Comment by devishard | Hacker News Reader

Comment by devishard | Hacker News Reader

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Even if we buy that Microsoft hasn't done any harm at all in balance (which I don't) why would them collecting billions of dollars and then disbursing them be considered a net good when the alternative is that money not going into their pockets in the first place, and doing good earlier?

Microsoft was founded in 1975. The Gates Foundation was founded in 2000. Why did we have to wait 25 years to see any money go into good instead of Gates' pockets?

Also, Gates is still very, very rich, even after giving away a lot of his money. He also helped a lot of his friends get very, very rich, and even the ones of them who give to charity will remain very, very rich. That's billions and billions of dollars that came from crushing smaller businesses, hardening monopolies, and pulling money from governments that could have gone to aid programs.

I am not sure where you got the "saving 10 million people's lives" statistic from, but if it's true, then how many millions more would have been saved by the billions of dollars that Gates and his friends have siphoned off by being middle men? Do you really think even half the money that has gone into MS will come out in the form of aid?

If $x spent to save 10 million lives saved between 2000 and 2015 are good, wouldn't $2x spent between 1975 and 2000 have been better?

Gates mostly earned money by selling products to people in the top 10% of global incomes - products they willingly bought. Most of his philanthropy has gone to people in the bottom 20% - people who earn a hundredth as much as people typically buying Microsoft software. Read more on this: https://80000hours.org/career-guide/how-much-difference-can-...

I think he intends to give away most of his money before he does - like 90% or so.

As for why the Foundation was started in 2000 - Microsoft wasn't making much money before the 90s so there wasn't much to give. Judging by Microsoft's share price, Gates only truly got rich after 1997.

> Gates mostly earned money by selling products to people in the top 10% of global incomes - products they willingly bought.

This is a bit of a foil; 10% globally includes many in the bottom 10% in the US. Buyers also include schools--computer labs are large portion of the increase in cost of education, which most would agree is extremely expensive in the US. And a lot of that money comes from corporations, who simply pass the cost of the tools on to their poor customers while not allowing those poor customers use of the tools. I'm also not sure how one can represent the fact that Windows products are only available to those in the top 10% income bracket as a positive thing.

I'm also not sure how you justify "willingly"; I've bought Windows products a few times because they were packaged with the hardware and I had no other choice.

> I think he intends to give away most of his money before he dies - like 90% or so.

This is true, but this doesn't respond to the point I was making:

1. Bill Gates is not the only beneficiary of Bill Gates' actions. Bill Gates giving 90% of his income doesn't give back all the money that Microsoft amassed.

2. 10% of Bill Gates' wealth is still more than most people will make over the course of their entire lifetimes. If you see this as "Bill Gates took a net of $10 billion from everyone else" instead of "Bill Gates took $100 billion from everyone else and gave $90 billion of it back" he looks a lot less generous.

Gates and his cronies specialized in extracting money from unwilling customers and tactics preventing superior products from even reaching the market. What he stole is only a fraction of the economic value he destroyed.

> selling products to people in the top 10% of global incomes

No, the majority of customers are big corporation with a very large customer base (aka lower and middle class). The customers are the ones ultimately paying for that - e.g. when they buy food at McDonalds.

Most people in the US, UK and so on are in the top 10% of global incomes: https://www.givingwhatwecan.org/get-involved/how-rich-am-i/

Some people in developing countries would have paid for Windows too, but they would have been unusually rich to have computers when Microsoft was raking it in. And from my experience in developing countries, Microsoft software was pirated almost 100% of the time.

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