The solace is that although Gates spends a great deal of money, there is growing scepticism about the intervention of billionaires as a panacea for humanity’s problems. One can see the often comical conspiracies around Gates (and the World Economic Forum with which he is often paired) as an exaggerated symptom of an actual overreach by private actors, who have over the past two decades sought to make policy from business class 40,000ft above democratic governments. That Gates effectively bought the silence of the journalists who could have been his most incisive critics only drives people understandably further towards marginal outlets that have the virtue, at least, of not being supported by the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation as they report on the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation.
This is precisely what separated the work of a man like Paul Farmer from this sort of helicopter philanthropy.