What I'm advocating is not that a committee that determines the value of software, but that government does take an interest when a likely monopoly starts repor

What I'm advocating is not that a committee that determines the value of software, but that government does take an interest when a likely monopoly starts reporting really usually enormous profits. > Bear in mind that if he hadn't created Windows... An alternative vision is one where a plurality to vendors are in a competitive market where standards allow OSes to interoperate. In such a market, the Windows product would not have been nearly so lucrative. >He's not keeping it under the mattress I understand that money circulates, but clearly it's benefits mainly accrue to the owner of the money. If it really did flow around benefiting everyone as you suggest we could just give all the money to one person and it would make no difference. There would be no profit motive at all if money really worked like this. >Finally he turned over the bulk of it to charity I think that's extremely wise and very generous of him. I also think that it should tell you something about how he feels about his fortune. However, I don't really want to live a world where individuals can become so unreasonably wealthy, and then we cross our fingers and hope they give most of it away. Just like we don't want to live in a world where tax contributions are voluntary. Ultimately for me there would only be sufficient inequality to persuade everyone to contribute as much as they can. That means paying some more to some very talented people to persuade them to work hard. Some people might end up 10 times richer than others, perhaps more, but no one has to be motivated by being paid 1000 times average salary.