Greed is good

MScoleman at aol.com MScoleman at aol.com
Wed Jun 10 16:56:31 PDT 1998


In a message dated 98-06-10 11:20:02 EDT, doug writes:

<< 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



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