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I was thinking about the super rich, recalling that story where a rich philanthropist made NYU Medical School tuition-free in a surprise announcement. I couldn'

I was thinking about the super rich, recalling that story where a rich philanthropist made NYU Medical School tuition-free in a surprise announcement. I couldn't help think: why do we live in a system where there are people so rich, that we rely on their kindness for our upper-crust medical students to not have debt? Why not have an economy that limits mega-wealth so we don't need to rely on the generosity of mega-wealthy donors? The subtext here is the vast majority of mega-wealthy donors are NOT going to help the rest of us who helped build their wealth.

nerdponx 7y ago
The problem as I see it is that accumulation of wealth-movement power (note that I did not say "accumulation of wealth" because that isn't really at thing) seems to be necessary to some extent in order to overcome collective action problems in society. Funding medical school is a great example -- nobody wants to do it, on their own, but society as a whole wants it to get done. Either you have wealthy individuals do it, or you have the government do it. But someone has to pool a lot of resources in one place and start moving them around, if we want things like free med school to exist. Maybe it's better if the government does it; in theory it leads to better outcomes because the government has better incentives to make good decisions with their wealth-movement power, outweighing the inefficiencies of economic centralization by ensuring that people's basic needs are met across the population. This is what a lot of leftists and liberals will argue. Meanwhile conservatives, libertarians, etc. will point to government track records in actually implementing programs well, engaging in corruption, designing good policy, and becoming extensions of corporate interests. Not to mention generalized waste due to mismatch between "incentives to start projects" and "incentives not to spend money".

nerdponx 7y ago

The problem as I see it is that accumulation of wealth-movement power (note that I did not say "accumulation of wealth" because that isn't really at thing) seems to be necessary to some extent in order to overcome collective action problems in society. Funding medical school is a great example -- nobody wants to do it, on their own, but society as a whole wants it to get done. Either you have wealthy individuals do it, or you have the government do it. But someone has to pool a lot of resources in one place and start moving them around, if we want things like free med school to exist. Maybe it's better if the government does it; in theory it leads to better outcomes because the government has better incentives to make good decisions with their wealth-movement power, outweighing the inefficiencies of economic centralization by ensuring that people's basic needs are met across the population. This is what a lot of leftists and liberals will argue. Meanwhile conservatives, libertarians, etc. will point to government track records in actually implementing programs well, engaging in corruption, designing good policy, and becoming extensions of corporate interests. Not to mention generalized waste due to mismatch between "incentives to start projects" and "incentives not to spend money".