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Who is Your Hero, Gates or Jobs?
Posted by
Zonk
on Fri Jan 27, 2006 02:36 PM
from the i-pick-albert-einstein dept.
from the i-pick-albert-einstein dept.
feranick writes "Wired and Ars Technica are both running articles comparing Bill Gates and Steve Jobs, not for their business/technological achievements but for their humanitarian involvement. I am curious to see what you are thinking about the issue. What is more important, be a showmen technologist like Jobs or an humanitarian missionaire like Gates? And even more important: Is it important that donations from rich billionaires be public or should they remain private?"
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throw the first stone (Score:5, Insightful)
It is a huge mistake to make assumptions and judge others when you really don't know anything about what is going on in their life, especially in regards to their finances.
I do admire that the authors of these articles are in favor of investing ones resources in ways that are intended to make the world a better place. I spend a good amount of my time trying to encourage people in the same way. But to criticize someone, even with the caveats about anonymous giving, is not really helpful. What a person does with their money, be it Steve Jobs or the kid grilling burgers at your local Jack in the Box, is their business. And we are in know place to judge them as human beings for what they do with their money, especially since we don't know what is going on in their lives.
When I approach people to support what I do, I try very hard to not develop preconceptions based on what I know about them, because I am almost always wrong when I do. People I think will give a lot, don't (often for very good reasons, whether I know those reasons or not) and people I think wont give at all, surprise me with their generosity. But judging one as better than the other without the whole picture would be a grave error.
Finally, when Christ wanted to give an example to his disciples of great giving, he pointed out the poor widow giving two mites. It was not the amount that mattered, but the attitude and the self-sacrafice. And from this distance who can judge those factors about Bill Gates or Steve Jobs?
Re:throw the first stone (Score:5, Insightful)
If they screw it up, that's too bad, and if we're in a position to give them advice that will help them to do a thing that will produce more happiness for them, that's wonderful, but usually we're not in that position, and if we aren't, then making judgements about it boils down to gossip.
One might make the argument that it's wrong for a person to amass great wealth in the abstract, and that therefore a person who accidentally amasses great wealth should do their best to divest themselves of it in a constructive way. But again, this falls to the person who makes the "mistake" of amassing this great wealth to judge, not to me.
Now if Mr. Jobs or Mr. Gates were to do something illegal to get their money, or something that we think should be illegal, then we could have a debate about whether the legal system had failed, and what to do about it, but again we wouldn't be talking about whether or not Mr. Jobs or Mr. Gates were a good or bad person - we'd be debating matters of public policy, which in itself would require no judgements to be made about the motivations of either party.
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Re:throw the first stone (Score:5, Interesting)
There are many Christians who are like Christ, unfortunately a lot of high profile people like to use Christianity as a means to a very different end.
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Re:Correction (Score:5, Informative)
You are so ridiculously incorrect that it's not even amusing. I know, this is Slashdot, and we've become used to this sort of thing. The Bible doesn't say a single thing about "hate gays, hate other religions, hate sex, hate the darkies". Not once. Sorry, bub. Jesus repeatedly demonstrated that it was more important to love than it was to enforce the law. An example of this is when the pharisees looked to condemn him for healing a man on the sabbath (in the OT, it is unlawful to perform any work on the sabbath). At no point was the message to "hate" anyone for anything. Regardless of whether homosexuality is a sin or not, we are told to love each other (friends and enemies both).
I'm sorry, but reasonable Christians have to simply accept that there are some real atrocities in their religion's history and that there was valid grounding in their holy scriptures for them.Must the muslims accept what happen to the World Trade Center? I don't see either as needing acceptance. If I bomb fundamentalist Christians in the name of Durandal64, is it your problem? You clearly seem to not like them and I took it to mean that you thought the world would be a better place without them. Please accept my actions as they were done in your name.
Those people had unquestioning faith. Saying that they weren't Christians belies a staggering ignorance of history.
Was Ptolemy not a scientist? Did he not get the whole solar system completely wrong? Does that invalidate all of science? No, but you learn from it that sometimes scientists are wrong. The same goes for Christians. Big whoop.
But what's bad is pretending that their take on Christianity is the only valid one. They start from the assumption that Christianity must be tolerant and loving and interpret the Bible from that framework, completely disregarding history and the text on the page.
You really don't get the Bible or the religion. Sure, you can pull out one liners and short stories, but when you take them out of the context of the entire thing, they're useless. It's not surprising that you don't get it. I don't, either. Jesus three times told his disciples (who followed him around constantly and heard everything he said) that they didn't get it.
I'll give credence to this "true Christianity" claim when major churches start putting their money where their mouths are and declare the racist, sexist, morally abhorrent parts of the Bible invalid.
Won't ever happen. It's part of the story of God's relationship with man. It's a part that you don't seem to understand, but that doesn't make it wrong or morally abhorrent. It's neither of those things.
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Gates deserving of "rock star status"? (Score:5, Insightful)
From the fine article, near the end, drawing a conclusion:
I respectfully disagree with the author's conclusion, unless by indicating "much more deserving", he is setting the bar incredibly low. Gates' fortune is every bit as obscene as the author claims Jobs' fortune is, and probably much more suspect in how Gates acquired it.
I get sick of the implied (or inferred by the masses) rags-to-riches yarn of Gates, college dropout made good. It's not true, Gates is of wealthy background, was a spoiled brat from the start and never had anything to lose, i.e., he was always destined to be rich and that would never have been in doubt. Unfortunately, he chose to become a goon and run roughshod over the technology world, amassing wealth unethically, and eventually (by DOJ judgement) illegally.
While I expect good to come of money Gates gives away, it's certainly less because Gates is a good guy and more that money can buy good things.
As for the slashdot question posed: Is it important that donations from rich billionaires be public or should they remain private?, probably yes. But probably more important is the motivation. I don't get any sense Bill's motivation is humanitarian, but do sense much of the work and generosity comes more from his wife Linda.
Anonymous or not? (Score:5, Insightful)
So, from a pragmatic point of view, I don't care whether it's anonymous or not. He wants the credit? Fine. Let him have it. I mean, imagine that you're some dude living in the third world, and some rich American is willing to spend a few bucks so that you don't die from some easily-preventable disease. He's doing it because he wants to be considered a good guy, rather than because he really cares about you, poor third world person that you are. Do you care? Or are you grateful that he did it, for whatever reason? You bet you're grateful. What's more, you probably consider him to be a pretty good guy.
It's like the actor who, immediately after Katrina, went down to New Orleans, rented a boat with his own money, and started pulling people out of houses. So he had a video crew with him. So? If I'm one of the people he saved, do I care that he wanted some publicity? Not at all. In fact, if I ever wound up talking to a reporter, I'd be sure to mention how this wonderful guy spent his own money to rescue me (thereby giving him some publicity).
I'm no Bill Gates fanboy. I despise his business ethics. But I appreciate his charity work.
Don't require the motives to be perfectly pure. Just be glad that he's doing something, for whatever reason.
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Re:Gates deserving of "rock star status"? (Score:5, Interesting)
I think you can classify a person's acts as good and bad, rather than tagging them as fundamentally good or bad. Gates has been a rapacious capitalist, and a generous philanthropist. Jobs has been a sleazeball (ripping off Woz very early in their relationship), but without him, Apple would be a shadow of what it is. In some ways, it's because Jobs is (from the sound of it) an a**h*** that Apple has contributed to the computer industry as much as it has.
What was the quote about you can still be moral and earn a million, but not a billion?
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Who Else but.... (Score:5, Funny)
Woz. (Score:5, Interesting)
Obvious Third Option: The Woz (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Does Ballmer donate anything? (Score:5, Funny)
funny internet videos for our entertainment
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Bill or is it Melinda (Score:5, Insightful)
As for the question, I favor Jobs.
-S
Mad, bad and dangerous to know - Jobs by a mile! (Score:5, Insightful)
As a creative sort of chap, I've always thought Jobs' heady mix of insanity, cunning and insight to be quite refreshing. Bill Gates is a nasty cold fish who seemingly knows nothing about humanity save that which he can buy.
Jobs makes things that are not just useful to me - they've helped bring out my artistic talents over the years - they've enabled me to create.
What has Bill Gates done for me and my world? Nothing, actually. He perpetuated some highly dysfunctional ways to interact with machines and generally works at dominating the distribution of information.
So he uses he obscene wealth (and it is obscene - and a bit of a fluke combined with Sam Walton-like business sense) for good. Well, that's great and I expect nothing less. Maybe he'll be considered another Andrew Carnegie someday, but I see very little to be interested by or admiring of about the man.
The things that Jobs and Co dream up bring pleasure and fun into my life.
Loaded Questions (Score:5, Insightful)
Greedy capitalists? (Score:5, Insightful)
Warren Buffett (Score:5, Interesting)
The most interesting thing that I learned is that while Buffett isn't a well philanthropist, when he dies, something like 1% of his wealth will go to his children as an inheritance, and the other 99% (currently about $39.6 billion) will go to a charatable foundation. He's told the administrator of that foundation that he wants him to try and "do something huge" with the money, not just spread it out to lots of smaller causes.
His justification for doing it this way instead of giving to charity right now is that the more money he has, the more money he can make, and the more money he puts into the foundation before he dies.
Now, it could be easily argued that he just likes making money, and doesn't want to give it away, but his impressively simple lifestyle argues that he certainly doesn't like spending money on himself.
I imagine that if I had billions of dollars, it would be much more fun to see that money go to work helping people while I was around to see it, but Buffett's plan makes sense from a practical standpoint.
Jobs saved me (Score:5, Informative)
I was on my deepest depression crisis ever and I was already planning my suicide. I was sure that day would be my last day when I came across his speech at Stanford University [stanford.edu]. And his words made me rethink everything I was going through at that moment, and gave me enough strength to give up the plan and keep going.
So yeah, Jobs is my personal hero. No matter how great amount of money Gates throw at projects, Jobs is the guy who said the right thing at the right moment.
[And I tried to send him my story, but I'm almost sure he would never see it]
Re:The Devil on the Left or the Devil on the Right (Score:5, Insightful)
I really don't think that using $49 Billion of your own money to start a charitable foundation could *possibly* be out of a motive to help your company financially. Why on earth wouldn't he reinvest it if his motives were to help Microsoft?
That's messed up, man.
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Re:The Devil on the Left or the Devil on the Right (Score:5, Interesting)
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Re:The Devil on the Left or the Devil on the Right (Score:5, Insightful)
I know a family practitioner who gave up his lucrative practice to work in Sudan under horrific conditions. He has no plans to return, I guess when the money runs out.
IMO, people like him are the real heroes.
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Re:can it be neither? (Score:5, Insightful)
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Re:uh... neither? (Score:5, Funny)
Maybe they should be guest speakers at this years LinuxWorld Expo then?
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Re:Who is the bigger hero? (Score:5, Interesting)
I'm extremely disappointed to see the slashdot crowd almost entirely bashing Gates becuase they don't care for microsofts software. This assumption that somehow Jobs is a better person because you like his software more is stupid, the companies are run with the same goals, Apple just has a different marketing strategy and alot less brute force to throw behind their decisions. I'm quite confident that if Apple had 96% of the OS market, and Microsoft had 4%, then peoples opinions would be exactly the opposite as they are now. It's the same old "Hate the big guy!" attitude, and its not exactly novel or interesting anymore.
Gates has helped millions of people by donating more money than most large countries. This is a wonderful thing and I applaud him for it. Jobs may or may not be donating money, as the article says that no documentation of this could be verified, but It really doesn't matter to me, it is completely up to him what he does with his money. And now that my rant is over, I'll throw my opinion out there.... I was more than a little disappointed when Apple ran their marketing campaign a few years ago using pictures of many famous civil rights people and other people like Einstien. The exploitation of good people for making money seemed awfully sickening to me. But this is likely a result of a powerful marketing team and not really the fault of Jobs.
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Re:Who is the bigger hero? (Score:5, Insightful)
It's not neccesarily because they don't care for microsofts software.
Perhaps it is because microsoft is a convicted monopolist and Bill Gates is the worst of the bunch. They have been found guilty in court of illegally crushing their competition in the name of profits. Had they not done that, there would have been more competition and prices would have been driven down. Gates and microsoft would not be so rich in the first place and the money would instead distributed in the rest of society where it should have been in the first place.
Gates gestures are nothing IMO compared to the harm he and others have caused society with their monopolistic practices.
This is nothing to do with software, and everything to do with a bunch of over powerful, greedy, damaging people who will stop at nothing to "stay ahead" in their industry.
Forgive me for not falling at their feet when they give a few percent of their immorally gained wealth back to society in some way.
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Re:The edge of the market (Score:5, Funny)
Well, then, stick it to Microsoft. Kill yourself now.
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