This is misleading at best. Sure, his dad was a lawyer and he was raised in a well-off househould. But he made something -- Microsoft -- through his own ingenuity, effort, and business acumen. I didn't agree with his business ethics, but to pretend he just fell into MS because of his connected family is fairly ridiculous.

Amazingly, he has since turned his fortune into one of the most successful philanthropy projects probably in human history. Now, do I think governments should do what he does? Yes. Would I prefer higher tax rates for people like him so the people could decide what to do, not him? Yes. But he has actually been working for good, you have to give him that.

And now my life is complete: here I am, trying to defend Bill Gates, on the internet.

Gates mother introduced Microsoft to IBM for the contract by speaking with the then Chairman of IBM, who she was an acquaintance of. How many of your parents can do something like that?

Sure, Bill is a very smart person. But it's kind of impossible to say for sure whether he could have been as sucessful, if he was born in a different family. Parents play a major role in shaping the mind of children. For what we know Bill would not even have gone for a programming career and might have been a TV news reporter was he born in some other family.

If he is born in some other family, is he even Bill?

Think of it this way: how many people were as well off and well connected, and lucky as Bill Gates when he started out? let's say 100,000 people, conservatively? How many of those are as successful as he is?

Think of how many people were as smart and hard working as he started out? How many of them are sucessful as he is?

IBM went to Gary Kildall at Digital Research first.

Microsoft was already a very successful microcomputer software company at the time.

Yeah. But there is a good chance that it would not be remotely anywhere as sucessful as it is today has it not got the IBM contract.

Parents connection doesn't mean you will get the business out of personal experience it can even lead to the opposite to avoid being blamed for nepotism.

Are you saying that children with well connected parents and not well connected parents ends up getting similar opportunities in life?

No, I just wanted to say that having well connected parents doesn't mean that always will be beneficial for the child it can also work against them, like it did for me.

If he was born into some other family he wouldn't be bill gates but he would still be a very successful if far less notable businessman. To become world famous does take a degree of luck not just merit. People who only have merit are boring.

>And now my life is complete: here I am, trying to defend Bill Gates, on the internet.

I feel the same way. Talk about full circle, it goes from a point in time where Mr Gates appeared to be set on destroying [internet/open source/linux] to now being one of the leaders I actually want to get behind.

In what every role (Mr Gates Villian, Bill the philanthropist) he is at least well informed.

Gates has been at the forefront of antiviral research since 1991 when Linux was published under the "viral" GPL :-)

It's not misleading at all, you've just grown up in a warm bath of Bill Gates PR. Gates is a very shrewd business man from a very shrewd and well connected family. There is nothing 'amazing' about his monopolistic practices, which he is now focusing on global bigPharma. Gates hides behind a 'giving it all away' trust based (aka tax avoidance) philanthropy but his wealth has doubled in the last few years. I wouldn't normally waste time on this but Gates is a dark character once you look beyond the pr veneer and fawning media coverage. We are in a very serious global pandemic where transparency and solutions by, of and for the people are needed, not for profit 'philanthropic' capitalism and social controls.

Did I despise MS od the 90s and their business tactics? Sure. But wether he pays taxes on his philanthropic endeavors doesn't really matter, what matters is that they exist and do some good in the world -- and certainly, spending money on health care is good in my book. So what makes him a "dark character" in your eyes?

Instead of donating to existing public health (and education) organizations, OS programmer Gates created his own so that his personal biases wouldn't be challenged.

@BeatLeJuce You don't have to go very far online to find the answers to you question. James Corbett has amassed a formidable array of facts and history, for example.

This guy: https://rationalwiki.org/wiki/James_Corbett ? I'm sorry, but that is nowhere close to a credible source

A critique of most modern billionaires and millionaires is that they settle for ivory tower philanthropy throwing money around so they can chat with rich experts to figure out which other rich experts to give more money to. While good does come from this, it doesn't seem to make much progress in solving the underlying problems. For instance, how long has the Gates Foundation been involved with vaccines and pharmaceuticals and does it look like solutions are in within striking distance for the underlying issues?

As an example, a millionaire (who recently became a billionaire) decided on two areas where mankind needed dramatic improvement. Instead of ivory tower philanthropy, he started two different for-profit companies, one for each set of issues. Both companies have stuck around for more than 10 years and the issues they are tackling appear to have solutions within striking distance. A tangible difference has been made. If you didn't guess, the two companies are Tesla and SpaceX.

In contrast, it seems like the Gates Foundation is treading water with the issues it’s tackling. I could be wrong, but that is my perception.

As another example, an entrepreneur back in the day decided every desk needed a computer on it and used his for-profit company to make that goal a reality. That entrepreneur, of course, was Bill Gates himself.

Very few people have the R&D and engineering expertise, economic sense, and the money to lead a company to achieve world changing endeavors. Gates did it once. Musk has done it more than once.

Gates could start a pharmaceutical company, run it himself, learn the ins and outs, and reshape the industry along the way (if he could successfully learn the ins and outs). However, he does not appear to be willing to accept the risks involved in starting his own a pharmaceutical company and the problems of the pharmaceuticals industry remain unchanged.

> For instance, how long has the Gates Foundation been involved with vaccines and pharmaceuticals and does it look like solutions are in within striking distance for the underlying issues?

The Gates Foundation joined the Global Polio Eradication Initiative in 2000, and has become the primary financial supporter of that body. The Gates Foundation has provided a total of $3.7B to the polio eradication cause.

Polio case numbers are down 90% since 2000.

Sources:

https://www.forbes.com/sites/devinthorpe/2019/05/31/why-bill...

https://www.gatesfoundation.org/what-we-do/global-developmen...

You are free to do what you claim Gates should be doing. What give you the right to tell him what he should be should be doing with his time and money?

To be fair they said "could" not "should." And honestly, it's a great suggestion. I'd love to see what Gates and a team he assembled came up with (plus it'd just be fun to know there's another superstar entrepreneur out there working hard).