I'm mildly embarrassed to admit it, but he was my childhood hero through the 90's. Even later when everyone thought Jobs was the bee's knees, I wanted to be as effective as Gates.
But when thou doest alms, let not thy
left hand know what thy right hand doeth:
This is misguided, but it's not hard to understand where the idea came from.
I've worked to overcome my WASP reluctance to talk about money. As a geek, we should be comparing salaries. As an activist, to be effective you need resources, which is a nice proxy for buy-in, so you learn how to ask for money.
Yes, and this is the concept I take issue with. If Bill Gates's continued public dialogue over his charitable actions convinces other billionaires to join the cause, how is that anything other than a net positive? He may yet succeed in wiping out malaria when he might not have succeeded had he kept quiet.
The goal of any charitable act should be to make your charity obsolete. Quiet, private giving in small amounts without a coordinated plan does not accomplish that. It merely serves to feed somebody for another day.
The important thing is that the charity gets done.
"So when you give to the needy, do not announce it with trumpets, as the hypocrites do in the synagogues and on the streets, to be honored by others. Truly I tell you, they have received their reward in full."
I think what Jesus meant was that letting others know was not the problem, but giving alms for the sake of being honored by others. These good deeds were not done out of mercy for fellow human beings, but to improve their stature in society.
We try to judge people based on their actions. Someone messes up and defends themselves with "I was only trying to help!" - "The road to hell is paved with good intentions."[0] The fact that proverb exists at all, means that our society has at least a partial inclination towards judging people on their actions, regardless of intention.
Well, if that applies in the "mean good, do bad = bad" case, then it should apply symmetrically in the "mean bad, do good = good" case.
Concretely: Bill Gates does some good. Someone says: he's only doing it to atone. So it doesn't count. --- the first part is not the problem, but the second part is. He still did good, and it still counts. Hate his character all you want, but he did good. Don't use his character to detract from his actions.
[0] There's even a Wikipedia page about it; https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_road_to_hell_is_paved_with...
Consider a Pimp finds out he can londer money and find new girls by setting up a homeless shelter. Is setting up the shelter a good action?
For the record, Bill's business practices sucked, but there's no denying that he had better vision for tech than the monster of his day, IBM. Each age has its villain, each of which has been far from what the world considers to be truly evil.
The pimps homeless shelter might also be a net positive impact. It seems far more selfish.
Alternatively it may have started Gates down a different path which changed his mindset. I can't know as this is all internal. The point is some people feel the internal reasoning is just as important as the outcome.
PS: This is one of the reasons the law cares about internal reasoning not just outcomes.
Err... no.
It's beyond ridiculous to compare anything that Gates did to physical violence. He had a few vicious, harmful business tactics. His overall benefit to society, especially if you include his philanthropic work, is likely beyond what most people here will ever achieve.
System were corrupt because of him.
Next to that, beating one child is less harm, not matter how awful it is.
Some of us are innately more immoral/moral.
Even if he is doing good now (debatable, but for the sake of argument let's say he is), it's a good forget the past. As a society, we need to remember, and we need to stand against it, not praise a bad guy as soon as he start not acting bad.
If (and it's a big if), he is doing good right now, it's just normal. It's what he was supposed to be doing from the begining. There is nothing special here, except somebody less misbehaving.
It's like when a pop star stops coke. He/she get praises. What the heck ? Most people just don't do coke. You stop ? Good for you. Now let me read actual news.
Extend. Embrace. Extinguish. Atone.
It's not easy to run a successful business. My own, Zortech, would have been far more successful if I'd had half a brain instead of only a quarter of one.
Rockefeller reduced the price of kerosene by 70% over the years he ran SO, thus (literally) fueling the industrial expansion of America, and making cheap kerosene available to everyone.
To say that benefitted nobody but him is ridiculous. Read "Titan" by Chernow.
THREAD OF CONVERSATION: Bill Gates is a murderer!
PHILLIP HAYDRON: Jeffrey Dahmer has murdered far more than he ever did!
(CDC? Really?)
Actually, MS-DOS was the first more or less standardized platform across diverse computers, which enabled software developers to develop for a market several orders of magnitude larger than what had existed before. The result was an explosion of software being developed.
I don't see how this retarded progress.
MS got market share by being cheaper, and once the network effect was in their favor they kept it by threatening OEMs who dared sell anything else to willing customers.
I would call both of them 'monitors' or something. Operating System is way to ambitious a name for what they did.