Commencement address by Bill and Melinda Gates
news.stanford.edu
news.stanford.edu
When were you born? Who were your parents? Where did you grow up? None of us earned these things. They were given to us."
Totally true, and very important to remember, especially for the HN crowd.
> Melinda: Let your heart break. It will change what you do with your optimism. On a trip to South Asia, I met a desperately poor mother who brought me her two small children and implored me: "Please take them home with you." When I begged her forgiveness and said I could not, she said: "Then please take one." . . . When I talk with the mothers I meet during my travels, I see that there is no difference at all in what we want for our children. The only difference is our ability to give it to them.
This is such a tremendously important message that I don't think you can even hope to accurately perceive the world without really internalizing it.
The other day, someone told me a story. He was working maintenance in an apartment building, and went into a unit one day. Inside the unit, he saw a couple passed out on the couch, and a baby screaming in his crib. He went over to the baby, and saw a cockroach crawl out of his diaper. The diaper was stuck to the baby's skin. He called 9/11 immediately, the police came, and the building fired his maintenance company for not going to the building management first. This wasn't South Asia, it was here in the U.S.
I heard that story, and then thought about how our daycare e-mails me daily an itemized list of the time of every diaper change and whether it was wet and/or BM. I thought about how unfair it is that she started life with a leg-up, from the hospital where she took her first breath, and yet how I'm totally driven to give her every unfair benefit I can ("you know honey, we could afford private school from pre-K if we budget carefully"). Intellectually, we want life to be fair for everyone, but being a parent means having this overwhelming urge to clear the path ahead for your offspring, burning down the forest if you have to.
I'm certainly not going to send my daughter to an inner-city public school to make a point. What gets to me is our inability as a society to acknowledge the cognitive dissonance, and speak about this issue honestly outside of graduation speeches. To talk about traits like intelligence and patience in terms of what they are: winnings in the genetic lottery, rather than as the result of moral virtue. To acknowledge that "equality of opportunity" is a vicious fiction and understand that not as a call to any particular political ideology, but as a fact of the universe that we must reconcile with any political ideology.
My own actions in that area are pretty hypocritical - not being from a wealthy background I was always fairly against private education. Then it came to the point where we could send our son to private school (this was at age 3) and we could afford it and the place was utterly gorgeous with fantastic staff and facilities - I never considered not sending him, not for a moment.
Now 12 years later it's clear to me that his education was worth every penny. But I know it's unfair - he's there because his mother and I can pay for it and a part of me wishes that all kids got the same opportunities.
I don't want to send my kids to an inner-city school for the sake of making a point but I do want to for a couple reasons. First, if no one with privilege goes there then how can privilege ever come to exist there? Second, I don't think I want my kids to grow up surrounded by affluence and privilege.
When you say it's clear that your son's education was worth every penny do you consider other pros and cons of being in a private school?
I say all of this knowing my kids are currently 4 and 2. And that my wife is much more like you than I. We'll compromise but I'm curious if there's something new I could learn here.
It's worth noting that I am in Edinburgh in the UK, which has an unusually high level of kids attending private education - roughly 25%. I don't know about where you are, but because there are so many private schools here they effectively each target a different "market" - a lot of this is due to the level of fees which can vary from £10K to £30K a year. Certainly at the school our son attends (which is one of least expensive) most of the parents are either professionals or business people - although there are kids who have extremely wealthy parents they tend to be people who have made money in business rather than inheriting it.
The pros are pretty much what you would expect - first rate teachers, lack of "problem" kids (I went to one of the worst high schools in the UK, so I know what this can be like), first rate facilities, huge amount of support for activities outside class (sport, drama, cadets, music....). The focus on kids being physically healthy is noticeable as well - although whether you regard this as a good or bad thing depends on what your kid wants.
Cons - it is expensive, and the fees are only the start, I would say it is easily 25% to 50% on top of the fees for all of the "extras". To be honest, we haven't seen that many cons but I've known people who have had problems with kids at the same school if they didn't find their niche to excel at - the culture seems to be that if you excel at something either academically and/or sporting (they are not viewed as mutually exclusive, which is a good thing) then you get respect from peers and teachers - the question is making sure you have something you excel at.
I'm not sure how they do it, but private schools, at least here in the UK, do seem to instill a huge amount of self confidence in kids, which is probably the most valuable character trait you can have.
I just didn't think about the role a school might have in that.
P.S. I'm in California. I visited Edinburgh last winter; beautiful city.
Huge mistake. We both paid for it in high school. We went to a very good high school so the transition to college and university was easier but we still pay the price for it to this day.
Very important point: I live in western europe, in a country with few private school. Most of our education is public.
Very eye opening!
Get everyone who cares about educating their children and send them all to the one school. Then post-hoc rationalise that it was the schools amazing teachers/facilities/whatever that caused the child's success. Nothing at all to do with being part of a family that cares about education.
However, attributing the differences in opportunity solely to "winnings in the genetic lottery" is a bit narrow, IMO. There are plenty of factors in addition to genetics that can either increase or decrease opportunity, and there is a lot that can be done in communities to improve opportunity, regardless of individuals' genetic potential.
A basic improvement would be making gains in public safety in communities plagued by high rates of violence and neglect. Children can't take advantage of the learning opportunities presented to them or maximize their genetic potential if they have to live in a climate of fear. This is true whether it's in Afghanistan or in the inner cities of the US.
My father ran away from his home in the late 40s/early 50s as a teenager to escape crushing poverty in the midwest (where shoes were literally an item to be shared amongst his siblings and starting a full-time job at 13 was normal). He joined the army, fought in Korea, came home and became the first person ever on my father's side to earn a college degree with copious help from the G.I. Bill.
It meant he could move up to low-paid white collar jobs instead of blue collar labor jobs, but still he didn't become a "success." He taught school for a while, until the rampant crime of the poor parts of Chicago scared him away, and after that he bounced around in various jobs: owning a gas station, sales, traveling sales, etc. He finally settled in the business I grew up in. But it was not wildly profitable.
My mother grew up in a family of non-college educated sales people and housewives. She attended 1 semester of community college before dropping out, married my father not long after and only ever really worked in the family business. To my knowledge, only 2 people on her side ever graduated from college: 2 of her brothers, both became reasonably successful.
My parents paid the employees first before they got paid, so we often went months without money. I think during the best year ever, a year with near monthly lucky breaks, my parents combined income may have broken $90k. During our worst year, we spent 4 months homeless, living in a roadside motel full of drug addicts and other questionable types. When we had a home
College and school was not a priority for me, I never took the SATs, and I guess it was assumed I would just inherit the family business. There's a long(er) story in between, but I'm the first person in my family to earn a Masters Degree and feel like I'm reasonably successful, upper-middle middle-class. I didn't do it all on my own, I was given some great opportunities and help along the way and seized those moments like my life depended on it and worked my tail off.
A great many of my peers fell into two camps, those born into wealth pretty much all turned out great, great educations, great careers. I'd say I'm about middle of the pack with these folks. A few slid down a bit, usually various substance abuse issues were involved. But even then, many of those folks had the family resources at hand to turn their lives around when they had solved the substance problems.
Those born into similar economic situations that I grew up in tended to stay in those situations. If they grew up in a single parent family and their mother worked part-time at the local Circle-K, there's a big chance that that's where they ended up as well or fell down even further. Thinking back, I can only think of 1 or 2 other kids I grew up with who worked their way out of the socio-economic conditions we grew up in. By and large, most of them didn't find a way out.
What's disturbed me are the people who were also given great opportunities but squandered them. The ones who somehow were sponsored to attend college for free, but failed out because of too much World of Warcraft, or couldn't figure out how to operate a condom and ended up with 3 kids they couldn't care for. Pondering these folks, I suspect that the "Marshmallow Effect" is a real problem for them. Most of the life choices where they lost an opportunity to get ahead involved them taking a strategic and difficult, long, view of their life...with the option of doing something that felt good at the moment instead. They usually took the feel good option instead.
Case-in-point, my best friend of more than 20 years has had opportunity upon opportunity come his way and blow them and has been more or less perpetually bankrupt since we got out of High School. He recently ran into yet another serious money and family problem prompting us to have a serious grownup conversation about his life-choices to date. He wasn't even aware that he had had these opportunities I spoke of and our parting words were that he was going to make a concerted effort to get a better job and work on solving his money situation instead of leeching off of everybody around him.
It's 3 months later, he hasn't finished his resume, has "applied" for 3 jobs in that time, and moved to a more expensive apartment he can't possibly pay for given his current situation. Why did he move? "My lease was up and I wanted a better location, near a better school district for my son." His son who won't start school for 3 more years. With so much left to do, you'd expect that he be spending his nights and weekends working a second job, or some other meaningful activity. No, Steam shows he spends most of his time after work screwing around.
This is all anecdotes of course, but I suspect that it's applicable in a great many places as well. Help and opportunities are out there if you're poor. But you have to work 2 or 3 times as hard as the other person who grew up rich and wealthy. While my school-mates were being given a generous monthly allowance, their parents credit cards, new computers and condos closer to school with a brand new SUV to drive the quarter mile there and back, I was working a full-time job, taking night school, driving an hour and a half to school and back in a car I was praying wouldn't die on me, sleeping 4 hours a night, and literally eating instant noodles 3 times a day for months on end. But I'm thankful every single day that I had: a car to drive, a job to drive to, school grants to cover my education, teachers who understood my situation and let me turn things in a day late, a boss who understood as well and let me take time off for exams and studying and more. I treated each of those opportunities as precious and tried to make 130% of them. And as time went on, doing so turned each of those initial opportunities into more opportunities, a snowball effect.
That's not to say that your dad isn't more valuable to humanity, etc., than your friend - he is. Nor is it to say that your friend shouldn't change - he should. But if you had the exact same genetics, and exact same life, isn't it literally impossible that you would have made different decisions?
For example, my Grandfather was absolutely dirt poor. But he had my father. My father, when he was in Korea, volunteered time at the orphanages. My father-in-law and his brother were orphaned during the war and fondly remember U.S. soldiers coming to their orphanage with candies and clothes and things. It might even be possible that my father helped my father-in-law at one of those institutions. Regardless, he was helped enough so that he didn't die of starvation or exposure and instead became an architect and helped house thousands of people in post-war South Korea, and had 5 children who've all gone on to be educated, successful, very productive members of society.
In some way, my Grandfather, who was socio-economically at the bottom of the pile, by having my father, may have helped contribute to my wife's family in helping thousands of people put a roof over their heads and for my wife's generation to go on to do other good things. We're all connected in a way and it really is a small world.
But if socio-economic condition is one axis to measure "success", being able to house and feed yourself and your family based on the money you earn from your efforts should be a minimal barrier to being considered "successful". And I wholly understand that there are simply people who don't have opportunities to seize at all, who never get the decent paying job or the cheap reliable car or the grant to go to school. Who make a bad decision once and it impacts them for the rest of their lives no matter how many right decisions they make afterwards.
I think it's a pity that not everybody has opportunities to be upwardly mobile, but I also think it's a problem when opportunities are presented and continuously squandered, and years later, they sit there bankrupt and miserable and wonder why they can't get a leg up in life. As a person who is now (occasionally) in a position of creating opportunities, I'm cautious about who I help because I am afraid that the effort I might go through to create one, for people like my friend, will simply be wasted.
In the end it was not hard for him to become moderately successful. But, his view on success and money was vary far from what "successful" people think. Heath, Stable job, good clean house, kids, and enough food is success. Just not the kind your going to read about.
IMO, as much as people look down on the middle class lifestyle there is little point to more because money is quickly just a number and unless you think you have enough it's never going to be enough. Which IMO raises an interesting question was my grandmother successful? Sure, she was living on the edge but she was self sufficient and her kids made it.
To me, determinism [1] is more plausible than free will. Events are always caused by prior events and in the end we have no control over our genetics and the conditions we were born into.
Of course I could be wrong and there is a realistic chance we will never find out.
If these influences were external, by the definition in question your action wasn't entirely free will, as its root cause could be traced back to external influences. This means the person you were at time T-1 would have to be 100% responsible for the person you are at time T in order for you to be 100% responsible for taking action X at time T. The same also implies that the person you were at time T-2 would have to have been the cause of who you were at T-1, and so on recursively.
Trace that far backwards enough, and you get to the point where in order for you to be entirely the cause of your actions at time T, the person you were at time Tb would have to have been the cause of who you were at time Tb+1, where Tb is the time you were still a baby and incapable of conscious thought. This is not possible, as a baby doesn't 'make decisions' in the conscious sense, it acts purely from the impulses condition by its genes and whatnot.
Thus if you chase the causal chain far back enough in time, you see there's always an external root cause for an action.
I'm not sure I expressed myself so clearly there. What I mean is that, the concept of free will disbelief in which is associated with paralysis is distinct from the philosophical/logical concept, but these two are often conflated. The logical understanding of free will not existing can actually be emotionally liberating; it acts as a balm against hatred and whatnot for instance, as it's difficult to hate someone when you see their actions as merely following a mechanistic, predetermined path. This kind of thing was an important concept in Spinoza's Ethics (Spinoza famously denied free will), and I believe also played a role in Buddha's teachings.
When I said there is no free will, I meant that you can't influence your own decisions. In fact, according to this theory, "you" is just a product of your mind. Your brain just follows the law of physics and chemistry. Decisions are made by your synapses and are the result of your past experiences, genetics, hormones, logic, emotions and surroundings. So if there would be an all-knowing being that knows the exact state of the universe and how things interact, it could calculate the future.
I don't define free will as being 100% the cause of an action. I would define it as the "freedom to do otherwise in the same circumstances".
Bear in mind that this is just a theory. But even if it's wrong, the influence we have over our life might be smaller than we tend to think.
I'm not sure I agree 100%, but I agree at least 99%.
I believe humans have the possibility of free will. But it in practice it's very rare and most of the time is exactly what you state.
See G.I. Gurdjieff for more on this. Probable crank, conman, and (I believe) probably correct on at least this point.
He states (rather his pupil Ouspensky states from his teachings), that we have the potential to develop free will, but it is not a native attribute, and most of the time we simply respond to stimuli and conditioning. I tend to agree.
2) We're all different* in a way but its primarily our environment that stimulates our intellect. From early age - music, lego/toys boosting creativity, conversations promoting curiosity about the world around .. educated parents(with enough free time and financial/social security[2]) and good schools - mozart would not write a single note had he been born in a poor lumberjacks family(he might have been a pina always playing tunes with some wood laying around - but even this is probably not true since he wouldn't have been exposed to music during his early life(~3-5y) meaning his brain wouldn't wire itself sufficiently to enjoy music as much as to become suff. motivated to go through the hassle/it would be difficult to "grow" a reward cycle for this particular activity; and even if - even if he had understanding parents etc - if they couldn't afford to get him a music instrument/send him to music school he'd probably end up as a lumberjack anyway)
It's time to get our heads out of our as*s, throw away the sociopathic narcissism/individualism that is so blatantly being promoted these days and look at the reality: You can't really boost your egos looking from above on all the people living in poverty/homeless/lower class or those who just "didn't make it" - because you haven't had the same starting position( >1) ). It would be OK to feel "superior" - looking at your car-park/property list - and despise people below(well not really but lets forget about the implications for now) - if everyone would have the same opportunities as you had(pre-school - should filter out bad parenting as well - /school/uni/entry capital/enough social and financial security to be able to take the same risks ..). In such a world - with a working education system and social safety net - there would still be "losers", a lazy good-for-nothing percentage/large leisure-crowd but if one of them decided that - after 10y of doing nothing, with friends all making contributions to medicine/science/writing novels/doing art he'd want to do something with his life too(which is the default for most people - till our current education system won't beat this out of your head) - he should have an opportunity to start school/business/project without taking 2 jobs and putting his family on an emergency budget ..
BTW The Original Position by John Rawls is a good thought experiment for this discussion[3]
So while I do not necessarily buy in completely to the idea of the birth lottery, I do believe that I do have a elevated level of responsibility to do good with the advantages and resources at my disposal.
Someone else in Bangladesh didn't do shit for their kids, and their kids are still there. Was that bad luck for the kid? Yeah, but for the dad, he could have done something about it. Pure cosmic chance that you were born to dad A instead of dad B didn't negate the fact that somebody's hard work paid off and someone was there to reap the benefit that happened to be you.
Sure there is still a level of unfairness in this, it's not purely hard work. But how much unfairness do you want to really address? Dad C is a Yanomamo indian in the Amazon basin. He worked his ass off twice as hard, but his son is never going to end up in America working a high tech job. Does anybody care about addressing this inequality? Hundreds of generations of Yanomamo, and they still wear leaves and live in the jungle. Hard work alone won't get you out of that. They never built a system that lets you build on the work of others. Bangladesh did, America did, and here you are. People worked hard to get you here. It wasn't luck, _except_ for you.
Also, I personally believe extremely strongly that Western culture's ability to "get along" with their neighbors, and the willingness to personally sacrifice for the sake of the greater good of their local community, has a lot to do with our success as a society, or so called "luck".
My father was a brilliant alcoholic who died when I was 17. I moved to his homeland when I was 16. So when he died, we were dirt poor. I was stuck in another third world country, with stifling cultural customs that I didn't understand, believe in. I wanted out because I could see myself withering away as a human being there. Sheer fucking desperation got me into a school in America with a full scholarship. Sheer fucking desperation because I worked my ass off in a research lab where I used to be up till 4 AM working on shit. Not being smart. Just the thought of getting out.
So the part where there was one massive piece of luck? I don't really see that. Funnily enough though, I think the one thing that made me desperate and want to get out was my dad finally dying. Because I realized that was the last straw. So was I lucky to face such adversity? I am not quite sure I would call it luck. But has it made me keenly aware of what poverty and desperation means? Yes, Sir it has. It will mean that I have a very very high achievement drive. But this is simply only one of the cards that I hold. Some of them are bad. Some of them are good. I can only play with the cards that I have. While I have sympathy for the hardship of others, flippantly stating that everything is pre-determined and hard work and persistence don't matter sincerely offends the fuck out of me. Because the truth is somewhere in the middle.
How could I make sure my offspring have a better life than I did? If my only option is "luck", then why bother trying?
But that doesn't change that it is a profound fortune to be born into such a family.
Many more times I have seen people from middle class or better backgrounds talk about how they got where they were because of hard work or drive or whatever. And then use that as justification for why some social program should be cut, like food stamps. The way I look at it, the "might as well not try" argument harms a few people who have the least influence in society. The "I worked hard and made it so we don't need social programs" argument is made by some of the most influential people and the programs they cut effect millions.
This idea should be met with violent resistance. Free will doesn't only exist, it's the only thing that matters. If I have no control over my life then I have no life.
I see this as part of the current public debate about haves and have-nots, growing inequality, etc.. which is an important debate. It's nice that the richest persons in the world have some humility about their success and speak so publicly, but we must not fall into the trap that luck and things outside our control are really what matters.
People born with nothing make it huge, rich kids with everything become total failures. This is absolute proof that free will exists and is what matters most.
At first I thought that was a great philosophy, to just be content with what you have (look at how little others have!). However, the more I think about it, the the more I realize that this attitude is a waste of an opportunity. We are given such a prime position to make a difference. My attitude is: work hard, strive for success, and use your success to give back and help others in need. I could do the minimum and support just myself and be content, but I could also push myself and make lots of money, and use it to help many people. I guess Gates is the best example of this.
People that take it the wrong way are the ones that don't try or just hang around, "because it's all luck". Just like folks that read a paragraph about physics, then decide everything will happen how it happens, so there's no need for them to do anything.
Whether you're born rich, smart, hardworking, or adaptable is all luck. In the end, your brain is a mesh of deterministic neurons -- "choices" are impossible.
Rawls is my favorite philosopher on the topic of social justice, and I can't recommend him highly enough.
Remember and do what?Ins't this morality of convenience.
If we really cared we would stop parents from passing on their advantages to their children and raise children on a collective common ground.
What we could and should do, however, is equalize public education spending per child across the entire US. The system we've always had, of funding education out of local property taxes, is grossly unfair.
We have to. Parents don't just pass on their advantages, they pass on their values which probably are more important than economic advantages. No amount of school reform will fix instances where kids have to go back to house with a missing father and a overworked mother.
Doing anything else and saying shit like 'lets remember we are lucky' is purest of pure hypocrisy.
I just sponsored a hysterectomy for $180 (1 year of Netflix) in 3 clicks on Watsi. That's crazy.
Maybe you can sponsor someone too: https://watsi.org/fund-treatments
You win, because $1/floss is worth it in aggregate to prevent future dental bills. Someone else wins, because they get the treatment they need to live a better life.
I'm hoping that as I mature, I'll be expanding the range of causes to which I will be giving to.
Without such 'contracts' watsi is - imho - bullshit.
I may be underestimating Bill's initial drive for their work now, but generally I have to guess that Melinda is the main hero here. Oh, not to forget, one little thing Melinda did: She talked both Bill and Warren into handing over, what, ballpark $100 billion? Then for her second day, the set up a value that all wealthy people should give about 50% of their wealth to philanthropy and got, apparently, quite a list of wealthy people to do just that.
Another good thing to respect about them clearly seems to be their marriage; it looks like on of their beet examples. Perhaps not just coincidentally, their love and relationship, if more widely followed, would have helped those woman and children abandoned in South Asia. My view is that their example of a good marriage is huge not just for themselves but for their goals of curing poverty, that is, it is easy to see that letting marriage break is one of the biggest wastes in civilization, in particular, leading to poverty and the problems they are now trying to solve.
Why so many people are so eager to bust up their marriages, or just not be very devoted to each other at all, seems to be a grand determination to extract miserable defeat from the voracious jaws of magnificent victory and just inexplicable.
Congratulations to them both.
This was a really inspiring read, thanks OP.
A poetic touch from a tech genius of our generation.
That was the headline summary.
Maybe I'm not well read enough about it though
As I mentioned in a comment below, numerous studies have shown that a person's ethics are heavily influenced by their present circumstances and environment, not some unchangeable inner nature.
Citation needed. I can accept "influenced by" or even "heavily influenced by" without too much argument, but "primarily dictated by" is an extraordinary claim, requiring extraordinary proof.
Its probably not as obvious here in the US with a two party system but other places like Denmark and Sweden you see this change more clearly.
Very interesting moderation in this thread. HN is not doing itself proud at the moment.
Fact: there is no such thing as a right time to write AARD code. Its a sin, pure and simple. Don't wait until the sinner is famous and rich...
Microsoft disabled the AARD code for the final release of Windows 3.1
Stupid, yes. But calling it a "sin" is why I have a hard time taking religious views seriously.
here is the link : http://www.forbes.com/sites/clareoconnor/2011/04/15/microsof...
Why Stanford , a prestigious university, would invite such scumbags ?
If Gates favors so much of charity why not donate everything except $1 Billion ? Are $1 billion not sufficient to live for rest of the life ?
Is his charity ( which comes to around 30 %) a simply proxy for tax saving ??
Whatever may be reason , please stop painting India a bad country.
I am from India , lived in America for 10 yrs before returning , travelled all over US and I can tell you there are classes, hungry people, children / women related crimes all over the place. So first look at your own country, how they are killing people in other countries and then lecture others.
Worst commencement speech in history of Stanford I would say.
Anyway, a great duo-commencement speech, which inspires and provides some real-world advice
Lots of good and relevant posts never make it off /new. Today enough people noticed the post and it made it to the frontpage.
love this
To me, the speech was fairly embarrassing. Its as though some rich people saw some poor people on a poor person safari. Now they come back to tell of what they saw, as if everyone in their audience would be just as amazed at such things as they were.
Perhaps for a stanford graduate audience that is true?
Theres suffering in the world!? :O
Thats what I was left with. No-one rational could disagree with their points, the validity of the foundations purpose, etc etc and all of that.
But the speech made me cringe a little.
Early in the speech, Bill talks about donating computers to poor people in South Africa. When he gets to there, he realizes that computers aren't what they need. Time after time, they tell heartbreaking stories that led them to actually change the world. That's the message - look at the suffering around us and do something about it. Use what you have to make the world a better place.
I almost didn't reply because I'm sure this is a troll. If it's not, try reading the whole speech.
If it was news to me too Id be as amazed by these observations as they seemed to be.
This place can be painfully self righteous, no-one is seriously suggesting the work they do isn't important etc etc.
Kids eh! :)
So unfortunately, a "hey guys, there's suffering in this world" kind of speech may just be appropriate for Stanford and the kind of people who will tune into its commencement.
Unless you personally have watched these things, you can only know about them vicariously, and emotive speeches motivate others to become involved. Cold hard facts rarely move people the same way.
There is one social model that has been truly successful in human history and has truly brought unlimited masses out of the darkness and into the light, and it is not based on altruism. It is based on (a) rule of law, not of men and (b) individual rights, especially property rights.
The Gates would do well to start preaching this model instead of the one that has failed over and over and over all throughout history, which is: you have a duty to be your brother's keeper (altruism).
You have some common misconceptions, allow me to teach you something new.
- I know a great many PhDs who are Objectivists (hopefully myself soon, too). It's really not a philosophy for teenagers and that is just something people spread to put it down without using a real argument.
- Objectivism can deal with children and family just fine. Lots of Objectivists have children and families, including Ayn Rand's closest philosophical associate, Leonard Peikoff.
- Objectivism does not say that wealth creation is the only goal. It says (summarizing) that self-preservation is the root of all values, and experiencing your values (in myriad ways) produces enjoyment. Wealth creation is just one way to experience your values, not the only way. Another way is, for example, through family. There are lots of Objectivists who choose non-lucrative career paths.
A society is to be judged by how well it treats those who are worst off. Optimize for that. Not the average, the median or the mode.
Prove it formally.
I can formally prove that it's not, so I'm just saying this to get you to think about what that would entail and reflect on how supportable your claim is.
If only he wasn't so swayed by the likes of Geoffrey Sachs and Bono. There is a great book written by Nina Munk about Sachs, if only Gates could try and change his mind and look at it a little differently.
http://www.gatesnotes.com/Books/The-Idealist-A-Cautionary-Ta...