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Bill Gates To Stanford Grads: Don't (Only) Focus On Profit
jfruh (300774) writes "The scene was a little surreal. Bill Gates, who became one of the world's richest men by ruthlessly making Microsoft one of the word's most profitable companies, was giving a commencement address at Stanford, the elite university at the heart of Silicon Valley whose graduates go on to the endless tech startups bubbling up looking for Facebook-style riches. But the theme of Gates's speech was that the pursuit of profit cannot solve the world's problems."
Destroying your enemies.
Profit will solve MY problems.
(If you think it's a shame that I care nothing for the world, I assure you the world started it by caring nothing for me.)
the pursuit of profit cannot solve the world's problems
That's because it causes most of them.
Cartoon lightening should hit gates in his weedy little head. What a hilarious hypocrite.
Tell you what, Gates... after I hit 70 billion I'll stop making it all about the money too. What a giant joke.
Yes, gates does a lot of very nice charity work around the world... and that's lovely. But he didn't just hop on a couch airplane and then do relief work in africa for years. The man amassed an insane fortune and then casually jet sets around the world making appearences for his charities. Don't get me wrong... he writes checks that clear. But that's his contribution to all these issues... writing checks. And that's very important... but to do that you have to have money. If you don't you can't do that.
So... I'm a little confused about his message. Because if I judged him by his actions... the sensible thing would seem to be... make billions of dollars by any means and then retire to run various charities and tell people what a good person you've always been.
I don't know... this charity kick that some of the super rich go off on seems like more of a donation to the "Everyone love me" fund. I frankly respect the anonymous donations more in most cases simply because you know they actually care more about the cause then they do about what people think of them.
I've decided to stop wasting my time responding to AC trolls/sockpuppets... so if you want a response from me... login.
Did you suddenly realize that no matter how many children you save from Malaria you will still go down in history as "part of the problem?"
Profit IS the problem adbusters.org
of course its in his best interest to tell grads to not focus on profits. the less profits for the grads the more profits for the tech companies.
Again.
A lot of people have also said this when he started his charitable foundation.
Some of the robber barons of yesteryear also fell to this thing they call a concience. Carnegie with the libraries, etc.
They are so caught up in winning, they don't realize what they sacrificed until after their are done. When no one will play with them anymore, they realize what they have done.
In Soviet Russia, Bill Gates thinks YOU'RE a hypocrite.
Thats really damn easy for Bill Gates to say. He did some pretty unethical things for profit.
But no wait, in the business world, ethics are proportional to profits.
When he has more money than hundreds of millions of people and gives advice on not being greedy? Fuck off.
It's very easy to tell people not to focus on profit when you've already made yours. I'm also adding my voice to the "Fuck Gates" camp. What he gives away is a small price to pay to when you consider what he's got left over. He manages to lose the reputation he should have for poisoning the technology industry in every way he could get away with for his own benefit, and still keep the vast majority of the profits. What a villain.
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The general interest is that smart people work to help humanity and make no profit.
The smart people particular interest is to work to make profit.
In other words, Gates defended his personal interest and now defends the general interest by telling people to do what he says and not what he did.
When I was young in the nineteen sixties, I listened to Bob Dylan, Joan Baez, Jefferson Airplane, and all the other bullshit idealism. We were going to make a better world, eschewing wealth, war, and capitalism.
Fact: 50 years later, my life is less than optimal, while Dylan, Baez, Pete Seeger, Airplane alumni, and others of their ilk all have had comfortable millionaire lives and not a worry in the world. If I had to do it over again, I would ignore all pop culture, save and invest every penny I had. By the time I was fifty years old, I would have been worth a a couple million, but I pissed it away on bullshit idealism.
Don't be fooled by philosophy, love, idealism. In the end, it is only money that makes life worth living. Sure we can sing songs about the contrary, but I'd like to see those Dylanesque pied pipers, who sold us those lies, give away their millions and trade places with me.
Aside from the literal connotations, profit is potentially more valuable than charity to charitable work itself.
Let's say you want to help decrease the spread of disease in africa. You can get the necessary training, go to africa, and along with thousands of others, actually DO that, and you'll have an obvious impact.
Or, like the folks he's talking to, you could go to a prestigious college, get a fancy degree, and potentially land a job that can pay for 3 or 4 people to perform the duties of the charitable worker above, while still maintaining a very comfortable lifestyle. You could even end up higher in a profitable company, where you direct millions of dollars to aid programs just for tax breaks, if not altruism.
So it's a problem to encourage new grads to focus on charity. They are at the peak of their earning potential, and no matter how you look at it, focusing on altruism is a quick way to retard their ability to make potentially world-changing decisions later, when their potential has been realized.
The view most cultures have for this sort of work is very odd. I think Dan Pallotta spells it out in his TED talk about how we think about charities. We often direct involvement and financial sacrifice as the only acceptable path to social gains.
If he wants to be well remembered for his charity only, he will have to kill the monster he created to amass his filthy lucre. Otherwise what evil it does when he unleashes it will taint his legacy still.
Help stamp out iliturcy.
The pope is protesting the molestation of small boys
The other Microsoft story, on the exact same page as Bill Gates telling you not to pursue money at all costs, and instead focus on making the world a better place?
Chinese Gov't Reveals Microsoft's Secret List of Android-Killer Patents
Right. We acquired all these patents to crush competition and make the phone market a monoculture. To make the world a better place.
Weaselmancer
rediculous.
Don't let the up and coming generation have capital to compete with the established corporations. Establish regulatory regimes making it prohibitive to try and compete without massive capital investment. Patent everything that moves and demand exorbitant licensing fees. Slavery is the new freedom.
Maybe it's his way of admitting defeat to google or apple or some other company that did not just focus on profit.
Steve: "Our stuff's better Bill."
Bill: "You just don't get it, do you Steve?"
I want to delete my account but Slashdot doesn't allow it.
He wants good subordinates paid for by someone else instead of direct competition.
Well, when I was 12 years old, I would have said fuck him, he can never make up for the all pain he's put the users of computers worldwide through. But now that I'm grown, I have to say, fuck him, could he please lend me $1M for my startup?
The process of earning your profit can easily counteract the effects of spending your profit on charity, however. The wealthy often realize this paradox when they begin "giving back". The Gates Foundation itself has been accused many times of investing in things that completely undermine its goals. This editorial from 2014 is just one example.; I recall hearing similar claims about investments in totally different industries almost 10 years ago
How you get your profit makes a big difference in what net accomplishments your money can achieve. If your earning provides great support to systems that keep poor countries unstable or work against universal improvements for humanity, but then you wish to spend your profits on humanist goals, then what was the point? I'd rather you'd just become a janitor instead of digging holes in human society and then desperately filling them back in, hoping you might create mountains in the process.
I'm going to kick him in the balls for saying that.
Be seeing you...
The problem isn't with profit, it's with how you make it. Gates made it through monopolistic practices and dirty tricks, mostly in the first world, and mostly profiting from other people's innovations and ideas. In that case, "making a profit" is not useful. But if you actually make a good product that people want to buy, making a profit is a good thing: it indicates that your product satisfies people's needs better than someone else's.
As for Gates, he is trying to salvage his reputation as much as he can.
He's just admitting that it sucks to be Bill Gates - in spite of the billions.
Let me know when Bill gives away all his money. And I mean *all* of it. And then goes to work with a charity in Africa or India or somewhere, depending on the people around him for food, clothing, and housing.
Until then it's all bullshit. He's a greedy bastard and I don't buy the "charity! I'm actually a good guy!" for a minute.
I do not fail; I succeed at finding out what does not work.
As people get older they experience death anxiety. People who spent their lives accepting death as inevitable and believing they had come to terms with it discover the reality of existential crisis once the reality of death begins to draw near.
A very common reaction to this is a rapid shift of values. People who spent most of their lives seeking some form of hedonism start to want meaning in their lives instead. They want to make up for lost time, too.
Lots of rich robber-barons became philanthropists near the end of their lives. Bill Gates is just another character in that same story.
The next generation of young-ins will be just as greedy as the previous, despite these admonitions from their elders. That's just how it works.
Honesty? Not even in the running, if you follow Microsoft's fraudulent and often criminal business practices and API's.
Do as I say, not as I do.
Profit is the goal of all enterprises and to make profit you must balance operational expense, throughput and inventory. That's all well and good, but if you lose sight of the core business objective which is to deliver value to the market; to your employee's, their families, your country, your customers and the world at large, then you company is by an large an abject failure. If you are the RIAA\MPAA of the world, and exist only to consume and question the public domain, you are a bottom feeding sack of crap.
"Well Gee the market is resilient against" ; Replace market with "people" and you will begin to realize while people will eventually correct the situation, everyone recognizes there's a lot of wasted time because some greedy asshole needed to come to the conclusion later in life that egging on countless businessmen to be greedy bastards is not a good thing.
Hint: You will NEVER have enough money, ever. 10 Million, 100 Million, when do you start enjoying it? Associating your Ego to a number or the balance sheet of a company is an incredibly stupid idea. There are people who have had far more impact on the world than Bill Gates ever will.
Gates did a tremendous job with Windows; Billions of computers sold. Think about that for a minute. We'll all agree, the computer science behind Windows is at best, a complete kludgefest; Apple was constantly striving to obtain perfection and Gates trashed them with his monopoly. There's an argument standardizing on one computing environment was a good idea, then again it's 2014 and we are still making DLL Files and dealing with Financialized Corporations hiring thousands of Indians to assemble one gargantuan cargo cult and suck on the teet of government and industry alike. Thanks to this one asshole.
Life is a mixed bag. Take from it the wisdom you can.
bullshit, most the dramatic increase in human life and health of the last 500 years has been driven by and is the result of profit-seeking. The only solutions to mankinds problems will be produced and distributed that way
Untrue. And unlike you, I have citations and links to prove it.
You might have heard of Edward Jenner , father of immunology and the man whose work in vaccination reduced smallpox from a feared fatal disease to a mere footnote today. Did he become rich from it? No. He sacrificed his own practice and in the end had to be bailed out with public funds.
Or we can look at Louis Pasteur, father of microbiology. He
What was was the motivation for his work?
You may be cynical and personally driven by profit-seeking, but don't assume everyone else is.
You gotta be shitting me. Apple is doing way worse things today than Bill Gates ever did in the 80s or 90s.
Only the State obtains its revenue by coercion. - Murray Rothbard
You're still a terrible person, Bill.
the very ruthless and very rich tell us that money doesn't solve problems.
Well, you already got everyone else's money after being absolutely driven to do so for decades. Now you tell us that having tons of other peoples' money is no good anyway when it comes to really important stuff. Hmm...
So rather than sit on a pile of billions that you've tied up after getting it from other people, just give it back if you've now learned that it didn't do all that much good in the first place. No? Well then, you're either a liar or a hypocrite.
STOP . AMERICA . NOW
You're still pissed off about that $70 you paid for Windows XP, I see...
Have a look at the post you replied to:
Once you have enough money to keep food in your belly and a roof over your head, increased income has very little impact on happiness, while the things you have to do to get that money can often be quite damaging to it.
Please point to the part where you came up with "lovey dovey feel good philosophy doesn't pay the bills" from? That is an absolutely true statement. Once you have enough money to cover your needs (Needs depend very heavily on your expectations and accepted standard of living), there is no improvement to your quality of life. You do not require to be rich to have financial security to do what you love.
You think widget makers in the widget factory want to build widgets in their off time?
Absolutely!
My father is a cabinet maker. He spends all his working hours working on the factory floor and he is not rich in any sense of a word. However at home he has a shed with a work bench, wood and a hell of a lot of tools. After he comes home he makes stuff just for the pleasure of it. All our friends got custom chairs/tables/drawers/bookshelves that he built out of his own time and money just for fun and a thank you.
My grandfather was a plumber. For his whole life if any of his friends had issues in their home he would fix it up for free. I can assure you, he wasn't rich either.
There is so much more to life than money! Do you think that every single volunteer out there is rich?
When Bill Gates gives a million here or a million there, he thinks, "Well, lets see, thats 50 billion - 1 million, still leaves me with 49 billion, 999 million. Oh, what the heck, throw the chumps another million."
I leave a penny in the penny bucket at 7/11 and I think, "Oh well lets see, thats 5 million pennys, -1 penny, still leaves me with 4 million, 999 thousand, 999 pennys, what the heck, throw the chumps another penny."
I'm giving at the same percentage as Bill Gates is. Why don't I get all the adulation! I give and I give, everyday on the way home from work, and this is all the thanks I get!
When Bill Gates give away his entire fortune and lives like I do, worrying about the mortgage for a small house and keeping the family vehicle running, then I'll be impressed. As long as he's still a multi-billionaire, after all the charity, I'm not very impressed.
Absolutely!
My father is a cabinet maker. He spends all his working hours working on the factory floor and he is not rich in any sense of a word. However at home he has a shed with a work bench, wood and a hell of a lot of tools. After he comes home he makes stuff just for the pleasure of it. All our friends got custom chairs/tables/drawers/bookshelves that he built out of his own time and money just for fun and a thank you.
My grandfather was a plumber. For his whole life if any of his friends had issues in their home he would fix it up for free. I can assure you, he wasn't rich either.
There is so much more to life than money! Do you think that every single volunteer out there is rich?
You live in fantasy land. Successful cabinet makers are some of the wealthiest craftsman in SoCal. My neighbor was a cabinet maker primarily for McMillin Realty for 35 years. He retired with a solid seven figure annuity.
Plumbers? Plumbers do quite well here, too. There are no small plumbing bills.
I think their philosophy is what you are trying to articulate. Stating that craftsman do not work for money (and its benefits) is ridiculous.
There is cause and effect. Profit is the effect. Therefore when you focus on profit it will dwindle. If you want more effect you have to focus on the cause of it.
".. a Fiduciary Responsibility to Maximize Shareholder Value."
Capitalism 101 guys - In America, reaping obscene profit is not only desirable, it's the law! ..Consequences be damned!
http://www.litigationandtrial....
http://www.washingtonpost.com/...
THIS SPACE INTENTIONALLY LEFT BLANK.
They have very strict rules for "giving" money.
First off, Gates only contributes as much money to the foundation as can be written off.
He "generously" gives to school districts. In exchange the school must only use Microsoft products. We will pay for the computers and initial licenses, but then you get locked into an agreement to pay Microsoft Licensing Fees, which means the Gates Melinda Foundation will pay %40 of the cost, and the schools have to pick up the back end 60% in a few years time. Gates still has substantial shares in Microsoft.
Some places they have built water treatment plants to treat the water that has been polluted by the factory built up the river. In quite a few of the cases, the factory built up the river was made by a company with investment money from the Gates Melinda Foundation.
They have also developed Common Core, to teach English and Math in the way that Bill Gates thinks it should be taught. Adopted in 46 states so far partially due to the $76 million to help adopt their philosophy. Common Core mandates that a far greater percentage of classroom time be spent on “fact-based” learning. Malcolm Gladwell’s Tipping Point instead of Shakespeare. Freakonomics instead of Poe. Bill and Melinda Gates truly believe that population control is key to the future through artificial contraception, sterilization, and abortion initiatives. Regardless if you agree with this or not, the "charity" is making sure with its money, this is what your children are being taught.
Microsoft, Apple, Google, Amazon what's the difference? All steal money from devs and control with walled gardens.
Anyone surprised?
Gates has been on a campaign to whitewash his image for many years now. He probably realized that he has more money than he can ever spend in his lifetime, even if he sleeps on a bed of dollar bills ever day - and burns it in the morning.
But one day he also realized that he'll go down in history as a sleazebag. So he did what all the robber barons have done before him, he turned to philantropy and creating a nice new image of himself, hoping that ten years from now people will remember that part of his life and forget the other.
And it just might work, because humans in general are stupid. Too few realize that since he made most of his fortune extracting economic rent, the damage he has done to society is larger than the money he has, so no matter what he does, if he wants to become a net positive for the human race, he has to do a lot more than just give away his wealth.
Assorted stuff I do sometimes: Lemuria.org
Perhaps my examples are not the best. Plumbers and cabinet makers are professions that pay well eventually. The point I was trying to make that people do indeed spend their free time doing thing what they do for a job.
Stating that craftsman do not work for money (and its benefits) is ridiculous.
This is the part that I just don't understand where both you and the grandparent post got from.This whole thread is about working for pleasure ONCE the income from that activity covers the cost of living. Again the quote from the original post is: "Once you have enough money to keep food in your belly and a roof over your head". Quote from the post above that is: "Yes, I work in imaging research, trying to bring about medical imaging progress, with hopefully useful results. I'm not at all motivated by profit. I just want enough money not to starve and enough funding to pay my students and equipment." (Emphasis mine).
No one that I can see has stated in this thread that anyone works for absolute free. We do not dispute that! Your bills needs to be covered first. But beyond covering your needs, profit need not be the motivation!
For example: You have a choice to stay doing a job you love, but only covers your expenses or do what you don't like, but earn triple the amount that you need. In BOTH cases you are NOT working for free! In BOTH cases your living expenses are covered.
What this thread is about is that choosing the former is better for your quality of life than the latter. This is the interesting and complex part that is being discussed. Not simplified "Be a hippy to be happy!" nonsense that you are reading into the discussion.
So basically, you're saying that you care more about paying a few bucks extra for some software than about some poor African kid dying...
The journal Aspects of India's Economy recently published a very good piece on Mr. Gates' widely acclaimed philanthropy: http://www.rupe-india.org/57/gates.html
The heir to the Johnson & Johnson pharmaceutical empire (who understands under-utilized capital). They BOTH realize that they with their HUGE personal fortunes just CANNOT SPEND IT ALL, or spread it around as much to others, as would say, 1 million people evenly being given an equal share of that money - someone said Mr. Gates has 70 billion dollars in personal fortunes (immediately liquid or not). Divide that among a million others, they will be spending it far faster and to many others (who in turn will spend it to suppliers, taxes, etc. - et al).
* Gates is trying, so is that young man (who is astoundingly wise for such a young man imo...)
APK
P.S.=> Imo, the inevitable outcome of our current economic systems IS this - ala "the cream rises to the top" (and will end up hoarding the cash) and so far above so, they hoard the coins/dead-presidents, and the ONLY ones that get the real benefits is the banks with the fractional reserve money system (turning every 1 of those dollars into "monopoly" fake money, multiplying it, but not actually POSSESSING IT (which is how folks got out of home foreclosures incidentally on that principle before)): We've SEEN and yes PAID FOR those in the banking industry's failures even when given THAT MUCH CA$H (bank bailouts) which, in turn, causes even MORE problems... apk
The same could be said for human pain and suffering. How many people today would be alive if someone else didn't suck the life out of them to increase their own wealth? Whether under the guise of Democracy, Communism, or Facism, those who seek personal gain suck something from someone. They have to because, in order to profit they have to have someone to profit from.
Time is what keeps everything from happening all at once.
Profiteers make their money on the innovations and discoveries of others. Their whole purpose is to thrive off the work of others. They are parasetical in this regard.
Time is what keeps everything from happening all at once.
You hear this sort of tripe from rich people:
- it's not about the money
- follow your dreams
- do what you love
Meanwhile the rest of us have to work for a living.
He's saying they needn't work for money. Many do, many don't. It's about what you want out of your life.
The Unicode standard is over 20 years old. Why does Slashdot not support it?
Yes save yourselves, dont end up going to Hell and getting escruciating flaming molten gold enemas for eternity, like Billy will.
Dear rich folks because of wealthy people like me misbehaving and stealing from the less fortunate by buying laws that favor me and such. You have to be more careful as the peons have their torches and pitch forks at the ready and the slightest shake will cause the nitro to explode.
Bill Gates, who became one of the world's richest men by ruthlessly making Microsoft one of the word's most profitable companies
Bill Gates has also had 58 years and countless billions of dollars to figure out why money doesn't always work.
My stomach hurts! I'm still laughing at the title! ...Can you imaging if your reading this and your Bill Gates!? Hint: read it without the parentheses as hew would think it! ....this is my first comment, but I've been reading for 20 years. that one is soooo funny
You see it time and again.. that dickbag uncle who wants to get in touch now that the final curtain is drawing near.. ruthless, monopolistic Gates now discovering that being #1 doesn't really mean much at the end of the day and often makes for a shitty person. I don't have much sympathy in either case. He had a lifetime to think about what kind of person he wanted to be. Sure, it's nice that he's parting with some of his ill-gotten gains but he probably did more damage to technical innovation than any other person alive.
Well, I admit I grew up with a father that dropped out of life and thought drugs and alcohol were the path to happiness. There's a lot of altruism in my heart, but growing up working since I was 11 to feed myself definitely embedded a responsibility to make sure I didn't impose that life of poverty on my family, and especially my children.
I've worked with many research facilities in the SoCal area and your "emphasis" would not be the norm, sir."
Bills, salary, taxes, investments, R&D, etc....
You mean to say that the charity leader's personal beliefs are going to strongly influence how the charity does its business? That's shocking I say, shocking!
Once you have enough money to cover your needs (Needs depend very heavily on your expectations and accepted standard of living), there is no improvement to your quality of life
Oh, I dunno. I think the quality of my life would be better if I had a Lamborghini.
.... Regardless if you agree with this or not, the "charity" is making sure with its money, this is what your children are being taught.
How terrible that your precious children will be exposed to the fact that not everyone agrees with Mommy and Daddy!
Seriously dude, get over it, your precious snowflakes will learn to shrug off stuff they don't buy into just like mine shrugs off all the god stuff people bang on about. Eventually they'll all develop their own opinions and, *spoiler alert*, they may be diametrically opposed to your own beliefs.
There's a scientific term for it... hold on... thinking... oh yeah, they call it, "growing up".
Welcome to parenthood!
What a hypocrite asshole. Young wolves, please leave me collect the cash you be good empathetic kids 'cause you know me and my kind we are sick, we suffer from incurable chronic afluenza and it is so painful unbearable, only 10 digits cash injections can alleviate this horrible, gruesome pain in our chest.
That way you'll never be in my position of wealth and generosity, and my reputation will have less competition.
That's Gates for you - always competing.
To a Lisp hacker, XML is S-expressions in drag.
he who lives in glass houses all over the world should not get stoned, you just say silly stuff then..
Do explain. Other than making you a novelty at parties, I don't see how your ride would significantly impact your life.
Even in this, he tried to mimic the big rival (Steve Jobs).
The guy never learns.
"Abashed the Devil stood, and felt how awful goodness is..."
for me to call him a hypocrite?
To alleviate http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/G... every https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wik... Currency should be pegged to https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wik... Oil for 4 years till https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wik... is resolved.
Casteism
I think you missed the whole point. That being life can be rewarding without being wealthy. A seven figure annuity? Really? Like that is the measure of a life well lived? It only demonstrates that those individuals made far more than what was suitable for a relatively comfortable lifestyle. There is a phenomena in economics that has yet to be falsified. That being, the more one person is paid the fewer dollars there are to spread around the economy. It's called "the concentration of wealth" and most economists are coming around to the idea that the concentration of wealth is destructive to society overall. I'm not proposing socialism or communism but I do advocate for a more equitable system of the distribution of a nation's capital. No one in their right mind can rationally assert they are that much of a better person than another to justify possessing assets worth $76 billion dollars Bile Gates) while many other hard working people barely see even 1 million their entire life. Even Warren Buffett has disparaged his own wealth and the wealth of the world's wealthiest families calling it "sinful" . The existence of the Gates Foundation and it's supposed non-profit activities along with other similar foundations would not even be needed if more working people had more disposable income.
"Those who can make you believe absurdities can make you commit atrocities." - Voltaire