Gates is doing Carnegie ---not making up for ordering his guards to open fire on striking workers, just making up for countless numbers of entrepreneurial people (not unlike you might find here on Ycombinator if it had existed back in the day) that died after their life's work was utterly destroyed by his wealth building tactics.

I leave you with this...from C|Net's Don Reisinger on Paul Allen: "One evening in late December 1982, I heard Bill and Steve [Ballmer] speaking heatedly in Bill's office and paused outside to listen in," he writes in his memoir. "It was easy to get the gist of the conversation. They were bemoaning my recent lack of production and discussing how they might dilute my Microsoft equity by issuing options to themselves and other shareholders. It was clear that they'd been thinking about this for some time." The lack of productivity wasn't intentional, Allen claims. A few months earlier, he was informed by doctors that he had Stage 1-A Hodgkin's lymphoma. He stayed on at Microsoft during his treatment, but Allen says that he was a victim of Gates and Ballmer at his weakest moment."

So forgive the rant provoked by the notion one would include Bezos in the same topic with Bill Gates. We suggest Gates just keep writing large checks, playing Bridge with Warren Buffet and be thankful he doesn't have a prison record for what he got away with when the world governments (and their old mainframes) didn't have a clue what he was doing or why it mattered.

I'm not saying they are perfect by any means, what I am saying is that it is not some sweatshop operation exploiting those without any other options.

Amazon has been a blessing to many people around the world, and to cast them as the villain simply because the unskilled labor job isn't as comfortable and kind as some would have it is frankly wrong in my opinion.

Let me just say that working at Amazon is a blessing compared to many of the alternatives. There are many jobs out there that are not pleasant. There are many working conditions we would rather not hear about - except to cry out at the social injustice - before resuming our 9-to-5 office jobs.

Amazon has raised the bar for this class of work, they have set high expectations and offered higher compensation in return. This job to many is but a foothold to a better life, and to others it is simply an improvement to their previous one.

Peeing in a bottle is great fodder for headlines, but they are far from the first to ever need to do that to meet their obligations. Obviously it should be remediated so they don't have to, and I definitely agree some bad PR is a a great way to go about it. However, if that is the worst of the job then all I can say is welcome to the workforce.

The thing that makes Amazon's case stand out is how systematic it is (and the scale at which that system plays out). This is a global company with deep pockets, and it very deliberately meters out exactly how much it can push people to maintain maximum profits. Even when that means people get injured or burned-out; others will take their place. The dire state of the low-wage job market, that causes people to take these jobs because it's the best they can get, is no excuse for treating people as subhuman.

The title doesn't match his quotes at all.

It's misinformation unless he said something else during the talk.

He's not ruling out stopping the shutdown.

He says it's to late if you want a containment strategy.

And politically people won't like a non shutdown plan.

BTW, you really should not be using Perl 4 anymore.

Who is saying we should "crater the economy" depends on your opinion of what will crater the economy, but all sorts of people are demanding things that someone thinks will crater the economy. That's what happens in a crisis, things seem crazy so people start talking about radical actions.

It's not difficult for some random person to say something that is going to have no personal or collective consequence. Gates may be insulated, but his comments have the potential to influence people who might in turn affect him.

And I'm still agreeing with you that Gates does indeed have a great deal of influence and should be very mindful of the human damage this cratering of the economy is going to have. Perhaps he should not comment publicly? But that's his right to do so.

Anyway, I disagree with Bill Gates on this. We need to get everything back up to speed again and still remain vigilant in protecting ourselves from this contagion.

It's the equivalent of wandering around whispering 'remember, thou art mortal' to people. Wealth insulates people from the consequences of their actions. Good point, duly noted.