20240822|比尔·盖茨: 英雄还是反派

Culture

文艺版块

Book review

书评

A biography of Bill Gates

比尔·盖茨传记

Dollar Bill

美元比尔

Billionaire, Nerd, Saviour, King. By Anupreeta Das.

《亿万富翁，书呆子，救世主，国王》，阿努普丽塔·达斯著。

"Americans appear to be growing increasingly uneasy about billionaires," observes Anupreeta Das, a journalist and former finance editor at the New York Times.

“美国人似乎对亿万富翁越来越感到不安。”《纽约时报》记者、前财经编辑阿努普丽塔·达斯观察到。

Do they embody the American dream or endanger it?

他们体现了美国梦，还是危及了美国梦？

And who gets to decide what billionaires owe to society?

以及谁来决定亿万富翁对社会欠下了什么？

Ms Das has chosen an original way to address these questions: by writing a biography of Bill Gates, the first superstar tech billionaire.

达斯选择了一种独特的方式来解决这些问题：撰写比尔·盖茨的传记，他是第一位科技界的超级明星亿万富翁。

With his long career and its many ups and downs, Mr Gates is "the perfect prism through which to refract these thorny moral questions" in pursuit of a "collective rethink" about American values.

盖茨的职业生涯漫长且曲折，在寻求对美国价值观的“集体反思”时，他是“折射这些棘手道德问题的完美棱镜”。

Ms Das goes from the founding of Microsoft in 1975 to its stockmarket flotation 11 years later (which made Mr Gates America's youngest billionaire) in just four paragraphs.

达斯只用四段话讲述了微软从1975年创立到11年后上市（这使盖茨成为美国最年轻的亿万富翁）的历程。

This lets her broaden her analysis to the tech billionaires who followed in his footsteps.

这让她将分析范围扩大到那些追随盖茨脚步的科技亿万富翁。

By 1995 Mr Gates was the richest person in America but was facing a new problem: his company was so dominant that it attracted the attention of antitrust regulators.

到1995年，盖茨成为了美国最富有的人，但却面临着一个新问题：他的公司过于强大，引起了反垄断监管机构的注意。

The heroic nerd had come to be seen as a villain, a fate that awaited other tech bosses, such as Mark Zuckerberg and Jeff Bezos.

这位英雄般的书呆子逐渐被视为是大反派，这也是后来等待着其他科技老板，如马克·扎克伯格和杰夫·贝索斯等人的命运。

In his mishandling of the antitrust suit, Mr Gates provided a lesson to others in what not to do.

在盖茨对反垄断诉讼的不当处理中，他给其他人提供了教训，告诉他们什么是不该做的。

Chastened, Mr Gates reinvented himself as a philanthropist, establishing the world's largest charitable foundation with his then wife Melinda and promoting among other billionaires the Giving Pledge (a promise to donate most of one's wealth to charitable causes).

受到教训之后，他将自己的形象重新打造为慈善家，与当时的妻子梅琳达共同创立了世界最大的慈善基金会，并在其他亿万富翁中推广“捐赠誓言”（承诺将大部分财富捐赠给慈善事业）。

So successful was this reinvention that Mr Gates was the most admired man in the world from 2014 to 2019, according to YouGov polls.

盖茨的这次转型非常成功，根据YouGov民意调查，他在2014年至2019年期间一直是世界上最受钦佩的人。

But then his infidelity and friendship with Jeffrey Epstein, a financier and paedophile, led to the collapse of his marriage.

但后来他的出轨行为以及他与杰弗里·爱泼斯坦（金融家、恋童癖）的友谊导致他的婚姻破裂。

At the same time, the power of his foundation began to come under increasing scrutiny.

与此同时，盖茨基金会的权力开始受到越来越多的审查。

It pours billions into public-health initiatives, outspending many governments, and thus shapes health policy in many countries-yet it is accountable to nobody but the Gateses.

基金会向许多公共卫生倡议投入了数十亿美元，支出超过了许多国家的政府，从而塑造了许多国家的卫生政策——然而，基金会只对盖茨夫妇负责。

During the covid-19 pandemic, Mr Gates was also the subject of conspiracy theories suggesting that he was profiting from vaccines and even injecting tiny microchips into people.

在新冠疫情期间，盖茨也成了阴谋论的对象，认为他从疫苗中获利，甚至把微小芯片注射进人们体内。

The geeky hero had once again become a villain.

这个极客英雄又一次变成了大反派。

Ms Das considers different facets of Mr Gates's life, from his friendship with Warren Buffett and the breakdown of his marriage to the running of his foundation and the management of his wealth.

达斯思考了盖茨人生中的不同方面，从他与沃伦·巴菲特的友谊，到他婚姻的破裂，再到盖茨基金会的运作和他对财富的管理。

Some of this is eye-opening.

有些内容令人大开眼界。

Mr Gates is, among other things, the largest private owner of farmland in America, and his investment firm, Cascade, owns big chunks of everything from Four Seasons Hotels to John Deere.

其中包括盖茨是美国农场最大的私人所有者，以及他的投资公司瀑布投资拥有从四季酒店到机械制造公司约翰迪尔等各种公司的大量股份。

But Ms Das's book is most interesting when it shows how Mr Gates has influenced other billionaires-how they have emulated him, and how they have not.

但达斯的书最有趣的地方在于，它展示了盖茨如何影响其他亿万富翁——他们如何效仿盖茨，以及他们如何没有效仿成功。

Mr Zuckerberg, for example, faced his own crisis over Facebook's role in the American election of 2016, and turned to Mr Gates for advice.

例如，扎克伯格曾因脸书在2016年美国总统大选中的作用而面临危机，并向盖茨寻求建议。

(Mr Zuckerberg dropped his hoodie for a sharp suit, but has recently reinvented himself as a hippie.)

（扎克伯格脱下了连帽衫，换上了一套利落的西装，但最近他又把自己重塑成了嬉皮士。）

And when it comes to philanthropy, other tech billionaires have embraced Mr Gates's technocratic, evidence-based approach, but have chosen to structure their philanthropic vehicles in different ways.

至于慈善事业，其他科技亿万富翁也接受了盖茨的技术官僚主义、基于证据的方法，但选择以不同的方式构建他们的慈善工具。

The book shows Mr Gates from many angles but provides few glimpses of him as a person.

这本书从多个角度展示了盖茨，但很少表现他作为一个自然人的样子。

There is a Gates-shaped hole at the centre of the narrative; Ms Das was not granted an interview.

在叙述的中心有一个盖茨形状的空洞，因为达斯没有得到采访盖茨的准允。

So what does she conclude about billionaires?

那么，她对亿万富翁得出了什么结论？

They are, she suggests, lightning rods for deeper concerns about inequality and privilege.

她表示，在对不平等和特权的更深层次担忧中，亿万富翁像避雷针一样吸引批评火力。

But she holds back from making a strong argument about Mr Gates or the tech jet-set.

但她并未就盖茨或有私人飞机的科技富翁们提出明确的观点。

She drops hints that she disapproves, noting that family offices are "unregulated entities" and that private jets have large carbon footprints.

她暗示自己对他们持不赞成态度，指出家族办公室是“不受监管的实体”，私人飞机也有巨量碳足迹。

It is as if she is waiting for readers to boo.

仿佛她在等待读者对他们喝倒彩。

A book that promises to tackle billionaires' place in society asks many questions-but also asks readers to make up their own minds.

一本承诺探究亿万富翁在社会中有何地位的书提出了许多问题，但也要求读者形成自己的见解。