Bill Gates, philanthropist
p2pnet.net news view:- I get frustrated by people who believe the only way to fund creativity is to charge royalty fees (monopoly rents), charging a marginal cost to their clients for their creativity. The marginal cost is the change in total cost that arises when the quantity produced (or purchased) changes by one unit.
But for creativity, the marginal cost to the producer is always zero. While it’s possible to amortize the fixed cost across many units, that’s a business model choice, and it’s just as legitimate to fund the fixed costs in other ways and not charge any monopoly rent at all.
When someone states knowledge must have a marginal cost, I suggest they’re on the “flat earth” side of the Jefferson Debate.
On August 13, 1813, Thomas Jefferson wrote a letter to Isaac McPherson, part of which read:
If nature has made any one thing less susceptible than all others of exclusive property, it is the action of the thinking power called an idea, which an individual may exclusively possess as long as he keeps it to himself; but the moment it is divulged, it forces itself into the possession of every one, and the receiver cannot dispossess himself of it. Its peculiar character, too, is that no one possesses the less, because every other possesses the whole of it. He who receives an idea from me, receives instruction himself without lessening mine; as he who lights his taper at mine, receives light without darkening me.
The best known opponent of knowledge development and distribution being paid for as fixed costs, rather than a marginal cost, is Bill Gates. He became the richest man on the planet by charging a large marginal cost for developments which only cost fixed amounts to develop.
In the recent decade, he’s been a strong proponent of things such as information and mental process patents (patents on software and business models), which would impose a marginal cost on this type of knowledge, and disallow people from choosing fixed-cost based business models. His opposition to Free/Libre and Open Source Software (FLOSS) is well known, and he sees it far beyond a competitive threat to being a threat to his personal ideology.
Even in “retirement” he’s said to oppose worldwide moves towards Open Access and/or commons-based Peer Production.
Open Access publishing funds the fixed costs relating to publishing material, and allows the information to be accessed by anyone without additional permission or payment.
Press releases that said that Gates was further moving away from day-to-day operations at Microsoft to focus on Health and Education with the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation was of great concern to me, given these are the areas worldwide that like software are ideal for fixed-cost business models.
I’ve never seen his work worldwide as being philanthropy because his ideology always enters into discussion with his promotion of marginal-cost over fixed-cost methods of production, distribution and funding of creativity.
But while I don’t see his work as philanthropy, other people do. Today I read an Angus Reid Strategies World Poll of how 20 Countries Ranks Most and Least Admired World Leaders. Bill Gates ranked #2, just under Nelson Mandela.
The world’s richest person will likely continue to use his wealth to stifle progress, and a large amount of the world’s population will continue to not recognize his political participation for what it really is.
I still believe that moving to methods of development, distribution and funding which recognizes the nature of creativity are inevitable. There are many rich and powerful people that don’t believe in evolution, but that doesn’t stop human beings from evolving.
Russell McOrmond – p2pnet contributing editor
[McOrmond is an independent author (software and non-software) who uses modern business models and licensing (Free/Libre and Open Source Software, Creative Commons). He's also the CLUE policy coordinator.]
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November 12th, 2006 at 5:21 am
“The world’s richest person will likely continue to use his wealth to stifle progress…” -Russell McOrmond
McOrmond? Is that the TV guy who kept saying “There are NO americans in Bagdad” until he ran from the US tanks? Must be the same guy if he equates Gates buying vaccines for millions of children with stifleing progress. Only a look-at-my-ego jerk would be so poor in spirit.
November 12th, 2006 at 2:07 pm
“Gates buying vaccines for millions of children” ?
The writer of the post should know:
1. Vacines are produced by pharmaceutical companies whose prices that produce medicines whose price is typically 20 the manufacturing costs bacause the “patent” system designed to milk people as much as possible.
2. Gates money is the product of profits allowd by the “copyright” system that allows the milking of people as much as possible.
3. Gates was successful because he deceived IBM into buying a product (DOS) that Gates did not have but IBM thought he did. After Gates sold DOS to IBM he went and purchased dOS from the owner. The rest was luck (being in the right place at the right time) and the absurd copyright duration that allows an owner of a software copyright monopoly on the program far beyod the point of obsolecense (100 years). A travesty of the constitutional intention of “limited duration” for the exploitation of creative works.
4. Gates lives in a country with tax loopholes for the rich. Once you are rich, you basically pay no or little taxes.
5. If the people in the third world countries cannot affor the basics, it is because their countries’s economies have been destroyed by the wealth countries. WIPO, designed to shaft the poor countries is a good example of how the wealthy countries operate.
Gates is not a bad guy. Just an average who became the richest guy like Bush becmae the most powerful person in the world with a C- college average but was in the right place at the right time…. his old man was president. It’s all luck, not merit.
etc.
November 12th, 2006 at 5:13 pm
Whenever you see someone buying something you need to also ask why something is so expensive. It is entirely because of the “flat earth” side of the Jefferson Debate, and the royalties for pharmaceutical patents, that these vaccines are so expensive in the first place.
We wouldn’t need Gates money for vaccines if it were not for — well — Gates money being used to lobby to keep the products of our minds expensive in the first place. You may also want to look into what investments Microsoft has outside of Microsoft, and just how much money Gates himself is making off of the patented pharmaceutical sector.
Another example: Microsoft “donates” software to Canadian government programs in Canada like Computers for Schools. They then write off on their taxes the suggested retail price for this software. Sounds like a “donation” until you realize that the cost to Microsoft to do this is zero, and they get $real cash$ from the government in return. This is not a “donation” but a tax scam where Microsoft is still getting paid by the government for the use of a specific brand of software.
If the marginal (per copy) amount of money you receive back from the government is greater than the marginal (per copy) cost to manufacture what was “donated”, then it is not a donation. Simple math.
November 13th, 2006 at 2:40 pm
“3. Gates was successful because he deceived IBM into buying a product (DOS) that Gates did not have but IBM thought he did. After Gates sold DOS to IBM he went and purchased dOS from the owner….”
“It’s all luck, not merit”
It sounds like luck combined with deceipt.
Thanks to all who have a little light to shed.