Bill Gates Owes Me Money
Bill Gates & Steve Jobs’ estate owe me money. A lot of money. And probably you too…Because of imperfect operating systems, poorly designed software, and bugs, many many computer users frequently struggle doing basic things; like setting up email.
There are a class of us who are tech-literate. I have spent thousands of hours helping friends and family, for free, fixing buggy and poorly designed software for non-tech users. Just today, I’ve spent three hours working on a buggy cloud system that does not work as advertised.
This is free tech support that Microsoft and Apple (and other tech companies) don’t pay for, but which enable their products to be useful. Without the free support that I and others give, many people simply could not use their computers.
Bill Gates did not earn the amount of money he’s worth; his worth is a fluke in a poorly designed non-capitalist* system. He’s rewarded for work he didn’t do; for example, the work I and others have done for him, without compensation.
The same holds for everyone in the tech industry who makes obscene money (not just the billionaires or millionaires, but those in the top 20% of income brackets). You didn’t get there on your own; you’ve been propped up by a system that is poorly designed to your benefit.
*Note: I am a capitalist. Without going into my whole economic theory (we are not a real capitalist market; not because of too many regulations, but too few), the US economy has been hijacked by the wealthy to their benefit. Ask yourself…does Microsoft want a “free” market with perfect competition? No. Business wants to do anything and everything it can to create a competitive advantage, and they’ve done so by tweaking laws and regulations to their advantage. This is not the “free” market at work; this is a corruption of a market. And our economic system has no checks and balances for this.
