Have you ever met Bill, and chatted with him for a few hours? I have. I think you'll find he's a geek's geek, with conscience. Thank Ballmer for most of MS's excesses. Ask yourself: is the world a better place due to what he's been able to do, so far? And, one would hope, continues to do through the Gates Foundation? Mostly, please, don't be so quick to throw the first stone.
I'm sure your few hours conversation with him overturns the evidence the DoJ managed to collect about their plans for Netscape laid out in emails and memos. Stuff signed by Gates saying “take away their oxygen supply”, “crush them” and “knife the baby” in regard to killing Netscape while they were up and coming.
Bill Gates is a bully, and no matter how much money he throws at malaria research to redeem it, the sad bit is that he set the bar for Bezos, Zuck, Kalanick et al to reach and they've largely reached similar heights because over the years the US government has successfully been defanged.
And regarding the Gates Foundation:
> ...there’s clearly a conflict of interest that Gates does have that’s at stake here. And that’s this, you know, look, if you look at one of the main problems that the Global South faces right now is that they have a lot of difficulty paying the patent licensing fees that they need on sort of basic medicines and technology including for renewable energy access. And one of the reasons for that is because of the TRIPS agreements, the Trade-Related Aspects of Intellectual Property Rights, which is an agreement that came into force under the World Trade Organization in 1994, which basically massively extends corporate patents law around the world. And Gates has benefited singularly from that because that’s where the vast majority of his profits come from and what funds the Gates Foundation is rent effectively on intellectual property.
People change in 20 or 30 years. I sure don't want to be judged by some of the things I did 30 years ago, when I was a hypercompetitive jerk (also socially clueless, and a few other things).
And I don't think that the "vast majority" of Gates' profits came from patents in the Global South. It came from copyrights, and primarily in the First World.
Not everybody worships wealth. Not everybody buys into the myth of the tech genius/entrepreneurial wizard. Some folks, myself included, don't feel that it's even remotely possible to amass billions in personal capital without doing some truly dirty, nasty, awful things to many other people along the way.
So, frankly, I don't really care that Bill Gates is now a soft sweater-wearing sexagenerian who likes to talk about solving global problems with his ill-gotten gains, instead of a cutthroat corporate executive crushing his competitors and perverting the market in the process. The fact is that one led to the other.
I want to hear less from delusional, egotistical billionaires who think that they themselves can solve the problems we face as a society, and more from our actual, you know, political leaders. I didn't vote for Bill Gates, thank you.
I'd always be more impressed by a poacher-turned-gamekeeper who returned his gains and then lived like the rest of us. Continuing to live a megaconsuming existence while consolidating power over fellow humans via 'philanthropy' is just more of the same.
> "don't feel that it's even remotely possible to amass billions in personal capital"
Instead of feeling, you can instead learn and think about how wealth and value works. Capitalism allows ownership of production. Produce something valuable enough and you'll make your billions.
There are plenty of people on this forum with a 7 or 8 figure net worth from starting a business, and even a few billionaires like the founders of Dropbox and Stripe. Maybe ask them how they did it instead of assuming the worst.
How can we know since he forced his vision on the world for so many years in technology?
At the very least, the fact BeOS isn't giving Windows and Apple a run for their money is a travesty.
The idea that super-rich people need to be super rich to do great things and society can't just come together to do them (Do you have the same reverence for the NIH? An entity that actually pays for indirect costs, unlike the Gates' Foundation.) is such a farce.
Very impressive that you have chatted with Bill Gates, and you seem very proud of that (congrats, by the way), but he's still a capital hoarder sitting atop a mountain of ill-gotten gains, and no I don't feel that I should thank him for that
Agreed, also in the article he advocates for higher taxes on the wealthiest people.
I don't see how a billionaire who holds this position can be anything but genuine.
Says the man that used his monopoly to crush his competition, created embrace/extend/extinguish and become the richest man in the world.
Exciting now that there are no stakes for him he's thinking about others (in both this and his other philanthropic adventures).