'Crazy and evil': Bill Gates surprised by pandemic conspiracies

[cmarshall]

18 minutes ago, heybruce said:

Bill Gates did not write the copyright laws, and it is the job of trade negotiators to protect intellectual property.  Most Americans wish

the trade negotiators would do their job better.

 Be serious.  Who else, other than major copyright holders, do you think wrote the US copyright laws?  Here's Microsoft's budget for lobbying the federal government:

 

[cmarshall]

6 minutes ago, Eric Loh said:

Really debatable whether Bill Gates’s wealth is due to government policy on copyrights. Is there an alternative to give people an incentive to innovate and do creative work. I am envious of his wealth but grateful for his technology and philanthropic contribution. 

 

Do you really imagine that if Gates maximum wealth had been capped at, say, $500 million, he would not have started Microsoft, because it just wouldn't have been worth it?

 

At $500 million he would have recouped his original investment many times over and become an extremely wealthy man whose descendants would have also been wealthy for generations.  

 

People who work in technology haven't regarded Microsoft as innovative for decades if they ever were.  The Windows interface was developed by Xerox Parc, not MS.

[heybruce]

11 minutes ago, cmarshall said:

 Be serious.  Who else, other than major copyright holders, do you think wrote the US copyright laws?  Here's Microsoft's budget for lobbying the federal government:

 

You edit my post down to one sentence you thought you could reply to, then did a poor job of replying.

 

US copyright law dates back to 1790.  Microsoft wasn't lobbying then.

 

 

[cmarshall]

3 minutes ago, heybruce said:

You edit my post down to one sentence you thought you could reply to, then did a poor job of replying.

 

US copyright law dates back to 1790.  Microsoft wasn't lobbying then.

 

In 1790 a copyright lasted approximately seven years after which the content passed to the public domain.  Currently, it lasts ninety-five years from publication.  But the enforcement of software copyrights is now a major goal of US trade negotiations and Gates has benefitted enormously from this.

 

I didn't find your other points particularly well-taken, but I am happy to respond to them, if you insist.

 

Bill Gates operated in accordance with the law.  Pablo Escobar didn't.  Bill Gates didn't have competitors murdered, he provided a product that the majority of consumers preferred.  You can still choose to use Linux if you don't like Windows. 

 

Bill Gates has a great deal of influence in writing the copyright laws.  But the point of my comparison was certainly not to equate Gates and Escobar in terms of lawlessness, but in their use of philanthropy to protect themselves from taxation in the case of Gates and informing of the police in the case of Escobar.

 

Bill Gates did not write the copyright laws, and it is the job of trade negotiators to protect intellectual property.  Most Americans wish

the trade negotiators would do their job better.

 

Already answered.

 

I don't know Bill Gates personally, and assume you don't either.  I won't speculate on his motives.  Why do you?

 

You can't be serious about this objection, can you?  Would I be disqualified from inferring the motives of, say, Pablo Escobar, because I never made his acquaintance?  Really?

[LomSak27]

45 minutes ago, cmarshall said:

It's true that I really have it in for Bill Gates, Warren Buffet, Larry Ellison, Jeff Bezos, and all the other billionaires who are not in any way entitled to their excessive wealth. 

 

Finally real motivations. You do not care about covid or vaccinations. You are as  happy arguing  Greta & climate change as netscape navigator vs internet explorer if you can drag Bill Gates into it. Obviously you are exactly what this article is talking about.

 

As strange as it may seem to you. Many of us are concerned about covid. Know people who have been sickened and some who died. Have family and friends that are immediately affected by this. We are now going into our second year, as the economic costs to Thailand & other countries continue to mount. There is a worry, an economic breaking point could be reached. Sorry if we cannot get excited about Gates, Soros, The Rothschilds or whatever conspiracy theory is the flavor of the month. There are much greater things to be involved in; the fight against the covid 19 pandemic is one.

 

 

Edited February 8, 2021 by LomSak27

[cmarshall]

11 minutes ago, LomSak27 said:

 

Finally real motivations. You do not care about covid or vaccinations. You are as  happy arguing  Greta & climate change as netscape navigator vs internet explorer if you can drag Bill Gates into it. Obviously you are exactly what this article is talking about.

 

As strange as it may seem to you. Many of us are concerned about covid. Know people who have been sickened and some who died. Have family and friends that are immediately affected by this. We are now going into our second year, as the economic costs to Thailand & other countries continue to mount. There is a worry, an economic breaking point could be reached. Sorry if we cannot get excited about Gates, Soros, The Rothschilds or whatever conspiracy theory is the flavor of the month. There are much greater things to be involved in; the fight against the covid 19 pandemic is one.

 

Congratulations on the humanity that you claim for yourself.  I was presenting my views on Bill Gates, not my views on the pandemic itself.  When I discuss that subject Gates's name never comes up since he is just not a factor.

[Eric Loh]

33 minutes ago, cmarshall said:

 

Do you really imagine that if Gates maximum wealth had been capped at, say, $500 million, he would not have started Microsoft, because it just wouldn't have been worth it?

 

At $500 million he would have recouped his original investment many times over and become an extremely wealthy man whose descendants would have also been wealthy for generations.  

 

People who work in technology haven't regarded Microsoft as innovative for decades if they ever were.  The Windows interface was developed by Xerox Parc, not MS.

He keep creating paradigm of utterly self indulging opinion and on the way conjured up half attempt information. Like the facts that Xerox Parc's mouse interface was not seen as a business opportunity by the Xerox who were more focused on copier and printer innovations. Bill and Jobs saw the potential and rest is history. There are also current innovations on holoportation, hands free keyboard among others by MS that are seen as innovative in the technology world. 

 

 

[LomSak27]

Just now, cmarshall said:

I was presenting my views on Bill Gates, not my views on the pandemic itself

 

You are into conspiracy theories. Nothing wrong with that but you have a believability issue when you talk about other subjects. Why would I bother to look at the stats you toss up when I know you do not care about Covid, you care about Bill Gates. I worked with a guy who was that way about the Rothschilds. It's like an obsessive picking at a scab. It also turned out that most the evidence he supplied was made up, altered, or just plain wrong. 

 

It's just sad. 

[cmarshall]

14 minutes ago, Eric Loh said:

He keep creating paradigm of utterly self indulging opinion and on the way conjured up half attempt information. Like the facts that Xerox Parc's mouse interface was not seen as a business opportunity by the Xerox who were more focused on copier and printer innovations. Bill and Jobs saw the potential and rest is history. There are also current innovations on holoportation, hands free keyboard among others by MS that are seen as innovative in the technology world. 

 

Microsoft's cash reserves on had on Dec. 31, 2020 were $131.968 billion.  That number alone demonstrates Microsoft's utter failure to innovate since if a company cannot find an investment for its cash, it should return the cash to the shareholders.  

 

Hands-free keyboard certainly sounds like a thrilling breakthrough that will signal a new era of technology.  How about MS contribution to the serious technical challenges facing the world such as clean energy, high-speed rail, a new generation of computer and communications security, etc.  MS is not on the map of global innovation.

 

But that's the nature of a rent-seeking organization.  They are happy to sit and collect their skim from consumers and businesses without developing anything new.  Think of Saudi sheiks happily enjoying their tea breaks in Redmond.

Edited February 8, 2021 by cmarshall

[tifino]

there wasn't any conspiracy theory behind that actual video featuring the interview of Gates and especially his mrs - that smirk that timed so well with the utterance about the world being taught a lesson about the coming of the 2nd wave to teach that lesson... 

[pikao]

 

Mr. Gates allready preparing

[tifino]

5 minutes ago, pikao said:

 

Mr. Gates allready preparing

 

surprised he didn't have some GhostBusters_R dolls weaponed up!! 

[heybruce]

1 hour ago, cmarshall said:

 

In 1790 a copyright lasted approximately seven years after which the content passed to the public domain.  Currently, it lasts ninety-five years from publication.  But the enforcement of software copyrights is now a major goal of US trade negotiations and Gates has benefitted enormously from this.

 

I didn't find your other points particularly well-taken, but I am happy to respond to them, if you insist.

 

Bill Gates operated in accordance with the law.  Pablo Escobar didn't.  Bill Gates didn't have competitors murdered, he provided a product that the majority of consumers preferred.  You can still choose to use Linux if you don't like Windows. 

 

Bill Gates has a great deal of influence in writing the copyright laws.  But the point of my comparison was certainly not to equate Gates and Escobar in terms of lawlessness, but in their use of philanthropy to protect themselves from taxation in the case of Gates and informing of the police in the case of Escobar.

 

Bill Gates did not write the copyright laws, and it is the job of trade negotiators to protect intellectual property.  Most Americans wish

the trade negotiators would do their job better.

 

Already answered.

 

I don't know Bill Gates personally, and assume you don't either.  I won't speculate on his motives.  Why do you?

 

You can't be serious about this objection, can you?  Would I be disqualified from inferring the motives of, say, Pablo Escobar, because I never made his acquaintance?  Really?

" But the enforcement of software copyrights is now a major goal of US trade negotiations and Gates has benefitted enormously from this."

 

Yes, Bill Gates has benefited from copyright laws.  That does not mean that he wrote or influenced how these laws were written.  There is a difference between making laws and abiding by them.

 

"Bill Gates has a great deal of influence in writing the copyright laws."

 

Really?  What proof do you have?

 

I don't know what drives Bill Gates' philanthropy.  Maybe he got religion, maybe he's concerned with how history will remember him, maybe he finds satisfaction in putting more money than he could possibly spend on himself to productive use.  I don't worry about it.  I find it curious that it seems to concern you.

[placeholder]

1 hour ago, cmarshall said:

 

Microsoft's cash reserves on had on Dec. 31, 2020 were $131.968 billion.  That number alone demonstrates Microsoft's utter failure to innovate since if a company cannot find an investment for its cash, it should return the cash to the shareholders.  

 

Hands-free keyboard certainly sounds like a thrilling breakthrough that will signal a new era of technology.  How about MS contribution to the serious technical challenges facing the world such as clean energy, high-speed rail, a new generation of computer and communications security, etc.  MS is not on the map of global innovation.

 

But that's the nature of a rent-seeking organization.  They are happy to sit and collect their skim from consumers and businesses without developing anything new.  Think of Saudi sheiks happily enjoying their tea breaks in Redmond.

Latest cash reserve figures I could find for Apple pegged them at 193 billion. These kind of numbers say more about tax avoidance and lax antitrust enforcement than they do about lack of innovation.

[cmarshall]

15 minutes ago, heybruce said:

" But the enforcement of software copyrights is now a major goal of US trade negotiations and Gates has benefitted enormously from this."

 

Yes, Bill Gates has benefited from copyright laws.  That does not mean that he wrote or influenced how these laws were written.  There is a difference between making laws and abiding by them.

 

"Bill Gates has a great deal of influence in writing the copyright laws."

 

Really?  What proof do you have?

 

I don't know what drives Bill Gates' philanthropy.  Maybe he got religion, maybe he's concerned with how history will remember him, maybe he finds satisfaction in putting more money than he could possibly spend on himself to productive use.  I don't worry about it.  I find it curious that it seems to concern you.

 

It's beyond the scope of a forum to educate you on how influence and money operate in American governance.  But here is a snap shot of the changes in US wealth and income distribution over my lifetime.

 

 

Gates himself is of no particular interest to me except as a representative of the class of super-wealthy created in part by their ability as a group to influence governments and policy.  

 

Here's a graph of lobbying of the US only since 1998:

What do you imagine those companies pay their lobbyists to lobby the government about if not their own interests? Too bad this graph cuts off at 1998 since the growth of lobbying since WWII is truly enormous.

 

Philanthropy is a tactic the wealthy use to stave off tax increases in the same way that Pablo Escobar used philanthropy to stave off police informers.  That's what the wealthy do.  So, while some philanthropic projects no doubt have merit, the undertaxing of the wealthy contributed to the underfunding of public health systems which contributed to giving the richest country in the world the highest death toll.

 

 

[cmarshall]

7 minutes ago, placeholder said:

Latest cash reserve figures I could find for Apple pegged them at 193 billion. These kind of numbers say more about tax avoidance and lax antitrust enforcement than they do about lack of innovation.

 

Apple and Microsoft have all the innovation of Saudi Arabia and Kuwait.  Why aren't they spending chunks of that on solving the major technological challenges of the world?  Their executives might as well be spending their time doing the sword dance.

[cmarshall]

On 1/29/2021 at 7:04 AM, placeholder said:

As the news article I linked to earlier points out, he's an extremely gifted mathematician. As an undergraduate at Harvard, he did groundbreaking work.

 

And yet he has had no impact on the pandemic despite his being well aware of the risks well in advance of society and having truly stupendous means at his disposal to address it.  

 

This is my last word on Gates whom I do not find any more interesting than the rest of his self-serving class.  And that includes Escobar.

[placnx]

1 hour ago, cmarshall said:

 

Microsoft's cash reserves on had on Dec. 31, 2020 were $131.968 billion.  That number alone demonstrates Microsoft's utter failure to innovate since if a company cannot find an investment for its cash, it should return the cash to the shareholders.  

 

Hands-free keyboard certainly sounds like a thrilling breakthrough that will signal a new era of technology.  How about MS contribution to the serious technical challenges facing the world such as clean energy, high-speed rail, a new generation of computer and communications security, etc.  MS is not on the map of global innovation.

 

But that's the nature of a rent-seeking organization.  They are happy to sit and collect their skim from consumers and businesses without developing anything new.  Think of Saudi sheiks happily enjoying their tea breaks in Redmond.

All the big tech companies have piles of cash, so does Berkshire-Hathaway - Buffett's company. Nothing special about MSFT. These days it's hard to find value in buying tech companies, so if they have cash, better wait for cheaper prices.

[heybruce]

54 minutes ago, cmarshall said:

 

It's beyond the scope of a forum to educate you on how influence and money operate in American governance.  But here is a snap shot of the changes in US wealth and income distribution over my lifetime.

 

 

Gates himself is of no particular interest to me except as a representative of the class of super-wealthy created in part by their ability as a group to influence governments and policy.  

 

Here's a graph of lobbying of the US only since 1998:

What do you imagine those companies pay their lobbyists to lobby the government about if not their own interests? Too bad this graph cuts off at 1998 since the growth of lobbying since WWII is truly enormous.

 

Philanthropy is a tactic the wealthy use to stave off tax increases in the same way that Pablo Escobar used philanthropy to stave off police informers.  That's what the wealthy do.  So, while some philanthropic projects no doubt have merit, the undertaxing of the wealthy contributed to the underfunding of public health systems which contributed to giving the richest country in the world the highest death toll.

 

I know about the Gini coefficient and wealth disparity and how lobbyists influence government.  However this is not proof that Bill Gates is influencing how copyright laws are written.  It is possible to get rich working with existing law.

 

You seem to take success in business as evidence that a person is corrupt, and altruism by the wealthy as proof of this corruption.

Edited February 8, 2021 by heybruce

[cmarshall]

8 minutes ago, heybruce said:

I know about the Gini coefficient and wealth disparity and how lobbyists influence government.  However this is not proof that Bill Gates is influencing how copyright laws are written.  It is possible to get rich working with existing law.

 

You seem to take success in business as evidence that a person is corrupt, and altruism by the wealthy as proof of this corruption.

 

I have no obligation to prove anything to you.  It would be a research project to identify the periods when major changes were contemplated or implemented for either copyright law or copyright enforcement and then to attempt to correlate Microsoft's lobbying efforts.  But here is a link to a source that reports the annual lobbying costs for Microsoft and identifies bills on which Microsoft's lobbists did lobby to obtain some benefit for Microsoft.

 

I take the enormous increase in the disparity of wealth and income as prima facie evidence of the excessive power of wealth in influencing government policy for its own benefit.  Read Thomas Piketty on the subject if you want to understand it.  

 

https://www.opensecrets.org/orgs/microsoft-corp/lobbying?id=D000000115

[mr mr]

On 1/28/2021 at 10:16 AM, Walker88 said:

If a prominent person with a platform spreads nonsense, that person should be sued incessantly.

 

you are including all religious leaders from all over the globe right ? 

[BobBKK]

On 1/28/2021 at 9:13 AM, Eric Loh said:

We can take heart from the Twitter's ban on Trump that resulted in a whopping decline of 73% of misinformation. Trump's manipulation on social media has influenced and emboldened the rise of misleading information and conspiracy theories in the last 4 years. With him gone and not giving any more oxygen to these neo-conservative and conspiracy right wing groups, we can hope that it will start a decline of these kind of crazy and evil contents. 

 

You are right there were no conspiracy theories before Trump.

[Eric Loh]

19 minutes ago, BobBKK said:

 

You are right there were no conspiracy theories before Trump.

Of course there were the birther conspiracy, Obama ISIL connection, Ted Cruz's father involved in JKK's assination and celebration in New Jersey on 9/11 before Trump's move into the WH. Just got worse when he is in the WH with open endorsement and adoration of QAnon as 'people who love the country". 

[candide]

3 hours ago, BobBKK said:

 

You are right there were no conspiracy theories before Trump.

There were. However Trump seems to be the first one to directly (birther) or indirectly (Qanon) support such theories, and even create one (massive election fraud).

[heybruce]

3 hours ago, cmarshall said:

 

I have no obligation to prove anything to you.  It would be a research project to identify the periods when major changes were contemplated or implemented for either copyright law or copyright enforcement and then to attempt to correlate Microsoft's lobbying efforts.  But here is a link to a source that reports the annual lobbying costs for Microsoft and identifies bills on which Microsoft's lobbists did lobby to obtain some benefit for Microsoft.

 

I take the enormous increase in the disparity of wealth and income as prima facie evidence of the excessive power of wealth in influencing government policy for its own benefit.  Read Thomas Piketty on the subject if you want to understand it.  

 

https://www.opensecrets.org/orgs/microsoft-corp/lobbying?id=D000000115

With the exception of "Copyright Alternative in Small-Claims Enforcement Act of 2019" I didn't see any related to copyrights.  I don't think that one act had much of an effect on Microsoft's bottom line.

 

I think the disparity of wealth has numerous causes.  In some cases it is government policies benefiting certain industries.  However I don't think computer operating systems are one of those industries.  People want a standard OS that they are familiar with and can use on any computer (Windows) or mobile device (Android).  Microsoft and Google won in the competition to build and market such operating systems. 

[placnx]

1 hour ago, heybruce said:

With the exception of "Copyright Alternative in Small-Claims Enforcement Act of 2019" I didn't see any related to copyrights.  I don't think that one act had much of an effect on Microsoft's bottom line.

 

I think the disparity of wealth has numerous causes.  In some cases it is government policies benefiting certain industries.  However I don't think computer operating systems are one of those industries.  People want a standard OS that they are familiar with and can use on any computer (Windows) or mobile device (Android).  Microsoft and Google won in the competition to build and market such operating systems. 

Software is a good business. There is usually a big profit margin after development costs are paid off. The open concept of MS-DOS or Android is good for society and lucrative for the authors.

[cmarshall]

On 2/8/2021 at 3:17 PM, heybruce said:

I know about the Gini coefficient and wealth disparity and how lobbyists influence government.  However this is not proof that Bill Gates is influencing how copyright laws are written.  It is possible to get rich working with existing law.

 

You seem to take success in business as evidence that a person is corrupt, and altruism by the wealthy as proof of this corruption.

 

Here is an article by economist Dean Baker about the role of patent and copyright laws and enforcement in the growth of inequality in the last thirty years in America.  He mentions Microsoft, but that is not the focus of the piece.

 

For copyrights, two revisions to the law, in 1976 and 1998, extended the maximum duration from 56 to 95 years. The Digital Millennial Copyright Act of 1998 imposed strong rules for copyright enforcement on the Internet. Washington has also sought to impose stronger intellectual property protections on our trading partners in every trade agreement that the United States has negotiated over the last three decades.

 

The effect of these changes was to transfer money from the bulk of the population to the relatively small group of people in a position to benefit from them, either because of their skills in software, biotechnology, and other areas, or because of their ownership of stock in companies that benefit from these rules.

 

https://www.thenation.com/article/economy/inequality-patents-taxes-copyright/

[heybruce]

2 hours ago, cmarshall said:

 

Here is an article by economist Dean Baker about the role of patent and copyright laws and enforcement in the growth of inequality in the last thirty years in America.  He mentions Microsoft, but that is not the focus of the piece.

 

For copyrights, two revisions to the law, in 1976 and 1998, extended the maximum duration from 56 to 95 years. The Digital Millennial Copyright Act of 1998 imposed strong rules for copyright enforcement on the Internet. Washington has also sought to impose stronger intellectual property protections on our trading partners in every trade agreement that the United States has negotiated over the last three decades.

 

The effect of these changes was to transfer money from the bulk of the population to the relatively small group of people in a position to benefit from them, either because of their skills in software, biotechnology, and other areas, or because of their ownership of stock in companies that benefit from these rules.

 

https://www.thenation.com/article/economy/inequality-patents-taxes-copyright/

And what did Bill Gates have to do with either of these laws?

[thaibeachlovers]

On 2/8/2021 at 5:10 PM, cmarshall said:

 

I am not pinning the pandemic on Bill Gates.  As I already explained I am criticizing the image that people have of him as super-smart and generously dedicated to the well-being of others.  

 

Bill Gates was made rich by the copyright laws and the aggressive efforts of trade negotiators of the US government to enforce those ever-increasing rights on his behalf.  

 

It's true that I really have it in for Bill Gates, Warren Buffet, Larry Ellison, Jeff Bezos, and all the other billionaires who are not in any way entitled to their excessive wealth.  Their philanthropy is just a PR campaign to prevent them from being taxed out of their wealth as they should be.  Did you know that Pablo Escobar built stadiums, housing, and hospitals for the poor also?  Is it any different?

 

Of course, Gates maintained his vise-like grip on the balls of businesses and consumers by stifling competition.  Is Windows 10 much different from Windows 3?  Just ask his competitors.

I never used 3 so I don't know, but it's not as good as 7 IMO. Far as I'm concerned he got rich because he cornered the market and not because he a good guy.

[placeholder]

On 2/8/2021 at 4:04 PM, BobBKK said:

 

You are right there were no conspiracy theories before Trump.

Stop telling falsehoods. Eric_Loh never said there were no conspiracies. Just that under Trump they ramped up tremendously. And one of the major subscribers to and inciters of conspiracy theories was Trump himself. Or maybe you believe that Obama really was born in Kenya?