Bill Gates has been thinking recently that perhaps capitalism isn’t working. According to an article in the Wall Street Journal,
“Three weeks ago, on a flight home from a New Zealand vacation, Mr. Gates took out a yellow pad of paper and listed ideas about why capitalism, while so good for so many, is failing much of the world.”
Another epiphany includes the realization that unfettered capitalism, with its focus on generating profits for a few, does a disservice to the majority of people throughout the world. Read more here.
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This is my favorite part:
But there's more to Adam Smith, he added. "This was written before 'Wealth of Nations,'" Mr. Gates said, flipping through a copy of Adam Smith's 1759 book, "The Theory of Moral Sentiments." It argues that humans gain pleasure from taking an interest in the "fortunes of others." Mr. Gates will quote from that book in his speech today.
That's nice that Bill Gates is taking masochistic pleasure in poor people's suffering while vacationing in New Zealand. Finally he gets to participate in the vibrant American tradition of sympathizing with oppressed people while participating in systems that exploit them, from Uncle Tom's Cabin, which exhorted privileged white people to end slavery by "feeling right" while reinforcing minstrelsy-fueled stereotypes of African Americans to Dave Eggers' recent adventurous appropriation of a Sudanese man's identity in What is the What. It's way better than Marx: Gates gets to have his wealth and power and his identificatory fantasies too.
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