[OT] Linda McQuaig on Bill Gates

[Timothy Hildred]

So many of the complaints sound like jealousy to me. As if it were
surprising that billionaires didn't all show up with a sack of potatoes and
a shoe lace to build their fortunes.

Many, probably most rich people started out rich. North America is a class
based society, plain and simple. The sooner everybody stops buying into the
myth of a classless society of innovative entrepreneurs changing the course
of history based on ingenuity and elbow grease, the sooner we will recognize
our common position.

A bit of a tangent, but its this myth that leads people to elect officials
with policies that are actually bad for them.

On Wed, Mar 23, 2011 at 1:05 PM, Jamon Camisso <jamon.camisso-H217xnMUJC0sA/PxXw9srA at public.gmane.org>wrote:

> On 3/22/2011 9:47 PM, Thomas Milne wrote:
> > On Tue, Mar 22, 2011 at 8:34 PM, CLIFFORD ILKAY
> > <clifford_ilkay-biY6FKoJMRdBDgjK7y7TUQ at public.gmane.org> wrote:
> >> I also heard that he tore the labels off mattresses, jaywalked, and
> >> mixed colours with whites in the wash.
> >
> > Okay, he never murdered anyone...but the billions of dollars that he
> > has amassed and hero status are not deserved, which is the point of
> > all this. He cannot claim to be a 'self-made man' or that he was the
> > progenitor of the home PC revolution.
> >
> > I've never put much stock in the whole 'great man' theory of history
> > anyway. Even someone like Einstein had to base his ideas on the
> > thousands of years of scientific progress before him.
> >
>
> Why doesn't he deserve his success? He played the game, played it well
> and came out on top based on the opportunities that his situation
> afforded him and the subsequent success of his company. None of us did
> that. I'd put money on most people acting the same way in a similar set
> of circumstances.
>
> In the end, I don't mind Microsoft, or Apple, or Oracle or company XYZ.
> Someone has to run the world's computers, and the more of them there
> are, the more of us have work to do. Of course it wouldn't hurt any of
> us if more systems ran Linux ;)
>
> Jamon
> --
> The Toronto Linux Users Group.      Meetings: http://gtalug.org/
> TLUG requests: Linux topics, No HTML, wrap text below 80 columns
> How to UNSUBSCRIBE: http://gtalug.org/wiki/Mailing_lists
>
-------------- next part --------------
An HTML attachment was scrubbed...
URL: <http://gtalug.org/pipermail/legacy/attachments/20110323/fdfadebc/attachment.html>