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Gates Issues Call For "Creative Capitalism"

Posted by Soulskill on from the evidently-foss-is-a-little-too-creative dept.

theodp writes "Bill Gates makes his case for Creative Capitalism in TIME, citing projects like a Text-Free UI for illiterate computing, the use of Multimouse technology to allow fifty kids to share one computer display, cell phone billing by the second, and Bono's RED campaign as examples of the type of corporate creativity that can make the world a better place for the billion or so people scraping by on less than a dollar a day. Michael Kinsley, a former Microsoft employee whose wife still advises the Gates Foundation, says it's hard to object to Gates' goals, but notes that creative capitalism does have its share of skeptics, and points out that there was not a whole lot of energy devoted to lifting up the world's poor during Bill's three decades at Microsoft."

3 of 464 comments (clear)

  1. Re:Gotta monetize it by barometz · · Score: 0, Troll

    "Creative Communism", you're making it way too easy. Sheesh.

    --
    "Bi-la Kaifa"
  2. Reading training software? by tepples · · Score: 0, Troll

    Teach the buggers to read.

    Imagine software used by students with their teachers to help the students learn to read. What kind of user interface should the student side of this software have?

  3. Re:Corporations as philanthropists is not the goal by farmer11 · · Score: 0, Troll

    I don't think we can say what the effect of the Foundation will be for a long time. I am, however, skeptical. BillG was a robber baron for 3 decades, proving that power and money were his greatest ideals.

    Now he wants to give some money back. It seems like everyone assumes that giving away large sums of money means you're a great philanthropist. I disagree. Lots of his pay outs seem to be band aid solutions that sound good but are not really concerned with affecting the deep and painful social change necessary to make lasting improvements in impoverished parts of the world. He seems to be giving people fish so they will be dependent on gifts rather than teaching them to fish.

    His gifts seem like investments in the same apathetic economic machinery that does little or nothing to help these impoverished places. Investing in drug research? Why, so these companies can make a profit selling the drugs to these needy and poor people? Thanks Bill!