Bill Gates, who gave the world Microsoft and got $43 billion in return, is now planning to devote himself full time to philanthropy and hopes to study global warming to see what good his money can do there. Some advice: He should not forget what brought him to this party.

His fortune, he should remember, did not derive from paying heed to establishment wisdom, which could not see past today to tomorrow. And it did not come from a love of bureaucracy — which, in the form of the U.S. Justice Department, did its ill-advised best to cripple Gates’ company through anti-trust action. His fortune was rather the consequence of independent thought, entrepreneurial brass and technological innovation.