Blessed selfishness
So what’s really going on here? Instead of being taxed by the state, Bill Gates and Warren Buffett are redirecting their wealth to their own private philanthropic organizations. The world is fragmenting into an ever increasingly hyperpolar place in which governments just another participant in the order of things. Some of that money I spent on Windows 2000 is now going to solving the malaria epidemic in Africa. I’m not sure whether this is a good or a bad thing. But it certainly is one explanation of why smart, ambitious people go into business rather than politics.
(Anti social contracts )
Andrew Keen is worried, and He has very good reasons. On its face Bill Gates and Warren Buffet fulfilled the socialist altruistic ideal and are giving away the vast majority of great wealth the created. However this is a great selfish act, and it is shaking the moral over-righteousness argument that only efficient, or even possible charity is a government managed wealth distribution.
Gates and Buffet donating the money the earned to causes they believe in. It is their money, not Andrew Keen’s - although he its hard for him to accept it. By bypassing the the tax collector Gates and Buffet told Keen, and his alike, that they have no say about how this money should be spent - and never did.
The money that we earned is ours, we should not be forced to pay it for "Baseball District Tax", and We should be able to say that we are giving it away on our own terms , even if Andrew Keen doesn’t like it:
Ellison’s actions are the equivalent of refusing to pay one’s taxes after a change in government. Just as the globally minded Gates is the most acceptable face of the new digital plutocracy, so the anti social Ellison epitomizes the narcissistic amorality of too many Silicon Valley entrepreneurs.
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