The two things are entirely orthogonal. Fairness is a moral judgement. Free markets are inherently amoral (not immoral) and tend to optimize for profits (with a bias towards short-term profits). That's not good or bad, it merely is.
Raising money for poor people, except for the tax and marketing benefits, is a bad economical decision -- the benefits are at best ultra-long-term and very unpredictable. No matter what you think about the Gates Foundation, they're not doing good things for economical reasons. If its only purpose was financially benefiting Bill Gates, he should fire his financial advisors.
The free market didn't get Europe out of the Industrialisation, civil rights (and labour laws) did. Regardless of what you think about modern unions[0], they played a huge part in empowering labourers enough that they could negotiate to improve their working conditions. Without organizing in unions, striking would have been economical suicide for any individual labourer.
[0]: I personally think that unions are antiquated in most industries in Europe and North America today, especially when most of the strikes seem to involve middle-class jobs and those who are worst off often don't have any means to unionize or strike (e.g. people who work at temp agencies that are treated as free contractors legally even if they are not financially independent). But that's a different topic altogether.
The two things are entirely orthogonal. Fairness is a moral judgement. Free markets are inherently amoral (not immoral) and tend to optimize for profits (with a bias towards short-term profits). That's not good or bad, it merely is.
Raising money for poor people, except for the tax and marketing benefits, is a bad economical decision -- the benefits are at best ultra-long-term and very unpredictable. No matter what you think about the Gates Foundation, they're not doing good things for economical reasons. If its only purpose was financially benefiting Bill Gates, he should fire his financial advisors.
The free market didn't get Europe out of the Industrialisation, civil rights (and labour laws) did. Regardless of what you think about modern unions[0], they played a huge part in empowering labourers enough that they could negotiate to improve their working conditions. Without organizing in unions, striking would have been economical suicide for any individual labourer.
[0]: I personally think that unions are antiquated in most industries in Europe and North America today, especially when most of the strikes seem to involve middle-class jobs and those who are worst off often don't have any means to unionize or strike (e.g. people who work at temp agencies that are treated as free contractors legally even if they are not financially independent). But that's a different topic altogether.