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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."
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.
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.
You don't have to "destroy" them, just "cut off their air supply".
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.
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?
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.