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2005-01-30 China-Japan-Koreas
China has created brand-new form of capitalism: Bill Gates
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Posted by tipper 2005-01-30 12:34:36 AM|| || Front Page|| [11129 views since 2007-05-07]  Top

#1 Bill, you're losing it. As the Diplomad says, there is no magic third way.
Posted by HV 2005-01-30 9:06:51 AM||   2005-01-30 9:06:51 AM|| Front Page Top

#2 Didn't know Gates was a fan of one-party state dictatorships. That's a bit out of synch for someone with a sideline in philanthropy.

Reminds me of the people who came back from Nazi Germany raving about Hitler's autobahns.
Posted by Bulldog  2005-01-30 9:12:12 AM||   2005-01-30 9:12:12 AM|| Front Page Top

#3 BillG always admired dictatorships. That is the reason he structured MS along the same lines.
Posted by Sobiesky 2005-01-30 9:25:42 AM||   2005-01-30 9:25:42 AM|| Front Page Top

#4  "willingness to work hard and not having quite the same medical overhead or legal overhead".

Jesus! He'd loved the Confederacy.
Posted by Shipman 2005-01-30 9:28:36 AM||   2005-01-30 9:28:36 AM|| Front Page Top

#5 It's a top-down thing, dontcha know...
Posted by Seafarious  2005-01-30 9:32:01 AM||   2005-01-30 9:32:01 AM|| Front Page Top

#6 HV: Bill, you're losing it. As the Diplomad says, there is no magic third way.

China's isn't the third way - it's practising raw capitalism - without democracy (just like Taiwan and South Korea until about a decade ago). Bill is just flattering his hosts about their originality - he's an astute student of Alfred Sloan, who built up General Motors to dwarf Ford - he knows what capitalism is all about.

China will eventually reach the same point as Taiwan and South Korea - where economic growth starts to slow, and the population begins to question the legitimacy of the government - which was based on maintaining high economic growth. But China has a while to go before that point is reached - as Bill said, the population is so poor that China's economy is likely to continue growing for several decades. Note that Taiwan and South Korea kept chugging along for four decades before growth slowed. China will likely keep growing for at least that long, if not longer, given how far behind it is, relative to the developed world. The catch-up phase is the easiest phase, and China has a lot of catching-up to do.
Posted by Zhang Fei  2005-01-30 10:11:38 AM|| [http://timurileng.blogspot.com]  2005-01-30 10:11:38 AM|| Front Page Top

#7 Now he can be referred to as "The Charles Lindbergh of China".
Posted by Anonymoose 2005-01-30 10:18:05 AM||   2005-01-30 10:18:05 AM|| Front Page Top

#8 Bill joins a long list of China panderers: Cisco, Dell, etc. Its called greed, money over principals and patriotism.
Posted by Duke Nukem  2005-01-30 10:22:03 AM||   2005-01-30 10:22:03 AM|| Front Page Top

#9 Anonymoose: Now he can be referred to as "The Charles Lindbergh of China".

Charles Lindbergh was a patriot who did not see the point of the US getting involved in European wars. He volunteered for the service in the Pacific theater and pioneered a few innovations that helped improve the effectiveness of American aviators in the region. He also felt that the long term danger was from yellow-skinned Asiatics.

Bill Gates is a great businessman, but I can't see him achieving the kind of folk-hero status that Lindbergh had. Lindbergh was not only admired - he was loved.
Posted by Zhang Fei  2005-01-30 10:26:34 AM|| [http://timurileng.blogspot.com]  2005-01-30 10:26:34 AM|| Front Page Top

#10 DN: Bill joins a long list of China panderers: Cisco, Dell, etc. Its called greed, money over principals and patriotism.

I'm not sure that calling China capitalist is pandering or unpatriotic*. He's merely stating a fact. China doesn't have Social Security, welfare, Medicare, Medicaid, workplace safety requirements, restrictive zoning codes that impede what individuals can do with their property, et al. In comparison to China, the US is the socialist state.

* It would be unpatriotic for Gates to sell military technology to China without the US government's permission. Other than that, I don't see how patriotism comes into it.
Posted by Zhang Fei  2005-01-30 10:32:39 AM|| [http://timurileng.blogspot.com]  2005-01-30 10:32:39 AM|| Front Page Top

#11 Zhang, can it really be called capitalist when the corporations doing all the 'capitalist' exploitation are all owned by the government, the party, the military, or well-connected party officials?

Just because they exploit their workers and don't have decent social benefits doesn't make them capitalist; by those standards, the old Soviet Union was capitalist too.
Posted by Phil Fraering 2005-01-30 10:46:18 AM|| [http://newsfromthefridge.typepad.com]  2005-01-30 10:46:18 AM|| Front Page Top

#12 PF: Zhang, can it really be called capitalist when the corporations doing all the 'capitalist' exploitation are all owned by the government, the party, the military, or well-connected party officials? Just because they exploit their workers and don't have decent social benefits doesn't make them capitalist; by those standards, the old Soviet Union was capitalist too.

First, capitalism refers to the profit motive. Socialist states are operated not to turn a profit, but to allocate resources equitably and rationally based on the decisions of enlightened bureaucrats. Capitalist states allow the economic actors themselves to make these decisions - companies and individuals succeed or fail based on their own efforts. China's loss-making state-owned enterprises don't "exploit" their workers - they lose money because they pamper them.

Second, it is false to say that the corporations making money are government-owned. The government-owned companies are the equivalent of the welfare state. These are generally loss-making enterprises, with schools, medical benefits, et al, all attached to the companies.

Third, the word "exploit" is a socialist term. In a free market of capital and labor, workers are free to choose the jobs they wish to take up. The regulations and social safety nets prevalent in developed countries are socialist measures taken in response to popular pressure, unrealistic projections of how much they will cost and lies about the government (actually, taxpayers) footing the bill - they have nothing to do with capitalism.
Posted by Zhang Fei  2005-01-30 10:57:55 AM|| [http://timurileng.blogspot.com]  2005-01-30 10:57:55 AM|| Front Page Top

#13 Charles Lindbergh was a patriot who did not see the point of the US getting involved in European wars. He volunteered for the service in the Pacific theater and pioneered a few innovations that helped improve the effectiveness of American aviators in the region. He also felt that the long term danger was from yellow-skinned Asiatics.

He was right there with Lt. Commander Lyndon Johnson.
Posted by Shipman 2005-01-30 12:07:42 PM||   2005-01-30 12:07:42 PM|| Front Page Top

#14 Bill is not losing it -- he never really had it. If IBM had been a little smarter and had not sold him DOS, you wouldn't even know his name. That and no one challenged Windows in time to prevent near-monopoly. The Chinese will eat his lunch.
Posted by Tom 2005-01-30 12:13:59 PM||   2005-01-30 12:13:59 PM|| Front Page Top

#15 Two yardsticks for truly free markets: property rights and the rule of law. China is enormously deficient on both counts. Doesn't mean it isn't a hugely energetic nation. But it isn't free and it isn't rich. Absolutely inane remarks by Gates.
Posted by Classical_Liberal 2005-01-30 12:15:42 PM||   2005-01-30 12:15:42 PM|| Front Page Top

#16 Microsoft got rich by copying the work of others.
China...
Posted by True German Ally 2005-01-30 12:33:00 PM||   2005-01-30 12:33:00 PM|| Front Page Top

#17 Tom: IBM licensed MS-DOS from Microsoft. That's what put Microsoft on the map. Gates leveraged DOS into a monopoly OS franchise that continues to this day and has been extended to Microsoft Office. Take out profits from Windows and from Office and Microsoft is a breakeven company at best.

The Microsoft DOS deal with IBM was in part a fluke. IBM really wanted to do business with Digital Research and license CP/M the leading micro-computer OS of the day for its new PC. But Gary Kildall the founder of D.R. was a hard case and didn't want to work with IBM. So IBM looked elsewhere. They talked to Microsoft, which was known for it's Basic language tools, but didn't have an OS. Gates sniffed an opportunity, purchased a shitty little clone of CP/M from Tim Patterson of Seattle Computer Products called SCP DOS and licensed it to IBM as MS-DOS. That might have been the single greatest feat of arbitrage in human history.

Gates did a lot of tub thumping during the anti-trust trial about preserving Microsoft's "freedom to innovate". The only real innovations to come out of Microsoft have been in the area of coercive and monopolistic business practices.
Posted by Classical_Liberal 2005-01-30 12:34:30 PM||   2005-01-30 12:34:30 PM|| Front Page Top

#18 Charles Lindbergh was a patriot who did not see the point of the US getting involved in European wars.

And here was me thinking Charles Lindbergh was a racist, anti-Semitic, Nazi sympathizer who argued that the Germans were not only unbeatable, but defenders of "our White ramparts".

"We can have peace and security only so long as we band together to preserve that most priceless possession, our inheritance of European blood, only so long as we guard ourselves against attack by foreign armies and dilution by foreign races."

Not a very likeable or representative American patriot, if you ask me.

He did increase the range of the Corsair, though, and was an inspirational combat pilot, which was nice.
Posted by Bulldog  2005-01-30 12:35:51 PM||   2005-01-30 12:35:51 PM|| Front Page Top

#19 capitalism refers to the profit motive

Not quite. It refers to private ownership of companies, in return for investing capital in them. Usually that ownership is in the form of stocks in a corporation, but not always.

It is, of course, the case that those who invest want profits so as to pay out a return on that investment.
Posted by true nuff 2005-01-30 12:46:55 PM||   2005-01-30 12:46:55 PM|| Front Page Top

#20 Take out profits from Windows and from Office and Microsoft is a breakeven company at best.
? Breakeven?
You mean if you stold 90 percent of it's intellectual property it would still break even?
Posted by Shipman 2005-01-30 1:07:21 PM||   2005-01-30 1:07:21 PM|| Front Page Top

#21 My bad... forgot about Flight Sim
Posted by Shipman 2005-01-30 1:08:00 PM||   2005-01-30 1:08:00 PM|| Front Page Top

#22 Bill is obviously an idiot who made his billions through pure, unadulterated, luck.
Posted by Angash Elminelet3775 2005-01-30 1:45:33 PM||   2005-01-30 1:45:33 PM|| Front Page Top

#23 Obviously, the man has no cool, unlike the apple gods!

lindbergh... (spit) he'd fit right into the current Hollywood left.
Posted by Shipman 2005-01-30 2:14:02 PM||   2005-01-30 2:14:02 PM|| Front Page Top

#24 Reminds me of the people who came back from Nazi Germany raving about Hitler's autobahns.

Spot on, Bulldog!

China has absolutely nothing to do with capitalism. It is and remains an exceedingly dangerous kleptocracy. How ironic that Gates should praise a country within whose borders he has yet to turn a single dollar's profit (especially when balanced against government sanctioned piracy of his products), despite having opened doors there many years ago. Gates is nothing but an extremely fortunate and conniving moron. I can scrape out more vision from underneath my little toenail.
Posted by Zenster 2005-01-30 2:29:06 PM||   2005-01-30 2:29:06 PM|| Front Page Top

#25 It just goes to show that one can be enormously successful in one area and a doofus in another. There are many successful engineers who are creationists or Scientologists. Einstein was a Marxist.
Posted by jackal  2005-01-30 2:30:12 PM|| [http://home.earthlink.net/~sleepyjackal/index.html]  2005-01-30 2:30:12 PM|| Front Page Top

#26 You are correct, Classical Liberal. Memory failed me. Gates did not buy his DOS from IBM, he just managed to retain the rights to the CP/M clone he bought elsewhere to pass off to them. And that was unusual because normally IBM would have owned all the rights to something produced for them by a contractor. But I'll stand by my statement that the Chinese will eat his lunch.
Posted by Tom 2005-01-30 2:34:32 PM||   2005-01-30 2:34:32 PM|| Front Page Top

#27 ZF: Bill Gates is simply following a long and growing list of US firms that are helping the Chinese government accelerate their power grab and restrict freedoms from their people.

By now it is well known about how Cisco helped the Chinese government construct firewalls to block the free flow of information from dissenting voices within and outside China.

The US tech firms are simply play to the tune of the Chinese communist government with their eyes on the huge consumer market that China affords.

To equate this with capitalism is truly simple-minded and short-sighted.

Posted by Duke Nukem  2005-01-30 2:35:08 PM||   2005-01-30 2:35:08 PM|| Front Page Top

#28 There are many successful engineers who are creationists or Scientologists.

Just reading that makes my skin crawl.

Excellent points, Duke. How those operating within a free economy can so actively sponsor their most dire foes is nothing short of astounding. Unless we break the Chinese mandarins' rice bowl d@mn soon, they will fill it with our collective lunch.
Posted by Zenster 2005-01-30 2:41:00 PM||   2005-01-30 2:41:00 PM|| Front Page Top

#29 From Time's reporter in Davos: "Huang gave a long overview of China's economic policies without confronting, until challenged by questions, the issues of intellectual property rights and China's exchange rate policy. Yet it is precisely such matters on which foreign investors want to hear clear, unequivocal policies from Beijing. As for the seminal question of whether China's economy can continue to steam ahead without the transparency and accountability that come with democracy and the rule of law, Huang was almost entirely silent..."
Posted by HV 2005-01-30 3:32:54 PM||   2005-01-30 3:32:54 PM|| Front Page Top

#30 CL / Tom / All - Transcript: Triumph of the Nerds
Posted by .com 2005-01-30 7:07:58 PM||   2005-01-30 7:07:58 PM|| Front Page Top

#31 Nobody is smart enough to fix Windows. Nuke it from orbit - it's the only way to be sure.
Posted by AJackson 2005-01-30 7:10:27 PM||   2005-01-30 7:10:27 PM|| Front Page Top

#32 Gates did not buy his DOS from IBM, he just managed to retain the rights to the CP/M clone he bought elsewhere to pass off to them

And that was because of family connections. The CEO of IBM at the time served on several charity boards with Gates' mother. When briefed on several approaches to providing an OS for their new PC, he responded "Oh, give the contract to Mary's boy."

Or so the story goes .....
Posted by true nuff 2005-01-30 7:12:57 PM||   2005-01-30 7:12:57 PM|| Front Page Top

#33 A straight line from Ada to Bill, it was seen by Babbage and Nosterdangus.
Posted by Shipman 2005-01-30 8:31:35 PM||   2005-01-30 8:31:35 PM|| Front Page Top

#34 "For IBM, Microsoft was a low risk, plus IBM's president John Opel, and Bill Gates' mother both served on the board of the United Way."
http://ieee.cincinnati.fuse.net/reiman/01_1999.html
Posted by Tom 2005-01-30 8:42:43 PM||   2005-01-30 8:42:43 PM|| Front Page Top

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