliciting sex from a minor. And, according to The Daily Beast, Gates offered Epstein advice on how to rehab his public image.
These reports put quite the damper on the public image of Gates, who previously seemed like a mild-mannered rich guy who was just trying to do some good with his fortune.
Maybe that should have never been his image in the first place.
After all, Gates’s wealth comes from selling an operating system built on allegedly stolen code and using monopolistic practices to build his computer empire.
Yes, he’s been giving away his wealth recently, and some of it has been used to achieve breakthroughs that are genuinely good for the public.
He also has more money than any person could ever need or use and just keeps getting richer; in fact, he’s worth nearly twice what he was when he first promised to give away his wealth.
The Gates saga is a good reminder that wealth is not a virtue. Giving away his wealth does not make Gates altruistic — it’s the only reasonable thing to do with that much money.
How he treats people is a better indicator of his character than the fact that he parted with a fraction of his money, which he could never spend anyway.
And it appears he’s not quite as benevolent as his carefully curated public image suggests.
By`AJ Dellinger- Mic
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