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Essays




The Absolute Non-Locality Of Black Holes by Joseph Julius The Jules Going into a black hole cuts you off from spacetime completely and int... [287 words]
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The Science Of Being Alone by Andrew Parker - [158 words]
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Letter To The Editor - Keep Our Kids Safe! Inoculate! by Khuu This letter explores the dangers of not vaccinating your ... [381 words]
Staring Out The Window by Addison C Schindler an essay about our world and the things that blind us from reality [864 words]
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The Illusion Of Self by Rube My philosophy of the self [367 words]
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The Poisonous Dart Frog, Politics And History by Colin Baker - [2,477 words]
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She Likes Trains: A Raging Railroad Crush by Shelley J Alongi Cats, cookies, what's on your lap, locomotives, feel better number on... [2,876 words]
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A Fool At Fifty Three by Kennedy O Obohwemu A faulty federal system from the beginning... [1,020 words]
She Likes Trains: Riding The Slow And Poky by Shelley J Alongi Nail biting, hands in the right place, cats, bells, pictures, and th... [7,178 words]
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How It Feels To Be Vegetarian Me by Tori M Modeled after "How It Feels To Be Colored Me" by Zora Neale Hurston [1,716 words]
Bill Gates Should Take A Tip From Karl And Fred
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She Likes Trains: Private Railroad by Shelley J Alongi Communion with the locomotive, meeting he extra, threatened with my own bell... [4,369 words]
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She Likes Trains: Engineer Questions by Shelley J Alongi Questions, back to the Chatsworth drawing board, the baby is back, rain, o... [2,792 words]
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She Likes Trains: Slow Engineer by Shelley J Alongi The man from the orange trains, love calls, waking the sleeping engineer, locom... [4,025 words]
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Forgotten Names Of Comintern by Alexander Gachikus - [5,006 words]
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Baptism Testimony by Desi Williams - [901 words]

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TITLE (EDIT)
Bill Gates Should Take A Tip From Karl And Fred
DESCRIPTION
Bill Gates recently criticised capitalism. Hooray! one might be minded to cry out! But all is not as straight forward as it seems.
[872 words]
TITLE KEYWORD
Drama
AUTHOR
Colin Baker
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
-
[October 2014]
AUTHOR'S E-MAIL ADDRESS
[email protected]
AUTHOR'S OTHER TITLES (117)
25 Years On (Poetry) - [85 words]
2 Am (Poetry) - [115 words]
A Bus Commuter's Sonnet (Poetry) - [107 words]
A Choreographed Breakfast (Poetry) - [68 words]
A Dreamer's Song (Aka Wishful Thinking) (Poetry) - [85 words]
A Fibber's Prayer (Poetry) A short poem about making good some porkies. [291 words] [Humor]
A First Class Service (Poetry) - [15 words]
A Lost Generation ? (Poetry) - [52 words]
A Pious Gent (Poetry) - [11 words]
A Restraining Order For Jesus (Poetry) - [258 words]
A Smoker's Pledge Of Allegiance (Poetry) - [98 words]
A To Z Of Adolescence (Poetry) Ever been a parent ? Of three daughters ? [21 words]
A Visit To The Planetarium (Poetry) - [31 words]
Africans, Westerners And Intelligence. (Essays) A reply to Dr. James D. Watson's recent assertion that Africans are of inferior intelligence when compared to Westerners. [7,297 words]
An Apple A Day (Poetry) Fun poetry. [36 words]
Believe In Better (Short Stories) A philosophical alternative to the current mindset. [804 words]
Beneath Her Window (Poetry) - [34 words]
Benefit Cutting For Dummies (Non-Fiction) Benefit cutting is politically and ideologically motivated. [2,411 words]
Bill The Bus Driver (Poetry) - [61 words]
Blackvein (Poetry) - [103 words]
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By Night When Others Soundly Slept (I'd Pinch Lots Of Stuff) (Poetry) - [114 words]
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Coming To Terms (Poetry) Extolling the virtues of the human brain. [177 words]
Contradictory Deliverance (Poetry) - [37 words]
Cost-Effective Indifference (Poetry) - [29 words]
Cough & Drop (Poetry) - [114 words]
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' Doc ' (Poetry) A very brief reflection of the continued erosion of free health provision in contemporary Britain. [80 words]
Douglas R.I.P. (Poetry) - [270 words]
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Evening Class For A Grownup (Poetry) - [58 words]
Favour (Poetry) - [21 words]
Fruit And Vegetable Shortages (Non-Fiction) A spurious argument [269 words]
Get On Board, Iraqi Children (Poetry) Allah's train keeps a-comin' for thousands of Iraqi children. [181 words]
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Growing Up (2006) (Poetry) - [28 words]
Hey John! How Are Things My Friend? (Poetry) - [134 words]
Hit The Sack (Poetry) - [299 words]
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Imperialism Dear Boy, Imperialism (Poetry) Limerick on the theme of the current Gulf conflict. [27 words]
In A Seaside Street (Poetry) - [167 words]
In The Top Right-Hand Corner (Poetry) - [21 words]
In The Union Of Myanmar (Poetry) - [38 words]
It's Like Hurricane Ike... (Poetry) - [112 words]
Kidney Stones (Poetry) - [13 words]
Killing At Camp - Justice? (Poetry) - [55 words]
Labour Pains (Poetry) - [93 words]
Last Wednesday: Peterchurch, Herefordshire. (Poetry) - [31 words]
Little Donkey - Revised (Poetry) A poem for christmas [16 words] [Humor]
Lovers Walking In A Lane In Summer (Poetry) - [126 words]
Margaret Thatcher's Funeral (Non-Fiction) - [270 words]
Meop Citsigoloen A (Poetry) - [28 words]
Milton! Art Thou Dying (Again)? (Poetry) Is Milton Friedman's free-market mantra now in tatters? [28 words]
Monday Morning (Poetry) - [59 words]
Moral Instruction (Poetry) - [107 words]
My Child X 3 (Poetry) - [23 words]
Newport - Stow Hill (Poetry) - [4 words]
Norman's Unemployment Policy - Britain, Summer 1981 (Poetry) - [158 words]
Oh Jesus! (Poetry) - [18 words]
Oh La La ! (Poetry) - [118 words]
On The Beach! (Poetry) - [48 words]
Over My Dead Body (Poetry) - [52 words]
Pardon Me But................... (Poetry) - [11 words]
Parliament? - It's History! (Essays) The role of Parliament as an institution here in the UK must now radically change. [1,398 words]
Partnership (Poetry) - [30 words]
Playing P�tanque (Poetry) - [141 words]
Pleasure Island (Poetry) - [114 words]
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Poetry - No Doubt (Poetry) - [8 words]
Potential Human (Poetry) - [33 words]
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Psalm 17-30 (The Rush-Hour Psalm) (Poetry) - [261 words]
Psalm 23 (New Labour's Psalm) (Poetry) - [108 words]
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Reflections On God's Actions (Poetry) - [62 words]
Remembering (Poetry) - [144 words]
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Saviour Self (Poetry) - [86 words]
School (Poetry) - [107 words]
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September 03, 2007 (Poetry) To mark a particular President's recent visit to Iraq [18 words]
Social Inequality Is Not One-Sided (Non-Fiction) - [1,035 words]
Society, The Family And A Thatcher. (Essays) When UK conservative Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher asserted in 1987 that 'there is no such thing as society', she overlooked all that it is to be human. [5,380 words]
Something For Nothing (Short Stories) The irony of political correctness [90 words]
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Spitting (At) Images (Poetry) - [28 words]
Take O Take Those Chips Away (Poetry) - [44 words]
Taking Leave (And All That) (Poetry) - [36 words]
The B B C (Poetry) - [12 words]
The Chair (Poetry) - [235 words]
The Chinese Medicine Shop (Poetry) - [43 words]
The Lords (Poetry) - [28 words]
The Poisonous Dart Frog, Politics And History (Essays) - [2,477 words]
The Religious Sum Of The Iraq War (Poetry) - [14 words]
The Retrospective Chicken (Poetry) Introspective journey of a chicken. [255 words]
The Sack Race (Poetry) A short poem, written to mark the occasion of my youngest daughter's recent triumphs in her school sack race. [207 words]
The State (Poetry) - [22 words]
The Sum Of Amon Goeth's Execution (Poetry) - [14 words]
The Valleys (Poetry) - [68 words]
The Western Alpha Bit (Poetry) Topic of Iraq [182 words]
Thoughts On The Evolutionary School Of Life (Poetry) - [177 words]
Thoughts On Youth Crime (Poetry) - [16 words]
Topsy Turvy (Poetry) - [33 words]
Up! (Poetry) - [64 words]
Up-Hill (Till M4 Junction 3, Then Head South) (Poetry) - [138 words]
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We'll Go No More A-Dogging (Poetry) - [70 words]
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While God........... (Poetry) - [15 words]
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Why Bother At All? (Non-Fiction) Why bother struggling to save a decaying economic system like capitalism? [483 words]
Withdrawn Loners And Sparkling Drops (Non-Fiction) The recent shooting at Sandy Hook school in Connecticut USA is tragic beyond question, yet also revealing in some ways. [856 words] [Crime]
Yesterday (Poetry) (Inspired by one of Brittany's recent tree-climbing experiences, she being our youngest daughter) [177 words]
Bill Gates Should Take A Tip From Karl And Fred
Colin Baker


In a recent newspaper article, - Capitalism Cares More About Bald Men Than Disease � Microsoft founder Bill Gates openly criticised what he regarded as �the flaws of pure capitalism.� He specifically highlighted the present lack of research surrounding the on-going quest for an effective malaria vaccine, contrasting this with the huge sums of money often directed into all manner of profitable cosmetic research, such as treatments for male pattern baldness. His arguments were plain common sense some might say. �Our priorities are tilted by marketplace imperatives�The malaria vaccine in humanist terms is the biggest need, but it gets virtually no funding. If [on the other hand] you are working on male baldness�you get�[infinitely] more research funding...�.


The unstated assumption underlying such criticism, is that ideas are primary, while material reality is either irrelevant, or else of superficial importance. If only the flawed ideas underpinning the given unwanted activity can be thoroughly discredited so the argument goes, so much more quickly will the social change one desires be realised. Bill Gates genuinely believes that capitalist research and pharmaceutical companies, if criticised enough on both rational and logical grounds, will somehow change their ways. They will begin at last, to redirect their massive resources away from comparatively needless cosmetic research, to more deserving, human(e) projects. Richard Dawkins adopts an identical approach in his now well publicised criticisms of religious belief in general and Christianity in particular. Dawkins has spent the last three decades or more, trying to rationally and logically criticise religion out of existence. For its part, in my experience most contemporary higher education teaching in the social sciences, ascribes primary importance to the kinds of theoretical and philosophical ideas that people hold, and secondary, or else no importance at all, to the prevailing material circumstances.


Gates is quite right of course, to draw attention to capitalism�s human(e) failings; to its inability to distribute the wealth and productive capacities it lays claim to in anything like a rational and optimum manner. The present and indeed shameful lack of research in the field of human medicine is just one example of this. He is mistaken in my view however, in his assumption that mental criticism alone, will be sufficient to right such wrongs. �Life is not determined by consciousness, but consciousness by life." Moreover, both Marx and Engels further believed that once formed, empirically grounded ideas in turn, react back on the very circumstances that gave rise to them. Marxism then, ��does not explain practice from the idea, but [on the contrary] explains the formation of ideas from material practice, and accordingly, it comes to the conclusion that all forms and products of consciousness cannot be dissolved [or significantly influenced] by mental criticism [alone]�but only by the practical overthrow of the actual relationships which gave rise to�[and subsequently sustains such thinking].


Thus, Gates arguably ignores the fundamental raison d'�tre of the very system that made him a billionaire! The sole purpose of capitalism is to produce ever greater amounts of surplus value under conditions of exploitative competition. Moreover, and unlike the process of selling to buy, the buy-to-sell process underpinning capital accumulation begins with money and, if all goes to plan, ends with more money and then it begins all over again. Thus, the process of capital accumulation itself, is interminable. �The piling up of ever more profits becomes in itself, the law of the capitalist�s existence. Blindness to this fact is one important reason for the lack of realism in the�[minds of those]�who argue as though the economic activities of the capitalist had no other purpose but the rational satisfaction of wants and tastes�. Given the competitive and exploitative material basis of global capital then, we should not be surprised at all, to witness obscene sums of wealth being channelled toward the research and production of wasteful, yet profitable commodities like cosmetic lotions for baldness, slimming pills, anti-aging skin creams and so on. After all, we westerners live in a dog-eat-dog culture which is premised on a survival-of-the-fittest mode of consciousness and being. In such circumstances, to go bald, or to be viewed as being just that little bit over weight, or to be regarded as aging in some way, all mean that one is loosing one�s ability to remain a lean, mean, fighting machine!


When Bill gates criticised the capitalist system for being too concerned with �marketplace imperatives� then, he was unwittingly calling for the supplanting of such competitive and exploitative relationships in practice. In this sense he is an unwitting revolutionary. For the kinds of ideas and subsequent activities that Bill Gates so obviously dislikes, owe their origins and on-going source of social influence to the prevailing, capitalist conditions. More specifically, only by bringing to an end the now glaring contradiction between on the one hand, global social production and on the other, private appropriation of that which is produced, can effective change as imagined by Gates at last be realised. If and when social appropriation is brought into being as a complement for social production, only then will such utterly selfish and wasteful ways of thinking, feeling and acting at last be consigned to the history books.









Colin Baker, March, 2013.




For a fully referenced version of this text, please visit http://www.whats-left.org.uk/Bill%20Gates.html

 

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COPYRIGHT NOTICE
© 2013 Colin Baker
STORYMANIA PUBLICATION DATE
March 2013
NUMBER OF TIMES TITLE VIEWED
1693
 

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