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Instead of looking at his influence on the evonomy generally, I would look at the Gates foundation (where he has pledged most of his net worth) specifically. T

Instead of looking at his influence on the evonomy generally, I would look at the Gates foundation (where he has pledged most of his net worth) specifically. The Gates foundation directs a large amount of resources not to "prudent economic decisions" (eg, it looses money), but to non economic priorities he set. I have no particular complaints about the Gates foundation specifically, but in an idealized democracy, this scale of resource utilization would be subject to more democratic oversight (eg. Compare the CDC fighting malaria with appropriations from an elected congress to the Gates foundation doing so with appropriations from Bill Gates). In practice, there is a lot of overhead to the democratic proceds, so we want more private charity then is ideal. And you are correct that there seems to be a limit on how much resources people consume before they start helping others (even if the way they help does not match the priorites of the general public)

ganonm 8y ago
"The Gates foundation directs a large amount of resources not to "prudent economic decisions" (eg, it looses money), but to non economic priorities he set." This is true, and although certainly not a bad thing, is perhaps a sub-optimal allocation of economic output. There is perhaps an argument for having individuals with enough power to do this as a means of making decisions that are sub-optimal in the here and now, but over long enough spans of time turn out to be optimum. Another example would be investing in renewable energies.
- gizmo686 8y ago
  The two pricipled ways I have heard for determining resource allocation are democracy and markets. Private philanthropy follows neither. As I alluded to above, there are certainly practical benifits of private philanthropy, as our democratic institutions are systematically bad at certain classes of problems.

ganonm 8y ago

"The Gates foundation directs a large amount of resources not to "prudent economic decisions" (eg, it looses money), but to non economic priorities he set." This is true, and although certainly not a bad thing, is perhaps a sub-optimal allocation of economic output. There is perhaps an argument for having individuals with enough power to do this as a means of making decisions that are sub-optimal in the here and now, but over long enough spans of time turn out to be optimum. Another example would be investing in renewable energies.

gizmo686 8y ago
The two pricipled ways I have heard for determining resource allocation are democracy and markets. Private philanthropy follows neither. As I alluded to above, there are certainly practical benifits of private philanthropy, as our democratic institutions are systematically bad at certain classes of problems.