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How much power is concentrated in the hands of individuals... It's great that Gates is choosing to use that power philanthropically, but it also raises question
by RataNova 1y ago
How much power is concentrated in the hands of individuals... It's great that Gates is choosing to use that power philanthropically, but it also raises questions about the long-term role of private wealth in solving public problems.
- CamperBob2 1y agoWell, it's not as if the public sector is solving many problems these days. We seem to have decided, collectively, that we'd rather have more problems. At least that's what we've been voting for.
- whattheheckheck 1y agoHow can it when it's a thankless job that other psychopathic politicians will rally the people you're trying to help against you?
- alabastervlog 1y ago> We seem to have decided, collectively, that we'd rather have more problems. ... because a faction of the rich decided they wanted the poors to believe government can't do anything useful, and launched an ongoing decades-long propaganda campaign to that effect.
- eej71 1y agoI think that's an incredibly simplistic and naive view of why large public projects gobble up colossal sums of money and don't have much to show for it.
- TheOtherHobbes 1y agoA lot of that public money somehow ends up in the private sector, usually as corporate profits. Libertarians may want to ask themselves what happens to the private sector - aerospace, energy, R&D, infrastructure, education - when public investment stops.
- eej71 1y agoI am guessing that in your mind that if a private corporation bids on a contract it should only break even? Is that it? Or perhaps - for you - even better would be - the whole thing would be done by the government. There is no private corporation?
- jjj123 1y agoCan both things be true? I have no doubt that a nationalized healthcare system would be bureaucratic and inefficient. But I also know our current system is worse by almost every metric and stays that way due to lobbying and, yes, propaganda against alternatives like Medicare for all.
- GuinansEyebrows 1y agoIt's not as naive as you're painting it to be: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dark_Money_(book) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dark_Money_(book)
- eej71 1y agoI'm sure a similar book could be written where the political stripes are all changed. Instead of Koch, we have Soros. Instead of Musk, it would be Gates. Instead of whoever owns Sinclair Media, its Carlos Slim or Lauren Powell Jobs.
- GuinansEyebrows 1y agoAnd? I would welcome that. This isn't team sports where I'm rooting for my favorite billionaire. That said, this book actually exists.
- eej71 1y agoI know the book exists as I'm very familiar with the kinds of claims that get repeated in threads like this. To me - these claims seem to fuel a conspiracy like mind set about why certain efforts or movements fail. "Because the billionares didn't want it to". "Or they bought the media and control the narrative". "Its all just a uniparty!". If I were to replace the word billionare with the name of the first Abrahamic religion, you and I would both see that view point as low intellect nonsense. And it would be. But somehow, sub in the word billionare and then it becomes brilliant analysis for some.
- GuinansEyebrows 1y agowell, you're changing from "people only complain about some billionaires" to "people complain about all billionaires and it's just a conspiracy theory" so I'm not sure what point you're trying to get across. maybe you could read the book to dispel your mistaken notion that it's just "billionaires bad", since it's stated (and successful) objective is to cover a specific group of highly-influential people that have worked on very specific projects in furtherance of a specific political/economic ideal that we're reaping the fruits of now in real time.
- alabastervlog 1y agoThat's a non sequitur, so... OK.
- nradov 1y agoYou're correct to an extent, but "the rich" also have a point there. As a taxpayer, the level of waste and incompetence in government spending on those problems is horrifying. It doesn't have to be that way. We don't need to spend billions of dollars and decades of time just to get minor infrastructure projects completed. https://www.simonandschuster.com/books/Abundance/Ezra-Klein/9781668023488 https://www.simonandschuster.com/books/Abundance/Ezra-Klein/...
- biophysboy 1y agoThe public sector has many problems, but they do pick up the tab when disaster strikes.
- deleted 1y ago[deleted]
- bogwog 1y agoWell, consider how our voting priorities would change if billionaires had less of an impact on elections? Would we be where we are today if, for example, Musk couldn't spend over a quarter billion dollars influencing the 2024 election?
- lesuorac 1y agoI honestly don't think Musk affected 2024 to any real extent. Look at how much narrower Harris's loss was than other incumbent losses in 2024. If anything you could make the argument Musk tanked Trump's lead like Trump tanked Poilievre. Democrats running a candidate that lost their only attempts during a competitive primary. As well as that candidate being unable to read the room and saying they'd do the same economic decisions as the unpopular _incumbent_ Biden. And they still were within 1% of votes!
- bombcar 1y agoIt is much easier to assume that someone else funneled money somewhere on the other side and caused your side (which is always perfect and without fault) to lose. It is absolutely disheartening and horrible to face the reality that democracy may result in outcomes you don't like, and people may have voted wrong with full knowledge and forethought.
- deleted 1y ago[deleted]
- knowitnone 1y agothe rich have always impacted elections through advertisements, campaigns donations, etc.
- lapcat 1y agoThat's because the ultra-wealthy control the elections via unlimited campaign contributions, "independent" group spending, lobbying, providing lucrative jobs to ex-politicians, or even running for office themselves. Both of the major political parties are corrupted by money, just in different ways, different funding sources. The news media has also been centralized, monopolized, and increasingly, owned directly by billionaires. The public sector doesn't work because it's been sabotaged by the private sector.
- RataNova 1y agoYeah, that's a big part of the problem, I think
- RataNova 1y agoFair point, public trust in institutions has eroded for a reason. But if we give up on the idea that the public sector should solve problems, we're basically conceding the game to whoever happens to have the most money and the least accountability
- tootie 1y agoHe talks about this in today's NY Times interview and he is pretty unsparing against Elon Musk in particular for his role in killing USAID. Says he is directly complicit in killing children while at the same time, he is technically still a signatory of the Giving Pledge.
- njdas 1y ago[dead]
- nfriedly 1y agoWow, he lays it out pretty bluntly: > the world’s richest man has been involved in the deaths of the world’s poorest children https://www.nytimes.com/2025/05/08/magazine/bill-gates-foundation-closing-2045.html https://www.nytimes.com/2025/05/08/magazine/bill-gates-found...
- codr7 1y ago[flagged]
- Cthulhu_ 1y agoWhen the government doesn't do it, private parties have to; when there's a significant percentage of the population voting for "small government" parties, more responsibility goes to (wealthy) individuals.
- coryfklein 1y ago> private parties have to No they don't. It can also be that neither the government nor private parties give. Making it an either/or often makes space for the individual to make excuses for why they don't share because out there somewhere there exists some government program that vaguely looks like charity.
- njdas 1y ago[dead]
- newsclues 1y agoIf the government do it, because they are lobbied not to, so that private parties (with lobbyists) can, there is potential moral hazard.
- otikik 1y agoWhen the government doesn't do it, it's because wealthy individuals have already bought the government. And have invested huge amounts of money into bamboozling the population into voting against their own interests.
- toenail 1y agoIf there's a problem to solve, there is a business opportunity. What do you propose instead?
- malcolmgreaves 1y agoNo. Capitalism is ineffective at solving lots of problems. Particularly problems of the kind where there is universal inelastic demand, where competition makes the end arrive or product less affordable or efficient, where externalities are not priced in, and where there are single/few or a unique instance of a thing that can be used by the public. Examples: healthcare, food and water for sustenance; insurance; pollution; parks and roadways, residential property; respectively.
- toenail 1y agoYou didn’t answer the question. I get it, you think capitalism is bad. What do you propose instead?
- energy123 1y agoRegulated capitalism, where cases of market failure are addressed.
- toenail 1y agoThe Chinese model, got it.
- GoatInGrey 1y agoI sometimes wish we actually had unregulated capitalism. Housing and healthcare would be much less terrible without legislated bottlenecks, among other areas.
- energy123 1y agoAgreed with the nuance. We need less bad regulations (housing and health) and more good regulations (food and environment).
- adverbly 1y ago+1 This is great, but what about the rich people who don't give? Won't they just continue to get more and more power? The scales are tipped and this is not sustainable. Gary Stevenson is a bit extreme, but he's not wrong about centralization and it's dangers!
- RataNova 1y agoThe system relies too much on the whims of individuals rather than building durable, democratic institutions that tackle these problems consistently
- 0_____0 1y agoHis letter basically says this, explicitly stating that government is needed for things like eradicating Polio.