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Comment by andmarios | Hacker News Reader

Imo the thing with the public sector, is that it is so large that it probably could fund both an OS and a productivity suite easily and that would be a net gain, both from a freedom perspective and for the economy at large.

I am all for entrepreneurship and I do think that companies and competition create progress. But when one company reaches the level of Microsoft, where every year we learn how many billions Bill Gates' bank account increased —I do know that he helps with his money but still, his bank account does increase—, it just takes money off the market. Hoarding is bad.

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> it just takes money off the market. Hoarding is bad.

Like anyone with significant wealth, Bill Gates's wealth is mostly in non-cash investments, whereby the capital is used for enterprise.

A more sensible argument might be that Microsoft is successful because of anti-competitive practises / exploiting a monopoly, rather than adding value.

Even if it was hoarded as cash, this shouldnt matter. Less meal tickets floating around means that the each ticket gets more food. If Bill Gates is using the money for consuming resources(say making a huge building), this affects the economy as there is an opportunity cost(the consumed resources could have been used elsewhere). One exception is monetary crises where hoarding has a negative impact, but thats not the usual situation.

There is a strong case for redistribution of wealth on its own terms and social good.

Bill Gates no longer owns a significant amount of Microsoft stock. Ballmer was the largest shareholder the last time I looked.

Gates isn't hoarding anything, and in any case, all his wealth is going to charity.

Bill Gates owns a very significant amount of Microsoft stock.

Since when is $11.3 billion held by one person in one company, not a lot? It's one of the largest single positions held by any person on the planet in a given company. That position is so large, by itself it would nearly qualify a person into the top 100 richest list globally.

Top Microsoft mutual fund position: Vanguard Total Stock Market Index Fund, 155 million shares.

Bill Gates: 167 million shares.

He'd be the seventh largest institutional holder in Microsoft - a $528 billion company.

It depends how you define significant. Gates has been selling stock and has reduced his shareholding from at least 45% to around 2.5%. While $11.3bn would be a lot for most people, I imagine things look different when you're worth $86bn to $90bn ;-)

Incidentally, Yahoo Finance reckons The Vanguard Group owns 525,395,707 Microsoft shares. The Vanguard Total Stock Market Index Fund is just one of its funds.

YF doesn't mention Ballmer so presumably he sold off his 333 million shares without it making news. It's a while since I looked....

https://finance.yahoo.com/quote/MSFT/holders?p=MSFT

Bill gates money isn't sitting in couches, it is invested back in economy. And given the fact that his total wealth is constantly increasing despite giving away billions, shows it is invested quite efficiently.

You could have simply omitted the second paragraph and your argument would actually be more forceful. I agree overall with what you say.

I don't think the problem is with how fast Bill Gates' money is increasing or whether the money is being hoarded. "Hoarding is bad" - some folks say this is a somewhat dubious economic proposition because in theory hoarding reduces the overall cash supply with fewer currency units chasing the same number of goods and services. This is actually really good for savers until the hoarding exceeds a certain threshold where it starts interfering with the velocity of money and all that good stuff. (and frankly, the US GDP is something like 18 trillion, the M2 money supply is apparently 10 trillion, and Bill Gates, despite his enormous pile of money, does not even have 1% of it. I don't think he would make much of a dent even if he hoarded every single penny).

The real problem is the propagation of unchecked power. Be it governments. Be it corporations. Be it dictators or whatever. At least, in theory, well designed governments already include checks and balances. Even the most corrupt banana republic is rarely beholden to the power of such a small group of people like we have in the top tech companies. I mean, how the fuck does Microsoft have the temerity to sneakily upgrade OSes even if people don't want to? Why is there no lawsuit against them of any significance? (And I am sure you can find equally bad examples of abuses of power from all the tech giants).

And while we were all told that competition is supposed to cause the checks and balances and will prevent power from accumulating in any one business - it is probably time to ask if that actually holds true in the technology sector, especially at the bleeding edge? It is probably time to legislate the dismantling of these tech giants.

Thank you for your elaborate response. The point I wanted to pass, is that spending 2 billion euros per year for FOSS, paying developers and various-sized companies in EU, would make much more difference to our continent than giving this money to a single company for proprietary software.

Not only this wealth would be better distributed, but also FOSS would be widely accepted and a sought after career path. Additionally, in my experience at least, FOSS leads to better professionals. My limited sample, says that a junior developer that can read the source of the library he uses, grows to be a better senior developer than the one that can't.

I can't imagine an operating system that I'd be less likely to want to use than one developed entirely by the public sector.

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