The Justice Department committed a grave injustice against you, Bill Gates. Your crime was to be too ambitious and too successful in a society riddled with envy. You were condemned for your ability, which made you stand out from the crowd.
The wealth you own is the measure of the wealth you produced. Every dollar you own was given to you in exchange for a product you created and offered in the market. You never pointed a gun at others or used force to compel them to buy your products. You set your terms and let them free to accept them or walk away. The companies and customers that dealt with you, did so by a voluntary decision based on their own self-interest.
Speaking for myself, I think I got a bargain from you. I have been using Windows for the last six years to learn, work, communicate, travel and enjoy my life. All for less than a dime a day!
But the most important thing I want to tell you about, though, concerns your motivation and your defense.
Despite what you claim, I don’t think you are motivated by the good of the consumers, nor do I think you should be. I think you are motivated by love for your work and by a passion to use your mind to achieve your values. As Howard Roark, from The Fountainhead, said in his courtroom speech, “The creator lives for his work. His primary goal is within himself.”
I think you are fundamentally an egoist, and you should be proud of it. An egoist is a man who values reason, holds his mind as his only guide, and has personal happiness as his goal. As Aristotle said, “Pride is the crown of all virtues,” and you certainly earned the right to wear it — proudly.
Don’t fall gently into the altruist trap of justifying yourself by the good you have done for others. You must understand that antitrust is not about protecting and benefiting consumers, but about controlling and harming successful producers like Microsoft. The problem with anti trust is not that it is being misapplied against you, but that it is immoral on principle. It is immoral on the grounds that it violates the inalienable individual rights of businessmen to their lives.
I long to hear you demand to be left alone, and for the simple reason that you have a right to your life, to your freedom, to your property and to your happiness. Microsoft is yours — not Bill Clinton’s, or Janet Reno’s or anybody else’s.
You are a creator and a human being, and as such, you need freedom to live, to think, to evaluate, and to take action. You can’t think or act or live by permission. You can’t have other people telling you how to run your business or what to do with your products — certainly not the ignoramuses from Washington.
Government bureaucrats have no right to interfere with your actions, your work or your company. You should be a free man. On that principle and on that principle alone you should defend yourself. Don’t settle with the thugs at the Justice Department. Don’t help them pretend they are good people with good intentions looking after the good of the consumers. Don’t compromise on your principles, or on your right to life and to your property. As philosopher Ayn Rand said, “In any compromise between good and evil, it is only evil that can profit.” Don’t collaborate with these evil people; if they want to break Microsoft, let them come in with the guns and do it themselves; let them figure out how to do it. Above all, don’t sanction the terrible injustice they are doing against you. It is true they hold the power to destroy Microsoft, but they don’t hold the power to fake the nature of their crime or to silence you.
You have started a revolution in the computer industry that changed the world. Maybe you could also start a revolution in the way businesses are perceived — by speaking out for your rights. But whatever you do, I want to thank you Bill Gates for making my life so much better.
