Why the Third World Needs Capital Not Charity

“Buffett and Gates, who have pledged to give away at least 50% of their fortunes, will now take their initiative to Asia, where they will try to convince billionaires in India and China to follow their lead.”

Which leads us to the next article from The Hindu:

“Bill Gates and Warren Buffett will next year approach a group of India's richest to enlist their support for and views on setting up fund-raising initiatives in India, the billionaire duo said this week, after organising a first-of-its-kind charity dinner for China's billionaires.”

Why are we claiming this is sad? Why does your editor disapprove of such wonderfully generous giving of wealth?

The simple reason is this. Warren Buffett and Bill Gates - like them or envy them - became two of the world's richest men for a number of reasons.

Chief among them was their drive to succeed. It was their ambition to be the best at what they're good at. For Buffett it was his ability to pick out good companies from the bad.

And for Gates it was his ability to recognise the huge potential in home-based personal computing and the riches that could be made from developing software to support it.

One thing is for sure, they didn't become rich due to receiving charitable donations from wealthy benefactors.

What they did receive was something much more important. And much more useful, which I'll get to in a moment…

We don't know much about the Gates life story, but based on what we've read about Buffett, sure it seems as though he got a few leg ups along the way, but it was his ambition and his ability to prove to others that he had a magic touch with investing that got him where he is today.

But, their personal wealth is only a tiny part of the story. The bigger story is the impact their entrepreneurial activities have had on others.

Take Bill Gates and Microsoft. Microsoft started out as a tiny software company with just a handful of employees in the late 1970s. I'm sure you've seen the Microsoft staff photo from the early days with a geeky-looking Bill Gates.