Famously Competitive, Billionaire Now Urges Business to Aid the Poor
By Robert A. Guth
The Wall Street Journal - Jan. 24, 2008
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.
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