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/10508124862265999...
Musk at least is already doing what you’re asking the money for.
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.
They already do tax them, at higher rates than anyone else in society. And its long been observed that a 100% tax rate wouldn’t pay for the social programs you’re asking for, because the ultra-wealthy just don’t have that much wealth relative to current government revenue levels.
As for socialized healthcare, we have it, perhaps you’ve heard of the affordable healthcare act and medicare. As for minimum wage, the US is 16th in the world. I’m not sure how you propose to translate taxes into a higher minimu wage, maybe a direct subsidy for workers? In any case they would then spend it on the same consumption goods as other miminum wage earners and put profit in the pockets of corporations and bid up the prices until equilibrium canceled out the increased wage. Paid personal leave? You want to pay people to not work because of some imaginary zeroes? Or you want to reduce the marginal productivity of capital in order to reduce the productivity of labor as well?
> 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.
Compared to the roughly $100,000 billion/year combined GDP of all nations, the $8 billion/year [0] Musk is trying to make the Mars colony cost is a rounding error, not “serious” money.
[0] 1e6 people at $200,000/person, divided by 25 years for even the most optimistic timeline
I will slightly disagree with characterizing Musk's linked tweet as "doing what you're asking the money for", only because "intended" is a bit nebulous; he could be spending a lot of money solving problems now rather than merely "intending" to do so. (One could argue that his companies are all intended to solve problems, to be sure, but that gets way more nebulous really fast.)
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.
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.
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_Foundat...
