If you want to learn more about what he is actually doing with his money, watch “Inside Bill’s Brain: Decoding Bill Gates”. You don’t have to agree (and I don’t) with every stance he has on issues but he is generally using his wealth to help people live healthier lives with more opportunities for education and advancement.
What are Bill's opinions on gun control? Socialized healthcare? Redistribution of wealth by welfare? Free speech?
It's easy to say that anyone who doesn't want children to die of preventable diseases is a "good" person... Only a sociopath would disagree.
And I'm sure most people will agree that less people on the planet would be beneficial. But the answers to the above issues, to me anyway, are a good indicator on how someone would choose to make that happen. I think Bill is of the pragmatic "math doesn't lie" camp... Which was the camp of Stalin and other upstanding members of the human race.
The man's wealth was built on ideas that he "acquired" and tweaked... It makes me wonder what other unoriginal ideas he is tweaking to achieve his goals.
Mike
From what I’ve seen of him, his answer to lowering the worldwide population would be to educate more people (especially girls and women), create a way for them to live in sanitary conditions and reduce the obstacles for people to participate in their society. All of these things are shown to reduce fecundity rates. I have never seen from a reputable source that he would condone mass sterilization, limits on children, etc. Tackle the problem at the source: make it so people don’t feel compelled to have lots of children.
Don't get me wrong... I'm all for less people to have to deal with. But when the words "population control" are uttered from the mouths of people in positions of power and influence, us little folk get nervous. And with history to look back on, rightfully so.
But the other issue is that we look at the world right now and decide there's too many of us... We need to rein in the biological imperative to make little copies of ourselves. But that biological imperative exists for a reason. Things are relatively calm right now. But that may not be the case tomorrow afternoon... We may be the bullseye for an errant asteroid... Or the Yellowstone caldera might decide that tomorrow is the day.
Because we can sit here and manipulate pieces of plastic and silicon and argue across vast distances we think we have it all figured out. We don't. We're a cosmic hiccup away from competing with primordial ooze. If the worst happens we will want all the diverse genetic material we can scrounge up.
If you believe in God then you know that at a certain point the scales will be balanced.
If you hold to natural selection then you know that at a certain point the scales will be balanced.
It makes sense to not breed more than we can feed. But when whatever universal force punches our ticket we'll need numbers on our side.
Mike