[grandgnu]

[ QUOTE ]
WOW. Just wow. You have absolutely no clue.

You said "For someone to be rich, others must be poor". Who did Bill Gates rob to become rich? Answer: nobody.

A company (or person) makes money by performing services or delivering goods that the customer desires. If they make (or perform) crap, they make no money. If they perform well, they make a ton of cash. But there's no coersion involved. It's a FREE market. So you don't make people poor in the process of gaining wealth. It's just not a true statement.

And here's an interesting follow-up thought: Of all those people/companies that bought MS products, do you think they gained anything from it? Like maybe more productivity/better performance of their own companies? You have to give the customer some credit for spending their money wisely. They didn't pay Mr. Gates' company scores of billions of $ for no reason.

And you also need to learn the meaning of a term: "zero sum game". A capitalistic economy is NOT a zero sum game. Wealth gets created. That's the main reason you don't need to make others less wealthy in order to become more wealthy.

Note that this is different than poker. In poker, it is actually worse than a zero sum game, unless you play without a rake. In that case (no rake), it is exactly a zero sum game.

If you look at the world's fastest growing economy (China), you will see that they have made a decided turn towards an open market economy (read: capitalism). Their economy pretty much sucked before that. And the Soviet Union's economy also sucked gas.

If you look at less economically-developed countries, they usually have one of two problems (sometimes both): Lack of education and/or dictatorship. Ignorance and oppression are the two great causes of poverty. Not capitalism.

Bobby

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I didn't say that Gates robbed anyone, I'm saying that in a Capitalist economy, in order for one person to have more than the "average median" income or assets, many others MUST have less than the average, thus making them "poor" based on that economy.

And let's not get into the "productivity" that Microsoft has delivered, since they continually produce buggy software and have a near stranglehold in the world of Operating Systems and Word Processing applications.

Many "better" products have been put out of business because other "lesser" products just had better marketing or more capital to set themselves up. Beta vs. VHS, Amiga vs. IBM PC's, etc.

Also, it isn't always about performing well, many companies just rip us off. I know it's nit-picking, but here are a few examples:

1. Friendlies Restaurants (Northeast US) used to give you HALF a cherry with your ice cream. What corporate big-wig was sitting in his office going "do you know how many millions we'll save if we give everyone half a cherry?!"

2. Moist Wipes: These used to come in packages of 50, now you get 48, or 42, but you get charged the same, or more.

3. Have you SEEN the prices of razor blades lately? You're paying something like 16 dollars for eight razor blades that probably cost a nickel or less apiece to produce (granted, there are varying advertising and other costs to be considered, but c'mon man, really!)

4. Purchase Microsoft XP in the States and you're paying somewhere between $150-$300. You can get it in China for $40 (and I'm not talking an illegal copy, this is a Microsoft approved price)

We live in a society where we are taken advantage of by the minority upper class who control the majority of the money and assets. And we are too apathetic and comfortable to fix the system.

Don't get me wrong, I know that Socialism and Communism have had, and do have, their faults. We haven't found an ideal system yet, hopefully one day we will.