Hacker News Reader

Comment by sutro | Hacker News Reader

I can't believe this is getting upvotes. Destroyed lives? Please. Get some perspective. And check your history. The guy bootstrapped Microsoft using nothing but sweat equity -- no investment, no inheritance -- working for years in very meager circumstances in New Mexico before getting some traction and moving to Washington. In short he lived the dream that many of us aspire to, and has probably helped his fellow man more than any single individual on the planet. The article was spot-on.

It's sad that myopic, hysterical, anti-Microsoft rants citing dead bodies and destroyed lives get upvotes on Hacker News.

View on HN

Indeed, Gates has likely helped create more billionaires and millionaires than anyone currently living.

Think of the ecosystem surrounding Microsoft: all of the hardware companies, peripherals, software, training, education and jobs that would not exist were it not for "a pc on every desktop." Not to mention the millions of people using Windows to run their businesses.

I might add also that Gates billions are not sitting in a vault. It gets invested and that capital is used by others to create their own empires.

Wealth is fractal. A major success can generate an explosion of wealth further down the chain.

Wether you agree with Billy Boy's tactics or not, it's petty to call him "evil".. he's had made an immeasurable impact on the world and done so in a way that directly or indirectly changed the lives of millions of people.

To fault him for giving away his fortune? Well that's just a whole other level of absurdity. He's under no obligation to give it away, and yet he is. One might argue over the efficacy of his plans, but surely humanity will benefit in the end.

The real questions are: Is it better to give away your wealth incrementally or in one lump sum at the end? Is more taxation better or less? Is a monopoly more effective at wealth creation or is a more diverse market better? It's impossible to answer.

Gates was just the person in the right place at the right time. It was the computer industry that's made all those billionaires and millionaires. You think we'd have stayed at a standstill for the last 20 years if Gates hadn't stepped up? Come on.

> and has probably helped his fellow man more than any single individual on the planet.

I was with you until that point. Gates didn't help anyone before helping himself. It's easy to be altruistic, to "do the right thing" with a billion dollars in the bank. I know a lot of businessmen that would not consider entering the kind of shady plans he devised to further Microsoft's (and his own) interests. Those are the real heroes: the people who work, create and strive to win in the market by creating superior solutions for the problems people have, not by striking deals with OEMs that restrict what kind of product end-users will be able to buy.

Also, don't forget that Gates didn't really risk everything (like so many entrepreneurs do). He had his family to back him up. I bet he would have a cozy job waiting for him if Microsoft failed.

I think we should do away with calling Gates's actions altruistic. What (significant) does he have to lose, or merely risk, by doing what he does?

It's a good thing, but I don't think it's deserving of altruism.

But being less than altruistic can still be very laudable.

I am not against Gates giving nearly all of his money away to charity. I am only against considering this very atypical episode represents what Gates is.

No, what's easy is to sit here from our current vantage point and call what he did easy. So what if he had an upper-middle-class family willing to put him through college. He walked away from that when he dropped out of Harvard and lit out for the middle of nowhere with no significant funds or support system to bootstrap a "software company" before such a thing even existed. He wasn't given his fortune, he built it himself, painstakingly, with decades of hard work and sacrifice. And because he didn't always play nice with competitors you and the other holier-and-smarter-than-thou HN commenters want to call his incredible accomplishments "easy." Whatever. He has achieved more, not just as a philanthropist, but as a hacker-entrepreneur, than anyone on this thread ever will.

> And because he didn't always play nice with competitors you and the other holier-and-smarter-than-thou HN commenters want to call his incredible accomplishments "easy."

Now that's a straw man. I never said it was easy to build Microsoft from its humble beginnings in Albuquerque into whatever it is now. I said it's easy to decide you'll try to start a company (Microsoft was his second attempt) when you know that your future is ensured whatever happens (the first company went bust). I also said it's easy to be the biggest philanthropist in history when you also have the deepest pockets in history.

And no, I am unwilling to forget his unethical, borderline criminal behavior, his despicable disregard for the law and the damage he did to what was once a competitive, diverse and flourishing industry. Microsoft's monopoly (and the consequent lack of diversity) has set the advance of technology back years, if not decades. Like many HN'ers you call "holier-than-thou", I have lived - and worked - in the pre-monopoly years and I can tell you, from first-hand experience, the world is a much more boring place because of him.

He may donate all his money to whoever he wants, but that won't erase his past.

Saying it's easy to give when you have Gates' deep pockets negates the effort that it took to fill those pockets. Of all the crimes in the world to call Bill Gates a criminal is to have completely lost the plot. I don't particularly like Microsoft technology either, so I've spent my career (which has been far from boring) working on other technology stacks, and have always had plenty of opportunity to do so. Yet despite that choice, I acknowledge that I owe Gates a great debt for pioneering the business of software, a business which, divorced from hardware, didn't exist prior to 1975, and a business of which I, and I suspect you, have been a major beneficiary.

How does your track record measure up to Gates'? Which companies have you bootstrapped? Which charities have you founded? Or are you just a bitter salaryman complaining from the cheap seats on the sidelines?

> How does your track record measure up to Gates'?

I was never involved in anti-competitive practices. I probably had more girlfriends and went to better parties. Girls considered me hot.

> Which companies have you bootstrapped?

None. I am not a billionaire.

> Which charities have you founded?

I regularly donate to several local charities.

> Or are you just a bitter salaryman complaining from the cheap seats on the sidelines?

The chair I am using now is cheap, but seems well built. While I could be called a salaryman for the past couple years, I cannot be described as bitter.

And, more interestingly, how does comparing me to Gates reduces in any measure the harm he has done? Are you attempting an ad hominem after the straw man and the false dichotomy failed to prove your point?

Ah yes, ad hominem, the great refuge of the HN peanut gallery. Many want to be judged on their comments alone. But commenting on a website is easy, far easier than any of the things in Gates' career that you claim were easy. So I was wondering if you had done anything in your career that I would consider hard. If you had, I might be inclined to give your comments more respect than they deserve on their face. But it sounds like you haven't, so you have no standing to criticize Gates in my book.

> Many want to be judged on their comments alone.

Ideas should not be judged by anything other than what they are.

> So I was wondering if you had done anything in your career that I would consider hard. If you had, I might be inclined to give your comments more respect than they deserve on their face.

The respect you give to my comments is not important to me. You may give the respect you think they deserve, for I will not give your thoughts any more respect than I think they deserve.

> so you have no standing to criticize Gates in my book.

You must know your book is not a very important one for anyone but you.

Ideas, thoughts, comments, criticisms don't deserve much respect whether they come from me or you or anyone else. Because it's all just talk, and talk is cheap. Actions and results are what matter. Bill Gates is a man of action and results.

> Bill Gates is a man of action and results.

Don't forget the lawsuits.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com