Hacker News Reader

Comment by ekianjo | Hacker News Reader

> Bill Gates is a living saint.

Maybe he just feels he has a lot to give back after what he did in the business world ?

    1. Earn shitloads by monopolistically holding 
       back a decade of innovation in the rich west.
    2. Give all of it to the poor.

If anything, that sounds like Robin Hood to me, more than anything else.

1. innovation does not only benefit the "rich west" - computers are everywhere, man.

2. I doubt he has given "all" of his fortune to the poor.

3. Robin Hood is a legend.

1. Sure thing, but if you can choose between "faster computers" and "cure malaria" then I'd wager that's pretty easy - except of course when you're called Ray Kurzweil.

> 1. innovation does not only benefit the "rich west" - computers are everywhere, man.

While this is true, the evidence so far is that innovation (at least of the kind we have been engaging in) benefits the rich far more than the poor.

> While this is true, the evidence so far is that innovation (at least of the kind we have been engaging in) benefits the rich far more than the poor.

Oh yeah ? Do you ignore the fact that even in the poorest countries people have mobile phones and connect with online services though it ? This has completely changed how they network in the past 10 years. The West is not the only harbour where innovation stops.

In many ways this was Rockefeller's motivation. He believed it was his Christian duty to earn as much money as he could and use it according to biblical principles.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com