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I think for some people it's just really hard imagining that Gates pivoted his ruthless passion for business (emphasis on ruthless) into a genuine mission to ma

I think for some people it's just really hard imagining that Gates pivoted his ruthless passion for business (emphasis on ruthless) into a genuine mission to make the world - especially the impoverished - a better place. Feeney, Buffett, and Gates need to be celebrated and revered way more than sports and movie idols IMHO.

colourgarden 6y ago
Could you give a summary of how Bill Gates is viewed by "the average American"? As a Brit, I think he's just viewed as "the rich computer guy". It's hard to fathom that people think he's involved with political topics.
- triyambakam 6y ago
  > It's hard to fathom that people think he's involved with political topics. Maybe hard to fathom, but just have a closer look and you'll see he has a lot of irons in the fire
  - deleted 6y ago
    [deleted]
- iancmceachern 6y ago
  Check out the work of the Gates foundation, working to eliminate Polio, etc.
- Aeolun 6y ago
  Much less so than any owner of Twitter, Google or Facebook is anyway. Microsoft is just selling unopinionated software to all businesses in the world. Out of all FAANG they’re the least politically aligned.
  - bena 6y ago
    Hell, they're so not FAANG, they're not even in the acronym. But I get it. If I were slotting tech companies into eras, they'd be before Facebook/Google, but after the real old school guys like IBM, AT&T, and Xerox.
    - jakear 6y ago
      I was thinking about this yesterday, and if FAANG means “big tech companies with continued big growth”, M is more deserving of the title than, for instance, G. FAAN all have over 300% return over past 5 years, as does M. G however is at like 130%, roughly the same as the Nasdaq. Which to me roughly means they aren’t growing faster than the average tech company (NASDAQ being roughly an index of tech) (Work at M, may be biased :) )
      - throw_away 6y ago
        I also felt that the N was out of place as its market cap is about 1/3 the next smallest (FB at $0.77B vs. $0.22B). The rest (and MSFT) are all > $1B. NFLX has a lower cap than NVDA, ADBE, and PYPL (and TSLA and BABA).
  - kabacha 6y ago
    > Microsoft is just selling unopinionated software to all businesses in the world You have to be satirical right? Microsoft is notorious for lobbying everything to this day. Browser monopolies, OS monopolies, they pretty much invented EEE, made whole cities switch to their OS and the whole xbox platform is very political regarding software, gambling and IP politics.
    - barry-cotter 6y ago
      He asked about how the average American views Bill Gates, not how the average person who read /. in the 90s views Bill Gates.
- Shared404 6y ago
  I have mixed feelings about Bill Gates. He is doing good things with his fortune now, but Microsoft are/were not the good guys.
  - tasuki 6y ago
    Microsoft always stole from the rich. Now Gates is giving to the poor. It could be worse :)
- preommr 6y ago
  Are you not familiar with the very prevalent conspiracy theories about him wanting to microchip people, how the coronavirus vaccine is his attempt to do, etc? It's been all over the internet. Here's a bbc article: https://www.bbc.com/news/52847648 https://www.bbc.com/news/52847648
  - qiqitori 6y ago
    On the internet, things can be "very prevalent" to one person (figuratively speaking) and "never heard of" to most other people.
- thinkharderdev 6y ago
  My sense is that in America, people outside the tech world don't even think of him as the founder of Microsoft anymore. He's just Bill Gates the incredibly rich philanthropist.
johannes1234321 6y ago
In conspiracy theories he is the inventory of COVID, in order to sell his vaccine, which is used to inject microchips into the population in order to control everybody. For people who take a serious look he is a respected philanthropist doing lots of funding of polio research and other related topics. The average won't know much about him, he is the Windows guy, rich ... that's about it.
garbagetime 6y ago
Isn't one using his extreme wealth for (what he sees as) the good of the people just the baseline amount of "not being selfish" required for not being a terrible person? I think that one person is much worse at charity than a public organisation dedicated to it would be. So, these people are (1) simply not being evil or extremely stupid (2) there are much better ways of having charity done. Therefore, I don't see why these people should be revered.
- yenwodyah 6y ago
  If spending billions of dollars on the betterment of hunanity, for no personal gain, isn't worth of praise, what is?
  - hh3k0 6y ago
    It is indeed a praiseworthy endeavor. That being said, society should not be at the mercy of the whims of billionaires. Their very existence is a grave error.
  - garbagetime 6y ago
    Sure, I agree that a person who spends his time trying to do good things for society is generally praiseworthy. I praise people who do good things all the time. But there's a massive difference between (a) praising someone and (b) having society revere per. If we should revere anyone, it's certainly not the person whose great achievement was to spend lots more money than the next person.
- thinkharderdev 6y ago
  Extremely rich people who are more or less retired from whatever it is that made them extremely rich in the first place often spend their twilight years focused on "philanthropy." So in general, I don't think Bill Gates should get some sort of special recognition for that. However, what I think he does deserve some level special recognition for is what he is devoting his philanthropic efforts toward, which is making a tangible difference for the worlds poorest and worst off people. It can be credibly argued that the efforts of the Gates foundations have saved many millions of lives and alleviated a huge amount of suffering. I also disagree with the argument that a public organization would be more effective. If by "public" you mean government-run then such an organization would almost certainly be focused on helping relatively wealthy (by global standards) middle and working class Americans. It seems unlikely that they would focus their efforts on something like eradicating polio in the developing world. Public institutions are good and American should have more of a social safety net but I think it's probably a good thing that individual American billionaires are focusing their philanthropy on things that would be politically awkward because the people who benefit directly don't get to vote in US elections.
abraxas 6y ago
I always assumed that Bill was not a good person at his core or at least was steered into shady shit by Ballmer but it was Melinda that brought out the best in him and hence his metamorphosis later in his career. Who knows though. The fact is however, that during much of the nineties Microsoft was engaged in some really awful stuff and Bill was incredibly glib about it.
- ip26 6y ago
  In retrospect, was it really "terrible person" level? I mean, I recall a lot of stories about throwing their weight around that were playing kind of dirty/hardball. But from the vantage point of 2020, with Theranos, Uber, Fyre, Dieselgate, Wirecard, the NSA and so on, I start to think, while they were ruthless competitors, were they particularly evil?
  - abraxas 6y ago
    I’m not sure if you’re too young or just don’t remember anymore but in the late nineties Microsoft literally tried to coopt the entire web. The embrace, extend and extinguish strategy wasn’t going to end with their domination of operating systems or office suites. The unholy combo of Internet Explorer and ActiveX were designed to ensure that the web would only properly function on a Microsoft platform. We literally squeaked through by the skin of our teeth thanks to the fiasco of ActiveX due to its myriad of security holes and a meteoric rise of Google who were strongly opposed to the shit Microsoft was trying to pull off. That said, in the 1997-2000 time frame things were looking incredibly bleak for the future of open web protocols. So much so that most companies were abandoning official support for any browser that wasn’t IE. We really got within a millimeter of a global, proprietary MSInternet. Count your lucky stars they failed in their most ambitious embrace and extend project.
    - ip26 6y ago
      Yeah, I know, and I'm certainly happy for the open-ish web. It just strikes me as pretty low on the "evil" scale compared to everything else that's been going on. Do you remember the kids-for-cash scandal?
deleted 6y ago
[deleted]

colourgarden 6y ago

Could you give a summary of how Bill Gates is viewed by "the average American"? As a Brit, I think he's just viewed as "the rich computer guy". It's hard to fathom that people think he's involved with political topics.

triyambakam 6y ago
> It's hard to fathom that people think he's involved with political topics. Maybe hard to fathom, but just have a closer look and you'll see he has a lot of irons in the fire
- deleted 6y ago
  [deleted]
iancmceachern 6y ago
Check out the work of the Gates foundation, working to eliminate Polio, etc.
Aeolun 6y ago
Much less so than any owner of Twitter, Google or Facebook is anyway. Microsoft is just selling unopinionated software to all businesses in the world. Out of all FAANG they’re the least politically aligned.
- bena 6y ago
  Hell, they're so not FAANG, they're not even in the acronym. But I get it. If I were slotting tech companies into eras, they'd be before Facebook/Google, but after the real old school guys like IBM, AT&T, and Xerox.
  - jakear 6y ago
    I was thinking about this yesterday, and if FAANG means “big tech companies with continued big growth”, M is more deserving of the title than, for instance, G. FAAN all have over 300% return over past 5 years, as does M. G however is at like 130%, roughly the same as the Nasdaq. Which to me roughly means they aren’t growing faster than the average tech company (NASDAQ being roughly an index of tech) (Work at M, may be biased :) )
    - throw_away 6y ago
      I also felt that the N was out of place as its market cap is about 1/3 the next smallest (FB at $0.77B vs. $0.22B). The rest (and MSFT) are all > $1B. NFLX has a lower cap than NVDA, ADBE, and PYPL (and TSLA and BABA).
- kabacha 6y ago
  > Microsoft is just selling unopinionated software to all businesses in the world You have to be satirical right? Microsoft is notorious for lobbying everything to this day. Browser monopolies, OS monopolies, they pretty much invented EEE, made whole cities switch to their OS and the whole xbox platform is very political regarding software, gambling and IP politics.
  - barry-cotter 6y ago
    He asked about how the average American views Bill Gates, not how the average person who read /. in the 90s views Bill Gates.
Shared404 6y ago
I have mixed feelings about Bill Gates. He is doing good things with his fortune now, but Microsoft are/were not the good guys.
- tasuki 6y ago
  Microsoft always stole from the rich. Now Gates is giving to the poor. It could be worse :)
preommr 6y ago
Are you not familiar with the very prevalent conspiracy theories about him wanting to microchip people, how the coronavirus vaccine is his attempt to do, etc? It's been all over the internet. Here's a bbc article: https://www.bbc.com/news/52847648 https://www.bbc.com/news/52847648
- qiqitori 6y ago
  On the internet, things can be "very prevalent" to one person (figuratively speaking) and "never heard of" to most other people.
thinkharderdev 6y ago
My sense is that in America, people outside the tech world don't even think of him as the founder of Microsoft anymore. He's just Bill Gates the incredibly rich philanthropist.

johannes1234321 6y ago

In conspiracy theories he is the inventory of COVID, in order to sell his vaccine, which is used to inject microchips into the population in order to control everybody. For people who take a serious look he is a respected philanthropist doing lots of funding of polio research and other related topics. The average won't know much about him, he is the Windows guy, rich ... that's about it.

garbagetime 6y ago

Isn't one using his extreme wealth for (what he sees as) the good of the people just the baseline amount of "not being selfish" required for not being a terrible person? I think that one person is much worse at charity than a public organisation dedicated to it would be. So, these people are (1) simply not being evil or extremely stupid (2) there are much better ways of having charity done. Therefore, I don't see why these people should be revered.

yenwodyah 6y ago
If spending billions of dollars on the betterment of hunanity, for no personal gain, isn't worth of praise, what is?
- hh3k0 6y ago
  It is indeed a praiseworthy endeavor. That being said, society should not be at the mercy of the whims of billionaires. Their very existence is a grave error.
- garbagetime 6y ago
  Sure, I agree that a person who spends his time trying to do good things for society is generally praiseworthy. I praise people who do good things all the time. But there's a massive difference between (a) praising someone and (b) having society revere per. If we should revere anyone, it's certainly not the person whose great achievement was to spend lots more money than the next person.
thinkharderdev 6y ago
Extremely rich people who are more or less retired from whatever it is that made them extremely rich in the first place often spend their twilight years focused on "philanthropy." So in general, I don't think Bill Gates should get some sort of special recognition for that. However, what I think he does deserve some level special recognition for is what he is devoting his philanthropic efforts toward, which is making a tangible difference for the worlds poorest and worst off people. It can be credibly argued that the efforts of the Gates foundations have saved many millions of lives and alleviated a huge amount of suffering. I also disagree with the argument that a public organization would be more effective. If by "public" you mean government-run then such an organization would almost certainly be focused on helping relatively wealthy (by global standards) middle and working class Americans. It seems unlikely that they would focus their efforts on something like eradicating polio in the developing world. Public institutions are good and American should have more of a social safety net but I think it's probably a good thing that individual American billionaires are focusing their philanthropy on things that would be politically awkward because the people who benefit directly don't get to vote in US elections.

abraxas 6y ago

I always assumed that Bill was not a good person at his core or at least was steered into shady shit by Ballmer but it was Melinda that brought out the best in him and hence his metamorphosis later in his career. Who knows though. The fact is however, that during much of the nineties Microsoft was engaged in some really awful stuff and Bill was incredibly glib about it.

ip26 6y ago
In retrospect, was it really "terrible person" level? I mean, I recall a lot of stories about throwing their weight around that were playing kind of dirty/hardball. But from the vantage point of 2020, with Theranos, Uber, Fyre, Dieselgate, Wirecard, the NSA and so on, I start to think, while they were ruthless competitors, were they particularly evil?
- abraxas 6y ago
  I’m not sure if you’re too young or just don’t remember anymore but in the late nineties Microsoft literally tried to coopt the entire web. The embrace, extend and extinguish strategy wasn’t going to end with their domination of operating systems or office suites. The unholy combo of Internet Explorer and ActiveX were designed to ensure that the web would only properly function on a Microsoft platform. We literally squeaked through by the skin of our teeth thanks to the fiasco of ActiveX due to its myriad of security holes and a meteoric rise of Google who were strongly opposed to the shit Microsoft was trying to pull off. That said, in the 1997-2000 time frame things were looking incredibly bleak for the future of open web protocols. So much so that most companies were abandoning official support for any browser that wasn’t IE. We really got within a millimeter of a global, proprietary MSInternet. Count your lucky stars they failed in their most ambitious embrace and extend project.
  - ip26 6y ago
    Yeah, I know, and I'm certainly happy for the open-ish web. It just strikes me as pretty low on the "evil" scale compared to everything else that's been going on. Do you remember the kids-for-cash scandal?

deleted 6y ago

[deleted]