9/11/2005 01:40:35 AM|||Jonthon|||

For as easy as it is to Gates-bash, he's really not all that bad a guy. Did everyone else know that Bill Gates dropped acid in college, and plans to give away 95% of his wealth upon retiring?

Hate is easy. Giving people a chance takes the effort, but it's worth it.

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GATES: Say the President is making a speech. Everybody in the nation gets to push little buttons to say yea or nay, and gathering all that information so it can be displayed within a second or two is tricky. But it's all within the state of the art. You don't have to be a dreamer to know that the technology will not limit the construction of the information highway.
PLAYBOY: How will being able to respond directly to the president alter our system of government?
GATES: The idea of representative democracy will change. Today, we claim we don't use direct democracy because it would be impractical to poll everybody on every issue. The truth is that we use representative democracy because we want to get an above-average group to think through problems and make choices that, in the short term, might not be obvious, even if they are to everybody's benefit over the long term.
PLAYBOY: Do you agree?
GATES: Yes. When making choices, or setting policies about the economy, education or medicine, society is best served by electing people who are particularly hardworking, intelligent and interested in long-term thinking.
PLAYBOY: You're giving our current elected officials a lot of credit.
GATES: What we have may be less than ideal, but it's still better than direct democracy. Anyway, we'll no longer be able to hide behind the excuse that we don't have the technology to gather the opinions.

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PLAYBOY: Does your net worth of multi-billions, despite the fact that it's mostly in stock and the value varies daily, boggle your mind?
GATES: It's a ridiculous number. But remember, 95 percent of it I'm just going to give away. [Smiles] Don't tell people to write me letters. I'm saving that for when I'm in my 50s. It's a lot to give away and it's going to take time.
PLAYBOY: Where will you donate it?
GATES: To charitable things, scientific things. I don't believe in burdening any children I might have with that. They'll have enough. They'll be comfortable.

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PLAYBOY: When you were at Harvard, did you frequent the Combat Zone, home of hookers, drugs and adult films?
GATES: That's true. [Laughs] But just because I went there doesn't mean I engaged in everything that was going on. But I did go there. It's easy, you just take the subway. And it's pretty inexpensive. I ate pizza, read books and watched what was going on. I went to the diners.
PLAYBOY: Ever take LSD?
GATES: My errant youth ended a long time ago.
PLAYBOY: What does that mean?
GATES: That means there were things I did under the age of 25 that I ended up not doing subsequently.
PLAYBOY: One LSD story involved you staring at a table and thinking the corner was going to plunge into your eye.
GATES: [Smiles]
PLAYBOY: Ah, a glimmer of recognition.
GATES: That was on the other side of that boundary. The young mind can deal with certain kinds of gooping around that I don't think at this age I could. I don't think you're as capable of handling lack of sleep or whatever challenges you throw at your body as you get older. However, I never missed a day of work.

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GATES: Actually, America has also done pretty well during this period. Some American companies made mistakes, and there are things we could do to improve our products. For instance, we could improve our education system. Also, get rid of short-term thinking.

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GATES: More optimistically. As there is progress, which is partly advances in technology, in a certain sense the world gets richer. That is, the things we do that use a lot of resources and time can be done more efficiently. So people wonder, Will there be jobs? Will there be things to do? Until were educating every kid in a fantastic way, until every inner city is cleaned up, there is no shortage of things to do. And as society gets richer, we can choose to allocate the resources in a way that gives people the incentive to go out and do those unfinished jobs.

|||112642083579856496|||Playboy interviews Gates