The Problem with Bill Gates
stilldrinking.org
stilldrinking.org
I don't think giving 1 day's wages to the world can be construed as "eliminating a category of poverty".
My guess is that it's closer to your estimate, about 1 day of wages, but it could be 2.7 years of wages at most.
But I agree with those ideas and I like the post.
"There cannot be both billionaires and the means of billionaires fixing the world out of the goodness of their hearts, because the only way to maintain billionaires is to maintain a system of dragging money toward billionaires."
This
Say Microsoft didn't do the shady, anticompetitive stuff stuff it did. Would they be as big? No, but they'd still be huge. Bill Gates wouldn't be as rich, but he'd still be a multi-billionaire.
And how would he have gotten there? By enabling hundreds of millions of people to be able to use computers better. That is, he would have become a multi-billionaire by making his customers lives better.
There wasn't a system of "dragging money toward billionaires" (well, all right, there is, but he wasn't using it). He was using the system of "making things that have low manufacturing cost that have really high value to the customer". That system of creating billionaires has to remain operational, or we all suffer.
Nobody needs a 12-figure bank account. We certainly don't need to allow private individuals to have that much power in order to incentivize creation.
That is true. And yet, Microsoft also made many of those employees into millionaires. Is your objection that they should have become multi-millionaires instead? (Yes, I know, not all became millionaires either.)
And what is your proposed solution? That business owners not be allowed to keep the profits of their business? That owners of large businesses not be allowed to keep the profits? Or... what?
Be careful what you wish for. In particular, be careful that you not destroy the engines of progress just because you don't like the unevenness of the distribution of their fruits.
Microsoft is not a single entity, it is the combined efforts of thousands of talented and not-so talented devs. The success of the company should yield financial reward for all employees at a uniform rate.
> And what is your proposed solution? That business owners not be allowed to keep the profits of their business? That owners of large businesses not be allowed to keep the profits? Or... what?
That they pay their taxes, and that the pay ratios between highest and lowest paid employees in the company are capped to something that is less than 500:1.
oh please. is it really that controversial to think that hoarding all that wealth and donating just enough to make yourself look good is immoral? when someone hoards shampoo bottles we put them on reality TV, but when it's money, baby boomers make excuses.
This premise is false, American billionaires do not hoard wealth, rather they invest it in companies.
Bill Gates sells Microsoft shares every year to fund his charitable foundation. He is effectively allocating capital away from Microsoft and towards world health. It is a misconception that these billionaires are like scrooge mcduck hoarding money in their vaults.