Sunday 24 January 2016

“Save Us Bill Gates!” Video Game Satirises Philanthrocapitalism




A bit fun from Global Justice Now who designed this video game mocking the Bill Gates foundation and its ill judged attempts to save the world.

A video game released today by campaign group Global Justice Now puts the player in the role of a super-hero Bill Gates flying above a stereotypical African landscape trying to disperse as much money as he can, while his portfolio of stocks and shares keeps generating more money.

The video follows the release of the report Gated Development - Is the Gates Foundation always a force for good? earlier this week, which levelled a series of criticisms as to the way that the foundation was dangerously skewing international development towards corporate globalisation and techno-fixes.

The report also highlighted the relationship between the money that the foundation has to give away and Microsoft’s tax practices. A 2012 report from the US Senate found that Microsoft’s use of offshore subsidiaries enabled it to avoid taxes of $4.5 billion – a sum greater than the Gates Foundation’s annual grant making ($3.6 billion in 2014).

Polly Jones, the head of campaigns and policy at Global Justice Now said:
“The ’Save us Bill Gates!’ video game is clearly a tongue-in-cheek, piece of fun, but the underlying issues it points to are very serious. It’s very disturbing that a small handful of obscenely rich individuals can exert an enormous influence on the education, healthcare and agriculture policies around the world. The vision of development that the Gates Foundation is pushing is one derived from the free market, big business values of corporate America, and has the potential to make poverty and inequality even worse. People in countries across the global south don’t need ‘saving’ by the likes of Bill Gates. They want justice and not charity, with changes in the unfair trade rules and tax legislations that mean that these countries are systemically impoverished.”

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