Business is business, he did what he had to in order to see his company thrive. And now he's stepped back and wants to give back to society. Branding him as a villain who wants to buy his way into heaven is a cheap shot.
Moreover, in reality the choice is usually between a villain "who wants to buy his way into heaven" and a villain who doesn't give a fuck. I'll take the former over the latter any time, because forever-saints with lots of money generally do not happen.
Indeed. There's also an immense difference between doing a genuinely good act for self-serving reasons (ie getting into heaven), and masquerading a self-interest as a noble good, meaning the act will have tangible negative effects, in conflict with its image.
What I mean is that "buying your way into heaven" and being a saint with tons of money doesn't have any meaningful difference. It doesn't matter if I build wells and schools in a third world country for instantaneous euphoria or for delayed euphoria through praise or for speculated reward in the afterlife.
As long as you're not building the school in order to indoctrinate the children into supporting your plans of world domination, you can and should do good for whatever reasons you want.
> What I mean is that "buying your way into heaven" and being a saint with tons of money doesn't have any meaningful difference.
It doesn't at the act of doing the spending, yes. The difference I meant was of history - by "a saint with tons of money" I meant someone who never did anything questionable throughout their entire life, and yet somehow still ended up in command of millions (or billions) of dollars. That pretty much doesn't happen (especially because there is always someone who'll find something questionable in everything and will spin it as evil; even Jesus got tried and executed for pissing off the establishment).
As to giving money away, when someone is still one of the richest persons to ever live their past donations while valuable are no real sacrifice. I respect the effort he has put into being effective with his givings vastly more than the vast quantities of wealth he has donated.
That's the point, though. Just giving away all your earnings and going poor from then on is stupid, not charitable. The way Gates does it, he ensures much more money will be invested (and also money invested won't be squandered as easily) over time than if he just gave it all away in an instant.
I feel that talking about donation size relative to one's remaining wealth often boils down to implicit references to the Parable of Poor Widow's Offering, in which Jesus compared the rich people offering God money they didn't need to a poor widow who offered the last money she had. But then, that parable was about sacrifice and the priority God takes in one's life. It was not a recipe for effective altruism!
(For an effective altruism recipe, the Parable of the Talents is better, IMO.)
(INB4: I make references to the Bible not because I assume everyone is Christian, but because those stories are a big part of the culture almost all of us here grew up and live in.)
Anyway, I am not saying he should become poor, just that the qualitative difference from 50 billion to 100 billion is effectively meaningless. If he had donated down to say 200 million that would have had a meaningful impact while still leaving him incredibly wealthy.
Consider, if someone makes a huge donation in their will they still make an impact, but it's got zero lifestyle impacts on themselves. The money is still very useful to other people it's just useless for the dead person.
Charities can invest, but were Gates to give away everything to some charity, and then assume control of that charity, nothing would change and people would still bitch about him being rich and not really giving anything away. Gates does what he does because he believes he can allocate the funds more effectively than a random group of people running a charity (who might e.g. suddenly decide it's better to spend on low-importance, high-visibility cases, and squander all that wealth). I'm convinced he's right on that one.
I am simply referring to it in terms of diminishing marginal utility. aka The first billion is vastly more useful than the second billion.
That said, we are still allowed to judge. Just saying "business is business" can justify anything and is akin to saying nothing is unethical as long as you make a profit.
These all can be true at the same time.
* Gates was an angry office bully - he admits this himself. He was total jerk.
* Gates routinely used dishonest business tactics and monopoly power to crush competition. Microsoft contributed negatively to software development. Microsoft Research was famous for doing good stuff that was absent in MS business.
* After retiring donates his money to charity.
Gates is not alone. John D. Rockefeller and many other business tycoons have done the same.
We also have people who were heroes and stayed heroes. For example, Linus Torvalds or Richard Stallman. It's unfortunate that our society values Gates (the converted villain) more highly than Torvalds or Stallman (the hero from the beginning). Or values Jobs more than Wozniak.
I can really identify with this, but I also disagree.
We reward effort, and it takes a lot more to become good than staying good. In the same way that we reward a struggling child who in the end manages to climb an obstacle or finish a task, while not recognizing the other kid who has already done both 20 times with ease.
I will never claim I'm a better person than anyone else, but I definitely was a well behaved and quiet kid, and I remember seeing this a lot as a kid, at which time I too wanted praise for my behavior when some frankly shitty kids got it for occasionally not being jerks to the other kids.
But kids (and many grownups) aren't rational. I don't think kid me was right. I think I wouldn't have grown as much, and I think my values would've been a lot worse had I been constantly rewarded for something that came naturally to me.
But perhaps it is different with grownups where we don't (or shouldn't) have the expectation of shaping them. It's probably not shocking that I've always valued Wozniak more.
I don't think so. Capitalism (or human society in general) isn't really consistent in rewarding anything, and as a consequence, it is not automatically moral. (Despite many people, for instance libertarians, making lot of contortions to make it appear moral.)
RE effort - yeah, capitalism usually doesn't reward effort, because effort alone does not bring money (unless they literally pay you to see you sweat). In our circles, we know it through clichés like "it's null until you ship it", or "ideas are worthless, execution matters", etc.
It's just being a villain makes it easier for you to play the market game and get rich. Part of being a hero is really just refusing to engage in things that'll bring you money. In the end, it's more likely that a villain through his villaining will get rich, so when they convert, they're left with resources to do good with, unlike our heroes who never got rich in the first place.
However, most people are impressed by casual impressions and simply don't research someone they admire. I held Steve Jobs in high regard, until I read his biography. Charismatic people with money are able to impress the general public easily.
So it's not necessarily that people value Jobs more than Wozniak, but that many people are easily impressed by superficialities, and do not take the time to know more about people that they like.
Linus Torvalds has always been an asshole both personally and professionally and he is actually a colossal impediment to having good software on Linux.
Stallman has also always been a major asshole who has a huge ego, who preaches to people like he's better than them and who introduced the worlds shittiest software license which the great majority of people pretty much avoid like the plague if they are aware of it.
I'm thinking you perhaps weren't aware of some of Microsoft's activities. Embrace, extend, extinguish? AARD Code? Scalability day? SCO vs IBM? Comparing TCO of linux v Windows using an IBM mainframe available for Linux?
Heck I've forgotten most of them as there were so many.
B.S.
A large reason for the success of Britain, America and the west was Protestant morality. Because one could reasonably expect fair dealing when conducting business with someone, even a stranger, there was no hesitancy conducting business rather than doing everything yourself or with your family.
The West was built on handshake deals. We've lost that, which is one reason for the rise of large firms and the rise of bureaucracy, rules & regulation.
In public opinion, it is far more important how charismatic you are. IMO Steve Jobs was a terrible person, and this can be seen from his actions in both his decisions in his personal as well as his professional life. However, people worship him as a god because he fits the stereotype of charismatic leader better.
Apparently, people need that.
Now, instead of doing more businees or investing in new technologies to better the world, like Elon Musk for example, Bill Gates invests his money and time into wellfare-projects. This of course give the impression that he wanna cleans himself from the past sins. Whether it's true is a different case, but the impression is simply there.
But the thing is, Gates is like Musk, he's investing in new technologies too. The two of them have different priorities, though. Musk is focusing on ensuring humanity's long-term survival, Gates is focusing on saving lives and reducing suffering now. They're much more alike than it would seem if you classify them as "Musk - tech, Gates - welfare".
I would suggest that the Gates Foundation is doing more to better the world than Musk.
Do you believe in ethics?
Furthermore, I'm really disliking this narrative of "billionaire-turned-good" cause now he feels bad for some reason. This is the same thing Donald Trump is doing, so if you don't like it when he does it, why do you like it when Bill Gates does it? Because Bill has a cool reading list? So now you have Bill Gates, Mark Zuckerberg, Jeff Bezos, the Koch brothers, etc etc, all trying to buy a final "positive" public image and leave the world in everyone's good graces after consistently fucking over lots of people over for the majority of their wealth soaked lives.
I'm not buying it.