{"id":162388,"date":"2015-06-28T00:38:45","date_gmt":"2015-06-28T00:38:45","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/?p=162388"},"modified":"2015-06-28T00:56:53","modified_gmt":"2015-06-28T00:56:53","slug":"bill-gatess-idiocy-or-is-it-psychopathy","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/editorials\/bill-gatess-idiocy-or-is-it-psychopathy\/","title":{"rendered":"Bill Gates’s Idiocy (or Is It Psychopathy?)"},"content":{"rendered":"

Eric Zuesse<\/span><\/p>\n

Bill Gates was interviewed in the Thursday June 25th Financial Times<\/i>, about global warming investments, and he said some remarkably stupid things, but explaining what he said requires a lot of intelligence; so, maybe what he said isn\u2019t actually that stupid. Might he be an idiot savant? Perhaps there\u2019s a deeper truth here.<\/span><\/p>\n

After all, idiot savants should be respected in the areas where they have their gift, but not outside it. Occasionally, distinguishing between an idiot savant and a genius can be hard to do. <\/span><\/p>\n

For example, at the beginning of the 20th Century, Henry Ford was considered to be a genius of industry and of technology, and he was sometimes America\u2019s wealthiest person, but he was also a\u00a0bigot,<\/span><\/a>\u00a0and no one can be stupider than that; so, he was just an idiot savant, after all. He was additionally famous as a philanthropist, having founded the Ford Foundation, but his donations to Hitler\u2019s Nazi Party and his propagandizing in the United States against Jews and for the\u00a0\u201cProtocols of the Elders of Zion\u201d hoax,<\/span><\/a>\u00a0might have done the world more harm than his Foundation ever did good. It certainly helped to produce World War II, Hitler\u2019s\u00a0war to exterminate all Jews.<\/span><\/a><\/span><\/p>\n

Global warming will do even more harm in the world<\/a><\/span> than anti-Semitism has done; and the only way that it might be prevented from actually destroying the world is if very little of the already-discovered fossil-fuel reserves that are in the ground will ever be sold and burnt \u2013 in other words: used. This is the subject that Bill Gates was talking about; so, the key scientific finding about \u201cunburnable reserves\u201d must be stated, as it was clearly expressed in the 25 January 2013 study\u00a0\u201cOil and Carbon Revisited: Value at Risk from \u2018Unburnable\u2019 Reserves,\u201d<\/span><\/a>\u00a0from the giant global bank HSBC, \u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

The IEA\u2019s World Energy Outlook\u00a0(2012 edition) estimated that in order to have a 50% chance\u00a0of limiting the rise in global temperatures to 2\u00baC, only a third\u00a0of current fossil fuel reserves\u00a0can be burned before 2050.\u00a0The balance could be regarded as \u2018unburnable\u2019.<\/i><\/span><\/p>\n

That\u2019s for only a 50% chance of a livable world in 2050: \u201conly a third\u00a0of current fossil fuel reserves<\/i>\u201d can be burnt by that time; the remaining two-thirds must be wasted (left permanently in the ground), if we\u2019re to have just a 50% chance.<\/span><\/p>\n

Obviously, that\u2019s not good enough. We need a 100% chance of a livable world in 2050; and, if that\u2019s no longer possible, then we\u2019ve got to do everything that we can to approximate as closely to a 100% chance as we can. Two-thirds of current reserves being simply wasted \u2013 left forever in the ground \u2013 won\u2019t be good enough. It\u2019s got to be as close to 100% as we can make it.<\/span><\/p>\n

But, for Bill Gates, what\u2019s not good enough seems to be instead too<\/i> good, too<\/i> much. He doesn\u2019t want merely for those two-thirds to be burnt; he wants even more oil and gas and coal to be discovered; he wants to add yet more to these unburnable reserves. <\/span><\/p>\n

And, so, Agence France Presse headlined on 26 June 2015,\u00a0\u201cFossil fuel\u00a0divestment alone will not halt climate change: Gates,\u201d<\/span><\/a>\u00a0and they reported that he is investing some of the money of his \u2018charity,\u2019 the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, \u201cin carbon-spewing companies like BP\u201d \u2013 the oil giant that caused the 2010\u00a0Deepwater Horizon Oil Spill.<\/span><\/a>\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

This money that his Foundation is investing props up these companies’ stock prices, so that even more oil and gas can be discovered and added to their existing stockpile of unburnable reserves. Exploration, after all, is what a company like BP does<\/i>: it explores for and develops \u2013 sends to market \u2013 yet new sources of unburnable oil and gas. If it doesn\u2019t explore for yet more oil and gas and coal, then it simply dies. There are all of those sunk costs, which will kill it, even when they stop exploration altogether. If the assets that they\u2019ve discovered in the past can\u2019t be sold, then certainly new such assets can\u2019t be sold \u2013 but Bill Gates wants his \u2018charity\u2019 to pay (indirectly) to discover more such \u2018assets.\u2019 He apparently wants to burn the planet. But, he says he doesn\u2019t; so, Gates himself also personally “will invest $2 billion in green energy.\u201d Doesn\u2019t seem very smart, does it?<\/span><\/p>\n

The Financial Times<\/i> interviewed him and\u00a0reported<\/span><\/a>\u00a0that he was \u201crejecting calls from environmental campaign groups for shareholders to dump holdings in oil and gas companies, on the grounds this will have little impact.\u201d That \u201clittle impact\u201d is actually the only chance to salvage our planet. If investors don\u2019t drive down the market-value of fossil-fuels companies, then there will be even more unburnable reserves added to those that these companies have previously wasted money to discover; and those companies will thus become even more desperate to advertise and lobby against governmental actions to stop global warming; so, not only will governmental actions to stop global warming be further delayed, but the companies themselves are doomed anyway. It\u2019s just stupid, but that\u2019s the way the real economy (not the fake one in the textbooks)<\/span><\/a> actually works. It works like the debt-buildups and crashes in 2008, and in today\u2019s Greece, and elsewhere, have worked: crashes which can be predicted with certainty, and which become the worse the longer they\u2019re held off, but whose precise timing is always in doubt among the public (but known among the aristocracy, such as Gates) until the crash suddenly comes. (The world, and economic theory, are corrupt as hell<\/span><\/a>, in order to leave the public-at-large holding the bag at the end, almost every time.) Not only those companies will be doomed; but, by virtue of this needless delay, the planet itself will also be doomed. This is just obvious to any intelligent person; but (if we are to believe him) it\u2019s simply not obvious to Bill Gates. Does he actually believe in the tooth-fairy?<\/span><\/p>\n

Henry Ford didn\u2019t care enough about past history for him to get past history right. Bill Gates, apparently, doesn\u2019t care enough about future history to get future history right.<\/span><\/p>\n

It\u2019s even more important to care about the future, than it is to care about the past. But Bill Gates is either an idiot, or else he doesn\u2019t really<\/i> care about the future, because any investment in a fossil-fuels company is going largely into discovering yet more unburnable reserves<\/i>. That\u2019s so simple. Why doesn\u2019t he get it? Is he \u2013 like Henry Ford was \u2013 really just an idiot savant?<\/span><\/p>\n

The odd thing is that, whereas Gates wants his \u2018charity\u2019 to lose money on fossil-fuel stocks that are doomed to become a total waste (they\u2019ve already got more reserves than they\u2019ll ever sell), his personal<\/i> funds are simultaneously buying alternative-fuels stocks that will be benefiting from replacing<\/i> those fossil-fuel companies.\u00a0It\u2019s interesting that, while his \u2018charity\u2019 will be losing money, he personally will be gaining money.<\/span><\/p>\n

The inverse relationship between the values of fossil-fuels companies versus renewable-fuels companies is already evident from stock indexes that follow these things. Here<\/span><\/a> you can see the 5-year performance of renewable-fuels companies; and here<\/span><\/a> you can see the 5-year performance of fossil-fuels companies. Whereas the former are steadily going slightly upward (and a purer fossil-free index<\/span><\/a> has performed even more steeply upward than that), the latter (the fossils) are highly volatile and already seem to be heading slightly downward. Clearly, fossils are at least a little worse than alt-fuels stocks on the overall trend, but they are lots worse even than that when their additional extreme volatility is taken into account. On 25 August 2014, Bloomberg issued a report, \u201cFossil Fuel Divestment: A $5 Trillion Challenge,\u201d<\/span><\/a> and at the end on page 17, this puff-piece for staying in fossils characterized renewable-fuels investments as having the disadvantage of being \u201cvolatile\u201d as compared to fossil-fuels companies \u2013 something that they had offered no data to support, and which those three links I just provided show to be the exact opposite of the reality: the renewable-fuels companies are far less volatile, and also have better trendlines. Perhaps billionaires need the public to buy fossil-fuels stocks because that\u2019s what they must themselves get rid of. They know that the sector is inevitably heading for a crash. They know that only a 50% chance of a livable world in 2050 won\u2019t cut it much longer. They thus must sell their trash ASAP, and they need people to buy it.<\/span><\/p>\n

So: maybe Bill Gates is no idiot after all; maybe he is instead using his \u2018charity\u2019 in order to help suppress the current market value of the alt-fuels stocks that he is buying (at those artificially suppressed market-values) for his personal portfolio. Maybe the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation is basically a racket for him, not just regarding \u2018charity\u2019 tax-deductions, but, even more, in order to suppress the current market value of the stocks that he\u2019s buying right now, so that he\u2019ll experience even bigger capital gains on them as more and more people subsequently dump oil-and-gas-and-coal companies (such as his \u2018charity\u2019 is buying) in order to invest in alt-fuels stocks (which he will then be selling \u2013 presumably at hefty profits). He just doesn\u2019t care about the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation losing some of its money, so long as this will boost his own net worth.<\/span><\/p>\n

Maybe Gates is intelligent, after all \u2013 an intelligent psychopath, that is.<\/span><\/p>\n

Well: he seems to be a lot like Henry Ford, after all, doesn\u2019t he?<\/span><\/p>\n

Or, is he, instead, an idiot savant, who is intelligent only about investing, and who has no real conscience \u2013 none but the one that he fakes (via his \u2018philanthropy\u2019)?<\/span><\/p>\n

However, that would be just a specific type<\/i> of intelligent psychopath, wouldn\u2019t it?<\/span><\/p>\n

Whatever it is, it\u2019s the real world; it\u2019s the way a real economy works \u2013 or, at least, ours does.<\/span><\/p>\n

———-<\/span><\/p>\n

Investigative historian Eric Zuesse is the author, most recently, of They\u2019re Not Even Close: The Democratic vs. Republican Economic Records, 1910-2010<\/i><\/span><\/a>,<\/i> and of \u00a0<\/i>CHRIST\u2019S VENTRILOQUISTS: The Event that Created Christianity<\/i><\/span><\/a>, and\u00a0of \u00a0Feudalism, Fascism, Libertarianism and Economics<\/i><\/span><\/a>.<\/span><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Eric Zuesse Bill Gates was interviewed in the Thursday June 25th Financial Times, about global warming investments, and he said some remarkably stupid things, but explaining what he said requires a lot of intelligence; so, maybe what he said isn\u2019t actually that stupid. Might he be an idiot savant? Perhaps there\u2019s a deeper truth here. […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1254,"featured_media":162389,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[461,1622],"tags":[2450,2451,845,928,927,862,851,654,77,2452],"class_list":{"0":"post-162388","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-editorials","8":"category-featured","9":"tag-bill-gates","10":"tag-coal","11":"tag-economics","12":"tag-energy","13":"tag-environment","14":"tag-fraud","15":"tag-gas-2","16":"tag-global-warming","17":"tag-oil","18":"tag-scams"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/162388","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1254"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=162388"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/162388\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/162389"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=162388"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=162388"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=162388"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}