Posted on 01/29/2005 1:07:29 AM PST by HAL9000
China has created brand-new form of capitalism: Bill Gates
DAVOS, Switzerland, (AFP) - US software giant Bill Gates has high praise for China, which he says has created a brand-new form of capitalism that benefits consumers more than anything has in the past.
"It is a brand-new form of capitalism, and as a consumer its the best thing that ever happened," Gates told an informal meeting late Friday at the World Economic Forum in this ski resort.
He characterised the Chinese model in terms of "willingness to work hard and not having quite the same medical overhead or legal overhead".
Manufacturers have created "scale economies that are just phenomenal", in part owing to companies there and elsewhere on the planet designing good products, Gates said.
Looking ahead, he added: "You know they haven't run out of labor yet, the portion that can come out of the agriculture sector" was still considerable.
"It's not like Korea, Korea got to a point where, boom, the wages went up a lot," he said, adding "that's good, you know, they got rich and now they have to add value at a different level.
"They're closer to the United States in that sense than they are to where China is right now."
Gates continued by heaping praise on the current generation of Chinese leaders.
"They're smart," he said with emphasis.
"They have this mericratic way of picking people for these government posts where you rotate into the university and really think about state allocation of resources and the welfare of the country and then you rotate back into some bureaucratic position."
That rotation continued, Gates explained, and leaders were constantly subjected to various kinds of ratings.
"This generation of leaders is so smart, so capable, from the top down, particularly from the top down," he concluded.
I'm not sure what your point is, however, "he knows..." is without relevance.
Consider that Bill Gates offered to sell microsoft to Ross Perot for $12 million in the early 80s. Ross offered only $3 million so the deal never happened.
The point being that both of these very successful businessmen had no idea what the future held for microsoft. An example of why central planning does not work, no matter how smart or the qualifications of the planner.
The merits of private property or slavery is a moral issue, not an economic or business issue.
Bill Gates is probably making these remarks because he is frustrated after finding out ebay wouldn't let him list his soul for sale, and he isn't sure if the devil's offer is the best he can get.
(I've been using the Firefox browser for a about a month and am very happy with it. If any of you are using Explorer you should consider a switch)
Of course some others have taken a liking to the idea of the producers becoming the wards of Government to make for a better world. Do YOU promote such an ideal?
Oddly enough, many business people prefer to make a "better United States" than a better "world." Some of us don't condone the idea of slave labor & crappy products in return for higher profits....all the while enriching an avowed enemy.
Might just be because we are a "Christian" nation.
ping
This is baloney, he needs to get to know a few people there. Underlings find their way to the top by kissing ass. This is usually done in the form of "giving presents", (at least those are the words that my chinese freinds use). There may be people that are spotted as having an aptitude to advance, but that is not an automatic qualification, it is just the start of the process, where the supervisor starts the process of soliciting "presemts".
Kind of reminds me of the way some of our city governments work.
Spin this.
On second thought, I wonder if that is how you advance at Microsoft?
Gates is a DORK and is out of his league. He let the Democrats in the US nearly sue him out of existance.
Bill is trying to be Charles Lindburgh of the 21st century! Does a great thing and thinks he knows what he's talking about.
He's just kissing ass to sell a billion copies of MS Word in Chinese.
Unfortunately we may end up in the same way. Illegal immigrants and outsourcing jobs overseas will ultimately create a US society where 10 percent will live well off (the guys who run the corporations and the people who provide critical services for them), 80 percent digital serfs who will be willing to work for anything and 10 percent permenantly unemployed and kept docile by entitlements or are involved in crime. Right now there is no laws on the books and no will on our politicians to stop it.
Please sir, may I be one of the guys who lives well.
Interesting. Good post/comments.
Oh, and MS also filed a brief in favor of "affirmative action" in the Michigan "Grutter v. Bollinger" (Michigan University) case. Such "affirmative action," BTW, doesn't do much to help men of other colors. It's an excuse for the preference of white women in universities and jobs. ...breaks families and keeps the labor pool large.
But the problem with it is...
"Then it will be plain that the first condition for the liberation of the wife is to bring the whole female sex back into public industry, and that this in turn demands the abolition of the monogamous family as the economic unit of society" (Frederick Engels, "Origins of the Family, Private Property, and the State").
Mao's Little Red Book on Women
http://www.paulnoll.com/China/Documents/Mao-31-Women.html
Some of Lenin's words on women
http://www.marx.org/archive/lenin/works/1919/nov/06.htm
The following is from the "Manifesto of the Communist Party" [Karl Marx (1818-1883) and Fredrick Engels]
http://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1848/communist-manifesto/ch02.htm
"The bourgeois sees his wife a mere instrument of production. He hears that the instruments of production are to be exploited in common, and, naturally, can come to no other conclusion that the lot of being common to all will likewise fall to the women."
He has not even a suspicion that the real point aimed at is to do away with the status of women as mere instruments of production.
For the rest, nothing is more ridiculous than the virtuous indignation of our bourgeois at the community of women which, they pretend, is to be openly and officially established by the Communists. The Communists have no need to introduce free love; it has existed almost from time immemorial."
Everyone who knows anything of history also knows that great social revolutions are impossible without the feminine ferment. Social progress may be measured precisely by the social position of the fair sex (plain ones included) (Karl Marx Letter to Ludwig Kugelmann, MECW, Volume 43, p. 184,
http://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1868/letters/68_12_12.htm)
You took the words out of my mouth. LOL. Maybe they might place the blame on FireFox.
""It is a brand-new form of capitalism, and as a consumer its the best thing that ever happened," Gates told an informal meeting late Friday at the World Economic Forum in this ski resort.
He characterised the Chinese model in terms of "willingness to work hard and not having quite the same medical overhead or legal overhead."
Or the same governmental or environmental regulations, Bill. The model is the same as the dawn of industrial America. You know, the one before safety regulations in the mines and garment district.
The difference is this, Bill. If the Chinese workers strike and riot for better conditions, the government will kill them and no questions will be asked.
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