Hubski exercised laudable restraint and refrained from creating a valuable discussion in this space which would enrich the lives of relatively prosperous Internet users without benefitting the poorest of the poor. However, I received a response to my question from a dear friend, who sportingly offered to "take the bait, however, only if I can take it wrong, and say yes. Yes it would." He then proceeded to enumerate a number of reasons why the world would be a better place without Bill Gates. I responded as follows.

You do not seem very sure of your footing, offering to "take it wrong." But I think you have a good approach. We need evidence, we need data, to decide if the existence of Bill Gates has been a net boon or loss. We can do a cost/benefit analysis. You have identified evils attributable to the man's legacy. They are hard to quantify, but we can estimate as necessary; surely e-waste is somewhere between a mosquito bite and the eruption of Krakatoa.

Here, then, are the downsides:

accelerated the spiraling of our global culture into terminal extremes of order, groupthink, and the destruction of personal freedom

The personal computer has indeed enabled a vast Internet culture. But it could be said that this venue is the very nexus of diversity of opinion, debate, free expression, and even personal freedom. Never before did so many people have so many ways to study a foreign language, plan a vacation, search for a new job, express fringe interests, find books to read, make and enjoy music, and earn money trading. There are bad effects too, but in my judgment, this is a net benefit.

It has made the panopticon a virtual reality

Government and corporate surveillance is entering a golden age. A security expert paints a bleak picture of a future in which advancing technology makes it easy for villains to accomplish their goals. Perhaps we can avert this fate. What choice have we but to try? Not many people care to hunt and gather. It is also difficult to see how Mr. Gates could have provided a revolutionary tool which enabled customers to do things unthinkable before, while preventing government and big business from putting the same tool to abusive ends.

health and environmental consequences of computer related greenhouse gases, PBA's and e-waste

But the PC is an invaluable tool in solving environmental challenges, which exist anyway given building construction, vehicle use, and manufacturing. Consider the already-proven benefits of technology to health. Would anyone choose give up MRI machines to save a few tons of emitted carbon? How much improved is medical education thanks to computers?

to say nothing of the impact of the perpetual production/obsolescence cycle on the exploitation of third-world resources and laborers

Well, if you say nothing, I get to have my way with this point. You refer to the endless manufacture of new and improved gizmos ever offered on the market. Clearly this is a huge boon for consumers, who can choose, if they like, to purchase tools that help them find a good dentist, research diets, keep in touch with friends, argue about online videos, get directions, make a living, teach kids to read, and read books themselves.

But the video seems to show concern for the poor, at least those in this country. I'll follow your lead in considering the real poor, those in the third world. But here I must admit confusion (a pre-existing condition) over the word "exploit." The dictionary offers a positive definition, to "make the best use of" as one may do with natural resources or a business opportunity, and a negative one, to "take advantage of," especially unethically.

Asian workers who make our gizmos typically work harder and earn less than I do. I wouldn't want to trade places. But I assume that they prefer to work in the factory than to not; I assume they have the option of staying home, or doing some other thing to try and make ends meet. If this is not true, then I think a clearer word for their plight is "slavery." For in the same way, I am exploiting my employer's willingness to pay me for my time and effort, and my employer is likewise exploiting my willingness to work for pay. I am not arguing that the factory worker's situation is "good" by some measure, but I am concluding that it is better than not being a factory worker, whatever the alternative is.

We can hypothesize about the worker's motivations. But for our purposes the question is whether the worker would be better off if the factory closed, or never offered work to begin with. Bill Gates' company now employs 128,000 people, about half of them outside the United States, including in Albania, Angola, Bangladesh, Egypt, El Salvador, India, Indonesia, Iraq, Kenya, Nigeria, Romania, Senegal, Ukraine, Vietnam, and Zimbabwe. Do you assert that all those Microsoft employees, and the third-world factory laborers, would be better off without their jobs and the attendant exploitation?

I worry less about the natural resources and negative effects on the local environment. The best way to take care of those problems is to continue letting the people participate in the world economy. After they can put food on the table and provide for their kids, they will look to cleaning up their space. It wasn't so long ago that we in the first world had foul air and unhealthy workplaces.

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Back to the video, much is made of the diversity of wealth holding in this country. It is eye-opening. But why do we celebrate diversity in other areas, but find it objectionable when it comes to wealth? Good-natured people seek kinship with those who are unlike them, but when the "other" is wealthy, a capitalist, an entrepreneur, he is seen not as a neighbor but an enemy, a villain.

We have seen this man before. We have a name for this man. This is the Straw Man.

Think of that cartoon capitalist as if he were like you, a regular guy. You want to make money, and probably prefer to make more money rather than less, if possible. You get to thinking about oxygen, something people would pay for if they needed to. Do your thoughts turn to pillows, nooses, garrotes? Let's hope not. Perhaps you ask yourself how you could provide oxygen where it is not already abundant, where there is need. Perhaps you a invent a medical ventilator, like Dr. Zamir Hayek, and make some money selling a device that keeps people alive. Perhaps you market oxygen masks and make money helping aviators, firefighters, and mountain climbers. Perhaps you invent scuba gear, make money and become folk heroes like Émile Gagnan and Jacques-Yves Cousteau.

If you only get a little rich providing oxygen, is that okay? At what point do you cross a line and meet too many peoples' needs, make too many lives better, and become a reviled capitalist?

How much diversity is the right amount?

When it is football performance, chess skill, stamp collecting, or cooking, we are usually content to let nature have its way, and let the best performers do as well as they can. In the software business I heard about the Pareto principle, a rough measure of how things are distributed. As Wikipedia puts it, the principle was named after "Italian economist Vilfredo Pareto, who observed in 1906 that 80% of the land in Italy was owned by 20% of the population; he developed the principle by observing that 20% of the pea pods in his garden contained 80% of the peas."

This 80-20 rule applies to a lot of situations. Microsoft found that 20% of the bugs in software caused 80% of the problems. Other businesses find that 80% of revenue comes from 20% of customers. Today I read that "just 19 percent of Americans do 79 percent of all our (non-required) book readin'."

Nassim Nicholas Taleb, in The Black Swan, extends this idea. He points out that the high-performing 20% are not themselves uniformly distributed. Rather, the top 20% of the top 20% contribute 80% of the 80%. That is, the top 4% generate 64% of the effects. Applying the principle once more, we predict that the top 0.8% of a diverse set of inputs will generate 51.2% of the outputs — in round numbers, the top 1% will be responsible for half.

How does wealth in the United States stack up? The table on Wikipedia shows a lot of variation, but it has never been as lopsided as one would expect from pea pods. I believe the video is based on the paper mentioned in that article, in which U.S. citizens underestimated the actual level of inequality, and said that the distribution "should" be more equitable than it is. Asking someone on the street what the distribution of anything should be seems singularly unhelpful. Do people even consider what value they are hoping to maximize when they chop up a pie chart? These must be the same people who see themselves among the 99% who are victims, focusing blame on the top 1%. Why not focus on the bottom 1%, and ask how we in the more fortunate 99% can improve their lot?

It is easy to contrive examples in which inequality is greater and well-being is also greater — the simplest is to imagine that everyone's wealth doubles overnight. Similarly, if everyone suffers a loss of 90% of their wealth, the gap between richest and poorest will be much smaller: less inequity. Or suppose someone immigrates to the country from outside, bringing such wealth as would make Bill Gates look like a pauper. Is the country really now worse off?

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One last note. I appreciate your appreciation of the awkwardness of using e-mail to compose an anti-computer screed. I am aware of inconsistencies between my convictions and behavior, and like to remind myself of Penn Jillette's position. He does not object to hypocrisy, figuring if a person says one thing and does another, he can either agree with what they say or with what they do.

It also reminds me of a favorite passage from a book set in the near future.

"You know, when I was a young man, hypocrisy was deemed the worst of vices," Finkle-McGraw said. "It was all because of moral relativism. You see, in that sort of a climate, you are not allowed to criticise others — after all, if there is no absolute right and wrong, then what grounds is there for criticism? ... Now, this led to a good deal of general frustration, for people are naturally censorious and love nothing better than to criticise others' shortcomings. And so it was that they seized on hypocrisy and elevated it from a ubiquitous peccadillo into the monarch of all vices. For, you see, even if there is no right and wrong, you can find grounds to criticise another person by contrasting what he has espoused with what he has actually done. In this case, you are not making any judgment whatsoever as to the correctness of his views or the morality of his behaviour — you are merely pointing out that he has said one thing and done another. Virtually all political discourse in the days of my youth was devoted to the ferreting out of hypocrisy."

Neal Stephenson, The Diamond Age

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The wealth diversity video has been ignored once or twice before. Here's a current link:

Followup: the 2014 Gates Letter