Bill Gates Read online

  Nader used Gates’s letter as an opportunity to release one more statement, responding that he was not calling into question the philanthropic efforts of Gates, simply asking that those most wealthy meet to speak about issues that might be solved given attention to inequality of wealth. Nader also mentioned speaking to two other exceptionally wealthy individuals, who believed his proposal had merit.12 If those two individuals—Ted Turner (known for variously owning CNN, TBS, the Atlanta Braves, and being the largest landowner in the United States) and Sol Price (whose Price Club stores eventually became part of the current Costco chain)—were both believers in billionaires addressing this problem, why would Nader be insistent that Gates alone be the one who initiated the conference? Nader had initiated a critical attack on Microsoft the previous year, leading to a November 1997 conference he called Appraising Microsoft and Its Global Strategy; Gates referenced this Nader-initiated conference at the November 1997 Microsoft Shareholder Meeting. Nader had—conveniently—scheduled his conference for the same day as Microsoft’s Shareholder Meeting, so there was little chance Gates or other senior executives would have attended even if interested in the offer. The Microsoft Shareholder Meeting had been announced the week before Nader’s request for Gates’s attendance.

  While Gates personally never responded to Nader’s invitation, his organization did through Microsoft executive vice president and chief operating officer Bob Herbold in a letter, objecting that Nader’s organization would not provide an opportunity for meaningful discourse with sessions led entirely by Microsoft critics, competitors, and those suing Microsoft. The entire proceedings were compared to a kangaroo court as Microsoft’s recommendations for panelists were rejected. Herbold ended by noting that due to the computing revolution, the access, speed, and cost of computing had decreased so dramatically that other major industries would not be able to maintain the same pace of increasing value to the consumer:

  Your premise that Microsoft has been a disincentive to competition and innovation is simply wrong. As an AT&T executive observed last year, the cost of computing has fallen 10 million-fold since the microprocessor was invented in 1971. That’s the equivalent of getting a Boeing 747 for the price of a pizza. If this innovation had been applied to automotive technology, a new car would cost about $2; it would travel at the speed of sound; and it would go 600 miles on a thimble of gas.13

  Herbold incorporates a statement made by Michael Rothschild (the “AT&T executive”) that supports the claims made by Gates, Microsoft, and others in the technology industry. The increases in capability and widespread adoption in a period of just under 25 years had put—in almost every U.S. home—computing products that were far superior in capability than even the largest computers available to the biggest corporations at the beginning of the 1970s, at costs most families could afford.

  As relayed by Clausing in the next day’s New York Times, Microsoft’s concerns of an in absentia round of bashing by the company’s opponents was well supported. And Microsoft executives, of course, were at the Microsoft shareholder meeting.

  Scott McNealy, the chief executive of Sun Microsystems, gave the keynote address, telling the audience he was the only competitor left able to publicly talk against Microsoft because he is the only one with an alternative operating system to Windows, Java… “It’s about standards on the Web,” McNealy said. “Very few people are willing to stand up to the power of Microsoft. Some people think Sun is committing corporate suicide by not reselling Microsoft. I just think it’s Web suicide if we don’t have choice.”14

  NADER, GATES, AND PHILANTHROPY

  Given the low-quality interactions between Gates and Nader, there was little chance Gates would immediately convene a summit of billionaires (with the help of Warren Buffett) that would lead to philanthropic efforts to solve problems globally, including health initiatives that could save lives without much funding. Given some time—a decade or so—Gates and Buffett do lead an initiative involving the world’s billionaires in philanthropy, and Gates begins to focus on health initiatives that did save lives.

  In fact, that disparity in wealth has increased since the time of Nader’s original letter, despite the involvement of many nonprofit organizations and the initiatives led by Gates and other billionaires. Oxfam used information presented in Credit Suisse’s “2013 Global Wealth Report” to estimate that the wealthiest 85 people in the world then controlled as much as the bottom 50 percent of the global population (3.5 billion people); the 1998 figure was 385 richest people controlling as much wealth as the poorest 3 billion people.15

  STARTING THE FOUNDATION

  Gates’s father was quoted on the struggle to get him to develop a Foundation to benefit others. In fact, Gates himself—in his letter to Nader—had stressed that his current project was to work to make Microsoft successful such that there would be more funds available for philanthropy later. And with the focus on Microsoft’s success:

  “He regarded it,” his father Bill Gates Sr., noted “as another management problem which would intrude on his time, which was his most precious commodity and so he had uniformly repelled the idea of starting a foundation.”…

  “He thought the most important thing to do,” his father said, “was to have the business succeed.” The young entrepreneur told his mother that philanthropy was fine, but he had to pay his employees, to drum up enough business; after all, it was a very competitive market out there. Eventually, young Gates came around, putting a United Way campaign in place at Microsoft. “So,” his father said, “his instincts for philanthropy were there.”16

  When did the idea for the Foundation actually coalesce and take off? While in line for a a movie, an idea came up that perhaps Bill himself would not have to run the Foundation on a day-to-day basis. And his father volunteered assistance. Bill Gates Sr. then says, “My son decided maybe it was time to start a foundation.” What had changed Bill’s mind? “I think it was the revelation that maybe there was somebody available to take the responsibility for managing [the foundation].”17

  FOUNDATION AND AIMS

  Between 20 and 25 percent of all funded projects are made in the United States, under a belief system that every life has equal value, regardless of location in the world.18 Bill and Melinda Gates are co-chairs along with his father, William H. Gates Sr., and close friend Warren Buffett is a trustee. According to the organization’s fact sheet, the Foundation has over 1,000 staff members, over $40 billion in the current trust account, and had made $28.3 billion in grants since founding, with work in over 100 countries, all U.S. states, and Washington, D.C.

  As Gates mentioned in the earliest days of Microsoft, he could negotiate business deals without the assistance of lobbyists; in the role of the Gates Foundation, he and his wife have important roles as leaders and policymakers, frequently speaking to raise awareness of initiatives.

  Bill and Melinda Gates with a tuberculosis patient in Cape Town, South Africa, in July 2006. (AP Photo/Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, Sharon Farmer)

  Among the largest committed grants are the GAVI Alliance for childhood vaccinations, the Gates Millennium Scholars Program, the U.S., efforts on malaria vaccines, and a contribution to Rotary International’s PolioPlus initiative, which seeks to eliminate the disease polio throughout the world. And Gates is results-oriented; efforts like eradicating polio has led to just three countries in the world still having the disease as of January 2014 (and reduction in worldwide polio cases by 99% in the past 35 years).

  LETTER FROM BILL AND MELINDA GATES

  In their letter announcing the aims of the Foundation, the family does talk about focusing on a limited number of goals, where the greatest impacts can be made (both in saving lives and allowing individuals to make the most of their lives): “Our friend and co-trustee Warren Buffett once gave us some great advice about philanthropy: ‘Don’t just go for safe projects,’ he said. ‘Take on the really tough problems.’”19

  CHANGING THE MISSION

  Early in the
days of the Foundation, the focus was on library projects in the United States and providing educational opportunities for students of impoverished financial backgrounds. Later, in an interview with Bill Moyers, Gates spoke about why initiatives outside the United States would become the primary focus, as he saw evidence of many people dying from issues that were not only preventable, but the investment required to make a difference in the lives of millions would be fairly inexpensive in the scope of the Foundation, as long as a well-reasoned approach was taken. While reading a report, he found that people around the world were still dying of mosquito-borne disease and lack of vaccinations, which were not problems encountered in the United States:

  I know when I saw that article on the World Development Report, I said, this can’t be true, but if it is true, this deserves to be the priority of our giving. And so I took the article and Melinda read it. I gave it to my dad and said, you know can you have the people you’re working with, tell me is this some aberration here? Or if this is true, give me more things to read.

  It was a shock, but then, you know it was an answer to say that governments weren’t doing it.

  And so maybe we could help step in. And maybe not just our resources, but maybe we could galvanize some interest and attention and IQ to go and look at these problems and think you know if I have the technology that can you know stop mosquitoes from carrying these diseases. Or allow vaccines to be delivered without a refrigerator, you know I have saved millions of lives by coming up with those ideas.20

  The Gates family recognized immediately that with the exceptional amount of financial resources allocated to improving the lives of others through the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, some of the most effective options could come at comparatively low cost. Rather than focus on rare diseases that are costly to treat and only saving a few lives, the Gates Foundation takes a very strategic approach. Gates still provides insight into his very analytical mind, thinking about diseases that cause the greatest number of deaths throughout the world, how many lives can be saved, and the meaningful improvement that comes based upon the involvement of the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation.

  In 2001, Kickbusch21 wrote, “In the short period of three years your Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation has supported global health development in your areas of choice (vaccine development and maternal and child health). The budget of the World Health Organisation pales in comparison. You should be praised for this commitment.” She suggested that philanthropy often gets stuck with unintended consequences, where various entities are attempting to raise funds for the same causes, effectively getting in each other’s way. She appeals to Gates’s business acumen and says, “The next big challenge for global health is not yet another disease initiative. John Maynard Keynes helped invent the United Nations. Bill, go the next step and invest your creativity, resources and influence to help create a financially viable network structure fit for global public health in the 21st century.”22

  The Gates Foundation continued its focus of saving the most lives and causing the most improvement, not the amount of dollars given. And for a disease like malaria, which infects and kills millions of people throughout the world each year, grants Gates felt to be small were actually exceptionally large in a global context, saving many lives with comparatively few funds. And given the approach the Foundation takes when working to solve problems, Gates himself was shocked upon discovering that life-saving work could easily be done—that others had not already adopted or championed the causes that impact so many people throughout the world.

  You think in philanthropy that your dollars will just be marginal, because the really juicy obvious things will all have been taken. So you look at this stuff and we are, like, wow! When somebody is saying to you we can save many lives for hundreds of dollars each, the answer has to be no, no, no. That would already have been done.23

  In speeches on important days in his life, as when Harvard bestowed upon him an honorary doctoral degree, he spoke about the mission of the Foundation, how every life has value, and stressed that the most important advances and the highest possible achievements made are those that reduce inequity around the world.

  But humanity’s greatest advances are not in its discoveries—but in how those discoveries are applied to reduce inequity. Whether through democracy, strong public education, quality health care, or broad economic opportunity—reducing inequity is the highest human achievement.

  If you believe that every life has equal value, it’s revolting to learn that some lives are seen as worth saving and others are not. We said to ourselves: “This can’t be true. But if it is true, it deserves to be the priority of our giving.”24

  DAVOS, 2008 WORLD ECONOMIC FORUM

  At the 2008 World Economic Forum Conference in Davos, Switzerland, Gates gave a talk called Creative Capitalism. This later became a book, including the contributions of Bill Gates and Warren Buffett among others: “The world is getting better, but it’s not getting better fast enough, and it’s not getting better for everyone.”25

  INFLECTION POINT

  Davos was an inflection point for Bill Gates, for he was about to leave his full-time work at Microsoft. Although he had, somewhat reluctantly, left the CEO position back in 2000, he had remained involved with the company he cofounded for an additional eight years in multiple roles. By 2008, Gates had been with Microsoft since day one and was the only person remaining who had seen the first eight years of the firm. The only other person who had experienced the first eight years of the firm had been Paul Allen, who commented on the impending departure of Gates: “It may be more of a change than he thinks,” says Paul Allen, recalling his own departure from Microsoft in 1983. “You don’t always realize how dramatic that transition is going to be when people aren’t depending on your decisions day by day.”26

  Toward the end of his day-to-day role at Microsoft, Gates acknowledged the statement by Allen and said that switching from Microsoft would be an “adjustment”: “So, yeah, I have an adjustment to make. I’ve done the same thing for 33 years, in a sense…. It will be an adjustment for me. If I didn’t have the foundation—which is so exciting, and the work is complex—if I didn’t have that, it would be tough for me, because I’m not a sit-on-the-beach type.”27

  He also recognized that not only did he want to do good work, but that if he were to stay with Microsoft as long as there were challenges from competitors, full-time work with the Foundation could never happen. In fact, he would have to work until his last day on earth, and didn’t see devoting all of his efforts to the Foundation to be giving up something he valued the past 33 years of his life, but as a new—and fun—activity.

  If you say, “Gosh, I won’t leave when there’s an interesting competitor,” then you’d have to die on the job.

  I love the fact that I get to meet with scientists who are devoting their lives to these things. So in no sense would I say, “Oh, I’m making a sacrifice to do something my mother told me I ought to do.” I am doing something my mother told me I ought to do, but I’m doing it because it’s going to be a lot of fun.28

  Gates knew he had amassed financial wealth, and had his own view of what should happen to massive wealth if still present at the death of the wealth-holder. Sharing the same view as his father, Gates strongly believed that if a person earning the wealth didn’t give those funds away—in his or her lifetime or through a charitable foundation—that the funds should be subjected to estate taxes before being passed to any heirs. Of course, Gates had long committed to ensuring that the majority of his wealth would be used to improve the lives of others through the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation. He also recognized that his success was based not just on his own achievement but the educational system afforded to him as well as other benefits that can be attributed to government intervention, such as a stable country where rights and freedoms to create his company were present: “And my case is a clear one. I’m a beneficiary of an educational system and a system of stability and incentiv
es, where I got to hire bright people and come up with products. And the fact I was 19 years old, that didn’t matter. If I had a good piece of software, somebody could buy it from me.”29

  EVER THE INNOVATOR

  Just ask Bill Gates. If he were a teenager again, he’d be biology hacking. “Creating artificial life with DNA synthesis. That’s sort of the equivalent of machine language programming,” says Gates, whose work for the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation has led him to become a didactic expert in disease and immunology. “If you want to change the world in some big way, that’s where you should start—biological molecules. Those are all pretty deep problems that need the same type of crazy fanaticism and youthful genius and naiveté that drove the PC industry, and can have the same impact on the human condition.30

  Gates readily saw that the charitable causes that attracted funding were those that were prevalent in more affluent countries. The individuals who lived in poorer countries, where easy to treat diseases were endemic, faced undue suffering and deaths that were preventable. Medical conditions such as baldness are exceptionally minor in comparison: “This leads to the paradox, that because the disease is only in the poor countries, there is not much investment. For example, there is more money put into baldness drugs than are put into malaria. Now baldness is a terrible thing (laughter). And rich men are afflicted, so that is why that priority is set.”31

  Bill Gates is not the only member of the household with a critical role in the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation. His wife Melinda would be his third major partner in Eisner’s narrative; she is also a visionary and conversant on the issues the Foundation seeks to address, leading efforts in initiatives such as reproductive health. Despite her broad influence in the Foundation, many observers do not see her role:

  They think he’s doing it all, and that’s okay. That is just the state of affairs. But I think as soon as they start to hear me talk about the issues and talk about what’s real and why we’re doing it, they start to realize, “Oh, okay, we get it. This is a partnership.”32