I think maybe GP was talking about what Bill Gates chose to do with his money and influence once he had them. In terms of the number of lives saved and improved, Bill Gates has had more impact than most of us could ever hope to.
He was trying to launder his reputation after all the stuff that came out in the trials, his connections to Epstein (which went back to before E’s first arrest) etc.
Arguably he did gain status. He did just what the writer of the article suggested. Instead of putting all of his effort into 'richest person in the world' status, he picked another thing to be high status in. Seems to have worked. He's not the richest guy in the world any more (admittedly he ain't far off, either), but he's arguably worth more respect than Bezos or Musk. Unless you're against microchips in vaccines, of course.
There’s no doubt Mackenzie Scott has gained a huge amount of status through how she’s dealt with acquiring enormous wealth. For me at least, she has way more respect than Gates Bezos and Musk combined…
Whatever positive effect his philantropy has, it has to be offset by the damage he's done to the world, by slowing down progress (famous asshole predatory behaviour of MS of the nineties) in order to make his money in the first place. Only then we can try to assess if Bill Gates' overall impact on the world was actually positive.
