Mark Thoma Is Irate This Morning: Modelling the Social Value of Microsoft
Mark Thoma's ire is roused by Robert Barro, in the Wall Street Journal. Mark sends us to an article in which Barro attributes the entire consumer plus producer surplus of the personal computer industry to Bill Gates:
Economist's View: Robert Barro: Bill Gates' Charitable Vistas: Mr. Gates delivered a commencement address that focused... on his own personal philanthropy. His implicit theme was that so far what he has accomplished may have been good for him and Microsoft shareholders, but it has been no great contribution to society. He suggested that with a personal fortune of about $90 billion... it is time for him to give something back.
I find this perspective hard to understand.... Microsoft has been a boon for society and the value of its software greatly exceeds the likely value of Mr. Gates's philanthropic efforts. Here is a sketch of a simple model of Microsoft's social value....
In 2006, its revenue was $44 billion, with earnings of $13 billion. This money was generated by creating something consumers value.... [T]he social value... comes from the increase in productivity created when businesses and households use [Microsoft] software. The social benefit equals the value of the extra product, less the total paid for the software..... A conservative estimate... is that the social benefit of Microsoft's software is at least the $44 billion Microsoft pulls in each year... capitalized... a valuation of $970 billion.... Mr. Gates is creating a benefit to the rest of society of about one trillion dollars -- or more than 10 times his planned donations. And this counts only the likely future benefits, giving no weight to the past....
Mr. Gates's plan is ... to use the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation to reduce world poverty, with an emphasis on advances in health. This is a noble goal. But it will likely just supplement the much larger existing programs... that have been carried out for many years by international organizations and governments... a checkered record. Although Mr. Gates is probably smarter and more motivated than the typical World Bank bureaucrat, he likely won't do much better....
[T]he key question for poverty alleviation is how to get Africa to grow like China and India... opening up to markets and capitalism.... [F]oreign aid had nothing to do with the successes [at reducing poverty] and did not prevent the African tragedy.... Perhaps the Gates Foundation will run more efficient aid programs than we've seen in the past, but I wonder.... [Gates] is kidding himself if he believes that the efforts of the Gates Foundation are likely to provide society anything like the past and future accomplishments of Microsoft...
The problem, of course, is that although Barro's model is a simple model, it is the wrong model.
In the absence of Microsoft, people would not sit in front of dark screens and do all calculations and sorts by hand. In the absence of Microsoft, its programmers would work for other computer companies--IBM, Sun, ATT, Digital Research, Apple, Go, et cetera. In the absence of Microsoft, its customers would buy operating systems and office suites from other computer companies as well. In the absence of Microsoft, production would in all likelihood be somewhat less efficient--in the absence of a single dominant software near-monopolist like Microsoft, more programmers would spend more time essentially duplicating one another's work as competitors went head-to-head with directly competing products. In the absence of Microsoft, margins would be lower because of lower market power--and so distribution would be somewhat more efficient. In the absence of Microsoft, invention and innovation in software might be faster (because a dominant, innovative monopolist can break the lockin effect created by obsolete standards) and might be slower (because a dominant, non-innovative monopolist that has a reputation for predatory pricing like Microsoft can create a "death zone" around it in which no profit-seeking firm dares innovate).
Whether the net social value of Bill Gates is positive or negative depends on his impact in creating and shaping Microsoft: relative to its competitors and to its alternative paths of development, did he make it more of a lockin-breaking innovator or a death zone-creating predator? Did he do more to make Microsoft a company that takes advantage o economies of scale or more to make Microsoft a company that raises profit margins? I'm on the side that thinks that Microsoft has been a considerable net plus. But others I respect see it is a net minus. And my judgment that the net social value of Bill Gates is large and positive is not because I attribute the total producer plus consumer surplus in the industry to him and him alone: I am not that naive, and not that slow-witted.
