Talking Back to Bill Gates

At Harvard last year and again at Davos, Switzerland, in January, Bill Gates drew applause when he called for a new "creative capitalism" that would help the world's poor more than the current version does. But beyond sounding nice, what is there to the concept? After all, Gates himself notably (and admittedly) followed the "uncreative" route: In phase one of your life, spend all your time and energy on business; in phase two, switch to philanthropy.

The star editor Michael Kinsley, founder of Slate, is tackling that question in his next Web-publishing experiment, soliciting and editing responses to the Davos speech from noted economists and policy experts and publishing them at the website creativecapitalismblog.com. The best of the exchanges will appear in a book to be published by Simon & Schuster this fall.

At least so far, what's striking is how negative some of the responses to Gates's proposal are. "Mr. Gates's speech attacks the system that has historically done the most to alleviate poverty--traditional capitalism--in favor of an untried and implausible alternative," writes NYU's William Easterly. Gregory Clark, of UC-Davis, chimes in that for almost every product, the world's poor "are indeed well served by selfish capitalism." He cites the fact that companies already make a profit selling cellphone service for pennies a day in Africa. (The development costs of most goods are paid by consumers in the wealthy countries.) The system only breaks down, Clark adds, when the developing world needs products that aren't demanded by wealthy consumers, like malaria vaccines. In such cases, he says, private charity is still the best response.

Perhaps the coldest dose of water comes from the federal judge Richard Posner, who suggests that even some of the Microsoft efforts that Gates cites as bold examples of creative capitalism, including $3 billion in cash and software donations to poor countries, are just business as usual: partly an effort to get a foot in the door of emerging markets, partly "PR charity" whose purpose is to "curry favor with politicians … advertise the corporation … create diffuse goodwill, disguise greed, and ward off criticisms."

Neither Gates nor the Gates Foundation--whose CEO is Kinsley's wife, though she steps down in September--is financially involved in the project, which is being funded entirely by Simon & Schuster. Contributors to the project will be paid on a per-word basis if their work makes it into the final book. And you don't have to be Richard Posner to contribute: Anyone who wants to can submit an essay. Good riffs on outside blogs may also find their way (if permission is granted) onto creativecapitalismblog.com and into the book.

To be sure, not everyone is down on the multi-billionaire's big idea. A not-unskeptical Kinsley suggests that the most potent idea in Gates's proposal is that hunger for public recognition and acclaim on the part of corporate chieftains and high-achieving employees may be harnessable to the cause of good works. The University of Chicago economist Gary Becker gives a qualified thumbs-up to the proposal, too, suggesting that employees and consumers may well be attracted to a company that sacrifices some efficiency for philanthropy. The test, however, will come when such a company goes head-to-head, in a brutal market, against one focused solely on the bottom line.

If Microsoft started get trounced by Google, how creative could it afford to be?