
Bill Gates made his fortune through sheer robber-baronry - todsacerdoti
https://threader.app/thread/1304811968398729218
======
nabla9
Bill Gates was just extremely brutal and cold, both in his personal relations
and in business practises.

Elon Musk, or Steve Jobs have probably been just as brutal but at least they
innovated and created cool stuff. They have/had vision.

MS under Gates was special in that they didn't come up with anything very
innovative. MS totally lacked vision. They first killed innovative
competitors, then maybe incorporated parts of that innovation after delay.
Gates was incredibly knowledgeable and intelligent, but not visionary. Tech
was only secondary consideration to business. MS under gates was
technologically underwhelming and super dull. After Gates resigned from his
position as Chief Technology Officer in MS, Microsoft's as a tech company
started to improve almost instantly.

~~~
cm277
Most people when they think innovation they think in terms of product, not
process. From a process pov modern software engineering exists on a planet
created by Microsoft. Commercial EULAs, shrink wrap software, platform
effects, developers as customers, etc, etc were mostly Microsoft innovations.

Microsoft executed. They executed mostly well and sometimes brilliantly.
Because if the processes are good enough for long enough product innovation
can be secondary.

Apple eventually became Microsoft and that's how they beat them.

------
jdietrich
If I had known how Gates would spend his fortune, I wouldn't have spent all
those years griping about Micro$haft.

~~~
molmalo
I believe he has the soul of a gamer. (heck, he ran a regular poker game at
Harvard).

And when he was immersed into the money-making game, he was all in, willing to
do anything to win.

But when you eventually beat the game, you don't get that thrilled anymore,
there's no big challenge ahead. You can play for a while to see how far can
you go, but it ends up being boring after a while.

So, I think he moved on to basically a real life version of reversal Plague
Inc (instead of trying to infect everyone, he tries to beat a disease). This
is a harder challenge in many ways, because he needs to deal with tons of
geopolitics, international affairs, research and development, human behavior,
etc.

If you see it from that perspective, you can still see that he is still a hard
player, but this time, he is playing a game that can be beneficial for
everybody, not just himself.

~~~
crgwbr
> real life version of reversal Plague Inc

To be pedantic, Plague Inc is just a reversed clone of the board game
Pandemic.

But overall, I think you’re spot on with his motivation.

------
dsbleia
Aside from the resentments of the author, I have to agree that antitrust has
been weakened in recent decades. This is just simply a fact. Some of you may
think that is a good thing, but you have to admit that it is the case.

------
sschueller
"A conspiracy to modify Windows so Netscape-rendered content would appear
"degraded""

This sounds like what Apple is doing right now and everyone keeps defending it
when it actual fact it's even worse.

Degraded non safari web browser performance on iOS ring a bell?

~~~
w0utert
>> _This sounds like what Apple is doing right now and everyone keeps
defending it when it actual fact it 's even worse_

What is it exactly that Apple is doing that you are referring to (I honestly
don’t know)?

~~~
fzzzy
Preventing third party jit, thus forcing chrome and firefox and other non-
safari browsers to use webkit for their implementations.

------
dvfjsdhgfv
If someone is interested, that particular transcript can be found here:

[https://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-
srv/business/longterm/micr...](https://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-
srv/business/longterm/microsoft/documents/gatespart5.htm)

A fascinating read.

------
bergstromm466
Gates used Microsoft to learn to create and then play the IP monopoly game,
and then used their gains to started building a bigger and bigger warchest.
Does anyone have examples of dominating-intellectual-property -oriented VC-
funded tech acquihires/acquisitions before Microsoft?

~~~
bergstromm466
the digital* IP monopoly game

------
cryptica
The concept of 'corporate personhood' is the single most damaging and unjust
legal construct of the century. Less than a couple of centuries ago, our
ancestors understood that corporations were an unnatural idea which did not
fit neatly within the framework of capitalism; so this status was reserved for
large scale government projects and had very specific constraints and mandates
imposed upon them. It wasn't until much later that corporations became the go-
to strategy for any business.

It takes 5 minutes to realize that corporations don't make sense as a concept;
the main benefit of a corporate structure over private business structures is
limited liability... Why in the world would we need to shield people from
being held liable for decisions that they made??? This is absurd.

The concept of a corporation is nothing but a way to deflect blame away from
real individuals who actually exist and to redirect that blame towards a
fictitious entity which is impervious to any kind of meaningful worldly
punishment.

~~~
klyrs
The coastal inferno, the Gulf hurricanes, widespread protests and riots: are
these actions of the invisible hand? This year's election is a choice between
the status quo which brought us here, and a corrupt tyrant who will
consolidate the profits to an even smaller class of elites. So, let's focus on
Gates: the kindest, gentlest, robber baron. This century's Carnegie.

He's plainspoken on the issue, really. If he were a politician, he'd be
restricted by laws and diplomacy and dealmaking. As a rich bastard, he can
traipse around and wield unilateral power wherever he decides to shower with
pennies. Of course, Bezos, Zuck et al have the same power. But they don't even
bother to pretend that they give a shit about non-billionaires.

------
wazoox
This is what he wrote about in a longer form here:
[https://onezero.medium.com/how-to-destroy-surveillance-
capit...](https://onezero.medium.com/how-to-destroy-surveillance-
capitalism-8135e6744d59?gi=sd)

This is also what Matt Stoller is writing about, the "monopolisation" of the
world, particularly in tech of course:
[https://mattstoller.substack.com/](https://mattstoller.substack.com/)

Funnily, I've recently read "Imperialism, the highest stage of capitalism" by
Lenin. Multinational companies were called trusts, monopolism was called
imperialism, and train, coal and steel was since replaced with telcos and
internet but it's incredibly apt at describing our world. Even the "systemic
banks" were mostly the same 100 years ago : BNP, Deutsche Bank, Société
Générale, JPMorgan...

~~~
lioeters
Thank you, both links led to thought-provoking articles.

> "..The rule of law against the powerful has collapsed in America."

> "Monopolism makes companies act like mafias, stupid and lazy, with an
> emphasis on abusive commercial practice rather than technical or
> organizational excellence."

> "Surveillance capitalism is everywhere. But it’s not the result of some
> wrong turn or a rogue abuse of corporate power — it’s the system working as
> intended."

\---

Here's the whole pamphlet by Lenin:

Imperialism, the Highest Stage of Capitalism -
[https://www.marxists.org/archive/lenin/works/1916/imp-
hsc/](https://www.marxists.org/archive/lenin/works/1916/imp-hsc/)

I'm no Marxist by any means, but I think it's possible to appreciate some of
these insights into society, without dismissing (or agreeing with) the
ideology that it's become.

------
chiefalchemist
And ever since, tech companies - for the most part - have been much less naive
about what can happen when tangling with politicians, especially the W.DC
type.

------
rektide
The loan to buy dos gets all the storytime usually. So some airing of the part
about putting ibm through the ringer. Yup. The applied practices of capital.

------
kren
Let's forget about the tens of thousands of companies that thrived and
hundreds of thousands of jobs created for Bill Gates' horrible ways. And the
fact that they willingly paid because they thought having Microsoft products
was better than not having Microsoft products. No one benefited from his
robber-baronry and everyone was forced to use Microsoft technology, even
Apple, and those products brought no value to no one. Oh man, I can't even
believe he would ever want to donate half of it to the prosperity of humanity
either. What good does that do?

~~~
nabla9
You use incorrect reasoning.

You should think in the terms of opportunity cost.

I'm convinced that there would have been more jobs and innovation without MS
monopoly. MS under gates killed and slowed down progress in personal
computing. They didn't innovate.

~~~
kren
I actually don't think it was a monopoly. I think it created an opportunity
for someone else to create better software. But instead we wanted to get rid
of the so called monopoly and we secured Microsoft's position in the market.
So if you want to talk about opportunity cost and state that Microsoft had a
monopoly, then the opportunity cost is that we didn't let another better
company take its place naturally and we spent a lot of tax payer money in
politics to take care of a problem that didn't need intervention. I firmly
believe we wouldn't be forced to use Microsoft today if we chose to do
nothing.

~~~
kren
What I mean is, we secured it by forcing them to create better products, so we
made Microsoft more desirable for consumers. If someone dislikes Microsoft's
monopoly and Bill Gates' fortune, then I'd argue intervention made it worse.

------
Igelau
News?

------
lukejduncan
“THE ENTIRE TECH INDUSTRY FITS AROUND A SINGLE TABLE.” Is incredibly
reductive.

------
bzb5
The author comes across as a petty, vindictive person.

------
data4lyfe
Threader is pretty interesting. It not only makes it generally easier to read
(save from any mistakes in the scraping or formatting) but also allows for
reading a twitter thread without the distraction of twitter itself, designed
to pull you into their ecosystem after you've finished the thread.

~~~
DyslexicAtheist
> without the distraction of twitter itself,

[https://nitter.net/search](https://nitter.net/search)

------
adamnemecek
It's reasonable to ask about the exact meaning of the word concerned given the
situation.

Also all the things mentioned are pretty standard these days.

~~~
dvtrn
Has the term been used to describe some other behavior since I learned about
it in 5th grade History class? I’d love to learn what else it’s used for, if
so

~~~
adamnemecek
It's not clear who "you" refers to in this context. Is it Bill Gates?
Microsoft? Does concern mean, "I sure hope they don't succeed" or does it
imply active steps?

~~~
TheOtherHobbes
In fact the meaning is completely clear in the context of the recording and
the events that preceded it.

------
fizixer
You cannot get ahead in society without making someone somewhat worse off.

How many you made worse off, and how much you made them worse off is a
function of how much you got ahead and in how much time.

"Free-market is not a zero sum game", is a lie that morons that go by the name
of 'economists' like to tell you. The world economy is growing by a minuscule
amount of 4% every year. Yes it's pretty much a zero-sum game, when some grow
way more than 4%, and others less, or even grow negative.

When CD tech became widespread, the VCR industry went out of business. When
DVD tech came along, CD industry went out of business. Online streaming put
pretty much everyone else out of business.

Do you not call this making people worse off? I do.

Is it a bad thing? that's a different question.

~~~
lend000
While inventing the printing press certainly put many scribes out of business,
few would call it zero-sum or robber-barony. The amount of new wealth
generated was exponential. That is still happening. 4% growth per year is over
10x in an average person's lifetime. Even accounting for inflation, the amount
of wealth per capita is always increasing with technology and innovation.

You allude to the fact that you don't consider it to be a bad thing at the
end, but even calling it a zero sum game is plainly wrong.

You are right about one thing, though. The incumbents are made worse off by a
better innovation. Sometimes that comes in the form of mom and pop shops,
sometimes big slow corporations. However, the positive net wealth gains and
the fact that this is the only way to achieve progress makes it seem
worthwhile.

~~~
cryptica
There has been no economic growth at all over the past 5 years and possibly
much longer (if you account for possible market manipulations by reserve
banks). If you measure the market cap of the biggest corporations relative to
any scarce commodity like Gold or Silver, the charts would be totally flat. If
you measure stock prices in terms of cryptocurrencies such as Bitcoin, then
stock prices have been dropping rapidly.

It doesn't make sense to measure stock prices in terms of fiat currencies
anymore because the Reserve Banks of the world can and have printed unlimited
amounts of it. You should only measure the price of stocks relative to the
value of scarce assets which have a stable intrinsic value (which is not the
case for the dollar or any fiat currency).

In Venezuela, the stock market yields hundreds or even thousand of times your
investment per year if returns are denominated in the national Venezuelan
Bolivar currency; this is way higher than any ROI you can get from any modern
stock markets in the US or anywhere else... It doesn't mean that these
companies are good investments and are actually growing (they're not; they're
tanking just like Venezuela itself).

If you think this is not what's happening in the US, just consider that the
price of US stocks are strongly correlated with each other... This is totally
consistent with what's happening in Venezuela; the degree of correlation in
price of unrelated stocks tells you the degree to which the so-called 'growth'
can be attributed to currency inflation.

~~~
lend000
Try benchmarking the latest and greatest desktop computer from 5 years ago
against what you can build today. Try using a 5 year old smartphone versus a
new one. Count how many skyscrapers have been erected in big cities that
didn't exist 5 years ago. You are arguing about some different topic, such as
currency manipulation and the implications of government debt.

However, total wealth certainly hasn't been stagnant, which is what this
thread is about.

~~~
cryptica
Wealth is about value. Personally I never cared much about the latest
smartphone, I wouldn't mind going back to my phone from 5 years ago. As for
skyscrapers, as COVID19 has shown, we don't need most of them (since people
can just work remotely). The money would have been better spent on giving
millenials higher salaries (or better, investing more in independent startups)
so that they could afford to buy their first house in the suburbs instead of
keeping them enslaved to their landlords and their corporate paymasters in the
city centers. In terms of the things that actually matter, wealth hasn't grown
at all.

I can stack millions of rocks on top of each other into a giant pile but that
doesn't mean I've been productive or that I created any wealth if nobody
benefits from my pile of rocks or if people are coerced into accepting its
legitimacy as a measure of wealth.

~~~
lend000
Wealth is about _perceived_ value. What you personally perceive as valuable is
different than the majority of participants in the economy, so trying to
enforce your judgments upon the system to show that no value was created is
pointless. You clearly have many gripes with various aspects of the economic
system, but my point is that value is still being created. I've created a ton
of value since 2015. The professional hardware and tools I use have improved
tremendously since that time. While the exact value below the paper wealth
numbers may be difficult to ascertain, it doesn't mean no wealth was created.
It should be obvious that things are still advancing to someone in the tech
space.

