Billionaire, Nerd, Savior, King: Bill Gates and His Quest to Shape Our World

Billionaire, Nerd, Savior, King: Bill Gates and His Quest to Shape Our World by Anupreeta Das

Bill Gates is super rich. He also has a personality that is not very easy to get along with. Luckily, he has minders that help his public persona. Alas, this doesn't help prevent his private affairs or personal interactions.

This book uses Gate's career to explore the role of billionaires in society. The author occasionally tries to be objective, but very clearly has an agenda. She feels that billionaires have too much power and that society enables them. She would much rather have a wealth tax to enable greater government spending, rather than enable the very wealthy to control the agenda via philanthropy. This would be a terrible idea. Government and philanthropic work each have their place. Governments are beholden to short term political expediencies, while individuals can focus on longer-term goals. Individual philanthropists can also spend vast sums on items that are of interest to them. Some might turn out to be greatly beneficial, while others may be flops. Governments would have much more difficulty starting programs that do not have popular support (and have difficulty stopping those that do.) Big philanthropy is a needed force with big government.

The book also explores the rise of Microsoft and some of its anti-competitive behavior. Gates was "self made", but had received opportunities from his upbringing. His parents' connections helped to get Microsoft's initial contract with IBM. He went against the grain to encourage charging for software. This caused ire with the existing computer science community, but did start an entire new industry. Gates then used the dominant position to force companies to pay for Windows whether they installed it or not. Later, Microsoft competed with Netscape by providing a browser free with Windows and making it the default. These behaviors hurt competition and caused stagnation. (Web browser innovation stagnated once Internet Explorer dominated the market. Innovation only returned once Firefox and Chrome launched with enough financial muscle to compete.) 

What should be done to optimize the benefit to society?