Creative Capitalism

909 Words2 Pages

For this extra credit assignment, we were assigned an article by Bill Gates about “creative” capitalism. Bill Gates is one of the most well-known and wealthy men on Earth, earning his fortune from software like Microsoft Office and Windows. At the time this article was written, neither was sold at prices below $100. But this article is not about the capitalism that Bill Gates’ company has used and which he gained his fortune from. No, today Bill Gates is telling us about his idea of creative capitalism.

The thesis of the article is that we need to change our economy to become a more creative capitalistic system. (As an aside, what makes this idea creative? Welfare capitalism would be much more descriptive. A company’s creativity has little to do with it.) Creative capitalism is a way of pushing products to those who currently do not have the means of getting those products. One way of achieving this goal is companies by themselves finding ways to profit from getting their products to those in need. The other way is from the government and philanthropic groups giving their money to get those products to people. According to Gates, this will bring in increased revenue to companies, and make poor people more successful.

I think that Gates’ system of creative capitalism is severely flawed. Firstly, Bill Gates did not invent the idea of companies searching for new markets to sell and produce their goods in. The Walmart ad on the top of this paper is proof of that fact. Walmart (which operates in our “standard” capitalism system) could no longer maintain its profit margins with the domestically produced goods it was buying. Instead it found a new source of labor in China, and was able to produce its goods much more cheaply. This mea...

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... need to be made by the government, which Gates’ says is happening, but too slowly.

Bill Gates’ ideas about creative capitalism are just that, ideas. He has become successful by stepping on his competition, and selling his products at a high price. And then he writes an article that basically says, “I wish big companies would sell at a loss to help poor people.” But his ideas about how this change will be made are nonexistent, and not even supported by his own company. He doesn’t even mention Walmart, which has acted in perfect fit to creative capitalism, probably because his readers would balk at his support of it. This makes it very clear this article was mainly written to enhance Bill Gates’ image as a philanthropist, so that more people will buy from his company. I firmly believe this article (and the idea behind it) is clever PR, not an actual economic idea.

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