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The Microsoft Millionaires Come of Age
iseff writes "The NYTimes is running a story about the ways in which Microsoft millionaires are putting their money to use. According to the story, there is somewhere around 10,000 Microsoft made millionaires spending money on various pet projects. For example, former programmer Chris Peters bought the PBA (Professional Bowlers Association), while Stephanie DeVaan founded a political action committee and Rich Tong founded Ignition Partners, a VC firm."
The problem is that all these millionaires made the vast majority of their money, not from free market forces, but from a government imposed monopoly on the distribution of infromation called copyrights.
This is not a natural form of profit, and when it comes to free markets, I suspect that many of them probably have no clue as how to make money any more than Miscosoft has a clue of how to make money outside of it's core office/os monopoly.
MS is literally burning most of their resources on trying to become an entertainment/media company right at a time in history when that part of the industry is predestined to become worthless as society enteres the information age. (Think of the people that were in the plantation business as the industrial revolution started to explode, yeah at first they became extremely rich as the cotton gin made their slaves 1000 times more productive, then they went to satanic hell)
The worst part is, very little of this money will likely go into successfull ventures, but when it hits the fan with the free software movement, a lot will likely go into dirty hardball. (Think SCO, MPAA BSA, RIAA rolled into one magnified by over 10000.)