By Michael Shermer’s recently gave a account of dinner with Bill Gates. I’ve always been intrigued with Gates and I imagine it would be an unreal experience to sit around talking with him about various topics. Shermer said:
This was unlike any dinner I’ve ever attended. Usually no matter how many heavyweight bigshot superstars are present there always seems to be a relatively fluid conversation around the table that unfolds organically as different people make different contributions. Not so here. Bill Gates was the star and we were tiny planets in orbit around him, sitting there like acolytes at the feet of the guru, asking him questions and listening to his lengthy and thoughtful answers.
Is that jealously I’m feeling? Why yes, it is.
I knew Bill Gates was smart, but in my estimation after listening to him for two hours is that he is really smart, off-the-charts smart, super bright, even brilliant. He is obviously well-read on those matters important to him, and he seems to have a steel-trap memory for regurgitating what he has read in great detail. Discussing world health and nutrition led me to ask him about diets and health and what he does personally, to which he answered that he runs 90 minutes a day on a treadmill. Since I do a fair amount of exercise myself (cycling is my poison) I asked him if he listens to audio books, which he said he does but is especially keen on listening to Teaching Company courses while working out, most especially the economics courses taught by Professor Timothy Taylor. Since I have taken all of these courses myself (you can download them into an iPhone and listen to them while driving, cycling, running, hiking, etc.), it was interesting to listen to Gates reiterate what was in them in the course of the evening as we asked him questions about the economy. I could tell that he could call forth from memory intricate details from those courses but in a completely different context in answer to a separate question.
Gates on the bail-out:
I asked Gates “Isn’t it a myth that some companies are ‘too big to fail’? What would have happened if the government just let AIG and the others collapse.” Gates’ answer: “Apocalypse.” He then expanded on that, explaining that after talking to his “good friend Warren” (Buffet), he came to the conclusion that the consequences down the line of not bailing out these giant banks would have left the entire world economy in tatters.
Gates on the Fed:
[I asked Gates] “If the market is so good at determining jobs and wages and prices, why not let the market determine the price of money? Why do we need the Fed?” Gates responded: “You sound like Ron Paul! We need the Fed to steer the economy away from extremes of inflation and deflation.” He then gave a mini-lecture on the history of economics.
If someone could give me tips on how to be invited to such dinners, I would appreciate it…
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20 Comments
That must have been a good experience for Shermer, he has some unfortunate Libertarian leanings.
What happened before the Fed kept a tight rein on currency?
Financial Panics of the 19th Century
Offer to bring the beer?
I would love to hear his thoughts on life and religion. It would be interesting. I used to know someone that worked directly for him, but I would have never been important enough to be able to get a meeting.
Awesome. I love Shermer but the moment economics comes up he suddenly turns into a nonsensical crank. It’s good to hear that even the richest men in the world understand the importance of government involvement in commercial affairs. I hope this has a big impact on Shermer’s economic views…but somehow I doubt it.
While I would like to believe that Shermer took something away from the meeting, I doubt it as well.
I’ve known too many Libertarians to believe that something so trivial as the reasoned opinion of a genius could lead them to question their theoretical belief in a Utopia of Randian Ubermenchen.
I don’t have a very good opinion of the guy. He stole a lot of the code he used (even from trashbins), and many of his millon dollar donations are not in money, but in Microsoft software equipped PCs.
At least Paul Allen is helping SETI, and I hope that is with a bit more than some free W7/Office licenses…
Diego: evidence, plz.
I never bookmarked the sources, but a quick search found:
Gates said: “I’d skip out on athletics and go down to this computer center. We were moving ahead very rapidly: Basic, FORTRAN, LISP, PDP-10 machine language, digging out the operating system listings from the trash and studying those.”
(http://www.theregister.co.uk/2000/06/29/bill_gates_roots/)
Regarding the computer donation, I remember he did that here, in Uruguay, about the time that it was decided to use the XO for the “plan Ceibal” instead of a Windows computer.
I’ll keep looking for more sources when I have the time, but almost all searches now point to his latest donation of U$ 10 bn (spread in 10 years). which, if it’s all money, it is indeed a very generous donation
A bit more, I just remember that he used to “steal” computer time, in a time when students had to wait for days before getting some computer time to test their projects.
“One of these systems was a PDP-10 belonging to Computer Center Corporation, which banned the Lakeside students for the summer after it caught them exploiting bugs in the operating system to obtain free computer time.”
(http://www.intro4u2u.com/2007/09/bill-gates/)
“‘Why do we need the Fed?’ Gates responded: ‘You sound like Ron Paul! We need the Fed to steer the economy away from extremes of inflation and deflation.’”
Well well well. What do we have here, a big industrialist who loves big government and regulation? How unlikely.
Name three industrialists who *love* government regulation of their industries.
Gates was simply being realistic, and given the economic meltdown we are enjoying thanks to two decades of irresponsible *de*regulation of the financial sector, I would like to here more of his thoughts on the matter.
Gates may be brilliant, but that in no means suggests he’s correct on any of these items. We’ll never know what the results would have been if AIG and the other rescued institutions were left to die. Perhaps it would have been Armageddon; perhaps it would have led to a despair filled decade or two followed by a better, stronger, more evolved world economy that would have given birth to an age of prosperity the likes of which we could have never imagined–in which case, history would have looked back at the 20 years of despair as a trying but critical blip in history that gave birth to something wondrous.
Of course this is all speculation, but we as a society, and as individual beings, are so concentrated on the immediate that we’re blind to subsequent outcomes. This mindset has become an epidemic in this omnipresent media age. The true results from any major economic policy, or for that matter, any major political policy, are never really known for years or decades, but in truth, they are never really known at all, for subsequent policies (often born as reactions to previous policies with similar short term goals in mind) will inevitably alter the course set by the previous policies and thus lead to different future policies and a mind-numbing range of possibilities.
That’s why sometimes it’s better to just have a cocktail, smoke some weed, or do whatever it is that you enjoy to blissfully ignore it all. Ignorance is bliss, after all. I just wish I could ignore it all.
I just don’t get Skeptics like Shermer and Penn Gillette (or PZ or Rachel Maddow for that matter). They hold to their political beliefs just as strongly as the religious hold to their dogma.
There are many different ways to run a government. All of them work, and none of them are wrong. It’s just a matter of what the society values, and what they are willing to pay for those values.
I prefer rationalism, or governmental empiricism. Tell me what the society wants, what its resources are, and I can tell you what system will best achieve that. Health care is the best example. If you want cheap healthcare, then get all government out of it. The market will force costs down. The trade off is that some people will get crap, or no service at all. If you want everyone to be covered, then government mandated insurance can’t be beat. If you want innovation, then market rewards are great, but if you want consistency you need government regulation.
All of them work and none of them are wrong? Even when governments collapse?
“If you want cheap healthcare, then get all government out of it. The market will force costs down. ”
Yeah the market will never collude on price fixing for health care unlike the other markets. Health Care is too important, so it would never happen. :(
Economic History Fail.
Now if only he could develop a secure, efficient operating system for a computer.
Hey man, didn’t you ever use Windows for Workgroups 3.11? ;)
Bill Gates is utterly wrong on political and economic philosophy. Neither he nor William Buffet predicted the economic crash, nor does either of them understand the causes or solutions to the economic problems. Only the Austrian School of Economics, the school which Shermer and Gillette belong, accurately predicted every economic crisis for the past 100+ years and offers the proper solutions to the crises (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CVaZ1HkNXsU).
Some of you talk about de-regulation, while dismissing the consequences of government intervention into the market place which helped cause the crises (e.g. community reinvestment act, legalized fraudulent fractional reserve banking, a failed welfare system, and a bankrupt congress). If a bank has the ability to create artificial wealth out of thin air and is “insured” by the artificial insurance of the “FDIC” then a bank has little regard for handing out loans; this is made possible because of a Central Banking Monopoly granted by the fully trusted federal government. Now add to this non-free market problem the problem of government forced subprime loan granting’s. Compiled together, you get a nation addicted to credit and one which lives beyond their means. More government and the bailing out of big business, the aiding and abetting of credit addiction, is not the solution to the crises, it is the cause. Corporatism and socialism is the culprit, the free market is far too diluted to even be considered the sole factor.
Yes Gates is rich and much of the reason is due to political lobbying and political entrepreneurship (lengthy patents and favorable legislation), but essentially, one can be a good businessman but a poor economist. Albert Einstein was a great scientist but a poor political philosopher.
Shermer and Gillette are libertarians because libertarianism is the only political philosophy grounded in realism and freedom. If you are a scientist or atheist then it is in your best interest to purport economic and social liberty. Any Government, no matter how small it is, is contrary to liberty. Government is the enemy of freedom. This doesn’t mean that libertarians are anti-social or atomistic, quite the contrary, libertarians promote a philosophy that is the most beneficial to the society. Government is not the society, society is the people voluntary engaging in cooperation.
Government is anti-society and pro-tyranny. So Shermer and Gillette are libertarians because they understand the importance of individual liberty and essential human rights grounded not in belief, but rather in evolutionary science and history.
To counter the financial panics of the 19th century post, I’d refer you to the history section of mises.org, the depression of 1920 http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=czcUmnsprQI , and to Peter Schiff http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CVaZ1HkNXsU . Murray Rothbard’s “Great Depression” is another must read.
@revylution “There are many different ways to run a government. All of them work, and none of them are wrong. It’s just a matter of what the society values, and what they are willing to pay for those values.”
Just because a government can run doesn’t mean that the government is just. Nazi Germany was ran exceedingly well and created one of the most dominant powers the world has ever seen, this doesn’t mean it was a just government.
The only just government is one which is limited to protecting humans from the infringement of their life, liberty and property by other humans. Fraud, corruption, force, deception, theft, and much more would be outlawed in a libertarian society. Once government begins to act in the same regard as aggressive humans against other humans, they have seized to serve the purpose of being a just government. I do not know a single society in existence that is libertarian. The closest thing could be found in some areas of colonial America.
The above opinions and those held by Shermer and Gillette are not grounded in faith or belief; they are grounded in subjective and objective reasoning. They are based on the study of human action, economics, and political philosophy. Natural rights, ethics and morals are additionally grounded in nature through the evolutionary process of the human species.
While the Austrian School has a lot of good things to its credit (oparticularly von Hayek’s explication of the price information mechanism), the notion that Austrian economics has predicted “every economic crisis for the past 100+ years” is complete piffle, a practical exercise in confirmation bias that isn’t hard when one is predicting catastrophe every five minutes.
They do not arbitrarily call for catastrophe every five minutes. They outline in clear and concise arguments exactly what is wrong, when it will surface, how it will surface, and what the God-like organizers of mankind (the government experts) will do to try and correct it.
Ron Paul, Austrian Economist, in 2003:
“Ironically, by transferring the risk of a widespread mortgage default, the government increases the likelihood of a painful crash in the housing market. This is because the special privileges granted to Fannie and Freddie have distorted the housing market by allowing them to attract capital they could not attract under pure market conditions. As a result, capital is diverted from its most productive use into housing. This reduces the efficacy of the entire market and thus reduces the standard of living of all Americans.”
Full prediction: http://realestatesolutions3d.wordpress.com/2009/03/18/amazing-prediction-by-ron-paul-in-2003/
Peter Schiff, Austrian Economist, 2006:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tZaHNeNgrcI
These predictions are in no way shape or form arbitrary nonsensical calls for disaster. They are concrete, thought out, and concise predictions for the economic future. The same can be found in the works of Austrian economists predicting the Great Depression, as well as various other recessions throughout the 20th century.
Your post was epitomical of piffle, not mine.