[lbo-talk] Bill Gates, business genius?

Tayssir John Gabbour tjg at pentaside.org
Sat Dec 4 15:30:27 PST 2010


On Thu, Dec 2, 2010 at 4:38 PM, Doug Henwood <dhenwood at panix.com> wrote:
> http://lbo-news.com/2010/12/02/bill-gates-business-genius/
>
> Reading Diane Ravtich’s excellent takedown of (private school grad and college dropout) Bill Gates for all his intervention in public education reminded me that the only reason people listen to him is that he’s thought to be some sort of business genius. If he’s that rich, he must be smart, eh? But he’s really not such a business genius....

His father (Bill Gates Sr.) is pretty honest:

"Let's talk about the question of why people are wealthy. There is

a myth that it's a function of enormous personal

attributes. There's a myth that achieving wealth is a function of

personal intelligence and energy and thus that the product of that

intelligence and energy being wealth is the sole and exclusive

possession of the person who developed and earned it. And that

myth is so egregious. It's just egregious.

[...]

"There are some things that our government does with its tax money

which directly create personal wealth and that is the enormous

federal research activity. Do you know there would not be an

Internet but for federal research money? There would not be new

biotechnological companies but for the federal research

effort. There would not be an examination of the human genome

without the federal research effort. In those university

laboratories is the seed of the health of our economy.

"We have a wonderfully robust economy, which may be a gutsy thing

to say on a Tuesday in January 2003, but in fact it is an

enormously robust economy, and the individual wealth which is

generated in this economy is, in my judgment, and I doubt that

there is much that anyone could disagree with about this, is a

function of the innovative businesses which are created as a

result of federal research. But you understand that the people who

benefit from that research get it free. The universities own it

under federal law. And the universities have the ability to

license it, even the professors who are in many cases the

inventors generate a direct personal stake in the products of that

research. So, if somebody starts a software company or a

biotechnology company, or even if somebody owns a building in

downtown Washington which you rent to those people, it starts from

the same place. It starts from this incredible research activity

which is going on with federal money."

-- http://www.taxpolicycenter.org/publications/url.cfm?ID=900584

All the best, Tj



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