Now you're making some reasonable points, higher taxes on the rich and on corporations might help. It has to be weighed against the cost in lost innovation and

Now you're making some reasonable points, higher taxes on the rich and on corporations might help. It has to be weighed against the cost in lost innovation and investment. For example US corporate taxes are so high that companies don't repatriate their international profits - they invest the abroad when in many cases they would rather bring the money back to the US. The international "market" of countries and tax system also functions as a free market, and the money has a tendency to flow to where it will be taxed least. It's the the free market and competition (between countries) at work. Where the optimal point is for reducing the wealth gap while still maintaining optimal levels of innovation and investment is something nobody knows - the issue is very complex. Removing (reducing to be more realistic) the influence of money on politics is a great idea. I'd love to see a system that leverages technology to provide a finer-grained representational democracy. One where you can vote for a representative on any given issue, or group of issues, or type of issues, etc and you can change that vote whenever you want. Google experimented with such a system internally at one point. Pure direct democracy is too dangerous, it's mob rule and would stomp all over minority rights and issues. Representational democracy is too far removed from the people. Something in between is likely the sweet spot. But it may never happen. Politicians have no incentive to dismantle the system that supports them. I too disagree that alternative systems would work better in Africa, but it's clear that democracy doesn't work very well either compared to developed countries. Well Gates might not be investing in things that people in the US would vote for, he's doing a great job in service of humanity. One could say that maybe the people he's actually trying to help, e.g. in Africa should vote on what to do, rather than him making the decisions - but would they make smart decision? These are uneducated people who don't know anything about economics, or science, or anything outside of their day to day struggle for survival. Well they might be better aware of the issues that they face, they almost certainly are not well equipped to solve them - democracy is of no help here. Anyway it's all moot, the money is his, and it's his right to decide what to do with it. Good on him for using it to help humanity.