Can Bill Gates launch capitalism 2.0?

The Associated Press

He revised personal computing. Now he wants to revise Adam Smith.

Featured Topic | Posted 30 weeks 6 days ago

Can Bill Gates launch capitalism 2.0?

Every year, some of the world's most powerful and influential leaders gather in Davos, Switzerland to talk about how to eradicate poverty, improve living conditions, and make the planet a better place. This year, Bill Gates, the world's richest man, talked about overhauling capitalism.

"We have to find a way to make the aspects of capitalism that serve wealthier people serve poorer people as well," Gates told world leaders at the forum.

Is Gates right? Or for all of his savvy as a businessman and technology pioneer, is the Microsoft founder far gone in utopian speculation?

Ben likes: Capitalism doesn't work, Mr. Gates?

Larry Kudlow/National Review Online

Bill Gates is issuing a clarion call for a kinder capitalism to aid the world’s poor. Mr. Gates says he’s grown impatient with the shortcomings of capitalism. He thinks it’s failing much of the world, and he said as much in a speech today at the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland. This from a guy worth around $35 billion. (Give or take a billion.) What chutzpah.

It appears Gates is ignoring the global spread of free-market capitalism that has successfully lifted hundreds of millions of people up from poverty and into the middle class over the last decade or so. Think China. Think India. Think Eastern Europe.

Joel likes: Bill Gates, closet socialist?

Blake Hounshell/Foreign Policy

If you look at what Gates actually said, he didn't call for governments to seize control of the means of production. Nor, truth be told, did he actually say anything profoundly new. He just wants to push for "an approach where governments, businesses, and nonprofits work together to stretch the reach of market forces so that more people can make a profit, or gain recognition, doing work that eases the world's inequities."