Bill Gates, Time Magazine "Person of the Year" 751
klubar writes "Bill Gates and his wife, Melinda, were named Time Magazine "Persons of the Year". He was joined in this honor with Irish rocker Bono-all being named for being "Good Samaritans" who made a difference."
Re:Kudos (Score:2, Interesting)
I'm trying to find the quote. Someone once made a comment during the Guilded Age regarding Carnegie's, Rockefeller's, etc... charities. The critique was that they were doing it for PR or to clense their souls (which might have been true for Carnegie. He really believed that it was a sin to die rich.) The person argued something to the affect of "So what? If it weren't for them, we wouldn't have all of these public libraries (Carnegie), the first Black Universities (Rockefeller), and so on (the Mellons, Morgans, other Robber Barons)". At that time, the Government wasn't doing it and I'm not sure that the Government should.
BTW, Rockefeller set up his charities so that they had to fund themselves. If they couldn't, they didn't get his money - very efficient.
Linus Charity donations (Score:3, Interesting)
Isn't Linus Torvalds also a millionaire? Does anyone have any figures
about his charitable donations?
Melinda Gates (Score:5, Interesting)
Re:cancel my subsc... oh wait, never mind. (Score:1, Interesting)
If Bill is sincere then good luck to him, but feeding the third world should be of greater importance.
Check out Greg Palast's articles, he's been exposing the work of the IMF for years. Must be difficult being a legitimate journalist (who investigates and doesn't just read "news" off of a printer!!) at the BBC these days.
http://www.gregpalast.com/ [gregpalast.com]
Re:Well. (Score:3, Interesting)
BTW: All you guys hate Bill so much, but do you know how much Wal-Mart gave to charity? Just see the movie 'Wal-Mart - The high cost of Low Prices' where they actually compare Bill and Melinda's donations and donations from Wal-Mart. Unfortunately, truth is quite shocking
Why I think this is bogus (Score:2, Interesting)
Gates is convicted abuser of monopilist power. This means he obtained a large amount of his tremendous wealth through illegal means. The only reason he/his corporation hasn't been chastized for this is his enourmous contributions to the rebuplican party during the Bush vs. Gore elections. So not only is he guilty of abusing monopolistic power, but in my mind he is also guilty of subverting democracy. Granted this type of subversion is pretty common in modern America, but I still find it reprehensible behavior.
Now, for whatever motivations he has, he is taking some small portion of his ill gotten gains and using it for charity. But he gained that wealth by putting lots of smaller and often better companies and products out of business. God only knows what the final cost of the Microsoft monopoly is on the world.
I hope that it's clear to almost everyone that such monopolies are always bad for the consumer (there may be an argument to be made for publicly controlled monopolies like rail systems and postal systems, but this is a complex debate, and I don't think it's germane here). The lack of competition means less incentive to do strong quality checking, less responsiveness to the consumer, and higher cost. Not to mention the god awful EULA's and customer service. And this hasn't even mentioned the nightmarish influence of Microsoft on the public domain and the patent service.
Now I don't want to focus on the typical fodder of microsoft bashing. My point is this wealth was accumulated using illegal business practices, and those illegal business practices were protected by using the wealth so gained to influence the political engine. Great. What a man! A real role-model.
Had he not accumulated such a vast amount of wealth through these illegal manoeverings, who knows how that wealth would have been spent otherwise? In essence, I see this as robbing money from the masses, and using it to purchase prestige and influence via charitable organizations. Granted his tactics aren't as bad as the Mafia's, but one can see a bit of an anology to the local mafia boss being a 'pillar of the community' because he does so much to maintain the local schools, libraries, and parks...
A good example of this... (Score:3, Interesting)
I don't think so. (Score:2, Interesting)
I don't believe one can make Billions through *honest* means, even in America...
It generally seems to require some form of deception, dishonest billing, and/or a monopolized market...
Or you believe that the Airlines operate an honest business? Cell-phone companies? Fast-food? Multi-level marketing? "Get Rich" schemes? QuickStar/Amway schemes? What about companies that exist to only hold patents???
How many Billions does MSFT have laying around in CASH right now??? Not revenue, not capital, but pure CASH... The number is truly staggering.
Hopefully the money MSFT donates does some good, but it is ill-gotten gains. Robin Hood is a nice child's story, but it is still not right to go around performing armed robbery in order to get some money to donate... MSFT's guns are not the projectile type, but the legal & financial type.
So please, don't delude yourself and other readers...
Re:Well. (Score:5, Interesting)
Yaaaay Melinda! (Score:3, Interesting)
Re:Respect.. (Score:5, Interesting)
If you're going to compare Mr. Gates to the robber barons in terms of generosity, at least take into consideration the fact that Gates is considerably poorer than Rockefeller was at Rockefeller's peak.
Do samaritians always sue indies over nothing? (Score:5, Interesting)
This nearly ruined SST over the costs of the suit alone, but by forcing SST to fight an expensive suit, while the music they had greatly contributed to for more than 10 years exploded into the mainstream, it greatly contributed to the eventual demise of the label, robbing the artists of an important channel.
Later U2 claimed [l2g.to] to have not been greatly involved. "It wasn't us, just the label", paraphrased.
I'm sorry, but if you let your lawyer sue, I'll hold you responsible. And if you wanna preach to people about responsible behavior, I'll expect that you know what your agents do in your name.
I have one thing to say about Bono: hypocrite. I think this is a fitting "people of the year" panel: They all give to charity in the limelight, then turn around and fuck people over.
ceases to amaze me (Score:2, Interesting)
And then the media airs it.
Re:This should prove... (Score:5, Interesting)
Interestingly enough, There's a guy in New York named Eliot Spitzer who uses similar tactics. He's the attorney general and he's the scourge of wall street.
But that's besides the point. What I think is interesting is that much of the banter is about whether or not Gates deserves this "honor" as opposed to whether or not the Time's Man of the Year is actually relevant in 2005. I've had friends who got into publishing and journalism after school... and they weren't the sharpest knives in the drawer. Assuming more of the same in the industry, I'm not prone to taking much seriously when journalists stray from objectivity and decide to weigh in with opinion. Which is to say, I'm not much of a fan of journalism. I'd rather they turn the cameras on, shoot some footage, and let me decide for myself.
Forget that Bill might or might not be worthy of the award... more pertinent is that the award no longer has merit. Who the fuck cares what Time editors think?
Re:Well. (Score:3, Interesting)
Thats because when you're the riches person in the world, the vast majority of your money exists as ownership of companies. If Gates were to try to sell off his 1 billion shares of MSFT, it would severely criple the company's finances because he likely wouldn't be able to find a buyer @market.
While I'm sure that his success is fundamentally driven by ego, you cannot say that he doesn't give an enormous amount back to society.
Re:Well. (Score:3, Interesting)
The money that he pours into Africa gets stolen by the corrupt heads of the countries. As long as African truckers can buy whores for a few dollars at truck stops, they'll be having "dry sex" [villagevoice.com] and spreading AIDs.
He could copy Soros and get more bang for the buck if he invested in somewhat less hopeless causes. I'm not saying I agree with Soros's goals; I'm just saying that he will likely have a greater effect on the world by spending money in places like Ukraine, Russia and Hungary.
Unless Bill can come up with a cure for AIDS that costs a few dollars to deliver to someone in the bush, all his AIDS-in-Africa charities won't do much. I figure Bill must know this, and figures that if he gives enough money to non-whites, liberal white people will think he's a good person.
On the other hand, I found out today that Google pays for pizza in the CS labs at various university's throughout the country. I think that's really impressive. They certainly have their eye on the prize!
Re:cancel my subsc... oh wait, never mind. (Score:2, Interesting)
(Sorry for all the "snip"s; but you never know what sort of people frequent Slashdot!)
Re:Well. (Score:1, Interesting)
Comment removed (Score:3, Interesting)
ok, but there's more to it (Score:1, Interesting)
December 15, 2005
Op-Ed Contributor
The Rock Star's Burden
By PAUL THEROUX
THERE are probably more annoying things than being hectored about African development by a wealthy Irish rock star in a cowboy hat, but I can't think of one at the moment. If Christmas, season of sob stories, has turned me into Scrooge, I recognize the Dickensian counterpart of Paul Hewson - who calls himself "Bono" - as Mrs. Jellyby in "Bleak House." Harping incessantly on her adopted village of Borrioboola-Gha "on the left bank of the River Niger," Mrs. Jellyby tries to save the Africans by financing them in coffee growing and encouraging schemes "to turn pianoforte legs and establish an export trade," all the while badgering people for money.
It seems to have been Africa's fate to become a theater of empty talk and public gestures. But the impression that Africa is fatally troubled and can be saved only by outside help - not to mention celebrities and charity concerts - is a destructive and misleading conceit. Those of us who committed ourselves to being Peace Corps teachers in rural Malawi more than 40 years ago are dismayed by what we see on our return visits and by all the news that has been reported recently from that unlucky, drought-stricken country. But we are more appalled by most of the proposed solutions.
I am not speaking of humanitarian aid, disaster relief, AIDS education or affordable drugs. Nor am I speaking of small-scale, closely watched efforts like the Malawi Children's Village. I am speaking of the "more money" platform: the notion that what Africa needs is more prestige projects, volunteer labor and debt relief. We should know better by now. I would not send private money to a charity, or foreign aid to a government, unless every dollar was accounted for - and this never happens. Dumping more money in the same old way is not only wasteful, but stupid and harmful; it is also ignoring some obvious points.
If Malawi is worse educated, more plagued by illness and bad services, poorer than it was when I lived and worked there in the early 60's, it is not for lack of outside help or donor money. Malawi has been the beneficiary of many thousands of foreign teachers, doctors and nurses, and large amounts of financial aid, and yet it has declined from a country with promise to a failed state.
In the early and mid-1960's, we believed that Malawi would soon be self-sufficient in schoolteachers. And it would have been, except that rather than sending a limited wave of volunteers to train local instructors, for decades we kept on sending Peace Corps teachers. Malawians, who avoided teaching because the pay and status were low, came to depend on the American volunteers to teach in bush schools, while educated Malawians emigrated. When Malawi's university was established, more foreign teachers were welcomed, few of them replaced by Malawians, for political reasons. Medical educators also arrived from elsewhere. Malawi began graduating nurses, but the nurses were lured away to Britain and Australia and the United States, which meant more foreign nurses were needed in Malawi.
When Malawi's minister of education was accused of stealing millions of dollars from the education budget in 2000, and the Zambian president was charged with stealing from the treasury, and Nigeria squandered its oil wealth, what happened? The simplifiers of Africa's problems kept calling for debt relief and more aid. I got a dusty reception lecturing at the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation when I pointed out the successes of responsible policies
Lex Luthor (Score:3, Interesting)
Let's see... rich guy, gives money to charities, does humanitarian things, does some evil on the side...
Re:This should prove... (Score:4, Interesting)
Sure, the guy acted like a dictator, but he did good things. Most people never thought NYC could be saved, it was too big and too 0wn3d. I'd say that gives him more justification for Man of the Year than getting insanely rich off selling lemon software.
Re:Well. (Score:3, Interesting)
Take this quote by Steve Dobbins, the CEO of Carolina Mills, which provides textile supplies. "People ask, 'How can it be bad for things to come into the U.S. cheaply? How can it be bad to have a bargain at Wal-Mart?' Sure, it's held inflation down, and it's great to have bargains," says Dobbins. "But you can't buy anything if you're not employed. We are shopping ourselves out of jobs."
Here's the link [fastcompany.com]. Why are less people employed? WMT drives many companies our of business by putting so low a profit margin that companies cannot afford to pay their workers satisfactorily. Hence, millions of American jobs are lost as the suppliers cut costs by moving off-shore. Or cut corners elsewhere by lowering wages and/or reducing health care.
So, hence the generally accepted claim that Americans are putting themselves out of work by shopping at WMT. So you say it's good we're saving $50 billion, but on the other hand we're losing millions of jobs, and important benefits like health-care. Which is worse? And when off-shore products are no longer as cheap to produce (eg when China decides to stop buying American debt), where will we be because most of our manufacturing jobs and plants have moved elsewhere?
Read that link for mor information about companies that got destroyed by WMT. Includes the story of the above company that prospered while he sold products to people producing for WMT, but then when companies moved overseas and underpriced him he couldn't compete even if he didn't pay any of the workers! Similar thing for Vlasic pickles. I saw another similar story on Rubbermaid on a PBS documentary on WMT. The list goes on and on.
But hey, you love WMT because they save money. As long as you can buy a gallon of pickles for $3 who cares if people lose jobs?
And what does that passage actually mean? (Score:3, Interesting)
Does it mean that rich people shouldn't donate? No
Does it mean we shouldn't encourage rich people to donate? No
Does it mean that we shouldn't be happy when rich people donate? No
What it means is that we shouldn't scoff at those who donate the little they have just because they're poor and can't give "much" dollar-for-dollar.
What it means is that we should applaud those people who have little but still give as much as they can, some of them even give everything they have.
I'm sure there are some rich persons who have given away everything too but even then it is how much they give the next day when they're poor which will really be comparable to the "widow".
What it means is that we shouldn't be full of pride for what we do, that we gave so-and-so much, because how many people notice those "widows" giving everything they've got? They never make any fuss over it themselves.
So it is a teaching about sacrifice and humility.
But we should also applaud something which is more widespread among the rich in the US than anywhere else (it's slowly catching on in Europe -- at least in Norway -- and hopefully around the world (I'm hearing about good efforts from Jackie Chan)): philantrophy.
I'd like to congratulate Bill, Melinda & Bono because they are trying. No, they will never reach the level of the poor widow in the temple (few of any of us do, at least I don't) but they are far far less hypocrites than many rich people (and average people) who do even less than them percentage-wise.
As for Time and their opinions I couldn't care less, the common journalists are among the biggest (if not the biggest) hypocrites in any way you can find anywhere, and the whole idea of nominating a person(s) of the year is to increase profit (which is not bad in itself unless it becomes the sole aim of the journalism and I dare say that it is in this case).
Last but not least let's not forget all the things lots of people do/give that doesn't involve money at all be it various volunteer work, open source or even donating spare CPU cycles: it all counts.
It's how much you keep (Score:3, Interesting)