Get it off my desk, okay!
I started this rant about Bill Gates on this blog, and hardly want to even finish my thought here. I am not an economist, and what little I do know about economics comes from my deep interest in a related field, philosophy.
But a fair amount of sites that deal with Bill Gates dictate that it is easier to understand him if you know something about the people who hate him. I don't "hate" Bill Gates, although I have friends who certainly do. When it comes to reading the material he writes (or has written for him) on the subject of his vision for the business world of the future, my feeling about him is similar to what Nietzsche felt about Plato: "appalled by his system, but reluctantly admiring of the élan and cunning of which he devised it." * (see footnote)
Gates writes:
In 1995, in The Road Ahead, I used the term friction-free capitalism to describe how the Internet was helping to create Adam Smith's ideal marketplace, in which buyers and sellers can easily find one another without taking much time or spending much money.
If you're a middleman, the Internet's promise of cheaper prices and faster service can "disintermediate" you, eliminate your role of assisting the transaction between the producer and the consumer. If the Internet is about to disintermediate you, one tack is to use the Internet to get back into the action. (end quote)
Gates' aim is to eliminate single-task jobs and has happily advocated the eradication from society of middle-management itself. The middle class in America, once the sector of the American economy where an ordinary guy could earn a decent wage, send his kids to college and retire, has already been shrinking faster than the ozone layer, and Gates0 wishes to hasten it's total demise. The only way back to the Gates "road ahead" and avoid being "disintermidiated" is to use the Internet, which, as it stands now, is largely the pervue of Microsoft and Gates himself. But he does not say how the disintermediated middle class citizen, who worked on an assembly line for 35 years and is now out of a job, is supposed to adapt to save his own ass. Sell everything he owns on eBay, perhaps?
Most of the suggestions for commerce I have read from Gates are useless. I remember one thing that he proposed was that you could click on a TV screen during a sitcom if you liked the clothes an actress was wearing, and then order the clothing for yourself through the internet. Exactly what I need, how nice. Inventors historically have never been particularly good at exploiting the capital generated by their inventions. The Wright Brothers' flyer was a risky, dangerous test plane that even killed Wilbur Wright before someone else got the idea to move the props in front of the plane so it was easier to control. Edison invented both motion pictures and recording, and the vast majority of his companies' products in these areas were poor because his own cultural tastes were rural and too old-fashioned.
But Edison still made loads of money. That was because he filed his patents and got his businesses underway well before the laws were changed to prevent the kind of heavy-handed, competition crushing practices in which his companies were deeply engaged. Bill Gates has real smart lawyers - the best that money can buy. They've managed to keep the regulatorial wolf away from the door, and that is why he is the richest man in the world.
Eliminating middle-management will not "help to create Adam Smith's ideal marketplace, in which buyers and sellers can easily find one another without taking much time or spending much money". It will widen the gulf between the haves and have-nots to such an extent that the "Haves" will be the only ones who have anything to spend on anything. The economy will collapse, the social contract will be abrigated, and this will lead to the outbreak of widespread unrest among the lower classes. When this is finally quelled and the blood has been shed, our captalist system will be replaced by a totalitaran one. Then everyone will be happy (that is cynicism, folks).
I really wouldn't put much stock in Gates' vision of the future of business. It sounded good in 1999, but since then the bottom has dropped out on the then-burgeoning stock market value of internet-based properties. The only segments of Internet business which are expanding are those which are either heavily litigated against, or are the subject of congressional investigations, or are one-trick services that are in competition with the regular brick-and-mortar firms that may employ your dad, sister or yourself. And, contrary to Gates' vision, the third type of business mentioned here is growing the most slowly of the three.
Off With Their Heads! To departing cast members on TV Dramas
A few blogs back I was bitching about the trend of Network TV dramas using violent and irreversible send-offs to popular characters when their actors decide to move on. Well, last week there was yet another - Alex, the icy blonde ADA on "Law and Order:SVU" was gunned down on the street and presumably bleeds to death, although later they show that she was merely injured and needs to play "dead" for awhile. My wife mentioned "at least she got to keep her legs".
Come see me ramble in public
I am speaking at the Student Activities Building at the campus of the University of Michigan (Ann Arbor) on Tuesday at 7:10 p.m. This talk will be about the WAIF "Art Damage" program and its eighteen year history. This is very work intensive and has taken up most of my time these past few days - in addition to housecleaning. I will have more to say after the talk has been delivered.
take care,
Uncle Dave Lewis
UncleDave41@comcast.net
*quote from Micheal Tanner, "Introduction" to Friedrich Nitezcsche: Beyond Good and Evil", Penguin Books, London 1990 (revised edition)