Just a few minutes into the first of this three-part series, I had to shut it off and take a walk. At that point, the viewer had watched as Gates arrived at the start of his day (without showering, apparently) at some office or other - it wasn't identified at that point but was probably the location of his foundation - and then the viewer listened to his schedule for the day being read off by a woman named Lauren Jiloty of "Gates Ventures" who then answered a question "Is he on time?" put from the filmmaker Davis Guggenheim with "He is on time, to the minute, every single meeting, without fail," and she goes on to explain that Bill "cannot buy more" of time. That it's a "limited resource." And that, in fact, "He's got the same 24 hours in a day that the rest of us have."
No, really? Bill Gates can't buy more time? But he's so rich!
And it doesn't get better.
Honestly, it is painful to watch as other people fawn all over someone who is nothing more than just another human being, treating him as though he's some kind of god or superhuman. This film is simply another example of people assuming that because someone was able to start a company and become vastly, immorally rich, they must be geniuses on a scale in proportion to their wealth. And it's just never the case. Nobody is THAT MUCH better than the average person. Nobody is THAT MUCH smarter. There are people walking the streets whose brains could run circles around Bill Gates' brain, but they chose to do other things. Being smart doesn't necessarily mean you will make yourself rich or that you even care about making money! And too many people just cannot seem to grasp that. They buy into this narrative we are sold that is perpetuated in part by people like Gates, billionaires and the people at the top holding the power over the lives of everyone else on the planet, so that the masses won't rise up and take what's rightfully theirs. Bill gates did not personally create all of the wealth of Microsoft. He started the company but needed others. Eventually many hundreds and then many thousands of employees and he simply paid them nothing, worked them to death (you can read all about this) and took the Microsoft wealth home for himself and a few others at the very top. He cheated the rest out of their contribution. The people who needed a job to survive in this jungle of a modern world. He did not work a billion times harder. Nobody can. If Gates is so smart, how can he allow himself to become so corrupt, so immoral? So much of his success is based on chance. He was born a white male in a country where that was 90 percent of the game already. He admittedly is intelligent and perhaps creative enough to have come up with the Microsoft OS at a time when not so many others were working on projects like that, and he was very lucky. Right place, right time. And he cheated his employees, and his company broke the law, operated unfairly within his industry, but simply did what other big businesses do and fought it out in court and often lost but paid fines and moved on, the damage already done, and not much to stop the momentum of a corrupt firm like Microsoft.
Gates is "smart" but there's one thing he can't seem to learn. Corruption and disgusting wealth inequality has finally got to change. But he wants his class, the 1%, to remain firmly where they are. So no, I don't like a TV series that perpetuates this myth and holds pathetic figures like Gates up as heroes, just because yes, after becoming insanely filthy rich, he's giving some of it - what he can comfortably afford - away. Gosh, what a hero.
