<< No, Gates got rich by staking claims to the cash flow unleashed by the
labor of others. "Gates" himself has created next to nothing. Well there
was that version of MBASIC he & Allen did in the late 1970s, but they
didn't invent BASIC. Neither did they invent word processing, graphical
interfaces, or anything. No one not drawing a Microsoft paycheck has ever
argued that their products were particularly innovative or particularly
great. And since when did "Gates" make the pie bigger for everyone?
Thousands of people working for Microsoft, from its multimillionaires to
the prison laborers who pack Windows boxes, did. And the Microsofties
appropriated the work of generations before them, going back to Babbage and
Lovelace (and much of it subsidized by governments and universities). But
since Gates is one of the principal owners of Microsoft, he has the legal
right to pocket the proceeds of other people's labor. How piggy.
>>
how true -- phrased another way, Gates has followed the traditional capitalist route of packaging and distributing other's labor and ideas to the exclusion of competition, and reaped the profit of dead labor. In short, he's a pimp. maggie coleman mscoleman at aol.com