My New Capitalist Friend: Bill Gates.

I'm not against capitalism, but I have critiqued it. My biggest issue with capitalism is discussed in the movie "The Beautiful Mind." John Nash won the Nobel Prize for the idea that what is best for economics is not when people do what is best for themselves, as capitalists like to claim, but it is to do what is best keeping everyone else in mind. Think of the scene where they are trying to each get the same girl.

I don't want to go into an elaborate discussion, but basically the idea that doing what is best for yourself is not what is best for the economy. You have to consider everyone else. This latest economic blunder is yet another example of what happens when you let capitalism run a muck. The economy will continue to suffer until the market realizes it needs to develop models where everyone else benefits to.

Bill Gates is my new Capitalist friend. From the Wall Street Journal:

Free enterprise has been good to Bill Gates. But today, the Microsoft Corp. chairman will call for a revision of capitalism.

In a speech at the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland, the software tycoon plans to call for a "creative capitalism" that uses market forces to address poor-country needs that he feels are being ignored.

We have to find a way to make the aspects of capitalism that serve wealthier people serve poorer people as well," Mr. Gates will tell world leaders at the forum, according to a copy of the speech seen by The Wall Street Journal.

Mr. Gates isn't abandoning his belief in capitalism as the best economic system. But in an interview with the Journal last week at his Microsoft office in Redmond, Wash., Mr. Gates said that he has grown impatient with the shortcomings of capitalism. He said he has seen those failings first-hand on trips for Microsoft to places like the South African slum of Soweto, and discussed them with dozens of experts on disease and poverty. He has voraciously read about those failings in books that propose new approaches to narrowing the gap between rich and poor.

In particular, he said, he's troubled that advances in technology, health care and education tend to help the rich and bypass the poor. "The rate of improvement for the third that is better off is pretty rapid," he said. "The part that's unsatisfactory is for the bottom third -- two billion of six billion."

Click on link to read more. The only advice I would give Bill is this: Bill, keep urging Microsoft to open source the software. :)