As Smith told the business summit last week, Microsoft remains "committed to one straightforward goal, and that is ensuring that the world center for developing the best and most popular software in the world will remain Washington state." Yet what makes Washington great for Microsoft isn't necessarily what makes Washington a great place to live. And what if the most popular software in the world soon isn't made by Microsoft?
The Legislature should meet our education and transportation needs, certainly, but not on Microsoft's terms. It faces increased competition and, perhaps, slower local growth and even layoffs. And no amount of tax breaks for business or improved education and transportation is going to change that. Microsoft's own decisions and behavior are responsible for its fate. We can't change Microsoft's behavior. But we can stop rewarding that behavior, and that of other businesses, for that matter.
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"Taxpayers in the state have to come to grips with the notion that we need to invest in higher education," Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer said last year. Maybe so. But Ballmer had to know that Microsoft wouldn't be footing much of the bill if taxpayers increased education funding.
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Former Microsoft employee Jeff Reifman builds Internet tools for nonprofit organizations as director of technology at
Groundspring.org. He also writes for the progressive political blog
IDEAlog.us.
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According to the BusinessWeek/Harris Poll, 74 percent of Americans believe that big companies have too much influence over government policy and politicians. "Of the world's top 100 economies, 51 are corporations," says Dr. Kellie McElhaney, executive director of the Haas Center for Responsible Business. "So much power is concentrated in the corporate world. Yet one of my fears is that we forget about individual responsibility. At the end of the day, corporations exist because we buy their goods and services," McElhaney says. After hearing about Microsoft's tax shelter in Nevada, one of my friends said she might begin pirating software as an act of protest.
Richard Grossman, co-founder of Programs on Corporations, Law, and Democracy, an organization contesting corporate power, says in a 2002 interview with The Progressive: "What we have now is a system where the coercive force of government and the culture that goes along with it enable a few people through the law and through their institutions called corporations to dominate the governing of this country. Many people don't want to acknowledge that. Because to do something about it means to change this country in very significant ways. If this country were really a country of democratic self-governance where the people actually were the source of all political and legal authority, it would be a very different country. And the people who govern today wouldn't govern. The class that governs today wouldn't govern."
Perhaps Bill Gates sees himself as having two legacies. He probably imagines he will be remembered both as an incredibly successful software tycoon and as a hugely generous philanthropist. But there's a third legacy Gates could pursue while at the helm of one of the wealthiest corporations in history: He could advocate that global corporations cede control of government back to the people. But let's not wait for him to do it. Let's do it ourselves.
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Former Microsoft employee Jeff Reifman builds Internet tools for nonprofit organizations as director of technology at Groundspring.org. He also writes for the progressive political blog IDEAlog.us. He can be reached at readermail@gmail.com.
