In Praise of Bill Gates!
Why Bill Gates Deserves Every Cent of His Billions
Apologies to readers for the recent absence. I'm also going to be away until early next week and regular blogging will resume thereafter.
Couple of excellent articles by Gary North on the free market, contracts and Microsoft. Read them here and here. Gary is one of my favourite writers and manages to bring great clarity to the issues he writes about (and usually with an interesting and different perspective).
"Gates was present at the creation of the microcomputer industry as a member of the Boston Computer Club. If we date the advent of this technology with the Altair 8800 in 1975, then only Apple and Radio Shack got into this industry in a big way earlier than Gates did. Insofar as the industry is a mass-market phenomenon, Gates created it – as close to singlehandedly as anyone has ever created a mass market industry."
It's easy to lose sight of what Bill Gates has achieved. For all the criticism that Microsoft attracts (much of it deserved, I would add), they have undoubtedly been an integral part of making computing easily available to the mass market. The productivity gains and increased wealth created by this has been enormous and Bill's fortune is a reflection of this.
Interestingly, instead of being held up as a giant of our age, Gates is given grudging respect at best and at worst is heartily despised. A very good example of the "anti-prosperity" mindset that is unfortunately so prevalent in our societies today.
Apologies to readers for the recent absence. I'm also going to be away until early next week and regular blogging will resume thereafter.
Couple of excellent articles by Gary North on the free market, contracts and Microsoft. Read them here and here. Gary is one of my favourite writers and manages to bring great clarity to the issues he writes about (and usually with an interesting and different perspective).
"Gates was present at the creation of the microcomputer industry as a member of the Boston Computer Club. If we date the advent of this technology with the Altair 8800 in 1975, then only Apple and Radio Shack got into this industry in a big way earlier than Gates did. Insofar as the industry is a mass-market phenomenon, Gates created it – as close to singlehandedly as anyone has ever created a mass market industry."
It's easy to lose sight of what Bill Gates has achieved. For all the criticism that Microsoft attracts (much of it deserved, I would add), they have undoubtedly been an integral part of making computing easily available to the mass market. The productivity gains and increased wealth created by this has been enormous and Bill's fortune is a reflection of this.
Interestingly, instead of being held up as a giant of our age, Gates is given grudging respect at best and at worst is heartily despised. A very good example of the "anti-prosperity" mindset that is unfortunately so prevalent in our societies today.
posted by Kevin Francis at
1:51 pm
