Jeff Bezos: Request for ideas
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For less than the cost of SpaceX they could have just bribed congress to give NASA sufficient funding.
For less than the cost of whatever Bill Gates tries to do with education, he could have just bribed congress to fund schools properly.
If they really believed in equal rights regardless of gender, sex, nationality, sexual orientation, race or religion, they could bribe congress to fix those things.
If they cared about the environment, you could bribe congress to fund the EPA more.
Single payer health care, they can just make it happen.
If I had that money, that's sure as hell what I would be doing with it. The fact that they haven't already suggest to me that maybe they don't actually believe in these things as much as they sometimes pretend to. Rich assholes never put their money where their mouth is.
And when I say bribe I mean the legal kind. Where you fund their campaigns through SuperPACs. You can outspend those Koch bros. easily. Why not go for it?
And you're right. It's a great idea. A sort of white-hat political force (controlling a tangled web of various corporation/non-profit/PAC type entities) that, instead of trying to gain some narrow advantage at the expense of the public, does the opposite.
If Bezos really has the balls to spend it, he has enough money; a presidential campaign, the most expensive kind, only costs 1.2 gigadollars or so[1].
You only need 60 senators and a couple hundred members of the House of Representatives to get whatever shit done you want. So doling out $10,000,000,000.00 a year or so in the right places would go a long way.
Of course, eight years later you're broke, the patient hegemony of other rich people and corporate interests reasserts itself, and America starts sliding down the path to democratic failure again...
[1]: https://www.washingtonpost.com/graphics/politics/2016-electi...
Rupert Murdoch is the primary backer of all things right wing in the world, and does more to influence elections and governments than Russia ever could. He wields that influence through media ownership.
[Roche](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hoffmann-La_Roche) [Merck](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Merck_Group) [Bayer](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bayer) [Sanofi](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sanofi)
Even supposing all pharmaceutical innovation comes from the U.S. still does not show that without the U.S. there would be none. Clearly there is a market for drugs and the U.S. is not the only country with research capabilities.
Taxes are not that much higher elsewhere. People are not being taxed to death elsewhere.
It seems the barbarians are certainly at the gates. Oh well, we had a good ride.
If someone can start a 100% transparent charitable organization, where each line item of expense is open to the public, it would give people more confidence in giving, and it would give the organizations more incentive to make effective and efficient decisions. Kind of like a manager overseeing your moves, except it's the public since they provide the funding.
In terms of where to focus the efforts -- I find providing education is the only short term effort that can lead to long term and everlasting gains.
https://www.effectivealtruism.org/
GiveWell, in particular, publishes a bunch of information (cost/benefit analyses, intervention reports, etc.) about their charitable success/initiatives.
1) First, buy an under utilized country (or a piece of country eg Newfoundland, Sakhalin Island, Princes Royal Island or similar)
2) install the British Institutions OS (run by retired Commonwealth employees). just like Hong Kong or Singapore.
3) allow visa free travel and residence for any non-criminal person on earth
4) To prime the pump, buy stuff from this new country and sell it through any handy distribution channel you might have
N.B. Don't forget to recirculate income from the top of the economy to the bottom or the heart will stop.
He's a smart kid, a lack of insight and focus do not come to mind when I think of his ability to tackle challenges.
In other news today... a lot of middle to upper middles class people, who view Amazon as a cold corporate digital version of Walmart, just had their favourite grocery store taken over.
I don't think the widespread resentment of Amazon as a "cold corporate digital version of WalMart" exists outside of your own point of view, and perhaps a few publishers' offices in New York. Amazon is one of those factors in its customers' lives that pretty much always Just Works. Gotta give credit (and cash, and gift cards) where it's due.
Just one opinion, but I already thought of Amazon as "the internet's WalMart". And that was before they took over Whole Foods.
It's not a widespread opinion yet, but I'm guessing as they exert ever more influence, more people will come to a similar association. If Amazon decides to takeover Meijer's next (just as an example) a lot of upper-midwest folks would suddenly make a similar association.
I know more than a few people who dislike what Amazon did to their favourite local bookstore but also shop at Amazon. I'm very long AMZN and I shop at Wholefood & Trader Joes.
I'm just suggesting that (a) Bezos has smart people around him who could give him suggestions and (b) this isn't bad PR.