Defend Billionaires Like Bill Gates and Offend Centrist Whiners Who Love Money

Politics & News
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The Truth about Bill Gates and why most of the super wealthy dont earn their money

Bill Gates is a thief and robber baron on a massive scale not seen since the late 1800s. He didn’t actually invent “any” of the technologies you are referring to… almost all of those technologies existed decades before Microsoft was founded. The underlying structure of Windows and all related Microsoft products was invented by US universities using public (government-provided) funds; or by IBM; or by Xerox in their Palo Alto Research Center (also known as Xerox PARC).

What Bill Gates “did” do, is incorporate those technologies into software his company made - and then took advantage of general computer illiteracy to hoodwink the US Patent Office into approving patents for his products. Although others had built operating system before Gates, using the same underlying technologies, no one else tried to patent those technologies before because it’s not legal to copyright publicly-funded work performed at universities.

He then sued every one of his competitors, using funds leveraged by borrowing from his VERY rich parents (No Bill Gates is not a rags-to-riches success story in any way. He was born extremely wealthy and would have died super-rich even if he never earned a penny on his own.); or else obtained by other means that many courts have repeatedly determined to be fraudulent.

He literally out-lawyered and out-spent smaller competitors - most of whom had legitimate claims to their intellectual property that he simply stole by incorporating it into his own products without any acknowledgement or payment - until they went out of business because of the cost of legal battles.

He then entered into a partnership with IBM to build PC’s for them… and stole the computer code and related technologies IBM built for the “OS/1” and “OS/2” products. He then entered into a partnership with NeXt Computing and did the same thing to them - Microsoft’s lawyers are the primary reason NeXt went out of business, even though NeXt built much better products than anyone else at the time (including the first color GUI and first integration with the mouse for commercial use). He stole most of the code for Office products by copyrighting work of US universities or much-smaller commercial competitors; and then suing those same universities or business competitors until they gave up their patents or granted nearly-free licensing rights to Microsoft (universities); or went out of business (smaller competitors).

In reality, Microsoft didn’t invent any of the code or hardware innovations underlying windows and office and related products. For example:

The mouse was invented as a taxpayer funded research project in 1962 while Bill Gates was still in elementary school.
Plug-and-play hardware & software was invented in 1969 while Gates was still in high school.
The base code for the windows operating system graphical interface (GUI) was invented in 1970, several years before Microsoft came into being as a company.
Colorized GUIs with fully integrated keyboard, mouse, plug-in play hardware, and portable CPU and screen - were invented in 1974. This was before Microsoft came into being as a company, while Gates was still a college sophomore.
Email software was invented in the mid-1960s. HTML was invented in the late 1960s. GUI email software was invented in the early 1970s. GUI spreadsheet software was invented in the mid-1970s. Etc, etc… all well before Microsoft was formed as a company, mostly while Bill Gates was still in elementary or high school.
What you may not be aware of is that Bill Gates owns many media companies and multiple news outlets. Gates spent a very large fortune planting old-media and internet news stories touting his genius and philanthropy. The sum total of all Bm Gates’ charitable contributions amount to less than 2.3% of his enormous wealth.

There’s a gold-plated train to hell reserved for people like Bill Gates.

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One reason I like seeing Langan and other deplorable frauds get mentioned in this context is that I can mention the actual Smartest Dude Ever was a socialist activist so everybody can relax.

Although the University had previously refused to let his father enroll him at age 9 because he was still a child, Sidis set a record in 1909 by becoming the youngest person to enroll at Harvard University. In early 1910, Sidis’ mastery of higher mathematics was such that he lectured the Harvard Mathematical Club on four-dimensional bodies which brought him nationwide attention.[8][9]

Sidis created a constructed language called Vendergood in his second book, the Book of Vendergood , which he wrote at the age of 8. The language was mostly based on Latin and Greek, but also drew on German and French and other Romance languages.[33] It distinguished between eight moods: indicative, potential, imperative absolute, subjunctive, imperative, infinitive, optative, and Sidis’s own strongeable.[34] One of its chapters is titled “Imperfect and Future Indicative Active”. Other parts explain the origin of Roman numerals. It uses base 12 instead of base 10:

:fist::fist::fist::fist::fist:

In 1919, shortly after his withdrawal from law school, Sidis was arrested for participating in a socialist May Day parade in Boston that turned violent. He was sentenced to 18 months in prison under the Sedition Act of 1918 by Roxbury Municipal Court Judge Albert F Hayden. Sidis’ arrest featured prominently in newspapers, as his early graduation from Harvard had garnered considerable local celebrity status. During the trial, Sidis stated that he had been a conscientious objector to the World War I draft, was a socialist, and did not believe in a god like the “big boss of the Christians,” but rather in something that is in a way apart from a human being.[15][16]

I also dug up this quote:

Chris Langan? Lol that fucking idiot.

-Billy Sidis

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To me the real issue is less about “is Bill Gates good or evil?” and more about “is the ability to make lots of money in one field a sufficient credential for one person to arguably have more influence over public health in many countries than millions of people in those countries or a greater say over education policy than the vast majority of people who will send their kids to those schools?”

Even if a given billionaire (or even all billionaires as a group) is good and smart and well-intentioned, the power and influence that their money provides is incredibly distorting to the political system.

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https://mobile.twitter.com/GunnelsWarren/status/1193284239871098880

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https://twitter.com/Amusitr0n/status/890198081798537217

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Windows is an absolute shitturd of an operating system and has done nothing but suck ass throughout its entire history. It has created very few innovations and its entire market presence is due to acceptance into the market place. They have done everything they can to claim patents and try to create artificial monopolies within their operating system when possible.

All of this said, whether there is 1, 100, 1000 billionaires is totally apropos. The questions are whether resources are efficiently allocated and they are not. Untreated easily-treatable illness causes damage to the economy. Otherwise intelligent people not being able to achieve their potential prevents gains. Hoarding of money slows down the economy. Rewarding intellectual thieves privatizes the gains of public research and disincentivizes private research.

Cliffs: Microsoft trash. China trash. Billionaires trash in practice, not in principal. Free healthcare and college good.

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I think another reason why there are a lot of people are so eager to defend billionaires is that the government has a terrible history of being efficient. We just need to look at the exploding costs of military projects.
Right now we are in a situation that the billionaires like Musk, Bezos or Branson are doing the major work in rocket science(maybe not exactly the science part but the developing part). If the state himself should do the work how do we ensure the people involved are accountable. If you are doing it as a private person you are mosly liable with your own money(unless you are a bank or a car maker :blush:). People using government money often are less careful or even corrupt.
We have a prime example here in Germany with the new Berlin airport. The costs exploded but nobody is being held accountable. Sure they switched the CEO’s but most of these guys find a new good paying job anyway. The city as supervisory office failed. It was builder and supervisor in one person. Of course that didnt work out.
So what I am saying is, if Warren or any other democratic candidate wants to run on the tax issue he/she should also have a plan in their pockets how they want to ensure that the money is not wasted.

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He absolutely exploited labor and did not properly compensate them. This is the problem.

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Yeah the technical aspects behind the ultimate money Microsoft made was not from Bill Gates. His skill was maximizing the exploitation of others for his gain.

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They’ve already solved this at colleges to get big time donations. Just name the new departments: ‘The Department of Gates’, ‘The Department of Bezos’, ‘The Department of Musk’ etc.

Then release their budgets and where everything goes. Even let them choose their favorite programs to have funded at the highest levels so they can feel even better about themselves helping the places people need help the most. Isn’t their whole thing trying to cement legacies? What better way than having your name honorarily stamped on the government forever (the only way to get one of these departments is to exceed a particular amount of billions that have gone toward taxes maybe 35 or 40 bil in a year minimum)? If you pay enough taxes, you can know exactly where it goes! Win!

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I was going to call myself a Buffet fan, but that’s not quite correct. I just have great admiration for what an investment guru he is and as an investor myself, I try to learn and mimic his strategy and advice. But let’s not kid ourselves… Protecting shareholder profits are one of the root causes of corporate greed

Warren is a value investor who only buys companies that are shareholder friendly (that is, they’ll use profits to buy back stock or make good investments, instead of diluting their price to earnings ratio by issuing more shares and taking on more debt, etc.). Obviously, this is better than not caring about the stockholders, but how many people have investment portfolios to take part in the benefits of a company’s profit and rising stock price as a shareholder?

I realize this is a whole different topic, but pressure to perform for shareholders doesn’t benefit workers or society at large, but often creates a ruthlessness environment of greed

I really have no point here. Just saying that most people either don’t or cannot afford to participate in our capitalistic system of financial markets for gain and are left on the sidelines, while major shareholders get richer and richer

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I’m not trying to say Buffett is great for the entire system, and this is probably too much to get into, but ultimately what is important is not money. It’s what work people do, whether it’s productive, and how the benefits are distributed. The problems with inequality aren’t really about people’s net worth, but about how their net worth causes labor and materials to be used unequally.

Jeff Bezos is a pretty extreme example of wealth turning into a lot of labor and material serving him or being wasted. He owns several giant homes in Washington, California, Washington DC and New York. He owns 300k acres in Texas. And that’s just the tip of the iceberg because supposedly his goal, his major lifetime goal and what he wants to do with his money, is get people like him living in space.

His ownership of Amazon is mostly bad because of the harm Amazon does, but owning a bunch of stock in a company is not automatically bad for the world. But, he is a conduit for a lot of money that turns a lot of labor and material away from things that could be useful to a lot of people and into a bunch of shit just for himself.

Buffett doesn’t do that.

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If money means as little as you claim, we needn’t worry about taxing billionaires out of existence. According to you, we’re not depriving them of anything in particular.

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That’s a great post. I consider myself pretty enlightened in this regard relative to the average American and yet I still find myself always feeling on the cusp of finally having enough to really start enjoying it. It always feels like the next step will be enough. A poker career is a great microcosm because you’re always climbing the ladder. This will get a little stream of consciousness, but it’s where I’m at and I’m in a mood to share today…

First, a few years ago, it was just having enough to be able to safely grind 2/5 with a healthy bankroll, and make like 60K a year with tons of time off and easy 25-30 hour weeks. Move into a nice spot, start enjoying life a bit more, not have to work for the man. That was great, but it wasn’t enough. Then it was either making six figures at 2/5, which I could have done if I worked even remotely hard on volume (I have tended to focus more on studying, improving, playing in good games and only playing when I’m sharp) and/or moving up to 5/T.

Now I’m semi-comfortably at 5/T - I say semi because I’ve been running awful since the WSOP, we’re at like 510 hours of ~min wage. People sometimes forget that winning small for a long time is as bad a losing for a short time, because you keep taking living expenses out of your roll. So the fact that I’m still semi-comfortably rolled after that is a testament to how comfortably rolled I was before that, of course.

Anyway, I’m semi-comfortably at 5/T with some hookups to awesome deep/soft games to where I could probably play ~1200 hours a year or less (some in home games some in casinos) and be in that 150-200K range if I ran neutral… but now I’m looking at it like, “Okay, I’m set up to make 100K a year even if I run bad (well, I might again miss this year after a narrow miss last year - that threshold has been my kryptonite, but :man_shrugging:), hopefully more like 200-250K the next few years… But I need to use that money to really grow my wealth so I can be set up for life and have peace of mind.”

So now it’s like expanding into a little bit of staking (one player), brainstorming a second income stream for a little more stability, growing my nest egg for living expenses from 12 super frugal months to 12 standard months, being in a position to buy a house, saving for retirement, and putting large sums (by my standards) into the stock market and/or other investments. None of this is bad, of course… but sometimes I wonder if I’m doing it wrong. I’m 33 and I can make great money, probably ~ the 85th percentile for my age, while working relatively few hours. I could travel more than I do, enjoy life more than I do, etc…

But I can’t get over that fear about the long-term stability, that desire to never have to stress about it. In my head it’s like, “As soon as you have that stability, you’ll be able to relax and enjoy it all. You just have to get that retirement fund on track, get that house, get that roll fully stabilized. You won’t stress over moving up to bigger games once all the other stuff is stabilized, it’ll be no big deal either way.”

But I fear/know it’ll just be about doing whatever I can to move the retirement age up. Always chasing the next level in American capitalism, never enjoying the current quite enough. Sometimes I think the smartest people are the happiest ones, people who move to a beautiful place with awesome weather and snag a service job they don’t bring home with them, then chill the rest of the time with people they enjoy without a care in the world. The rest of us, who society would consider “smart” are often more like hamsters on the wheel.

We all think we can escape it, but how many actually do? Even knowing that, I still think I’ll escape it any day now.

In fairness, I’m blessed to not have a boss and do something I (usually) enjoy for good money, in that sense I’ve escaped… But I mean escape in the big picture sense. Escape the grind completely. Escape the stress completely. At this point I’m probably too programmed by corporate American society to even be able to enjoy that lol…

</stream of consciousness>

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Really appalled by the level of argumentation ITT. “Boo billionaires” commands 90+% support, and this is the quality of ideas the smartest posters are coming up with. If you assume:

  • There’s a political/economic system with no billionaires and idyllic peace.
  • There is no system that has billionaires and idyllic peace.
  • It is possible to move from the system we have now to an idyllic peace system.

Then yes, the no-billionaires position is morally compelling and disagreeing with it is insane or evil. But there is quite a bit of contestable ground being assumed here!

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It’s a thought experiment. Interrogating its relationship to reality is 100% missing the point, every single time.

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“Billionaires are a policy failure” is also a line for making people stupid. It is a variant of the something-must-be-done fallacy (i.e., “Something must be done”; “This is something” → “This must be done”). If the existence of billionaires reflects a failure of policy, what policy? You can (you actually can’t IRL, but leave that aside for the moment) eliminate billionaires by taking away enough of their money, but that doesn’t improve any policies.

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Tax policy.

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Another interesting unquestioned assumption is the belief that raw intelligence is the real thing, and the ability to spend a ton of time on a huge universe of material so that you can deploy it, even though you fail to gain a deep deep understanding is “really stupid.” In real life, extreme intelligence is far less valuable than good-enough intelligence plus flexibility plus the ability to apply things you don’t 100% understand. There are doubtless many people who understand math better than Gates. But most of those people waste their lives proving theorems in topology that have zero relevance to anyone.

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There are definitely benefits to education other than remembering and deeply understanding the specific subject at hand, but your teaching philosophy of designing classes that consciously avoid it seems like you’re overreaching just to argue.

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