Ruined? Most businesses fail, and most large businesses cause many others to fail (this includes IBM, Google and Apple) as well as providing the means for many others to succeed and prosper.
Even if you were right, I don't think the lives of Silicon Valley yuppies have been "ruined" in quite the same way as some of the victims of Chinese factory production lines....
Fact is that Steve Jobs, Larry Ellison, Eric Schmidt and others also screwed people, and in some cases, probably more than Gates. None of them has done remotely as much to make up for it.
Indeed, while you are getting your panties in a twist about things you think happened in the 1990s, Gates has saved millions of lives.
Have you considered worrying less about a few capitalists being "ruined" (while living in the world's richest society and consuming a huge proportion of the world's resources) and worrying more about the millions suffering from war, starvation, disease and various other afflictions?
Being found to have a monopoly (by a judge who explicitly excluded Macs and Linux machines) meant Microsoft was held to much higher standards. Other companies can and do behave far worse and get away with it.
You want to compare the effects of these lives "ruined" (whose exactly?) with the Chinese workers making your products committing suicide?
I made no such comparison and any such comparison is a red herring. Bill the businessman was ruthless and unethical and destroyed many a business via illegal means. Bill the philanthropist is a great man who's doing great things that I very much support. One does not negate the other. I can despise Bill the businessman and look up to Bill the philanthropist at the same time.
First, you're overstating things wildly. Unless you come up with some names (people and companies) I shall continue to believe that you're blowing smoke.
Second, Gates wasn't uniquely bad, and he had plenty of equally ruthless rivals including Jobs, Ellison and Noorda. He was, as mentioned, held to much higher standards.
Third, it still shows a profound lack of humanity to think that what was mostly antitrust-theatre has anything like the same importance as real life and death issues in the wider world.
> I shall continue to believe that you're blowing smoke.
Well fuck off then, we're done. I'm not going to waste my time reiterating Microsoft's crimes to someone's who apparently blind to them and continues to throw out red herrings.
There's plenty of evidence that Netscape, for example, was a bad business and made countless mistakes, and that Microsoft did not compete unfairly under the rules. See, for example, Winners, Losers and Microsoft by Liebowitz and Margolis or Trust on Trial by Richard McKenzie.
Re Chinese workers, denial of concrete evidence is a good way to show you lost the argument. Also, that you are desperately short of common humanity.
> Chinese workers, denial of concrete evidence is a good way to show you lost the argument. Also, that you are desperately short of common humanity.
No, it's a good way to throw out irrelevant red herrings from someone who doesn't know how to even make an argument. Let it sink in to that tiny little brain of yours, how Chinese workers are treated by others has no bearing at all on whether Bill did something wrong in his past. Lacking any real argument, you're just flailing around foolishly looking for something to grab onto.
Unfortunately you have a marked lack of understanding as well as a lack of common humanity. Some things are more important than others. Gates's "crimes" -- which were only defined as crimes after the event -- were trivia compared to those of many US corporations including Enron (1), Pfizer (2) and Monsanto (3).
Anyone with a sense of proportion uses their bile to fight things that actually matter. No rational person today thinks that includes what Gates did in the 1990s.
(1) Fraud and conspiracy on a massive scale, plus money laundering, insider trading and other crimes.
(2) Using Nigerian children as guinea pigs. Dozens died.
(3) Illegally dumping thousands of tons of highly toxic waste in landfills.
Unfortunately you have a marked lack of intelligence and continue to employ fallacious arguments. Murder is a more serious crime than theft, that is not cause to dismiss theft as trivia nor do any other companies crimes no matter how serious lessen Gates past crimes. Take your ignorant fallacies and irrational red herrings somewhere else.
You've been told multiple times to stop throwing in those other companies as red herrings and since you're unable to have a rational discussion, we're done here. Take your ignorance somewhere else, I'm not interested.
Who can say what others might've done with the money? As someone who genuinely believes in democracy, I have to believe that a large sum of money will achieve more good in the hands of many than in those of few, or one.
Let the people die from malaria, do nothing about kids getting crippled from polio, let kids suffer from malnutrition??
What do you suggest he should do instead? Play golf and write management books all day?
A man made richest fortune on earth, and has now gone on a mission to tackle tough problems for the betterment of humanity and all you can do is find mistakes in his work?
He's doing great things now, but that's not in the slightest way relevant to the point I made. His wrongs were not and are not petty to those who suffered from them and pointing that out is not finding mistakes in his work nor is it disapproving of what he's now doing.
