[aeturnum]

Yah, I was a bit cheeky, but I think we're understanding each other!

I guess I want to say that I don't think our two views obviously contradict each other. I think you and I agree on how responsible Gates was for Microsoft's success. I agree with your entire 2nd paragraph.

To me, the part of your account that I am drawn to is how much of Gates' most influential actions were well before he could fully assess his financial rewards. It simply seems true that Gates did not need the full weight of his fortune to motivate him because it did not exist for the period that was most important in generating it.

I do not have much of an answer to any of this - as I've said I think it's fine that Gates be absurdly rich - but I think it's important to point out these obvious misallocations where someone is eventually paid world-changing amounts of money for work they completed years ago when they could only be relatively sure they were going to be paid life-changing amounts of money. I think it is literally and figuratively in all our interests to see if we can imagine a system that distributes rewards more widely.

> And as far as Bill's wealth goes he's doing a pretty good job of giving it to people in greater need of it than the average software developer.

I think there's are certain inevitable problems when you ask one person to allocate this much money that will crop up no matter how good that person is. I guess I would just say, while I think Gates has done very well, I am not sure at all that the net positive change in the world is better when Gates has ~$100bn v.s. him having...$10bn and 5-10,000 MS employees share the other $90bn. A lot of those people are smart and I bet they could come up with ideas Gates has missed!