Letters to the Editor
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Microsoft vs. Walmart
Microsoft is highly aggresive, sure, but WalMart is much more than that. The list of their offenses is more serious and longer than Microsoft's. Everything from locking workers in the store to force unpaid overtime to denying women promotions based solely on gender to undercutting local businesses until they go out of business and then jacking up the prices.
That said, I have seen WalMart do one good thing. I used to live in Boonton, NJ and they cleaned up a Superfund site at (reportedly) their own expense and built a store on the site. I don't know how well they cleaned it or if they took money from the government to do it, but they did clean it.
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I'm trying to remember...
End of the 19th century & beginning of the 20th, peoples like Carnegie and other robber barons had amassed amazing fortunes via questionable tactics. A number of them decided later in life to better the world, spending their millions for anything from monuments to their names to actually helpful investments. A lot of their names & the things they set up are still around in some way, and the terrible ways they amassed those fortunes far less known.
I'm not sure if that's the best comparison for Gates et al, but for me years of making money the wrong way shouldn't be completely forgotten by some donations. Even if these folks put all of their money where there mouth is - which I do *not* expect or require - they did live rather well for some time and caused a whole lot of trouble for a whole lot of people.
Yeah, I prefer this over the alternative, and I do remember your article back then. I'm still not sure I believe this is much more than guilt money, the capitalist equivalent of confessing to your priest after your latest shenanigans.
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Start with his own employees
Greetings
The CEO Of WalMart should go micro first, in his own company with his own abused employees then his vendors and their exploiting sweatshops...
But their words "listen good"
Perhaps in time with enough economic pain we'll remember why deregulation is so very bad for consumers and workers yet so beloved by the rich
Enjoy the journey
WarLord
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It sounds like they BOTH want to build company towns in Africa
It's a kind of benign colonialism.
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Time to turn the heat up:
Some hundred, or whatever years from now people are not going to remember my name or your's; but Bill Gates' name will be thoroughly remembered. So we can all be glad about this. May his and Wal-Mart's actions be as good as their rhetoric.
No poverty; no charity
P.S. click on conryw to reference Los Angeles Times' articles on The Gates Foundation.
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Link didn't work. Here it is again, hopefully:
http://www.latimes.com/news/nationworld/nation/la-na-gatesx7jan07-sg,0,261331.storygallery
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Cut out the middle man
Why doesn't Gates just give his money directly to Wal-Mart and cut out the middle man? In the end Wal-Mart will get it anyway.
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Good luck
There's one small problem with Bill's idea: greed.
History has shown clearly and repeatedly that the wealthy and powerful, for the most part, do not care about anyone other than themselves. With a pathetic few notable exceptions such as Gates and George Soros, the wealthy can never be trusted to lift a finger to help the poor. On the contrary, they're usually happy to squeeze the poor whatever additional pennies they can get.
Bill Gates has done a lot of good with his money, but if he thinks he can shame other wealthy people into doing likewise, he's a fool.
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Bill Gates and Wal-Mart want to save the world?
Micros**t produces crap. Why people think this guy is so great is beyond me.
Simply put, I am glad to be a hardcore Mac user.
Gates can save the world by saving the sanity of his customers and going out of business. The sooner, the better.
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Adam Young of Madison
Oh Farhad, this alias isn't fooling anyone.
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What's surprising here?
We believe that there should be one framework of social and environmental standards for all major global retailers. And there should be one third party auditing system for everyone.
Capitalists (i.e. the owners of capital) have always sought to modify the structure of markets to assure that they can earn steady profits. If we use the post-Depression system as an example, this typically involves two aspects:
1) Providing the workers with sufficient material comforts so that they don't rebel.
2) Centralizing control over the economy to remove uncertainty from the marketplace.
This centralization of control also applies to politics and society in general. The main way of removing "uncertainty" from the marketplace is to eliminate competition, particularly from upstart workers who think that they deserve to have a say in how things are done.
The culmination of all of this was illustrated long ago by Aldous Huxley in his novel Brave New World.
This behaviors only surprises to those who subscribe to "Goo goo historical mythology"
http://mutualist.blogspot.com/2005/11/goo-goo-historical-mythology.html
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The Robber Barons Feign Befuddlement Over Plight of Worker Poor?
Hilarious.
Two ruthless thugs wander around the slums as if they were innocent pilgrims wondering aloud, “How…how did all of this happen? Surely their must be some kind of…of system wherein greedy corporations can’t ass rape the workers out of every last penny. But what?”
Hint: Stop shipping all manufacturing overseas, stop ruthlessly enforcing a ban on unions and stop hiring Indians at 10/hr instead of Americans at a middle-income wage!
The CEO of Wal-mart especially is funny (or should that be insulting?) as he too claim ignorance of how any of this happened! Of course it doesn’t help his credibility that he feigns this ignorance while holding a bloody baseball bat in one hand while a worker with broken legs is lying twitching at his feet. “How? How did this happen and what can we possibly do to change it?” This is said, of course, in-between whacks of the baseball onto the workers head. Um, yeah. Sorry. I don’t really believe these guys give a shit about any of us.
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What do Microsoft and WalMart have in Common ? ... Self Financing...
They don't rely on banks for financing. Both WalMart and Microsoft are fully self funding and they see that the banks are controlling and abusing their power. Both need the middle class to sell their products (xbox, dry goods) and see the squeeze the rich are putting on the entire system.