"Microsofts creative destruction" + Microsofts response.

[ChichiriMuyo]

Legend11 said:

ChichiriMuyo said:
I hate when people talk about Bill Gates being a philanthropist when what he's using a lot of that money for is to teach people how to use MS products. Breeding loyal customers isn't charitable even if you can convince the government not to tax you for it. I almost couldn't finish after that.

I read just a week ago that the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation is donating $10 billion over the next decade to vaccine research (after already donating $4.5 billion) and now I'm reading a post that is basically belittling the guy's philanthropy?  How about the $1.5 billion they gave to the United Negro College Fund for scholorships for minority students?  Also do you really think that Warren Buffet would be giving billions of dollars and eventually the bulk of his money to that foundation if it was basically just teaching people how to you Microsoft products?  Feel free to hate Microsoft and Bill Gates all you want but at least have the decency to give the man some credit for his philanthropy.

And what kind of software do you think they are going to use to do that research?  I'll give you one guess what company made it.  Keep in mind this is a charitable donation of cash by Bill Gates, not a charitable donation of software by MS, but these people still need the software and need to be trained to use it.  This also goes for the eventual distribution network that will spring up if they develop something useful.  Guess what software will be used for shipping orders.  Guess what software is done to handle inventory.  Payroll.  These aren't things MS is donating, but there's no they are going to buy non-MS products to do a project funded by Bill Gates.  And as for Warren Buffet, you don't think he'd invested in the pharmacutical company that is being given the money?  He's not going to own stock in one drug company and pay another to do research for him no matter how charitable he is.

Both of these men use their foundation in a way that continues to benefit them.  Yes, people are helped by their activities, but when you get down to it people were helped by the invention of Windows and that was a purely capitalistic move.  Helping someone, even if that's what you're claiming as your goal, isn't mutually exclusive of helping yourself.  If you're helping yourself, it's not charity, and just in convincing you he's a good guy for helping people he's helping himself.

I understand that some people don't get the idea of spheres of influence.  It requires complex, high-level thinking and attention to minute details, and if it were easy for everyone people like Bill Gates wouldn't have nearly the advantage over the common person that he does.  But what you have to keep in mind is that Bill gates doesn't think in terms of dollar amounts like the regular person does.  4.5 Billion doesn't mean a fat stack of cash like it would to you, it means he has the ability to direct the way thousands of people go about their daily lives - what jobs they do, how they do them, how they will impact other people.  Really this money is going to shape the way not just thousands by hundreds of thousands, perhaps millions, view Gates and the company he made, and the fact that helping others is part of the deal does not detract from what is really going on.

Yes, people will be helped by the Foundation, no doubt, but you can absolutely count on Bill Gates and Warren Buffet being helped more than anyone else.