He defined “creative capitalism” as follows:
"The challenge here is to design a system including profit and recognition to do more for the poor," he said, calling for a new form of "creative capitalism."
"Creative capitalism is an approach where governments, businesses and NGOs (non-government organizations) work together to stretch the reach of market forces so that more people can make a profit or gain recognition doing work that eases the world's inequalities," he said.
"I'd like to ask everyone here ... to take on a project of creative capitalism and see where you can stretch the reach of market forces," he added.
At first glance, this sounds refreshing. Bill’s not only worth around $30Bil, he’s also a swell guy who cares about the poor. No wonder he drinks his Stoli martinis with Bono.
It’s when I stop to think about the paradigm behind the platitudes that “creative capitalism” becomes as scary and implicitly insulting as “compassionate conservatism”. In one of the better lines in last night's GOP debate/insomnia remedy Rudy Giuliani pointed out that he doesn’t need to be a compassionate conservative because if you really understand conservatism, the compassion is implied.
The same could be said for capitalism. It’s about making money. That involves moving assets from less productive and valuable uses to more productive and valuable uses. It doesn’t take Martin Heidegger to understand the implicit requirement that all successful capitalists must also have a profound wellspring of creativity within their beings.
It takes a certain creativity to genuinely give people something they want. Most of us can’t even figure out what that really is for ourselves. The truly successful capitalist either has to read our minds, or develop a strategy to change them. Someone who designs and writes remarkable software, with no bugs and which never requires more patch trading than a Cub Scout Jamboree, would obviously understand this concept. It’s no wonder Bill Gates doesn’t quite grok the water.
Another thing that Gates gets backwards is that he thinks we need to get rid of unequal results. You can’t have freedom and equality of result in synonymy. We all eventually encounter the same situation, this author included, where the guy standing next to us, makes more money, has smarter kids, plays better rugby and, for lack of a less undiplomatic term, is genuinely better. And if that guy (or gal) who is better, also is a genuinely decent person; this sucks even worse!
Bill Gates went through a period in his life where he had to fight like the Spartans at Thermopylae to get to the top. There was no quarter given and probably not too many quarters in the cup holder of his old used car. He fought his own poverty first, and then founded a corporation that heroically fought the poverty of just about anyone lucky enough to land a job there or to get into the stock early.
That’s what Mr. Microsoft needs to remember. Back when he was a college dropout, and his struggle against the world was about as fair as a bare-knuckles fight against Evander Hollyfield, Bill Gates understood what creativity truly required. He first successfully fought the poverty that stared vapidly back at him every morning when he shaved.
What Bill Gates should be preaching at Davos is the Gospel of Self-Mastery. He should be encouraging hard work, never quitting, returning value for value and making sure that no moment of your life is ever mundane and ordinary. None of us needs an NGO, The Davos Forum or a sappy lyric from Bono to harness that type of creativity. This is why these talking points never go up on the PowerPoint slides viewed by the powerful and arrogant in the mountain resort town of Davos, Switzerland.
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