4 ms·

There's no reason to get into comparisons, except to the extent that it helps push them to compete harder, and make more progress. A public space race of billi

There's no reason to get into comparisons, except to the extent that it helps push them to compete harder, and make more progress. A public space race of billionaires is exactly the kind of thing we should all be hoping for. They can leverage their relatively small funding to push much larger government funding in productive directions. They're better than most government administrators and don't have as many constraints, so they can take more risks and pay experts what they're worth on the open market. The public should be calling for more of this kind of thing across all major areas of civilization. Let's get a public race among billionaires for curing cancer, HIV, and poverty. If it feeds their egos, all the better. Almost all progress is connected to selfish goals, even among the greatest and most "pure" scientists. They want to win a Nobel, for the money and the recognition. Or they're doing science because it's just extremely pleasurable for them, which is not a selfless reason at all. The sooner people realize that base motivations aren't a sin the better we'll all be. And in reality, motivations are always a mix of (mostly) selfish and selfless reasons. Motivations aren't what matters. What matters is making progress that can (eventually!) benefit everyone.

kylestlb 5y ago
"Almost all progress is connected to selfish goals" [citation needed]
- WalterBright 5y ago
  More like find one that isn't. I bet you can't :-)
  - agrover 5y ago
    Salk and Polio vaccine.
    - WalterBright 5y ago
      Salk said: "It's brought me enormous gratification" https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jonas_Salk https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jonas_Salk
      - staunch 5y ago
        Salk got funding for his lab from the billionaire Mellon family. The Polio vaccine is a prime example of how billionaires can help push civilization forward. > Sarah Scaife's causes were family planning, the poor and the disabled, hospitals, environmental causes and various good works in and around Pittsburgh. Her most famous gifts, in the late 1940s, were to the University of Pittsburgh – $35,000 to equip a virus research lab. In that lab, Jonas Salk discovered his polio vaccine. https://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-srv/politics/special/clinton/stories/scaifemain050299.htm https://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-srv/politics/special/clint...
        imwillofficial 5y ago
        How how far the Salk family has fallen. Weren’t they implicated in the opiate crisis?
varispeed 5y ago
> A public space race of billionaires is exactly the kind of thing we should all be hoping for. I'd rather see them paying fair wages and taxes. It's hugely inappropriate that they make billions while their workers struggle to pay rent. It's only possible, because those poor people are too worked out to protest and do something about effectively being slaves. These rockets seem more like modern day pyramids, only difference is that they will not last 3000 years.
- staunch 5y ago
  > I'd rather see them paying fair wages and taxes. Unless you're in the "billionaires must not exist" camp, which we could argue about, they'll still be very rich, given the scale and success of their businesses. A net worth of $50 billion vs $150 billion doesn't change all that much, for the U.S. treasury or Bezos. > It's hugely inappropriate that they make billions while their workers struggle to pay rent. There are many thousands of Amazon workers making six figure salaries. Thousands that making millions per year. These people are not struggling to pay rent. Amazon has also saved millions of low income people money through their services, not to mention the billions of taxes generated by their businesses. They're not some purely predatory business, like cigarette and alcohol companies. Billions of people benefit from Amazon.com and AWS-powered services every day of their lives. The fact that low skilled jobs pay crap is in no way unique to Amazon, they just happen to employ more than any other single organization. I'm fully onboard for a UBI policy in the US and I doubt Bezos or Musk would object for reasons of greed. The caricature of these guys being extremely greedy is fairly ignorant. Greediness is not what made them so rich. > These rockets seem more like modern day pyramids, only difference is that they will not last 3000 years. There's some other major differences, like they can actually make humanity space-faring, multi-planetary, provide world-wide high speed internet to poor villages, move toxic industries off-world, etc. Even the pyramids were not all bad, although the best you can say about them is that they were jobs programs, and a better use of human resources than fighting useless wars.
  - varispeed 5y ago
    > Unless you're in the "billionaires must not exist" camp, which we could argue about, they'll still be very rich, given the scale and success of their businesses. A net worth of $50 billion vs $150 billion doesn't change all that much, for the U.S. treasury or Bezos. They should be okay with $10 million. Average worker will never be able to accumulate even $1 million during their lifetime. > There are many thousands of Amazon workers making six figure salaries. Amazon has 1,298,000 workers. The 1% you are referring to, does not make Amazon a good company. Furthermore, given how much money Bezos was able to skim, the six figures are still laughable. > The fact that low skilled jobs pay crap is in no way unique to Amazon Yes, because we don't have proper regulation - like making sure highest pay is no more than 10x of lowest pay or linking minimum wage to company global revenue (with a minimum threshold). > and I doubt Bezos or Musk would object for reasons of greed. They would object, because people on UBI wouldn't have to work in their sweatshops. > like they can actually make humanity space-faring, Corporations are not motivated by humanity > provide world-wide high speed internet to poor villages To help with surveillance, data mining and control. > move toxic industries off-world, etc. Only if it is profitable. More likely they would move banking off-world to shield themselves from paying taxes.
8note 5y ago
This "eventually" sounds like it's really "we get progress once we put them through guillotines and claw back all the tech we paid for" The end state of these things is still government provided utilities: space equivalents to roads and busses The main benefit of billionaires doing this is that republicans love giving as tax money to rich people, so it can actually be funded, and the funding is what really decides whether a thing will be done
- staunch 5y ago
  Can you point to some examples in history of things going this way? There are relatively few advances that were done purely by governments. Usually progress starts in the government and is then superseded by private industry, or the reverse. There's a reason capitalist-America has led technological progress for 100+ years. The USSR had almost purely governmental funding and their administrators were almost universally terrible at genuine innovation.
andrepd 5y ago
> Let's get a public race among billionaires for curing cancer, HIV, and poverty. Imagine thinking that having to beg fief lords for what should be yours by right is a good thing...
- staunch 5y ago
  Imagine making up strawmen on forums so that you can feel smug knocking them down... The fact is that governments already spend far more than billionaires are able to spend and are relatively ineffective. No one has ever suggested they stop doing their part. Billionaires lending their expertise and money is not a substitute for government work, it's just a proven accelerant. See Bill Gates' work in Africa for an example. He has leveraged his fortune to help find effective opportunities for his money and government money. He has has saved millions of lives that no government would have otherwise saved, even if he had donated all of his money to the U.S. treasury.

kylestlb 5y ago

"Almost all progress is connected to selfish goals" [citation needed]

WalterBright 5y ago
More like find one that isn't. I bet you can't :-)
- agrover 5y ago
  Salk and Polio vaccine.
  - WalterBright 5y ago
    Salk said: "It's brought me enormous gratification" https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jonas_Salk https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jonas_Salk
    - staunch 5y ago
      Salk got funding for his lab from the billionaire Mellon family. The Polio vaccine is a prime example of how billionaires can help push civilization forward. > Sarah Scaife's causes were family planning, the poor and the disabled, hospitals, environmental causes and various good works in and around Pittsburgh. Her most famous gifts, in the late 1940s, were to the University of Pittsburgh – $35,000 to equip a virus research lab. In that lab, Jonas Salk discovered his polio vaccine. https://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-srv/politics/special/clinton/stories/scaifemain050299.htm https://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-srv/politics/special/clint...
      - imwillofficial 5y ago
        How how far the Salk family has fallen. Weren’t they implicated in the opiate crisis?

varispeed 5y ago

> A public space race of billionaires is exactly the kind of thing we should all be hoping for. I'd rather see them paying fair wages and taxes. It's hugely inappropriate that they make billions while their workers struggle to pay rent. It's only possible, because those poor people are too worked out to protest and do something about effectively being slaves. These rockets seem more like modern day pyramids, only difference is that they will not last 3000 years.

staunch 5y ago
> I'd rather see them paying fair wages and taxes. Unless you're in the "billionaires must not exist" camp, which we could argue about, they'll still be very rich, given the scale and success of their businesses. A net worth of $50 billion vs $150 billion doesn't change all that much, for the U.S. treasury or Bezos. > It's hugely inappropriate that they make billions while their workers struggle to pay rent. There are many thousands of Amazon workers making six figure salaries. Thousands that making millions per year. These people are not struggling to pay rent. Amazon has also saved millions of low income people money through their services, not to mention the billions of taxes generated by their businesses. They're not some purely predatory business, like cigarette and alcohol companies. Billions of people benefit from Amazon.com and AWS-powered services every day of their lives. The fact that low skilled jobs pay crap is in no way unique to Amazon, they just happen to employ more than any other single organization. I'm fully onboard for a UBI policy in the US and I doubt Bezos or Musk would object for reasons of greed. The caricature of these guys being extremely greedy is fairly ignorant. Greediness is not what made them so rich. > These rockets seem more like modern day pyramids, only difference is that they will not last 3000 years. There's some other major differences, like they can actually make humanity space-faring, multi-planetary, provide world-wide high speed internet to poor villages, move toxic industries off-world, etc. Even the pyramids were not all bad, although the best you can say about them is that they were jobs programs, and a better use of human resources than fighting useless wars.
- varispeed 5y ago
  > Unless you're in the "billionaires must not exist" camp, which we could argue about, they'll still be very rich, given the scale and success of their businesses. A net worth of $50 billion vs $150 billion doesn't change all that much, for the U.S. treasury or Bezos. They should be okay with $10 million. Average worker will never be able to accumulate even $1 million during their lifetime. > There are many thousands of Amazon workers making six figure salaries. Amazon has 1,298,000 workers. The 1% you are referring to, does not make Amazon a good company. Furthermore, given how much money Bezos was able to skim, the six figures are still laughable. > The fact that low skilled jobs pay crap is in no way unique to Amazon Yes, because we don't have proper regulation - like making sure highest pay is no more than 10x of lowest pay or linking minimum wage to company global revenue (with a minimum threshold). > and I doubt Bezos or Musk would object for reasons of greed. They would object, because people on UBI wouldn't have to work in their sweatshops. > like they can actually make humanity space-faring, Corporations are not motivated by humanity > provide world-wide high speed internet to poor villages To help with surveillance, data mining and control. > move toxic industries off-world, etc. Only if it is profitable. More likely they would move banking off-world to shield themselves from paying taxes.

8note 5y ago

This "eventually" sounds like it's really "we get progress once we put them through guillotines and claw back all the tech we paid for" The end state of these things is still government provided utilities: space equivalents to roads and busses The main benefit of billionaires doing this is that republicans love giving as tax money to rich people, so it can actually be funded, and the funding is what really decides whether a thing will be done

staunch 5y ago
Can you point to some examples in history of things going this way? There are relatively few advances that were done purely by governments. Usually progress starts in the government and is then superseded by private industry, or the reverse. There's a reason capitalist-America has led technological progress for 100+ years. The USSR had almost purely governmental funding and their administrators were almost universally terrible at genuine innovation.

andrepd 5y ago

> Let's get a public race among billionaires for curing cancer, HIV, and poverty. Imagine thinking that having to beg fief lords for what should be yours by right is a good thing...

staunch 5y ago
Imagine making up strawmen on forums so that you can feel smug knocking them down... The fact is that governments already spend far more than billionaires are able to spend and are relatively ineffective. No one has ever suggested they stop doing their part. Billionaires lending their expertise and money is not a substitute for government work, it's just a proven accelerant. See Bill Gates' work in Africa for an example. He has leveraged his fortune to help find effective opportunities for his money and government money. He has has saved millions of lives that no government would have otherwise saved, even if he had donated all of his money to the U.S. treasury.