Bill Gates & Creative Capitalism

Bill Gates & Creative Capitalism

Posted by Tawan , Reader : 516 , 19:02:55
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I thought I would take a break from ranting the yoga seems to be working in the mornings and write about something good and something that I believe in.
It comes from the World Economic Forum 2008 last month at Davos, Switzerland. It was Bill Gates’ speech on creative capitalism. Because of free market capitalism the least needy see most of the improvements while the bottom third the most needy get the least. There is a financial incentive to serve the wealthy market incentives makes this happen. Capitalism harnesses self interest for the benefit of people but only for those people who can pay it does nothing for those who can not pay.
Bill Gates quoted the father of capitalism Adam Smith author of Wealth of Nations to define creative capitalism “How selfish soever man may be supposed, there are evidently some principles in his nature, which interest him in the fortunes of others, and render their happiness necessary to him, though he derives nothing from it, except the pleasure of seeing it.”

Bill Gates wants to refine free market capitalism where selfish is not only the motivating factor behind profits but also to add recognition as an incentive in markets where there is no profit to benefit the poor where in the past only government aid and NGOs were present in these markets. So Bill Gates dream is to bring private industry, governments and NGOs working together to expand the market to the bottom one third of the world.

Bill Gates cited the success of the RED Campaign which was also born in Davos, Switzerland in helping to generate more than $50 million dollars for the Global Fund to Fight AIDS, tuberculosis and Malaria. There were many more examples cited. One of the best examples I quote “The World Health Organization tried to expand vaccination for meningitis in Africa; it didn’t go straight to a vaccine manufacturer. It first went to Africa to learn what people could pay. They found out that if they wanted mothers to get this vaccine for their babies, it had to be priced at under 50 cents a dose. Then they challenged the partners to meet this price, and, in fact, Serum Institute in India found a new way to make the vaccine for 40 cents each. It agreed to then supply 250 million doses to distribute through public health systems over the next decade, allowing it to also sell into the private sector.”
Bill Gates is devoting his life for creative capitalism through his foundation.
Thailand could also learn from this instead of going head to head with international drug companies in trying to force them to sell cheaper to Thailand.

I must say I now have a great respect for Bill Gates now and I am glad that I have a legal copy of Windows Vista even geeks are more appealing to me now.