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Post 0

Friday, June 16, 2006 - 6:32amSanction this postReply
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 Exploitation has two senses. One means taking unfair advantage of someonelike if someone is inordinately sensitive to, say, cold weather and you are the only one with a blanket but in some special situation demand that you be paid for it way above the ordinary market price. There are undoubtedly such cases. But if I am at dinner time hungry and someone who owns a restaurant sells me food, thus exploiting the opportunity to feed me for pay, that kind of exploitation is not just innocent but out and out admirable. It’s entrepreneurship. Of if you love classical music and you pay an orchestra to perform some of it for you at a symphony hall, you are exploiting their skills in a most benevolent way, as they are exploiting your interests in their performance.


Personaly, I think those of us who are traders should not even use the word 'exploiting', given that it hold the first or primary definition to most.   Instead, myself prefer,as you indicated, 'entrepreneuring' - or better yet, actually, trading, which brings to the front the primal issue of what the trader worldview is: voluntary exchanging value for value, a sum-plus, not the zero-sum.




Post 1

Friday, June 16, 2006 - 7:15amSanction this postReply
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I think this was all just a "feel-good" excuse for him. The man is 50 years old and worth $50 billion...I'd retire too.



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Post 2

Friday, June 16, 2006 - 7:42amSanction this postReply
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Whatever the motivation, that's not the issue. What matters is that he is an influential person who is suggesting that trade involves ill gotten gains for which one needs to atone.
(Edited by Machan on 6/16, 7:43am)




Post 3

Friday, June 16, 2006 - 8:19amSanction this postReply
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Hi Tibor:

You are right on the money (as usual)!

Many businessmen (including Bill Gates) wrongly believe that if they are to earn respect, they must do so by doing more than performing well in business. Many unfortunately attempt to prove their value by "giving back" to education, the arts, the community, and so on.

Businessmen should take pride in their achievements and their virtues of rational thought and productive work that make them possible.

We (including Bill Gates) need to proclaim the truth about business.

Ed







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Post 4

Friday, June 16, 2006 - 9:34amSanction this postReply
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Ed, I have nothing against--and I even support--generosity, philanthropy, kindness, etc.  These arise from the benevolent virtues anyone of good character should cultivate in oneself. It's part of a well integrated life to have those virtues. But they aren't obligations, they aren't owed to anyone, like something one has promised or respect for another's rights. It's the confusion that bugs me! It has consequences that can easily misguide and mislead about matters of morality and politics. 



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Post 5

Friday, June 16, 2006 - 3:12pmSanction this postReply
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Great article.  Tibor is most fun to read when he's pissed off.  :)




Post 6

Friday, June 16, 2006 - 5:07pmSanction this postReply
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Tibor:

Yes, I remember well and agree with what you had to say about this especially in your book, Generosity in the Civil Society.

I believe you said that generosity should be practiced at all stages of life but that the extent and objects of one's generosity will depend upon the relevant circumstances. Because our lives are limited with respect to our time and resources, we must discern and choose the acts and objects to value through our charity. A life that includes no acts of generosity is certainly morally deficient. Generosity is an expression of one's self-perfection and the obligation for it is that the benefactor owes it to himself, not to the recipients. Generosity is thus viewed as perfective of one's capacity for cooperation and a particular manifestation of that capacity.

As you said, it is not a matter of "giving back".

Cheers!!!

Ed







Post 7

Friday, June 16, 2006 - 5:37pmSanction this postReply
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Bill Gates seems enigmatic. He bleats statist left-wing platitudes, he suffers quietly--apparently without public protest--while his competitors beat him over the head with anti-trust law suits, and I'm sure he and Swarzenagger get together regularly to worry about global warming. On the other hand, he thinks for himself in his business, and he's creative, energetic, highly generous, and extremely effective at making things happen. He married his secretary, a somewhat attractive, intelligent woman a few years his junior; instead of acquiring a gorgeous shapely trophy wife 25 years his junior. Why someone with such outstanding personal qualities would passively accede to the "public wisdom" about politics and ethics mystifies me.

I saw him interviewed recently on some TV show. I felt sorry for him, because his interviewer misunderstood what inspired Gates' business success. The interviewer, a typical anti-capitalist, viewed Gates' achievements as another instance of capitalist "greed" (he didn't use this term); and expressed his opinion that Gates would be just as "aggressive" if he were operating a lemondae stand, as he supposedly has been in founding and running a global information technology business. Gates tried to politely explain to his clueless interviewer that he is inspired by the challenge and method of creating new solutions to technology limitations, rather than by an obsession with commercial "conquest".

I assume that anyone who has ever built or created anything of value would intuitively grasp what Gates expressed. But not his interviewer, who remained clueless. Affecting a jovial comradery toward his guest, the interviewer's line of questioning and commentary--and the expression in his eyes when he looked at Gates--revealed hostility and resentment toward his guest. At the conclusion of the interview, he gratuitously insulted Gates with some throw-away comment that eludes me now.

Why Bill Gates does not pause to question the ethos of his interviewer, and of anti-trust legal jackals, astounds me.




Post 8

Friday, June 16, 2006 - 5:45pmSanction this postReply
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http://www.microsoft.com/billgates/speeches.asp

(Edited by Ciro D'Agostino on 6/16, 9:24pm)




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Post 9

Saturday, June 17, 2006 - 10:45pmSanction this postReply
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Why Bill Gates does not pause to question the ethos of his interviewer, and of anti-trust legal jackals, astounds me.
Where's Galt when you need him?

I liked the article a great deal, Dr. Machan.




Post 10

Tuesday, June 20, 2006 - 11:53pmSanction this postReply
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Whatever the motivation, that's not the issue. What matters is that he is an influential person who is suggesting that trade involves ill gotten gains for which one needs to atone.
===============

I just had to repeat that (for emphasis)!

;-)

Ed
[Machan is rockin'!]




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