Bill and Melinda Gates have a plan for income inequality

[Trillo]

55. They didn't create DOS, they bought it and rebranded it.

The Microsoft monopoly

This is not the place to go into the exact details of Bill Gates’ rise to fame and riches. Suffice to say that, contrary to the popular myth, his story is not one of rags to riches. Gates’ grandfather was a wealthy banker, James Willard Maxwell, who established a million-dollar trust fund for his grandson on which he could always rely. He was also the son of a wealthy attorney in Seattle and thus, as an upper middle class young man, he had the necessary funds to found Microsoft in the first place.

Together with Paul Allen, Bill Gates founded Micro-Soft in 1975, later called Microsoft Corporation. After having marketed its own Microsoft version of BASIC, a programming language, the company took off. As early as 1976, Gates wrote an “open letter to hobbyists”, which claimed that a commercial market existed for computer software. This may seem obvious these days, but it is important to note that software at that time was hardly ever sold. Since all software was based on the software and ideas of others, it was considered impossible to own it. Software was developed by hobbyists and was passed around and shared in the community. The capitalist logic had its last laugh, however, and the commercialisation of software paid off.

The breakthrough for Microsoft came when IBM decided to enter the personal computer market in the late 1970s. IBM needed two things: an operating system to run it and a programming language. The company contacted Bill Gates about BASIC and at the same time enquired about an operating system. They signed an important contract in 1980, despite the fact that Gates had no operating system at all. Hence, Microsoft simply licensed a clone of CP/M, the de facto standard at the time. This piece of software, which Microsoft had not written themselves, was significantly renamed QDOS (Quick and Dirty Operating System). As Bill Gates and his company had hardly made any investment costs (this was done by other companies like Digital Research, Seattle Computers and IBM) and had no production costs (IBM funded the production), Microsoft was able to sell its product below the market price and gradually drive competitors out of business. The only thing left to do was to purchase all rights for QDOS for just $50,000 and rename it MS-DOS. Now they had a product in which they had played no part in its innovation but which was extremely profitable. And that is what business is all about after all.

This, in a nutshell, is how Microsoft initially made its millions. The company accumulated ever more capital and with its growing resources it could squeeze competitors as WordPerfect and Lotus 1-2-3 in the late 1980s. Bill Gates was even able to rival that other giant, IBM. IBM will have regretted the signing of their contract with Bill Gates, which in a sense was their death warrant as monopolists in the computer industry themselves. The millions of profit became billions in the nineties, and Microsoft gained a monopoly position. At the height of the dot.com boom in 1999, Bill Gates’ wealth was estimated at a mere $90 billion (Forbes figure). They became (and still are) one of the world’s most profitable enterprises and could flood the market with their products.

[h1]Predatory tactics[/h1]

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Here's something a bit more on topic:

Bill Gates is not a popular figure, but the media, which he bribes, likes to portray him as exceptionally popular, hoping that enough people will follow the media rather than the judgment of friends (to some people the media is a friend).

Those who attempt to actually look at the facts rather than look for handouts may often find that those who acquired their wealth through criminal activities simply continue doing so with varying degrees of success (making money from having money, using lobbying, tax breaks, interest, and insider information).

Bill Gates continues to amass more wealth while the media he bribes contributes to false perceptions that he is giving his money away and invests only in benevolent companies (selective focus on PR-generating grants like scholarships). A lot of the investments are anything but charity and they target monopolies, with or without patents (e.g. Microsoft and Monsanto), with or without human cost (e.g. Shell and other oil companies). When it comes to the GMO monopoly, Gates is not merely an investor but also a lobbyist who tries to go as far as setting school curricula in favour of his investments. People are not dumb enough to miss it and over time they also find out that Gates bribed their press to deceive them. Journalists whom I speak to already take that as a given. They know there is something rotten in Gates.

“G4S has nearly a million employees — people whom the rich hire in large amounts to oppress the population in exchange for a salary.”A while back we showed that Gates was already setting his eyes on British schools and retails giants like JJB. He and Murdoch were spying on young people [1, 2] as means of profiling those who are being indoctrinated. Well, spying on people and breaking down protests are two related activities (mind control and physical control) and this new report shows Gates backing what here is Manchester we consider to be a private army of mercenary thugs that warp public policing into a for-profit business of few (public becomes privatised, with government/taxpayers’ subsidies), ranging in activity from spying in the streets to riot policing (where the rioters are sometimes the police). According to Wikipedia, this is a growing ‘business’, not just in the United Kingdom. G4S has nearly a million employees — people whom the rich hire in large amounts to oppress the population in exchange for a salary.

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