Bill and Melinda Gates: America’s Top Farmland Owner

Re:Bill and Melinda Gates: America’s Top Farmland Owner by hyperman1 on Thursday January 14, 2021 @03:36PM (#25782112)

I play board games with some friends. While we're generally nice guys and girls, in some of the games we go full twirling moustache evil, every trick allowed as long as its in the rules. That's an in-game persona for an hour, after which we revert back to our nice selves. Which is fine, BTW, we're consenting adults and we know its a game.

I always thought of Bill as doing the same thing in Microsoft. Nice guy generally, but business is business, no hard feelings while he steamrolls your small company to death. Then, after having a fun work day doing what he should be doing, he reverts to his nice self.

He was probably shocked to learn the world knew only his evil side.

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Re:Bill and Melinda Gates: America’s Top Farmland Owner by norenh on Thursday January 14, 2021 @03:49PM (#25782268)

You might be right, but I do feel that it is a difference between a board game and real world.

The decisions you make for the company affects the real world (even thought it is in the role of a artificial entity, like a company) and have real consequences on people and the state of the world.

The same in not true for the decisions you make in a board game or computer game.

Of course some might say board games affect the real world but the difference in scale is so large it is negligible.

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Re:Bill and Melinda Gates: America’s Top Farmland Owner by hyperman1 on Thursday January 14, 2021 @05:24PM (#25783613)

that's clearly true, of course. I don't want to defend Bill or Microsoft (not that he needs me to). I simply see it as a way to explain his behaviour.

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