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Bill Gates, Creators, HAPPINESS, looters, money, Moochers, Occupy Wall Street, OWS, Steve Jobs, wealth
“So you think that [The love of] money is the root of all evil? Have you ever asked what is the root of money? Money is a tool of exchange, which can’t exist unless there are goods produced and men able to produce them. Money is the material shape of the principle that men who wish to deal with one another must deal by trade and give value for value. Money is not the tool of the moochers, who claim your product by tears or of the looters, who take it from you by force. Money is made possible only by the men who produce. Is this what you consider evil?” ~ Atlas Shrugged
In this video clip Donald Trump advises people to choose a career doing what you love instead of doing what others expect you to do. He goes into an interesting story about a close friend of his who was in a high paying Wall Street job but wasn’t happy.
“Your time is limited so don’t waste it living someone else’s life. Don’t let the noise of others’ opinions drown out your own inner voice. Most important, have the courage to follow your heart and intuition.” ~ Steve Jobs
Here’s a comment I found on Bill Gates from Steve Jobs that leaves a lot of insight into what motivated both men:
“Bill likes to portray himself as a man of the product, but he’s really not. He’s a businessperson. Winning at business was more important than making great products. He ended up the wealthiest guy around, and if that was his goal, then he achieved it. But it’s never been my goal, and I wonder, in the end, if it was his goal. I admire him for the company he built—it’s impressive—and I enjoyed working with him. He’s bright and actually has a good sense of humor.” ~ Steve Jobs
For Jobs, it was the joy of inventing new things that reflected high quality and good tastes. For Gates, in Job’s opinion, it was a wish to build a great company; an empire – that in the end was not about money, but about deal making and winning. The money just came along in greater quantities as their separate rides through live continued.
From Bill Gates:
“I didn’t start out with a dream of being super rich.” “Most people who have done well just have found something they’re nuts about doing,” he said. Then they figure out a system to hire friends and do it with them.”
Bill goes on to say later that:
“If you really look at where we’re letting people down in terms of the American dream, I wouldn’t say that – maybe this is self-serving – I wouldn’t say it is because people are very rich. I’d say it’s because we aren’t doing a good job in education to give them an opportunity to move up into the top few percent.”
“It’s not good to have a society where you don’t have mobility between different income levels.” ~ Bill Gates
To these unqualified successful men, one theme is constant – do what you love. Money was not the primary motivator and in the case of Donald Trump’s friend, the expectations of friends and the potential for making large quantities of money as motivators, left him miserable and sad. His life was devoid of happiness and he was living for others; not for himself.
With respect to Mr. Gates’ remark on education, I would go so far as to say that education, to the contrary, is doing a great job of encouraging young students to work less hard, to become less ambitious and less appreciative of the philosophical differences between a flawed democratic Republic where liberty is held as the ideal and dictatorship where all but an élite few are forced to live their lives for anyone but themselves as slaves to the collective and to the state. The Occupy Wall Street crowd has many participants with legitimate concerns about the economy, about unemployment and survival in a world where immoral contradictions or pragmatism and altruism are given more value than moral principles of hard work, responsibility for oneself, a respect for the rights of others and the awareness needed to know that intrusions on the rights of others is both immoral and anathema to one’s freedom.
To them, complaining how things ought to be makes much more sense than actively working to create from reality a business or an interest where they can both be happy and productive. It takes less energy to put out a hand than it does to lift one’s ass off of the ground and putting the body in motion. It takes more mental work to meld abstractions into possible solutions than it does to simply lay one’s head down to dream. But, then, how can they be expected to works with abstractions and productive thinking when they’ve been taught to simply accept what they’ve been told by their professors and primary school educators as gospel. How can we expect class after class of graduating high school students who are entering college semi-literate and devoid of any real critical thinking skills because opposition theories and view points are no longer allowed? How can we expect them to solve life’s problems when all of the problem solving needed in their lives have been resolved by someone else or through the prism of political correctness and a distorted reality where everyone is equal in outcome regardless of the varying degrees of work and ability that went into solving a particular problem or athletic event?
Instead of living their lives to the fullest, this group is stuck on the start line. They have no moral compass. They have no inner resolve to succeed because they’ve been taught that success is immoral. Success is something to be despised and vilified. Mediocrity is the order of the day and no one should ever have to work hard to simply be mediocre. Ninety nine mediocre people are better than 1 high achiever; after all, in the new America, everyone gets a trophy and no one ever loses – so, what’s the big deal if we disregard the unalienable rights of 1 out of every 100 people in order to force everyone to be equal. If we’re all equal; then, no one can boss us around…right? The scariest part of all, for me, is wondering what values this particular generation is going to instill in their offspring with no attempt made to end the facade of public education and reintroduce critical thinking and expression into the lives of children and young adults.
Once again, quoting Bastiat:
“Everyone wants to live at the expense of the State. They forget that the State lives at the expense of everyone.” ~ Frederic Bastiat
