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I’m not following how Musk and Bezos could make the world better off by giving away their money.

chipotle_coyote 6y ago
I mean, literally giving it away in a naïve fashion like "we're going to combine their wealth and divide it up equally among everyone else in the world" probably wouldn't make the world better off in a meaningful way -- but between the two of them we're talking about $370 billion dollars. It's not too difficult to imagine how using 90% of that to target specific problems could improve life in tangible ways for a measurable chunk of the world's population, and still leave each of them billionaires. (In fact, judging by rankings from Forbes last year, it would still leave them among the top 50 richest people in the world!)
- chordalkeyboard 6y ago
  > but between the two of them we're talking about $370 billion dollars. Those are investments that are already earning a return. How do you propose to use them to make people any better off than they already do? You could expropriate gates and bezos, and sell the assets to some other billionaire, then fund the government for a fraction of a year, or buy mosquito nets for africans, and then what? Is that what you think would make the world a better place? I’m asking here. > It's not too difficult to imagine how using 90% of that to target specific problems could improve life in tangible ways for a measurable chunk of the world's population This is what I’m asking you to imagine and tell me, because for people like Gates and Buffet who have already given a lot of money away, it actually is kind of hard to find ways to make an actual lasting meaningful improvement in people’s lives, they’ve spent the better part of their lives working on it and they haven’t given up yet. But the money has to be translated into things that help people out, just giving them stuff can actually leave them worse off because it creates dependencies and disparities.
  - chipotle_coyote 6y ago
    I don't think the fact that I can't give you an off-the-cuff but brilliant strategic plan in this Hacker News comment describing how Elon Musk could best structure his charitable foundation is a real indictment of my assertion that such a plan could be put together. :) As I mentioned in a previous comment to somebody else, I recognize that "giving away" incredible amounts of money is easier said than done -- but that doesn't mean it's not possible. Again, as I mentioned in that comment, MacKenzie Scott (Jeff Bezos's ex-wife) appears to be doing a startlingly good job of it. So is Bill Gates, as you mentioned. There are others. There are all sorts of conversations to be had about extreme wealth, but it really does strike me as at least reasonable for part of that conversation to be around changing the culture of expectation for billionaires.
    - chordalkeyboard 6y ago
      > I don't think the fact that I can't give you an off-the-cuff but brilliant strategic plan in this Hacker News comment describing how Elon Musk could best structure his charitable foundation is a real indictment of my assertion that such a plan could be put together. Mostly I just want to counter the mistaken idea that redistributing the wealth of billionaires would result in improvements for the poor. It wouldn’t, because that wealth is already in a form that can’t be easily translated into the things that poor people lack. > As I mentioned in a previous comment to somebody else, I recognize that "giving away" incredible amounts of money is easier said than done -- but that doesn't mean it's not possible. Its possible to give it away. I’m asking how to improve people’s live thereby. The wealth is in the form of companies that are already providing goods and services to people. There’s not enough profit to make meaningful direct cash payments to the poor. If you liquidate the companies assets you’ve expropriated Bezos’ wealth and sold it to people....then you do what with the money? We already know transfer payments are only temporary. > Again, as I mentioned in that comment, MacKenzie Scott (Jeff Bezos's ex-wife) appears to be doing a startlingly good job of it. So is Bill Gates, as you mentioned. There are others. Its not easy: [0] >> Both insiders and external critics have suggested that there is too much deference to Bill Gates's personal views within the Gates Foundation, insufficient internal debate, and pervasive "group think."[101][159] Critics also complain that Gates Foundation grants are often awarded based on social connections and ideological allegiances rather than based on formal external review processes or technical competence. > There are all sorts of conversations to be had about extreme wealth, but it really does strike me as at least reasonable for part of that conversation to be around changing the culture of expectation for billionaires. Its reasonable for people who think they can better allocate resources to explain how their proposed allocation is, in fact, better. The billionaire has already proven he can put his wealth to productive use. I’m merely expecting you to suggest how you could meet that same standard. [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bill_%26_Melinda_Gates_Foundation#Reception_and_reforms https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bill_%26_Melinda_Gates_Foundat...
- ben_w 6y ago
  Given the majority of their wealth is their ownership of companies, and those wealth estimates represent how much money other people think they can make from Amazon/Tesla dividends in future and how much people recon it would be worth spending to take over SpaceX/Neuralink etc., distributing their wealth would likely do less than you expect. Also, given that Musk has tweeted: > About half my money is intended to help problems on Earth & half to help establish a self-sustaining city on Mars to ensure continuation of life (of all species) in case Earth gets hit by a meteor like the dinosaurs or WW3 happens & we destroy ourselves - https://mobile.twitter.com/elonmusk/status/1050812486226599936 https://mobile.twitter.com/elonmusk/status/10508124862265999... Musk at least is already doing what you’re asking the money for.
  - hoseja 6y ago
    Oh but he's not doing it while wearing Che shirt and having the right identity, also his companies aren't cooperatives crippled by internal ideological fractures; therefore bad.
  - semi-extrinsic 6y ago
    Well, yes and no. The "self-sustaining city on Mars" bit is a pipedream, and not something we should spend serious amounts of money on in the 21st century. There are no plausible catastrophes that could hit Earth that wouldn't randomly leave at least as many people still alive on Earth afterwards. The meteor killed most of the dinosaurs because they were unable to adapt to the climate after the impact. But some dinosaur species were able to adapt, thus we have birds today. Humans are immensely good at adapting. There is no question in my mind that several million people would survive both WW3 and a meteor like what killed the dinosaurs. The humans on Mars are redundant in that case. The only upside to Musk's idea is he (or at least someone) gets to pick who the survivors will be. To me the sensible thing to do would be to tax these people (Musk, Bezos, Gates etc) and have the government implement policies that used these funds for socialized healthcare, higher minimum wage, paid parental leave etc. - you know, what all other first-world countries already have.
    - chordalkeyboard 6y ago
vidarh 6y ago
I think you missed the word "if" there. The commenter above did not suggest it would, but posited that if they could do so without affecting their own wealth, they believe Musk and Bezos quite probably would. It's a hypothetical suggesting something about Musk and Bezos personalities and/or intent, not about their actual ability to make things better.
- chordalkeyboard 6y ago
  > It's a hypothetical suggesting something about Musk and Bezos personalities and/or intent, not about their actual ability to make things better. I was responding to the below. There’ a perspective that the magnitude of their wealth represents their current level of contribution to helping these people, and reappropriating that wealth would decrease their contribution by misallocating their property. >> The problem is starting out on that path towards equal distribution is going to mean they lose a lot of money.
  - vidarh 6y ago
    I don't see how your assumption follows from that statement at all. I see it as a statement suggesting that their current fortunes are simply not big enough that any kind of redistribution sufficient to make a major difference wouldn't have a measurable effect on them personally.
    - chordalkeyboard 6y ago
      I’m taking that as granted and going further: redistribution at any scale is unlikely to have the desired effect on the poor, regardless of how it affects the person being expropriated.

I mean, literally giving it away in a naïve fashion like "we're going to combine their wealth and divide it up equally among everyone else in the world" probably wouldn't make the world better off in a meaningful way -- but between the two of them we're talking about $370 billion dollars. It's not too difficult to imagine how using 90% of that to target specific problems could improve life in tangible ways for a measurable chunk of the world's population, and still leave each of them billionaires. (In fact, judging by rankings from Forbes last year, it would still leave them among the top 50 richest people in the world!)

chordalkeyboard 6y ago
> but between the two of them we're talking about $370 billion dollars. Those are investments that are already earning a return. How do you propose to use them to make people any better off than they already do? You could expropriate gates and bezos, and sell the assets to some other billionaire, then fund the government for a fraction of a year, or buy mosquito nets for africans, and then what? Is that what you think would make the world a better place? I’m asking here. > It's not too difficult to imagine how using 90% of that to target specific problems could improve life in tangible ways for a measurable chunk of the world's population This is what I’m asking you to imagine and tell me, because for people like Gates and Buffet who have already given a lot of money away, it actually is kind of hard to find ways to make an actual lasting meaningful improvement in people’s lives, they’ve spent the better part of their lives working on it and they haven’t given up yet. But the money has to be translated into things that help people out, just giving them stuff can actually leave them worse off because it creates dependencies and disparities.
- chipotle_coyote 6y ago
  I don't think the fact that I can't give you an off-the-cuff but brilliant strategic plan in this Hacker News comment describing how Elon Musk could best structure his charitable foundation is a real indictment of my assertion that such a plan could be put together. :) As I mentioned in a previous comment to somebody else, I recognize that "giving away" incredible amounts of money is easier said than done -- but that doesn't mean it's not possible. Again, as I mentioned in that comment, MacKenzie Scott (Jeff Bezos's ex-wife) appears to be doing a startlingly good job of it. So is Bill Gates, as you mentioned. There are others. There are all sorts of conversations to be had about extreme wealth, but it really does strike me as at least reasonable for part of that conversation to be around changing the culture of expectation for billionaires.
  - chordalkeyboard 6y ago
    > I don't think the fact that I can't give you an off-the-cuff but brilliant strategic plan in this Hacker News comment describing how Elon Musk could best structure his charitable foundation is a real indictment of my assertion that such a plan could be put together. Mostly I just want to counter the mistaken idea that redistributing the wealth of billionaires would result in improvements for the poor. It wouldn’t, because that wealth is already in a form that can’t be easily translated into the things that poor people lack. > As I mentioned in a previous comment to somebody else, I recognize that "giving away" incredible amounts of money is easier said than done -- but that doesn't mean it's not possible. Its possible to give it away. I’m asking how to improve people’s live thereby. The wealth is in the form of companies that are already providing goods and services to people. There’s not enough profit to make meaningful direct cash payments to the poor. If you liquidate the companies assets you’ve expropriated Bezos’ wealth and sold it to people....then you do what with the money? We already know transfer payments are only temporary. > Again, as I mentioned in that comment, MacKenzie Scott (Jeff Bezos's ex-wife) appears to be doing a startlingly good job of it. So is Bill Gates, as you mentioned. There are others. Its not easy: [0] >> Both insiders and external critics have suggested that there is too much deference to Bill Gates's personal views within the Gates Foundation, insufficient internal debate, and pervasive "group think."[101][159] Critics also complain that Gates Foundation grants are often awarded based on social connections and ideological allegiances rather than based on formal external review processes or technical competence. > There are all sorts of conversations to be had about extreme wealth, but it really does strike me as at least reasonable for part of that conversation to be around changing the culture of expectation for billionaires. Its reasonable for people who think they can better allocate resources to explain how their proposed allocation is, in fact, better. The billionaire has already proven he can put his wealth to productive use. I’m merely expecting you to suggest how you could meet that same standard. [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bill_%26_Melinda_Gates_Foundation#Reception_and_reforms https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bill_%26_Melinda_Gates_Foundat...
ben_w 6y ago
Given the majority of their wealth is their ownership of companies, and those wealth estimates represent how much money other people think they can make from Amazon/Tesla dividends in future and how much people recon it would be worth spending to take over SpaceX/Neuralink etc., distributing their wealth would likely do less than you expect. Also, given that Musk has tweeted: > About half my money is intended to help problems on Earth & half to help establish a self-sustaining city on Mars to ensure continuation of life (of all species) in case Earth gets hit by a meteor like the dinosaurs or WW3 happens & we destroy ourselves - https://mobile.twitter.com/elonmusk/status/1050812486226599936 https://mobile.twitter.com/elonmusk/status/10508124862265999... Musk at least is already doing what you’re asking the money for.
- hoseja 6y ago
  Oh but he's not doing it while wearing Che shirt and having the right identity, also his companies aren't cooperatives crippled by internal ideological fractures; therefore bad.
- semi-extrinsic 6y ago
  Well, yes and no. The "self-sustaining city on Mars" bit is a pipedream, and not something we should spend serious amounts of money on in the 21st century. There are no plausible catastrophes that could hit Earth that wouldn't randomly leave at least as many people still alive on Earth afterwards. The meteor killed most of the dinosaurs because they were unable to adapt to the climate after the impact. But some dinosaur species were able to adapt, thus we have birds today. Humans are immensely good at adapting. There is no question in my mind that several million people would survive both WW3 and a meteor like what killed the dinosaurs. The humans on Mars are redundant in that case. The only upside to Musk's idea is he (or at least someone) gets to pick who the survivors will be. To me the sensible thing to do would be to tax these people (Musk, Bezos, Gates etc) and have the government implement policies that used these funds for socialized healthcare, higher minimum wage, paid parental leave etc. - you know, what all other first-world countries already have.
  - chordalkeyboard 6y ago

vidarh 6y ago

I think you missed the word "if" there. The commenter above did not suggest it would, but posited that if they could do so without affecting their own wealth, they believe Musk and Bezos quite probably would. It's a hypothetical suggesting something about Musk and Bezos personalities and/or intent, not about their actual ability to make things better.

chordalkeyboard 6y ago
> It's a hypothetical suggesting something about Musk and Bezos personalities and/or intent, not about their actual ability to make things better. I was responding to the below. There’ a perspective that the magnitude of their wealth represents their current level of contribution to helping these people, and reappropriating that wealth would decrease their contribution by misallocating their property. >> The problem is starting out on that path towards equal distribution is going to mean they lose a lot of money.
- vidarh 6y ago
  I don't see how your assumption follows from that statement at all. I see it as a statement suggesting that their current fortunes are simply not big enough that any kind of redistribution sufficient to make a major difference wouldn't have a measurable effect on them personally.
  - chordalkeyboard 6y ago
    I’m taking that as granted and going further: redistribution at any scale is unlikely to have the desired effect on the poor, regardless of how it affects the person being expropriated.