Damien Grant is an Auckland business owner and a regular opinion contributor for Stuff, writing from a libertarian perspective.

OPINION: I am old enough to recall a simpler time when office workers were trusted with the power to open windows.

I am unsure why this pleasure was stripped from subsequent generations, but one possible reason was their visceral reaction to being asked to use Word Perfect.

This mis-named and appalling piece of software was so malevolent that it drove users into a state of temporary rage and could induce clerical staff to hurl their personal computers from the third floor to watch, in deep satisfaction, as the cathode-ray tube shattered into 10,000 fragments.

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Thankfully, the Mark Zuckerberg of his era, wunderkind Bill Gates, had a competitive program on the market and as I sit here some four decades hence I am tapping away using his software.

When I am done, some hour or two from now, the contents of my toil shall be saved and the wonders of Microsoft Exchange will be engaged to fire this unworthy prose to my long-suffering editor who will be, as are you dear reader, wondering when I shall get to the point.

The best thing about the early releases of Microsoft’s software was that it was free, on account of its ineffectiveness in enforcing licensing requirements.

For maybe a decade I was part of a vast cohort of freeloaders who enjoyed the bounty of Gates’ genius without having to pay a single drachma.

Those carefree days, like opening office windows (see what I did there), are long gone and Microsoft is far more effective at compelling me to pay their licence fees, but in terms of the value I receive from their product, it may as well still be free.

Microsoft’s software allows users a degree of utility that is incomprehensible, incalculable and immeasurable.

Obviously if Gates hadn’t done it, we’d be using a similar product, but that is to miss the point; successful entrepreneurs sell you something for a price that is lower than what you believe it is worth.

Word, Excel, Exchange and similar products have allowed office workers to do in hours what formerly took days. These innovations have made every person who uses them more productive. The difference between the cost of what you are buying and the value you receive is vast.

To comprehend the value these products provide, imagine how expensive they would need to be before you stopped paying? If access to email was $1000 a month, most commercial firms would still pay it; yet the service is so cheap as to be effectively, and in some cases literally, free.

Microsoft is valued at over US$2 trillion and this is perhaps less than 1% of the value it has provided to mankind.

The advances in productivity made possible by the sorts of products sold by Steve Jobs, Bill Gates, Larry Ellison and so many others have allowed billions of us to live lives of such comfort and excess that obesity is now a greater problem than hunger in many nations.

Gates has, nobly, committed himself and his vast capital to making the world a better place, and his achievements in this area are outstanding.

Millions of lives have been saved thanks to his efforts against measles and malaria. And yet Gates can devote a dozen lifetimes towards philanthropic endeavours and these achievements shall be as dust to the sand dunes of utility Microsoft has gifted to humanity. Further, Microsoft is merely one of thousands of companies and entrepreneurs that drive our civilisation forward.

We celebrate, and we should, those who use their capital for good works, but we should not be blinded to the real value of these remarkable individuals.

This week Wellington property developer and philanthropist Mark Dunajtschik has announced he is giving his fortune, estimated at $450 million, to charity, with a focus on serving those living in the Wellington region with a disability.

This is, self-evidently, a fantastic thing to do and is more evidence of that this remarkable New Zealander is deserving of the knighthood wisely bestowed on him earlier this year; and yet he received his award for services for philanthropy, and not his efforts that allowed his to be philanthropic.

It is my perspective that his enduring value to our beloved capital is the buildings he has built, refurbished and developed; for each is remarkable, its real value obscured because such achievements are now so commonplace.

We take as given so much of the accomplishments of those such as Dunajtschik that we fail to really comprehend their value to our society.

An apartment complex, an office building, even something as mundane as a domestic house requires hundreds of businesspeople covering a wide range of skills and resources, to design, construct and maintain.

That we look at such marvels without wonder and awe is itself testament to the achievements of past generations of entrepreneurs.

Meanwhile, we honour those whose accomplishments amount to little more than the outstanding quality of their character while failing to comprehend the contributions made by those whose business skills, willingness to risk and to fail, have produced a magnificent bounty.

We are too quick to acknowledge the politician, the activist and the worthy citizen who toils for the benefit of others, and too slow to acknowledge those whose contributions provide more tangible and enduring results.

A dozen of the most gifted social workers cannot match the contribution made to a community by a thriving retail store or a McDonald’s. Such outfits offer employment, they offer things of value people wish to acquire.

They create the opportunity for individuals to build their own lives rather than having one designed for them by someone whose only knowledge of true hardship has been acquired in a lecture room.

Charitable works never achieve as much good as honest traders do when, in pursuit of their own profit, they seek to sell to others goods and services at a price lower than that which their customers value their wares.