All billionaires need somebody whose job it is to tell them their ideas are f***g idiotic to their face periodically.
Kinda like “momento mori” without the incentive to go and invent tech to make them immortal.
Kinda like “momento mori” without the incentive to go and invent tech to make them immortal.
A billionaire becoming a paraplegic would invest so much money in solving nerve and limb repair.
A billionaire going blind would get the brain mapped at a resolution we can only dream of.
I'm committing right now to putting my money to work in these areas if I ever make it.
"It's time we demolish the convenient myth that tax cuts for the richest result in their wealth somehow 'trickling down' to everyone else," said Bucher. "Forty years of tax cuts for the super-rich have shown that a rising tide doesn't lift all ships—just the superyachts." https://www.commondreams.org/news/billionaires-policy-failur...
I think most arguments for/against the existence of people with such wealth are basically capitalists saying they deserve it for creating value or that we need to incentivize wealth creation, and socialists arguing past them saying that it's just wrong for anyone to have so much more than anyone else.
This is the first time I've heard anyone making a good argument that actually, even IF you are a staunch capitalist, and you only consider people who made their money without leaning on government to bend the rules in their favor, maybe billionaires don't deserve all their wealth.
It’s not just cash that accumulated and could be better used somewhere else. It’s a FMV applied to a much larger portion of what the liquid market can support. Nobody gave Bezos $200 billion instead of giving it to charity. He just has ownership of multiple companies with share prices that when multiplied times his stake land at that value.
So it’s not surplus at all and it’s just instead, “here appears to be a valuable company, let’s seize and liquidate 10% to fund some socialist endeavors”. It makes no difference if it’s one owner or 10 at that point. It’s illogical because it’s not about wealth at all.
The author of that article based the entire premise on Jeff taking in $200 billion in profit himself, which is so uninformed the whole thing can be more or less dismissed outright.
>Warren Buffett has donated another $4.64 billion of Berkshire Hathaway stock to five charities, boosting his total giving since 2006 to more than $51 billion.
https://www.livemint.com/companies/news/warren-buffett-donat...
So which one is it? They can't have cash because it's all in stock, so they shouldn't be able to donate. But they can donate stock, because then it suddenly behaves like cash.
While the idea of cost-benefit analysis in philanthropy has gotten a bad reputation after going down some very weird rabbit holes recently, the idea behind it isn’t completely crazy.
Building toilets may not be as sexy as reattaching nerves but the cost-benefit ratios are pretty attractive.
I find the 'ethics' of everything complicated, lately. But, simple non-flashy action to just try to relieve some suffering is about as ... therapeutic as it gets - for everyone, I think.
It reminds me of that great folk tune, "Simple Gifts" (famously set by Copeland [in his style]). There's quite a bit to be said for the ideas of groups like the 'Shakers' (though strict celibacy for all does tend to be quite a headwind for perpetuation).
There is something very significant in the idea framed, for example, in the Christian Bible as "private prayer"** - the effects this has on the function and other characteristics of a person AND their community (which ideally is the world).
The mindset of as substantial a 'selflessness' as is possible for humans seems to make the world much more livable, simple, etc. (for anyone who practices towards it). It doesn't seem so common among people who become billionaires, though - this is not a dig at them at all, nor do I wish to end this comment on the subject in general. But, what's truly absurd and sad, to me, is that what everyone actually wants tends to get further away the more you cling to anything ... simply accumulate anything, including money.
* (John Turturro voice, always hear in my head, omit details as much as I can 'help myself' tho...)
** Matthew 6:5, for example - this is ending up rather 'Christianity-heavy', but the key messages are quite 'agnostic' IMO. I find them more-or-less in the 'useful' "spiritual systems" from all regions ...
Realistically speaking, no human institution will remain true to its original purpose for very long after the death or departure of its founder. Institutions drift, whether towards maximizing shareholder value (if a publicly traded, i.e. de-facto ownerless, corporation) or towards pushing a political agenda (if a non-profit foundation). The only way to have a chance of avoiding this drift is for the founder to pass on true ownership of the institution to somebody whom he believes shares his vision. Even then, that doesn't exactly work out perfectly because eventually the owner is going to make a poor choice for his successor and the successor will either run the institution into the ground or sell the institution because he doesn't actually want it.
According to [1], the current minimum value of a bored ape is the equivalent of about $48,000 USD.
I’d be surprised if the price ever goes to zero unless the trading infrastructure completely collapses (which isn’t exactly beyond the realms of probability). I imagine that there would be a demand if the price went down enough (and I’m talking to something in the tens of US dollars) from crypto critics who’d enjoy purchasing them from the crypto bulls for the schadenfreude.
> A billionaire going blind would get the brain mapped at a resolution we can only dream of.
I am wondering, being blind myself, what is it exactly that you are hinting at? I am assuming something in the direction of neuralink?
I am asking because I really can not relate to your optimism. Tech is great for assistive technologies like talking phones or image to text LLMs and so on. But when people start to suggest all I need is the right implant to "compensate" for my disability, I frankly start to freak out and realize whatever they are thinking is not resonating with me in any way. Is your techno-optimism, in 2023, really that great that you'd want some tech to fuck with your brain?
Also, what many people don't realize is that people with sensory disabilities literally grow used to their "new" way of perceiving the world. Most of the interventions people seem to hold in high esteem kind of assume the disability hasn't been going on for a while. For instance, me being blind for 35 years also means that even if I would gain a visual sense through some tech, I'd still have to invest years to make some basic use of it. Imagine, I'd have to learn to read, basically like a preschooler.
Its not that easy to "gift" sight to the blind, not even with the most fancy optimistic tech we have in a forseeable future.
That is putting aside that the public and private sector fund research differently with different priorities which results in both discoveries one would make that the other wouldn't and in flaws and anti-patterns observed. Private funding would be more likely to have arbitrary favoritism based on personal biases vs the public sector playing politics in a "lets play pin the jobs on the congressional districts" way.
War and existential threats can do so even faster.
Publicly funded research does a great job of finding the slopes that would ordinarily be overlooked.
Most research projects are competitively funded by grant money on short timelines, and researchers are employed on fixed-term contracts. University professors with tenure are the exception rather than the rule. Research projects regularly get canned because priorities change or the work just isn’t sexy enough.