Why? Some of the most venal, greedy, and ruthless people in history made their money then turned to philanthropy to improve their image. I would argue that it was downright predictable, and so would Alfred Nobel. In fact using charity to either improve your public image (as in Gates and many others) is probably only matched by people like Jimmy Saville using charity to give themselves license to continue committing crimes.

What’s surprising to me is that it still works!

That's a pretty dark view.

I imagine that Gates played to win in business, as many others do, it's just that he was particularly good at it.

Now he's playing hard and to win in philanthropy.

I doubt he gives 2 bits what the average person thinks of him, at least not enough to throw money at rehabilitating his image. If that was his goal, his philanthropy targets would be different.

Right, the then world's richest started a charitable trust purely so he could improve his public image.

I'm sure the competitive drive to dominate (in generosity) plays a role. Look at the rivalry between Rockefeller and Carnegie for example. Once they grew old and their companies either bought out (Carnegie) or broken up by the feds (Rockefeller) they basically switched to seeing who could get their names put on the most public buildings by building libraries, universities, etc.

What else is he going to do? At that level of wealth, the marginal returns on greed have diminished to almost zero.

So one must find another way to feed ones ego. What is left apart from fulfilling the god complex and saving the world?

Edit: has->have

> What is left apart from fulfilling the god complex and saving the world?

Well one thing I can think of is wanting to make the world better