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Who would you rather have another $100 million dollars - the US government or Bill Gates? One has a track record of creating incredible products, the other is a

Who would you rather have another $100 million dollars - the US government or Bill Gates? One has a track record of creating incredible products, the other is a literal dumpster fire, blowing $100bil ain’t nothing to the government.

brnt 7y ago
One of those 100M is spent, on goods and services provided by working people, while the other 100M may sit idle for decades to come.
- seibelj 7y ago
  My favorite argument in defense of billionaires is space. Governments made basically no progress in outer space, and then a few billionaires decide they want to go the stars, and suddenly everything happens again. And those billionaires did it with a fraction of the funds that the government could marshal - they have private sector acumen. You let the billionaires have their money because letting free people control that much capital is far superior to the government.
  - LiquidSky 7y ago
    What are you talking about? Space travel is literally the worst possible argument on this front. >Governments made basically no progress in outer space Governments made ALL progress in space, ever. Space travel only exists at all because governments poured unbelievable amounts of money, resources, and people into researching and developing it over decades. These billionaires' efforts are starting on top of that. If they had to start from scratch it would be impossible. Government space programs petered out not because of a lack of "acument" or some other nonsense, but because public support for these programs ebbed as the impetus (the Cold War) went away. You really couldn't think of a worse example that completely undercuts your point.
  - gamblor956 7y ago
    ... Using decades of government funded research that let them save billions. Billionaires are good at commercializing the work of others. But they're not creators.
    - Fezzik 7y ago
      Sure, but all-things-being-equal -- whatever that means in this scenario -- how long would it take an fictional Elon Musk to get to where the actual Elon Musk is today? Where would you see government propping him up in the process? The only reason government got us to the point it did in space exploration is because, for a brief-brief-brief period of time Elon Musk types were running the government. Now it is sycophantic cronies. It seems like having captial directed towards enlightened visionaries/beneficent dictators is preferable.
      - lucisferre 7y ago
        This reads like a cult of personality manefesto.
  - turk73 7y ago
    Isn't the government basically underwriting SpaceX, though? Musk is a clever con man with cool tech, but still a con man. Also, the manned space program was political cover for ICBM development.
  - vannevar 7y ago
    And those billionaires did it with a fraction of the funds that the government could marshal... Did what? The billionaires haven't even put a single person in orbit yet, something the government did within a few years of starting a space program. The US government went on to put humans on the moon (a feat yet to be equaled even by any other government, much less a billionaire), operate a reusable spacecraft for 30 years, and build an enormous space station in orbit and operate that for 20 years. Free people do control government capital in a functioning democracy that has not been captured by billionaires.
  - foobarbecue 7y ago
    "Governments made basically no progress in outer space" Is a completely ridiculous thing to say. Governments explored every planet in the solar system and discovered thousands more in the galaxy, sent humans to the moon, and have kept humans in orbit continuously for 30 years. The US governement is about to send the first helicopter to Mars. Some of their contractors have been doing a good job of innovating lately too, great!
  - danans 7y ago
    > and then a few billionaires decide they want to go the stars Wow, I knew JFK was rich, but I didn't think he was that rich! https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/We_choose_to_go_to_the_Moon https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/We_choose_to_go_to_the_Moon EDIT: /s ... if it sonehow wasn't clear. Nonetheless, the fact remains that JFK is the only person whose vision has led us "to the stars", and it was the US government that achieved the vision he put out.
  - pnako 7y ago
    The Japanese space agency landed a robot on an asteroid, the European space agency landed a probe on a comet. Meanwhile people like Elon Musk are mostly interested in vanity and commercial projects. Sure, there are worse ways to spend your money as a billionaire than being a space tourist, but let's not pretend he's bringing much progress.
    - r_deckard 7y ago
      His venture successfully built reuseable rockets that could lower the cost of spaceflight significantly. This would allow more people to do more things in space. Which could accelerate technological advancement in the space sector. This is something no one else have been able to do up until recently. I would at least consider that as a notable progress.
bickfordb 7y ago
Exactly which incredible products are you attributing to Mr. Gates? Gorilla.BAS in 1991?
- Fezzik 7y ago
  Not products, but his philanthropy is second-to-none. Measuring his investments towards preventing malaria alone he has probably done more to save lives than any other single individual in history. Which sounds silly, but is the reality of the situation.
  - thrax 7y ago
    He's donated 5 percent of his wealth. Him and buffet are top of the billionaire giving pile at 3 and 5 %. that means 95% of their wealth is still tied up in service of further wealth extraction.
deleted 7y ago
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turk73 7y ago
I just read that Bill Gates is promoting some kind of Orwellian Id system tied to cell phones that would allow the police to scan your identity at a distance. It raises all kinds of questions in my mind like "will everyone be required to have Id and a cell phone?" And "will we live in a free country in the near future?" So no, I don't trust either one. The government wastes billions on things that are frankly unethical to me. Private industry has similar cockamamie ideas and they aren't at all concerned about basic freedoms or privacy.
thebradbain 7y ago
I don't really subscribe to this idea that the US Government burns money as a rule. I'm sure there's many places that could be streamlined or made more efficient. But to blanket state that the US government as a whole is wasteful garbage seems naive, considering the immense scale and breadth of functions they carry out. The US Government employs 2.5 million people (3.8 million if you include the US Army, for which spending actually represents 61% [!] of the current US Budget) – the scale is personally hard for me to grok, at least. One thing that changed my mind about government spending is to look at the budget of a government program or facet of a program you're personally familiar with, and at least in my experience, it blows my mind what they can accomplish with what they're allocated. For example, the entire yearly operating budget of Big Bend, a national park bigger than the state of Rhode Island, is only $7 million, including employee salaries, maintenance and restoration, emergency services, special programming, on-site research, and educational outreach – and it brought in around more than $27 million in visitor spending last year. From a money-making standpoint (which I don't think is the purpose of a government so much as to serve the public interest), that represents an extremely good return on investment – not to mention all the positive externalities of such a venture.
- tumba 7y ago
  I believe you are incorrect about the US Army’s percent of the federal budget. Total defense spending (all branches) represents around 15% of the budget. Source: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Expenditures_in_the_United_States_federal_budget https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Expenditures_in_the_United_Sta...
  - rtkwe 7y ago
    That number might be based on it's portion of discretionary spending? It is a large portion of that type of spending for sure.
  - thebradbain 7y ago
    Ah, great catch! I’m admittedly nowhere near an expert in this regard. I was looking at the US Discretionary spending budget, and mistakenly thought that was representative of the total budget I was looking at the discretionary budget breakdown: https://www.pgpf.org/chart-archive/0070_discretionary_spending_categories https://www.pgpf.org/chart-archive/0070_discretionary_spendi...
blueprint 7y ago
that's not what literal means :P
vannevar 7y ago
The notion that the government wastes more money than the private sector is a persistent myth with little evidence to back it up. Private capital wastes enormous amounts of money on failed ventures, inflated salaries, and profit-taking, and is every bit as wasteful as any over-budget government project.
- jasonsamoa 7y ago
  Work for the government for 1 year then work for a startup for 1 year.
  - ZenPsycho 7y ago
    Surely a sample size of two anecdotes is sufficient evidence.
    - jasonsamoa 7y ago
      Nope but it might be better than nothing. Ask yourself, who has a greater incentive?
      - ZenPsycho 7y ago
        ask yourself: How much is your Boss's Salary
zelly 7y ago
Exactly. I'm not about to defend rent-seeking billionaires, but I trust them more than government--the entity which literally kills millions of people. I'd rather economic mass went into making Lambos and penthouses for billionaires than warheads and aircraft carriers to murder more people.
atomi 7y ago
Bill Gates is cherry picked. Also, billionaires aren't accountable to an electorate.
deleted 7y ago
[deleted]

brnt 7y ago

One of those 100M is spent, on goods and services provided by working people, while the other 100M may sit idle for decades to come.

seibelj 7y ago
My favorite argument in defense of billionaires is space. Governments made basically no progress in outer space, and then a few billionaires decide they want to go the stars, and suddenly everything happens again. And those billionaires did it with a fraction of the funds that the government could marshal - they have private sector acumen. You let the billionaires have their money because letting free people control that much capital is far superior to the government.
- LiquidSky 7y ago
  What are you talking about? Space travel is literally the worst possible argument on this front. >Governments made basically no progress in outer space Governments made ALL progress in space, ever. Space travel only exists at all because governments poured unbelievable amounts of money, resources, and people into researching and developing it over decades. These billionaires' efforts are starting on top of that. If they had to start from scratch it would be impossible. Government space programs petered out not because of a lack of "acument" or some other nonsense, but because public support for these programs ebbed as the impetus (the Cold War) went away. You really couldn't think of a worse example that completely undercuts your point.
- gamblor956 7y ago
  ... Using decades of government funded research that let them save billions. Billionaires are good at commercializing the work of others. But they're not creators.
  - Fezzik 7y ago
    Sure, but all-things-being-equal -- whatever that means in this scenario -- how long would it take an fictional Elon Musk to get to where the actual Elon Musk is today? Where would you see government propping him up in the process? The only reason government got us to the point it did in space exploration is because, for a brief-brief-brief period of time Elon Musk types were running the government. Now it is sycophantic cronies. It seems like having captial directed towards enlightened visionaries/beneficent dictators is preferable.
    - lucisferre 7y ago
      This reads like a cult of personality manefesto.
- turk73 7y ago
  Isn't the government basically underwriting SpaceX, though? Musk is a clever con man with cool tech, but still a con man. Also, the manned space program was political cover for ICBM development.
- vannevar 7y ago
  And those billionaires did it with a fraction of the funds that the government could marshal... Did what? The billionaires haven't even put a single person in orbit yet, something the government did within a few years of starting a space program. The US government went on to put humans on the moon (a feat yet to be equaled even by any other government, much less a billionaire), operate a reusable spacecraft for 30 years, and build an enormous space station in orbit and operate that for 20 years. Free people do control government capital in a functioning democracy that has not been captured by billionaires.
- foobarbecue 7y ago
  "Governments made basically no progress in outer space" Is a completely ridiculous thing to say. Governments explored every planet in the solar system and discovered thousands more in the galaxy, sent humans to the moon, and have kept humans in orbit continuously for 30 years. The US governement is about to send the first helicopter to Mars. Some of their contractors have been doing a good job of innovating lately too, great!
- danans 7y ago
  > and then a few billionaires decide they want to go the stars Wow, I knew JFK was rich, but I didn't think he was that rich! https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/We_choose_to_go_to_the_Moon https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/We_choose_to_go_to_the_Moon EDIT: /s ... if it sonehow wasn't clear. Nonetheless, the fact remains that JFK is the only person whose vision has led us "to the stars", and it was the US government that achieved the vision he put out.
- pnako 7y ago
  The Japanese space agency landed a robot on an asteroid, the European space agency landed a probe on a comet. Meanwhile people like Elon Musk are mostly interested in vanity and commercial projects. Sure, there are worse ways to spend your money as a billionaire than being a space tourist, but let's not pretend he's bringing much progress.
  - r_deckard 7y ago
    His venture successfully built reuseable rockets that could lower the cost of spaceflight significantly. This would allow more people to do more things in space. Which could accelerate technological advancement in the space sector. This is something no one else have been able to do up until recently. I would at least consider that as a notable progress.

bickfordb 7y ago

Exactly which incredible products are you attributing to Mr. Gates? Gorilla.BAS in 1991?

Fezzik 7y ago
Not products, but his philanthropy is second-to-none. Measuring his investments towards preventing malaria alone he has probably done more to save lives than any other single individual in history. Which sounds silly, but is the reality of the situation.
- thrax 7y ago
  He's donated 5 percent of his wealth. Him and buffet are top of the billionaire giving pile at 3 and 5 %. that means 95% of their wealth is still tied up in service of further wealth extraction.

deleted 7y ago

[deleted]

turk73 7y ago

I just read that Bill Gates is promoting some kind of Orwellian Id system tied to cell phones that would allow the police to scan your identity at a distance. It raises all kinds of questions in my mind like "will everyone be required to have Id and a cell phone?" And "will we live in a free country in the near future?" So no, I don't trust either one. The government wastes billions on things that are frankly unethical to me. Private industry has similar cockamamie ideas and they aren't at all concerned about basic freedoms or privacy.

thebradbain 7y ago

I don't really subscribe to this idea that the US Government burns money as a rule. I'm sure there's many places that could be streamlined or made more efficient. But to blanket state that the US government as a whole is wasteful garbage seems naive, considering the immense scale and breadth of functions they carry out. The US Government employs 2.5 million people (3.8 million if you include the US Army, for which spending actually represents 61% [!] of the current US Budget) – the scale is personally hard for me to grok, at least. One thing that changed my mind about government spending is to look at the budget of a government program or facet of a program you're personally familiar with, and at least in my experience, it blows my mind what they can accomplish with what they're allocated. For example, the entire yearly operating budget of Big Bend, a national park bigger than the state of Rhode Island, is only $7 million, including employee salaries, maintenance and restoration, emergency services, special programming, on-site research, and educational outreach – and it brought in around more than $27 million in visitor spending last year. From a money-making standpoint (which I don't think is the purpose of a government so much as to serve the public interest), that represents an extremely good return on investment – not to mention all the positive externalities of such a venture.

tumba 7y ago
I believe you are incorrect about the US Army’s percent of the federal budget. Total defense spending (all branches) represents around 15% of the budget. Source: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Expenditures_in_the_United_States_federal_budget https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Expenditures_in_the_United_Sta...
- rtkwe 7y ago
  That number might be based on it's portion of discretionary spending? It is a large portion of that type of spending for sure.
- thebradbain 7y ago
  Ah, great catch! I’m admittedly nowhere near an expert in this regard. I was looking at the US Discretionary spending budget, and mistakenly thought that was representative of the total budget I was looking at the discretionary budget breakdown: https://www.pgpf.org/chart-archive/0070_discretionary_spending_categories https://www.pgpf.org/chart-archive/0070_discretionary_spendi...

blueprint 7y ago

that's not what literal means :P

vannevar 7y ago

The notion that the government wastes more money than the private sector is a persistent myth with little evidence to back it up. Private capital wastes enormous amounts of money on failed ventures, inflated salaries, and profit-taking, and is every bit as wasteful as any over-budget government project.

jasonsamoa 7y ago
Work for the government for 1 year then work for a startup for 1 year.
- ZenPsycho 7y ago
  Surely a sample size of two anecdotes is sufficient evidence.
  - jasonsamoa 7y ago
    Nope but it might be better than nothing. Ask yourself, who has a greater incentive?
    - ZenPsycho 7y ago
      ask yourself: How much is your Boss's Salary

zelly 7y ago

Exactly. I'm not about to defend rent-seeking billionaires, but I trust them more than government--the entity which literally kills millions of people. I'd rather economic mass went into making Lambos and penthouses for billionaires than warheads and aircraft carriers to murder more people.

atomi 7y ago

Bill Gates is cherry picked. Also, billionaires aren't accountable to an electorate.

deleted 7y ago

[deleted]