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Bill Gates's Plan To Improve Our World
An anonymous reader writes "Bill Gates has written an article in Wired outlining his strategy to improve people's lives through philanthropy and investment in technology and the sciences. He says, 'We want to give our wealth back to society in a way that has the most impact, and so we look for opportunities to invest for the largest returns. That means tackling the world's biggest problems and funding the most likely solutions. That's an even greater challenge than it sounds. I don't have a magic formula for prioritizing the world's problems. You could make a good case for poverty, disease, hunger, war, poor education, bad governance, political instability, weak trade, or mistreatment of women. ...I am a devout fan of capitalism. It is the best system ever devised for making self-interest serve the wider interest. This system is responsible for many of the great advances that have improved the lives of billions—from airplanes to air-conditioning to computers. But capitalism alone can't address the needs of the very poor. This means market-driven innovation can actually widen the gap between rich and poor. ... We take a double-pronged approach: (1) Narrow the gap so that advances for the rich world reach the poor world faster, and (2) turn more of the world's IQ toward devising solutions to problems that only people in the poor world face.'"
Religion.
Of course someone who made a lot of money helping a lot of other people make a lot of money helping millions of people have jobs to do. While pissing off the largest portion of the readership here due to quality of the product. I'm pretty sure this isn't going to get a fair shake here on Slashdot.
Paying taxes to buy civilization is like paying a hooker to buy love.
" turn more of the world's IQ toward devising solutions to problems that only people in the poor world face. '
Like the US and Imperialist Europe and their economic manipulation/hegemony? Great, get to work Bill.
I am a devout fan of capitalism. It is the best system ever devised for making self-interest serve the wider interest.
The argument can be made that capitalism widens the divide between rich and poor. The old question remains whether unbridled capitalism and philanthropy can better address the world's woes, or, would a more socialist political structure like those seen in Scandinavian countries better address and more quickly narrow the divide.
I thought he retired.
And you assert he is wrong, because....? Jealousy, or just because rich people necessarily must be "evil" in order to further the cause of class warfare?
Keep in mind that Bill Gates has always had a Poker Face for business.
Anything he could do to to grow businesses that reduce poverty, is in his interests. However you won't see him just throwing money into impoverished nations or even funding initiatives on American soil that won't have results.
Ask yourself, which is more likely to have results, spending 10 million dollars on developing better educational facilities, or handing out 10$ to one million people in poverty? The better long term outcome is the better educational facilities since it may help for 50 years. Yet many people would rather take the handout and keep taking handouts as long as someone is doing the handouts. This is why the concept of "welfare" is broken in developed countries. In developed countries, the welfare system allows people to never work at all during their lives and produce as many babies as possible. So all this does is lead to a population explosion of yet more people on welfare.
You'd be surprised at how often kids just do exactly what their parents did. You don't break that cycle unless you can education them out of that cycle.
'We want to give our wealth back to society in a
... BURN THE WITCH!
No, seriously. As a percentage of net earnings, the rich contribute far less as an aggregate group than the poor. There's an inverse relationship between income and charity. The more you make, the less you give, proportionally speaking. You can outline all the reasons why it would be better if this wasn't the case... I doubt you'll find much disagreement here. But making the case for it doesn't mean anyone's going to adopt it; A concept Mr. Gates and the company he used to captain both seem ill-equipped to grasp. Simply understanding the problem better doesn't result in a solution; It is one of the oldest delusions humanity has to offer... that knowledge will lead to action.
Instead, we need to figure out why people give proportionally less, and address the issue within that cognitive framework. And the Just world phenomenon is a great place to start: The belief that you deserve whatever is happening, or has happened, to you. Fundamentally, I think you'll find the reason the rich give less is because on a subconscious level, having adopted the belief that they earned their wealth rather than simply having won a cosmic lottery, they then build on that with confirmation bias. That is, every action that comes after that in some fashion just confirms that they're more deserving than the next guy... and eventually, that makes them not very charitable. Afterall, if I did it, you can do it, right? It's such a basic failure of reasoning that entire books have been written on the subject, and yet... here we are... still not getting it.
#fuckbeta #iamslashdot #dicemustdie
Nothing is ever that simple and any attempt to boil something so vast down to a single word, no matter how far reaching, is naive. Religions exists because of various human needs, and people believe because of various needs. It can enrich lives or impoverish them. It can motivate, or demotivate. It can create and destroy. Help and Harm. Like anything manmade it can be used for peace, and for war.
Terrible acts done in the name of religion are symptoms of deeper, more intertwined problems in how we relate to one another, terrible teachings symptomatic of human needs for order, control, and normalcy. Absence of religion would not simply make the world a better place on it's own, something else would take the place, both good and bad, that religion serves . "If god did not exist it would be necessary to invent him"
"goodbye and hello, as always" ~Prince Corwin, from Zelazny's Amber series
Bzzt. Thanks for playing.
You can highlight lots of examples of power-hungry idiots using certain religious ideology to cause harm, but it's no more dangerous than power-hungry idiots finding some other, perhaps less convenient, excuse to do the same thing. Many have done that as well.
Even if you had a point, which you don't, "correlation does not equal causation" (we can't have a Slashdot post that doesn't mention that fact, or Nazis, or "trusting trust")
In the old days when this was a small town calling itself a city, I'd frequently be at a play with Bill or some other event.
I like his focus on where we need to fix it, but the cold hard fact is he lives in an area where the ultra-rich are taxed much less than the poor, and he goes to great lengths not to pay taxes on many levels.
Capitalism is no problem - but Adam Smith, the Father of Capitalism, railed against Mercantalism that Bill worships at the head of.
-- Tigger warning: This post may contain tiggers! --
I saw a documentary once and it said that in the future we'll have our greatest minds working on those.
to the poor, its the standard of living their income provides that matters. If the entire World were millionaires it doesn't matter that some people like you are 10,000 times richer. Technology trickles down to the poor. There are cell phones in Africa and they're not there because of charity, they're there because mass production have made them economically viable.
Most of the hate for Microsoft was due to their monopoly status; not so much anymore. That monopoly let them sit on their laurels and collect money without needing to produce the best product quality. Today, MS the _underdog_ in a lot of hugely important markets. Furthermore, Gates is only a Chairman at MS anymore and has little or nothing to do with day to day operations. He's spent a an enormous amount of time, effort, and money sincerely trying (and in many cases succeeding) to make things a little better for humans everywhere. People need to let go of the hate, it's no longer useful in this context.
Human beings.
Gamingmuseum.com: Give your 3D accelerator a rest.
This is worth a read:
http://newint.org/features/2012/04/01/bill-gates-charitable-giving-ethics/
TL;DR
Gates's and others' philanthropy prolongs poverty by sowing as it does the seed of more inequality (in Gates's case, through the formation of health policies in the third world that make it easier for Western drug companies to open up markets for treatments there). They give away the fruit, but never the trees.
As Oscar Wilde observed of the philanthropists of his era: ‘They seriously and very sentimentally set themselves to the task of remedying the evils that they see in poverty, but their remedies do not cure the disease: they merely prolong it.’ Then and now, as Wilde said, ‘the proper aim is to try and reconstruct society on such a basis that poverty will be impossible.’
This is really the question that needs to be addressed: why is poverty still possible - and why can it even get worse - after 200 years of Gates's capitalism? Surely by now if capitalism was the answer, we'd not be where we are today.
"And the meaning of words; when they cease to function; when will it start worrying you?"
I don't have a magic formula for prioritizing the world's problems. You could make a good case for poverty, disease, hunger, war, poor education, bad governance, political instability, weak trade, or mistreatment of women.
All of those things are good causes, but since Gates is struggling to find a place to begin, I'd like to suggest that he starts by fixing the blight-on-humanity that he created. Microsoft screws many of us over on a regular basis. It hurts the economy. It hurts technological progress. How about pushing his company to be more cooperative? How about pushing for open standards? How about pushing back against terrible patent and copyright abuses, insane EULAs, and absurd licensing fees? How about open sourcing old versions of their software so that software from a few decades ago can be preserved for historical/artistic purposes, if for no other reason?
It's like a man coming into your house, pissing all over your rug, and then saying he's struggling to figure out how he can improve your property value. Maybe start by not pissing on my rug anymore?
to explain off world intelligence - at the same time insulting our own
There are millions of poor kids in America, Gates.
Don't you care about them?
Yeah Right -provided you are on the right end the rich interest's end.
Look at it in context. He starts by paying homage to capitalism so people won't call him a blasphemer for saying "capitalism alone can't address the needs of the very poor" (damn, am I really defending Bill Gates?).
Remember when every /. article related to Microsoft had that cyborg pic of Willy next to it? So glad he didnt turn out like the Waltons! :)
That and I dont think Ive heard the plight of our people and the path towards resolution ever put so succinctly.
Altruistic capitalism. Bravo Willy, bravo!
Someone forgot to tell Bain Capital.
I personally know someone who worked for a mid-sized IT firm out of Texas. They were small but growing and successful. Then Bain Capital stepped in, waived some money around and purchased the company. The day after the deal was finalized, everyone was fired and the company was liquidized - sold of bit by bit. The poor lady is now in the Mid-West working in a call center.
Capitalism for the wider interests my ass. When the wider interests are served, it's incidental. Capitalists only care about the 99% when it means making more money off of them, and they wouldn't serve the wider interests if they didn't have to. Granted, they often do, but it's not because they are on the moral high ground. Perhaps Bill Gates really truly is trying to say that the evils of capitalism truly equal good for the people, but I don't think that makes it a good system - it's open to mutation and a future where we see the raw, unabashed, exploitation of the people. Like I said, it's incidental. We are carefully watching the US government become dystopian, while corporations are more quietly doing the same. Bill gates might be a true philanthropist, but he is nearly alone in his level of giving and is kidding himself if he believes all capitalists have the greater good or wider interests at heart.
Brought to you by Carl's Junior.
Does this means he will fund Linux?
So Bill Gates combined forces with Bloomberg and the teacher's union in Douglas county to try to politically turn over the Douglas county schoolboard, AGAINST the will of the people in Douglas County. I don't want this kind of "philanthropy" from any of these types of people. No thanks.
'We want to give our wealth back to society in a way that has the most impact, and so we look for opportunities to invest for the largest returns.
Well, Mr. Gates, here's how:
Don't take away their wealth in the first place.
It's well-established fact that the poor make the best use of money. There is less waste and more immediate progress than with any organisation or institute. Micro-credits are a blasting success wherever they are granted in the interest of helping people. (they fail when the same banks that caused the housing bubble/burst get in on the game hoping to make a quick buck, because they don't screen the applicants).
Monopoly rent is known to damage the economy disproportionately. For every $ you give to charity now, Mr. Gates, you've already taken two away.
"Don't be a greedy bastard." is a much, much better formula for helping other people than giving away even most of your money. Because it's not a zero-sum game, it's not just redistribution of wealth, the 1% gain most of their wealth not just by taking it from the rest, but by causing damage in excess of their profit.
Assorted stuff I do sometimes: Lemuria.org
Bill wants you all to love him, that's all.... and vote him a Nobel Peace prize for saving the world. He's been trying for a while now, one wonders how much money he has invested in pursuit of the prize.
I prefer Classic Slashdot.
After the way he "improved" my computing experience over the last few decades, I will take my chances without his plan.
If Slashdot were chemistry it would look like this:Cadaverine
The apostrophe defeats programmers yet again. Programmers who eagerly want to learn as many complex and disparate ways of doing the same thing but are confused for all eternity by '
Bill Gates is a depravity who is PROUD to model himself on the founders of America's 'great' eugenic foundations- you know, the organisations that gave the world "racial science" that Hitler and the Nazis (amongst other monsters) so willingly adopted. Go read about the history of IBM and the Nazis of WW2.
Of late, Gates has been the main driving force behind three horrifying initiatives in the USA
1) The inBloom full surveillance database of every child in the USA, across the entirety of their childhood. Bill Gates built the inBloom system in partnership with Rupert Murdoch. Now I KNOW you sheeple are thick- so very very thick- but how do you explain Rupert (FOX NEWS) Murdoch working hand in hand with Bill (MSNBC) Gates, when you sheeple are told that every conventional 'liberal' considers the war mongering right wing filth behind Fox News to be the very definition of evil?
2) The 'Common Core' curriculum. You cannot dumb down people properly unless you take control of their early education.
3) The 'NSA in every home' platform we know as the Xbox Kinect 2 sensor system. When SF, futurist and political writers of the past wanted to BANG their readers over the head with a vision of the ultimate nightmarish police-state future, they imagined a world where every ordinary person had government cameras in their own homes, and government broadcast services that could not be switched off. No sane person wants the government in their homes, and none of the early adopters of the WWW (which obviously excludes Gates and Microsoft- they were VERY late to the party under Gates' braindead leadership) desired that the Internet would take that direction.
Gates, like Tony Blair, travels the world, meeting with people FAR more important than you (by the definitions of 'importance' used by Blair, Gates, and the other monsters in their circle), constantly pushing a single theme- modern technology, including the media and computers, MUST be used to take rigid control of the sheeple once and for all. Gates is a member of Blair's Fabian cult- a cult that states that ALL types of Human must be given the chance to rise to the top (no racism or any similar pathetic nonsense tolerated). BUT, after a suitable period where equality of opportunity has existed, those that fail to rise to the top MUST be recognised as cattle, just as those that successfully rose are recognised as 'masters'.
Gates and Blair both actively call for a massive cull of the 'useless eaters'- a process by which the 'ideal' population of the Earth is determined, and excess population eliminated by any possible means. Blair tells all those that will,listen that this MUST be accomplished by another World War- cleansing the Earth and moving Mankind into the next era, just as his ilk claim WW2 (and to a lesser extent WW1) did. Gates prefers a more 'scientific' approach to the culling of billions of Humans. Like those that headed America's eugenic foundations before him, Gates would prefer a world that accepted compulsory sterilisation and euthanasia.
The NSA revelations should have blown away any illusions you sheeple have about the inherent 'goodness' of your masters. Humans who achieve power over other humans inevitably despise those people who accept their position in life 'on their knees'. When you let Gates put NSA spying in your home via the Xbox One, or do not destroy Gates' inBloom and Core Curriculum assaults against your children in your local communities- then you are choosing to live on your knees.
Oh, and Bill Gates is a corrupt lying fuck that I would not trust with my used toilet paper, let alone tell us what changes we need to make in the world or what sciences we should be studying.
Airplanes got invented by individuals - the french were gliding down hillsides and the Wrights read about that and said "fuckin' cool lets do that" and then did it better than anyone else. Only after did they try to commercialize it and capitalism caused some ugly things along the way. Air conditioning I'm not sure about. And Computers were invented for war, not capitalism. Of course business will take anything and try to market it to everyone in order to make a buck, so business does bring advances to the people. That doesn't mean it's the only way, but it was proven effective. In general it doesn't cause innovation. Shit, DOS was a personal project that Bill Gates bought from his friend (without disclosing who he was selling it to and hence got it relatively cheap) - point is that these things often come about due to interests other than capitalism.
That's not how apostrophes work.
"We can't solve problems by using the same kind of thinking we used when we created them." I think that is true enough... may be just a saying but how in hell he will do that. I mean. First, Capitalism is a competitive thing... people loose, people win, that should be clear even for Bill Gates. What we need here to erradicate poverty is a cooperative system. Money is just a device, an invention that grew bigger than its purpose. This guy may be the smartests guy alive for business but he needs to see outside the box. Funny thing is he has the time and the money to do so... so questions arise on what is the real plan or how he plans to do it. For as long as I remember each year we have more benefical concerts, programs, donations, etc... the amount of money destined to charity is huge... I agree is not well managed but poverty increases at a higher rate. Something must be wrong in the wiring of capitalism.
http://www.quasarcr.com/
so bill will open source and make free windows?
Has it ever occurred to you that if capitalism worked so well 100 years ago, we wouldn't have instituted the policies we did?
Bill Gates isn't some evil person. He ran a business, did some thing we don'y like, paid for those mistakes.
Now he is rich and helping the world.
He is a person.
The Kruger Dunning explains most post on
40.1 trillion world debt
imagine if the bill gates rich pricks were not all busy lying and cheating and then giving lil tidbits to make themselves look good how the world will be
" The rich of today pale in comparison to the wealthy of the last century. "
laughably false.
", the 'wealth gap' was much wider, yet the standard of living for the poor was rising, "
It was rising because the gap was getting narrower.
" not falling the way it is today."
when the gap is increasing.
100 years ago free market enslaved children in sweat shops, poisoned bodies of water, allow real owners to destroy anything in their past. Whole cities would have coal ash in the air all the time, created monopolies that remove choice.
Study some fucking history.
The Kruger Dunning explains most post on
Jeezus Bill, if both you and Warren Buffet really want to make the greatest impact on humanity, use every cent of your wealth to establish a global free press foundation beholden to no person or government. Only via this method can humankind be as sure as is humanly possible that we're getting an unbiased view. Fund a Free Press Foundation now!
Did you ever wake up in the morning, with a Zombie Woof behind your eyes? -- FZ
He is a person.
People suck.
I'm guessing that he's not taking submissions...just pursuing things on his own?
Jhyrryl
The rich of today pale in comparison to the wealthy of the last century. Rockefellers, Carnegies had 10 times as much wealth as Bill Gates, the 'wealth gap' was much wider, yet the standard of living for the poor was rising, not falling the way it is today.
Wow! 10 times more!? Got a source for this interesting claim? You wouldn't just be makin' stuff up would you?
From what I can find the incomes of the top 1%, and the top 0.01%, etc., is at or above the GDP share of the beginning of the 20th century.
Starships were meant to fly, Hands up and touch the sky - Nicky Minaj
But capitalism alone can't address the needs of the very poor.
Your signal to double down on capitalism.
an ill wind that blows no good
The argument "it worked for the ancient people it must be OK" is not a good one. Although it may have indeed been helpful, people of ancient times would also tell you that acupuncture works and that rhino horn will give you a bigger human horn. Some people still believe that today because it is ancient tradition, see the theme here? Keeping religion out of habit is a pretty poor idea if there were some alternative that didn't leave people willfully ignorant and hostile to advances in society. Don't just get rid of religion, replace it with something more attractive and less damaging. What that alternative is, I have no idea, we can only hope its not Google +
"poverty, disease, hunger, war, poor education, bad governance, political instability, weak trade, or mistreatment of women". We could add deforestation, global warming, dwindling supplies of fresh water, etc.
But aren't all these symptoms of an exploding human population over the last few centuries and especially the last few decades. If you don't do something to fix that problem, then you're wasting your time and money on anything else. I like capitalism too but I don't think capitalism solves all problems and a fair number of problems are better addressed with socialism.
This is fucking stupid.
Sort of like Republicans proposing tax cuts like a solution to everything, even if the problem was a meteor smashing into the Earth's surface.
So Bill Gates has found the biggest way to impact the world with his money is to make sure African women can't reproduce.
All of us know that whosoever dares criticise the "free market" in any form or way whatsoever in front of a US audience will automatically be branded a 'Bleeding Heart Liberal', a 'Socialist', if not 'Communist' by that same audience (depending on their mood and how threatened they feel) without further investigation of what he actually has to say.
Practically the only way a US audience will pause long enough to actually listen is to bring impeccable credentials as a 'Capitalist' and to start off by clear endorsements of Capitalism in general. Only then is it considered acceptable to point out one or two weaknesses or deficiencies of the system and suggest improvements.
This is what Bill Gates has done, and he's one of the few people alive who can not only say something like that and still be listened to, but who *wants* to point anything like that out to the world. I guess that Warren Buffet is another, but I wouldn't know many others. That's why he said that.
And please note that the quality of MS software or its competitive practices have no bearing on the issue.
outlining his strategy to improve people's lives
His resignation and suicide. But since he's put in such a fine effort to date, I'm inclined to be more leniant.
The people that truly made the great discoveries of the modern age made very little. Gates road his particular brand of morally bankrupt and ethically void "Capitalism to billions. And he is still focused on making the most of others suffering. Witness his "The first hit is free" work with the pharmecutical companies, and his foundations track record of investing in companies doing more harm than good. The world will be much better when he goes the way of Steve Jobs, hopefully with more pain
It could start with getting rid of MS Windows!
I kid, I kid! :D
Capitalism is all about maximizing profit, so using the world's IQ toward devising solutions for people who cannot afford to buy products is a horrible capitalist strategy. It's taking resources that could be spent on maximizing profits by developing products for more profitable demographics and shifting them towards something systemically unprofitable. I'm not trying to take anything away from the hard work that Bill is doing - he seems determined to use his money to make the world a better place, but I can't help but see some cognitive dissonance going on in his defense of capitalism.
You are unable to love but fake it towards people. Even if they didn't pick up on that on a subconscious level, they could still never love you because the only person they get to meet is the role you play for them. You are your own punishment, so you seek to spread your sickness to others but emotionally healthy people will never eat your shit because they instantly realize what a sad, empty existence it must be to live in your hell.
he didn't pay for those mistakes, he simply bought a cover up.
Charity and donations won't change the nature of the system of exploitation.
http://www.theguardian.com/global-development/poverty-matters/2010/sep/29/gates-foundation-gm-monsanto
especially when its for profit.
He's also critizing capitalism elsewhere to shift the blame of his own, continuing capitalist endevors.
He also uses his status as a philinthroper to specificly target and silence unrelated critism of himself and his work at microsoft.
The argument "it worked for the ancient people it must be OK" is not a good one.
Oh? Has basic human nature taken a sudden radical evolutionary turn since the beginnings of modern human societies some 5,000 years ago?
Although it may have indeed been helpful, people of ancient times would also tell you that acupuncture works and that rhino horn will give you a bigger human horn. Some people still believe that today because it is ancient tradition, see the theme here?
I never said religion was not without faults, pitfalls, and dangers. Religions, like governments, are made up of people susceptible to all the faults that all people are susceptible to.
Hence why you're far more likely to be killed by your own government than any terrorist group However, as you noted and I also noted in my preceding post, there hasn't been any comparable belief system tried that could take it's place without horrific consequences.
Strat
Progressivism (aka US 'Liberalism'): Ideas so good they need a police/surveillance-state to enforce.
It's hard for me to see Bill Gates beyond being a spoiled, insecure boy. He talks about all these grand visions (The Road Ahead, et al) yet clearly is out of touch with the real world and the realities of human nature to the point that he dreams up these fanciful dreams of utopia that only get taken seriously because he happens to be insanely rich. It's hard for me to see Bill Gates as machiavellian or otherwise diabolical (not that he doesn't throw a good capitalist tantrum now and again), because he's so clearly scared of being caught for what he isn't -- a man in charge of his own fate. He can't possibly be able to imagine living a life not saddled to his silver, free to be bold like many of the "not haves". If he were to no longer "have", then he'd lose the very thing that defines him -- massive wealth. His ego must be terrified at the idea that he is nothing more than paper and ink.
So he props up these grand visions and philanthropic ventures as a way to give validation to his existence, never manning up to working out his own inner deficiencies. And since he lacks the real world understanding to do so himself, he allies with Warren Buffet types to guide him on what he should do, swallowing completely their belief in the supremacy of the capitalist ethos. But his "plans to improve our world" always come off as childish and unworkable. Indeed, can anyone here enumerate the number of grand plans Bill Gates has put forth that have fulfilled their objectives in improving our world? (that's an honest question, by the way)
"Molest me not with this pocket calculator stuff."
- Deep Thought
Humans are the anomaly to the perfect economy.
Think about the age old saying "power corrupts". A man can be corrupted into abusing his power, but people are just as guilty of this. Think about the part of our government who's careers depend on take from the rich and give to poor.
That's why Marx said that socialism was an inevitability, it is. It has to be. As more of the population realizes they can keep getting free shit, they'll keep electing those officials responsible.
But on the bright side, there will eventually be a revolution against the future communistic state that ends up emerging from the collapsing capitalistic system in place, and the process can start all over again.
Bill,
How about giving back by accomplishing the following:
-Lobby to fix the patent system. We all know that software should not be covered.
-Kill Intellectual Ventures. Your (and Nathan's) ace-in-the-hole troll.
-Stop taxing the competition. 2 Billion a year from Android Royalties?
Oh yeah. You bent the system to make those nightmares a reality.
"There's an inverse relationship between income and charity. The more you make, the less you give, proportionally speaking."
Compounding this problem is the fact that we tolerate it.
A recent example of this is with the recent Philippines tsunami. The NBA players association decided to give 250,000 in relief aid, as mentioned in a PR statement that was apparently issued with some pride. In case it's not clear, we're talking about a group of crazy-rich athletes with an average salary of $5,000,000 donating about $600 each. To see just how terrible this, consider this. If you earn $50,000 a year, and you decided to forego a $25 pizza for the family for one week and donated that money to the disaster victims, mathematically you're FOUR TIMES as generous as an NBA player.
They recently decided to double it to $500,000. What a bunch of heroes.
And yeah, before you ask, I gave. I earn less than $30,000 a year, and I sent over $100. I'm not knocking anybody in my pay range for not sending as much. I'm talking about the superrich expecting accolades for doing jack shit, and the idiotic masses obliging them.
I'm glad he's such a fan of Capitalism.
Now where exactly does one find this capitalism? Whatever the system in the US of A is, it is not capitalism, just mislabeled as such. Government regulations prevent true private decisions.
Go kill yourself.
From the Real Shit Hole.
That value is inflation adjusted based on CPI, which you and I both know is complete bullshit. The important question is how does their net worth compare when measured in kilograms of rhodium?
I was getting a better opinion about Bill Gates with his charitable efforts and then he went and created InBloom (along with Rupert Murdoch's News Corp). For those who don't know, InBloom was created to help school districts manage data. To that end, they are collecting hundreds of data points on students. Examples include home addresses, SSN, medial diagnoses (autism/deafness/emotional disturbance), whether they were disciplined and how much including any jail time, and whether the student gets pregnant. To make matters worse, they are storing it in the cloud. (We all know cloud storage is 100% secure, right?) Not only don't they need parental approval (the law governing schools protecting student information was amended to allow the schools to participate), but parents can't even opt out. Yes, if you have kids in Colorado, Delaware, Georgia, Illinois, Kentucky, North Carolina, Massachusetts, Louisiana, or New York, your childs' information may already be in the cloud.
Thanks, Gates for seriously compromising my son's personal information and leaving me nearly powerless to stop it. (I can protest, but the politicians here have all drunk large amounts of InBloom Kool-Aid and think us parents are just annoying pests to be ignored.)
My sci-fi novel, Ghost Thief, is now available from Amazon.com.
From the 1940s through the 1990s, half the world's scientists worked on the nuclear arms race. Now most of the top math graduates are quants, writing programs that exploit the expected behavior of other quants' programs in order to make money on stock market trades. How do we pull brain power into anything worthwhile?
I am a devout fan of EVOLUTION. It is the best system ever devised for making self-interest serve the wider interest...
There's just this nasty bit involving death, so if we can just get the sharks to start babysitting the little fishies instead of eating them, but golly, all will be well!
Capitalism cannot help those who are the victims of Capitalism.
From wage theft to theft of time, from exploitative financing of necessary services or goods, from payday check cashing for 10% of gross pay to sleezy salesmen of Capitalist solutions for unemployment (Start your OWN business they said, with what came the reply, followed by silence), the gain of the few is paid for with the destitution of the many.
This is not an accident, this is the design criteria for Capitalism, just as Adam Smith noted in his seminal treatise, An Inquiry into the sources of the Wealth of the Nations.
When communism starves 20 million to death, it is because someone refused the tenets of Communism.
When Capitalism sets the price of food just above the 'feed everyone' level, using the simultaneous equations that yield maximum income, and starves 12,000 PER DAY in Capitalist India, it is because everyone who has food OBEYS the tenets of Capitalism.
While you've been exceptionally polite about just how right you are, I somehow can't feel too bad pointing out a small flaw in your reasoning. The method of calculating his adjusted wealth used there is percentage of GDP, not standard adjusted dollars. In regular old adjusted dollars, his net worth, when he had $1.5 billion sometime around 1930 was about $21 billion. It actually goes up if you go back a bit, but it never goes up above about $25 billion in adjusted dollars. If you think about that in terms of wages, a job that roughly equates to a minimum wage job in 1914 would be 50 cents per hour. Map that to a modern $8.00 an hour job and you're looking at about a 16 times increase, so that pretty much puts Rockerfeller's wealth, relative to the average working stiff of his time, in the neighborhood of a modern billionaire with something like $20 to $30 billion.
The percentage of GDP theory is an interesting one, but it isn't a realistic way of comparing wealth across a century of time. The problem is that you're basically saying that a big 10 kg fish in a small pond is bigger than a 20 kg fish in the ocean beause one is in a small pond and the other is in the ocean. Would rockerfeller have been richer if he had the same wealth and moved to a country with a smaller GDP (but the same or higher gdp per capita)? Would he have been poorer if he moved to a country with a larger GDP (but, once again, the same GDP per capita)?
I recall that he's doing work on disease and education, and he supports certain political beliefs. It looks like he's making some headway on disease, but his political choices are dubious. He's active in developing and proselytizing "Common Core", a markedly inferior lockstep education system that extends America's slide into inferiority.
Contribute to civilization: ari.aynrand.org/donate
Is he going to shut down mickeysoft for good, give back all the money he stole from companies/developers and confess to the federal courts? No? If not then quit posting this rubbish on /.
Ah, yes, it sure helps to lobby for strong copyright protections so the poor won't be able to afford education. And while we're at it, also lobby for veto-rights on ideas, so if any poor sob has the same idea as you already patented can be sued into oblivion.
Hypocrisy at its best.
"The more prohibitions there are, The poorer the people will be" -- Lao Tse
Very rarely have I agreed with Bill Gates to such an extent.
My 2 cents.
We suffer more in our imagination than in reality. - Seneca
People who use the term 'We' are usually the ones who talk big but wind up spending other peoples money.
Cmon Master of Shoddy, start using the personally responsible word 'I' when you speack of such things.
"But capitalism alone can't address the needs of the very poor."
Nice to see a hyper-wealthy businessperson actually admit this.
If capitalism is so great why is the U.S. only #1 is stealing wages from workers? The U.S. ranks poorly in healthcare value, education, quality of life, and a host of other areas. Whatever the U.S. has, it is certainly NOT capitalism. Try selling narcotics and see how capitalism works for you.
Hope is the currency of fools
Prong 3: get rid of Windows 8
Compare the people: Bill Gates - Steve Jobs. Both fought hard for their companies, etc. However, that is where the similarities end. I find the only redeeming quality about Micro$oft is Bill Gates and his charities. The same can't be said for Steve Jobs, the iDick. The "I" pun was intended.
"This means market-driven innovation can actually widen the gap between rich and poor."
Somehow I see republicans everywhere hissing "lies!" *gasp*
There are at least a half dozen distinct different forms of atheism. The few that are inherently compatible with agnosticism are not faith-based, but the rest of them quite necessarily are.
But your definition of atheism is easily disproved anyway; absolute statements require only one counterexample. I have no belief in the "supernatural" whatsoever. Everything that exists, exists in nature. I am not an atheist and would resent being called one; I am an ordained religious theist (pantheist, essential monist variety). Therefore your definition of atheism is false, according to the rules of logic and science.
Did you know that there are several atheist religions? Did you know that many atheists believe in the supernatural? No, of course you didn't. We are all subject to the Dunning-Kruger effect; if you decide to study theology you'll be come less confident of your understanding of atheism the more you learn. A planet is smooth as a billiard ball if you look at it from far enough away.
An interesting talk about what Tech tends to do and what Tech should do.
Yeah right, thanks Bill for dumbing down computers. Just what we need, more "help" from this guy...
01/01/01
List was a bit lacking? Any problem on the list to which "loss of habitat" belong. Chernobyl, might be an instructive and weak example of the problem. Any1 else feel something was missing on his list?
Is this the same Bill Gates who wants population control with health care and vaccines? Or do I understand what he said at T.E.D wrongly?
gosgog:
I'm not a Bill Gates fan as far as Microsoft days, I used it because I didn't know any better, until someone put me onto LINUX. However, he made a ton of money, because he's smart, & y'all griping about Morality, is to me a waste of time. CAPITALISM is what makes the world go round, but there's a hell of a lot of immorality involved, why? LAWYERS, lot of them elected to Gov't ...that's why! they have been twisting MORALITY to suit themselves (by that I mean getting RICH!) & the U.S., has done that better than anyone else....just look at our Gov't....full of Lawyers!!
Getting back to Gates for a second, he's made a pot full, but he is at least spending tons of it to try and benefit the less fortunate world so I say "Bully for Him" and those other folks who have made a ton but do try and spend a bunch to help where it can benefit those less fortunate. So you ASSHOLES who are now bitching about him...."what rthe Fuck have you done to benefit mankind???"
Why doesn't Gates adopt/provide http://www.thehealthsherpa.com/insurance_plans?zip_code=85008
Casteism
ALL SAID/ I among others in my camp, think bill gates should run for president and Hillary as vice pres. To bad Steve is not alive he and bill would have made a number 1 team ;~}
The first problem is POPULATION.
period.
It's just that nobody dares to even mention it.
People talk about global warming, pollution, even to some extend about the swindling soil resources, but nobody has balls to tell the people that we are just too many using up too many resources and that the obvious solution is just to stop crapping out more humans as if we were a plague of afids. And this is valid for both, the poor countries and the rich ones where a single children uses up so many resources as a whole small village in Africa. And that just because children are considered a sort of consumer item such as HD TVs or mobile phones.
And instead of attacking the problem we are wasting time, resources and efforts in empty symbol-politik such as vaccinating the newborn in Africa to rid them from smallpox so that they can die later from AIDS, starvation or killed in a war.
Stupid humanity, stupid plague.
-- 29A the number of the Beast