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I don’t think so. The very rich can really try things and build industries that we wouldn’t be able to do otherwise. Elon musk wouldn’t have been able to do any

I don’t think so. The very rich can really try things and build industries that we wouldn’t be able to do otherwise. Elon musk wouldn’t have been able to do anything he did without the money from PayPal. Same thing with the Rockefellers and the Hearsts in the early 20th century.

anigbrowl 4y ago
Maybe needing to be vastly rich to to cool things is the actual problem? Suppose there were higher levels of general financial security such that people could take more risks. Open source software generates huge positive externalities without fairy godparents.
- bergenty 4y ago
  You just can’t achieve really big things with a medium amount of money. You can have the government do it but you never really see that much innovation. There’s a reason you don’t see a huge amount of innovation coming out of Europe.
  - toomuchtodo 4y ago
    But in return, everyone has a decent quality of life. In America, the innovation comes at the cost of grinding everyone not wealthy till death. Just be upfront that’s the trade off for “innovation.” The economic environment that allows for such enormous wealth aggregation comes at a cost.
    - bergenty 4y ago
      Yeah I’m in the camp where I want to see rapid progress above a decent quality of life for everyone. I feel like we’re rapidly approaching a point where technology can realistically solve all of our basic problems and want to get there as quickly as possible even if it means pain in the short term (probably our lifetimes). Obviously not everyone will agree with me but in the US even a grinding life isn’t all that bad relatively. You won’t go hungry, if you’re not drug addled you’ll rarely be on the streets for very long, if you have a mental condition or disability you get money from the government, minimum wage jobs are very, very easy to get, we have a problem with cops but on the whole our justice system actually lets anyone get justice etc.
      - svnt 4y ago
        I am really confused. Could you provide some data to back up your position that basically nothing is a big problem unless you are “drug addled”? How does one become “drug addled” if nothing is a problem? I would be more convinced if you could also link to studies showing how early family life and local history have no impact on developmental brain processes and don’t create culture traps.
        LawTalkingGuy 4y ago
        > How does one become “drug addled” if nothing is a problem? Prescription drugs, used according to the bottle/doctor. Hard drugs mixed in with softer ones. Intentional drugging. Many ways.
        prottog 4y ago
        We would also need studies showing how additional government intervention in the family helps prevent the culture trap. What can the government do to make people value education and delayed gratification, which are perhaps the two traits best shown to enhance individual outcomes?
        svnt 4y ago
        Most of the work on delayed gratification has been shown to not be measuring capacity for that but instead trust in potential future gains and personal security. What the government could do to enable what you’ve called out is help ensure more people meet the necessary lower levels of Maslow’s hierarchy so that when kids show up to stuff marshmallows in their mouths they can feel secure enough in the probable truth of the statements and even simply the return of the researcher to assign any probability to the appearance of a second marshmallow. Step one is something like don’t let babies be raised in abandoned projects where everything they have gets stolen regularly from before they can remember.
    - sneak 4y ago
      That’s a false dichotomy. The percentage of people with bad quality of life is about the same in both places (for westernized Europe) and much worse for eastern Europe.
      - wizofaus 4y ago
        Officially the poverty rate is actually somewhat lower in the US than most countries in Europe. But it seems unlikely it's measured the same way, or that it necessarily translates to more people being unable to access basic services (health, housing, power etc.).
    - deleted 4y ago
      [deleted]
  - svnt 4y ago
    We have no idea what innovation might have come because it was overrun by earlier deliberately monopolistic efforts driven by the aggressive and arguably unnecessary consumption of marginal human lives. Just because the fastest way of building something can win doesn’t mean we should do it that way. In fact, we almost always shouldn’t do it that way, upon inspection.
  - sophacles 4y ago
    Funny you say this on the internet, an innovative (at the time, now it's just taken for granted) communications network funded by the US government for it's first decade. On that network you are using a technology (http/html) that was inveted at CERN (a large government funded research institute) in Europe. These two things together have widely been credited with changing the world.
    - prottog 4y ago
      Inventing a technology and building a profitable business on top of it are very different things that require very different skill-sets. Besides, there is no evidence to suggest that private money cannot fund basic research of the type that the government does.
      - PuppyTailWags 4y ago
        > there is no evidence to suggest that private money cannot fund basic research of the type that the government does. The evidence is that it doesn't. Pharma companies rake in the money a ton but they're not the ones discovering new drugs, they're just the ones who ferry it to market.
        LunaSea 4y ago
        Current machine learning state of the art would like to disagree.
    - isleyaardvark 4y ago
      I couldn't help thinking about the space race, myself. That was a puzzling assertion.
- bombcar 4y ago
  No amount of general financial security would get me what I need to start a company that can land rockets. Even if I can get the group of people I need for free (because all their expenses are paid) I still need land, materials, etc.
  - banannaise 4y ago
    No, we still need land, materials, etc. Accomplishing things becomes a problem of cooperation instead of acquisition. Instead of "Can I buy the things and pay people to do work" we have "Can we agree to allocate resources and work together". You're assuming that one lone visionary is essential to success, and that a level of coercion is necessary so he can make people do the work. We're software people here. We should know to reject "visionaries". They're just idea guys, the same guys we laugh at when they say "Here's my app idea, you build it and we can split the profits 50/50".
- tracerbulletx 4y ago
  Software is one thing. Getting people to build ships that can transport tons and tons of materials around the world, dig lithium from a mine, send things into space, or clean the office buildings, or dig the fiber trenches, or run the power plants is a another. If money was too diffuse, then economic decision making would be too diffuse to be an organizing principal. Whether the people who end up with the capital required to make those decisions actually deserve it or are especially good at it vs anyone else is a whole different matter.
smt88 4y ago
Wielding that amount of money/power is most often used for evil. Even if it were only used for good, it should be democratically controlled. It's nice that Bill Gates uses his billions for tackling diseases, but he shouldn't be able to decide the fates of millions of people unilaterally. He's an individual wielding nation-scale power, and that's dangerous for everyone else. The same is true for Musk, and it's especially true for the billionaires who are distorting our democracy (Thiel, Bankman-Fried, Bloomberg, Koch, Hastings, etc.)
- mikkergp 4y ago
  I don’t know the way around this, but I do think it’s good that power is not centralized in one governmental structure, even if that structure is Democratic, and I also think it’s good that there are a diverse set of philosophies determining how philanthropy should happen. I don’t know that I love the idea of billionaires being the solution to those two problems, but I do think that some part of our resiliency as a nation is because the government doesn’t have total control over those things. Not to mention the obvious conundrum that this may be great when the party you support is in power but not so great when they’re not.
  - ryan93 4y ago
    They are not a “solution” they are private citizens engaging in activities that are not if your business.
    - mikkergp 4y ago
      Did you mean to say that are none of my business? I’m not sure what you are getting at here.
  - banannaise 4y ago
    > I don’t know the way around this, but I do think it’s good that power is not centralized in one governmental structure, even if that structure is Democratic If your assertion is that nobody should wield nation-scale power, then I agree, and welcome to anarchism! If your assertion is that billionaires are an effective check on governmental power, I'm... not seeing it. Particularly given how much power billionaires have to influence the government itself.
adrianN 4y ago
People generally like the idea of democracies. Why shouldn't we let democratically elected representatives decide what cool things we want to do instead of leaving those decisions to individuals that happen to be very rich.

anigbrowl 4y ago

Maybe needing to be vastly rich to to cool things is the actual problem? Suppose there were higher levels of general financial security such that people could take more risks. Open source software generates huge positive externalities without fairy godparents.

bergenty 4y ago
You just can’t achieve really big things with a medium amount of money. You can have the government do it but you never really see that much innovation. There’s a reason you don’t see a huge amount of innovation coming out of Europe.
- toomuchtodo 4y ago
  But in return, everyone has a decent quality of life. In America, the innovation comes at the cost of grinding everyone not wealthy till death. Just be upfront that’s the trade off for “innovation.” The economic environment that allows for such enormous wealth aggregation comes at a cost.
  - bergenty 4y ago
    Yeah I’m in the camp where I want to see rapid progress above a decent quality of life for everyone. I feel like we’re rapidly approaching a point where technology can realistically solve all of our basic problems and want to get there as quickly as possible even if it means pain in the short term (probably our lifetimes). Obviously not everyone will agree with me but in the US even a grinding life isn’t all that bad relatively. You won’t go hungry, if you’re not drug addled you’ll rarely be on the streets for very long, if you have a mental condition or disability you get money from the government, minimum wage jobs are very, very easy to get, we have a problem with cops but on the whole our justice system actually lets anyone get justice etc.
    - svnt 4y ago
      I am really confused. Could you provide some data to back up your position that basically nothing is a big problem unless you are “drug addled”? How does one become “drug addled” if nothing is a problem? I would be more convinced if you could also link to studies showing how early family life and local history have no impact on developmental brain processes and don’t create culture traps.
      - LawTalkingGuy 4y ago
        > How does one become “drug addled” if nothing is a problem? Prescription drugs, used according to the bottle/doctor. Hard drugs mixed in with softer ones. Intentional drugging. Many ways.
      - prottog 4y ago
        We would also need studies showing how additional government intervention in the family helps prevent the culture trap. What can the government do to make people value education and delayed gratification, which are perhaps the two traits best shown to enhance individual outcomes?
        svnt 4y ago
        Most of the work on delayed gratification has been shown to not be measuring capacity for that but instead trust in potential future gains and personal security. What the government could do to enable what you’ve called out is help ensure more people meet the necessary lower levels of Maslow’s hierarchy so that when kids show up to stuff marshmallows in their mouths they can feel secure enough in the probable truth of the statements and even simply the return of the researcher to assign any probability to the appearance of a second marshmallow. Step one is something like don’t let babies be raised in abandoned projects where everything they have gets stolen regularly from before they can remember.
  - sneak 4y ago
    That’s a false dichotomy. The percentage of people with bad quality of life is about the same in both places (for westernized Europe) and much worse for eastern Europe.
    - wizofaus 4y ago
      Officially the poverty rate is actually somewhat lower in the US than most countries in Europe. But it seems unlikely it's measured the same way, or that it necessarily translates to more people being unable to access basic services (health, housing, power etc.).
  - deleted 4y ago
    [deleted]
- svnt 4y ago
  We have no idea what innovation might have come because it was overrun by earlier deliberately monopolistic efforts driven by the aggressive and arguably unnecessary consumption of marginal human lives. Just because the fastest way of building something can win doesn’t mean we should do it that way. In fact, we almost always shouldn’t do it that way, upon inspection.
- sophacles 4y ago
  Funny you say this on the internet, an innovative (at the time, now it's just taken for granted) communications network funded by the US government for it's first decade. On that network you are using a technology (http/html) that was inveted at CERN (a large government funded research institute) in Europe. These two things together have widely been credited with changing the world.
  - prottog 4y ago
    Inventing a technology and building a profitable business on top of it are very different things that require very different skill-sets. Besides, there is no evidence to suggest that private money cannot fund basic research of the type that the government does.
    - PuppyTailWags 4y ago
      > there is no evidence to suggest that private money cannot fund basic research of the type that the government does. The evidence is that it doesn't. Pharma companies rake in the money a ton but they're not the ones discovering new drugs, they're just the ones who ferry it to market.
      - LunaSea 4y ago
        Current machine learning state of the art would like to disagree.
  - isleyaardvark 4y ago
    I couldn't help thinking about the space race, myself. That was a puzzling assertion.
bombcar 4y ago
No amount of general financial security would get me what I need to start a company that can land rockets. Even if I can get the group of people I need for free (because all their expenses are paid) I still need land, materials, etc.
- banannaise 4y ago
  No, we still need land, materials, etc. Accomplishing things becomes a problem of cooperation instead of acquisition. Instead of "Can I buy the things and pay people to do work" we have "Can we agree to allocate resources and work together". You're assuming that one lone visionary is essential to success, and that a level of coercion is necessary so he can make people do the work. We're software people here. We should know to reject "visionaries". They're just idea guys, the same guys we laugh at when they say "Here's my app idea, you build it and we can split the profits 50/50".
tracerbulletx 4y ago
Software is one thing. Getting people to build ships that can transport tons and tons of materials around the world, dig lithium from a mine, send things into space, or clean the office buildings, or dig the fiber trenches, or run the power plants is a another. If money was too diffuse, then economic decision making would be too diffuse to be an organizing principal. Whether the people who end up with the capital required to make those decisions actually deserve it or are especially good at it vs anyone else is a whole different matter.

smt88 4y ago

Wielding that amount of money/power is most often used for evil. Even if it were only used for good, it should be democratically controlled. It's nice that Bill Gates uses his billions for tackling diseases, but he shouldn't be able to decide the fates of millions of people unilaterally. He's an individual wielding nation-scale power, and that's dangerous for everyone else. The same is true for Musk, and it's especially true for the billionaires who are distorting our democracy (Thiel, Bankman-Fried, Bloomberg, Koch, Hastings, etc.)

mikkergp 4y ago
I don’t know the way around this, but I do think it’s good that power is not centralized in one governmental structure, even if that structure is Democratic, and I also think it’s good that there are a diverse set of philosophies determining how philanthropy should happen. I don’t know that I love the idea of billionaires being the solution to those two problems, but I do think that some part of our resiliency as a nation is because the government doesn’t have total control over those things. Not to mention the obvious conundrum that this may be great when the party you support is in power but not so great when they’re not.
- ryan93 4y ago
  They are not a “solution” they are private citizens engaging in activities that are not if your business.
  - mikkergp 4y ago
    Did you mean to say that are none of my business? I’m not sure what you are getting at here.
- banannaise 4y ago
  > I don’t know the way around this, but I do think it’s good that power is not centralized in one governmental structure, even if that structure is Democratic If your assertion is that nobody should wield nation-scale power, then I agree, and welcome to anarchism! If your assertion is that billionaires are an effective check on governmental power, I'm... not seeing it. Particularly given how much power billionaires have to influence the government itself.

adrianN 4y ago

People generally like the idea of democracies. Why shouldn't we let democratically elected representatives decide what cool things we want to do instead of leaving those decisions to individuals that happen to be very rich.