Gates should do no further philanthropy until he puts his wealth and influence behind shifting the tax base off of economic activity (income, capital gains, sales, value added, inheritance, etc.) and onto (liquidation value assessed) wealth with the bulk of government revenue disbursed as unconditional basic income aka citizen's dividend. Gates became the world's richest man on the strength of the network effect aka network externaility aka natural monopoly aka economic rent which would have been reflected in the liquidation value of his copyright on MS-DOS (which he didn't even write) the moment IBM distributed it on their original 4.77MHz 8088 PC.
On Fri, Jan 24, 2014 at 5:08 PM, Jed Rothwell <jedrothw...@gmail.com> wrote: > leaking pen <itsat...@gmail.com> wrote: > > I've never heard anyone malign his programming skills. moral character, >> visual design skills, absolutely, but never his coding chops. >> > > I believe I have seen jealous people attack his programming skills as > well. People often denigrate Microsoft as a whole. I feel kind of sorry for > them in because they are stuck with the legacy problem. They have to write > kludgy software to keep it backwards compatible. > > People who are highly successful often have their biographies cleaned up > by posterity. Edison in particular was considered a saint in the 1930s and > 40s, in the movie portrayal, for example. Nowadays the pendulum has swung > the other way. Many people criticize him or claim that he did not invent > things, or that he stole things from Tesla. I have read many biographies of > Edison and also his notebooks and papers online. ( > http://edison.rutgers.edu/) He was a first-class genius. I have no doubt > he invented a great deal. He had a magic touch when it came to production. > He understood what the customer needed and wanted. He was magnificent. The > thing is, he was also a jerk in many ways. He resembled Steve Jobs or Rossi > in that he was a monomaniac. He was exploitative. He ignored his wife and > children. Yes, he was nice in some ways, to some people, and loyal to his > workers, and an inspiration to his workers. But he was a sharp dealer. He > did not pay his bills. He paid people a pittance and hired Bowery bums to > work in his factories to save a nickel. He drove investors crazy. > > He was like anyone else, a mixture of good and bad. > > Regarding Tesla and Edison, when Tesla's laboratory burned down and he > lost everything late in life, Edison immediately set him up in his own lab > and gave him whatever equipment he needed, gratis. > > - Jed > >
