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> This generation of "robber barons" has very clearly done more good for society than any other group of people of the same size

I'd take Jonas Salk, Norman Borlaug, and Marie Curie over Elon Musk, Mark Zuckerberg and Jeff Benzos.




Well i meant "group" as in an actual group of people who are all doing roughly the same thing at the same time, like the previous generation of robber barons.

But even in this case, I could make a pretty strong case that Salk was less important for the eradication of Polio than Gates, and that Curie will likely be less important in the long run than Zuckerberg on healthcare and biosciences, and a weaker but reasonable case that Borlaug will be less impactful on human survivability with increasing population than Musk.


You can't make a case for any of that. But go ahead and try.


no. just NO. look at maps of polio proliferation before/after Jonas Salk, the frikkin guy who DISCOVERED/CREATED the polio vaccine, and then look at maps related to Gates work, which, while admirable, bears no comparison from the night-vs-day world of pre-polio-vaccine vs post-vaccine. Wards of people in iron-lung machines staring at mirrors on the ceiling. It was before your time, but this is no excuse for spouting total nonsense.


You might be right. It is possible that Gates is merely one of the most positively impactful human beings, rather than the absolute most positively impactful.




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