How today's billionaires plan to improve the world
economist.com
economist.com
All of this is the culmination of the migration of the State from governments to Financiers. A replacement of democratic justice with “market justice”.
NOTE: I still like Elon Musk. But he’s the exception, and it could be argued that NASA would have done all of this already if their budget hadn’t been frozen for the last 50 years. FYI the budget in 1967 for NASA was, even BEFORE being adjusted to inflation, greater than it was today. Astounding.
Zuckerberg learned this the hard way when he spaffed $100 million on New York schools and ended up with zero measurable difference in outcomes.
https://finance.yahoo.com/news/mark-zuckerbergs-100-million-...
$100 million down the drain, largely because - guess what - the politics of Newark were totally unaffected by all this money. Zuck wanted a new teachers contract that linked pay to performance to be a part of the reform, and $50m of the $100m was devoted to achieving this outcome. It was meant to be used for teacher bonuses and so on. But only the state legislature could make real change there, and they didn't. Instead the contract was renegotiated with seniority protections intact because the union refused to budge on it, and the local government rolled over. The district also spent huge sums of money on "consultants" making $1000/day - $20m of it went down that rabbit hole.
In the end Zuck discovered that you can't solve political problems with money, no matter how much you throw around. Trump beat Clinton despite spending 50% as much, even though Obama had been warning after Citizens United that it represented a "serious harm to democracy". People tend to over-estimate the impact money can have on society.
If a system isn't really carefully designed, it ends up creating incentives to dump the hardest to teach kids somewhere.
(+) sarcasm - everyone claims that 10x developers exist, and they might be right, but there's no reliable scheme for identifying performance.
- People place way too much value on social connections over hard work.
- People have a greatly exaggerated view when it comes to the correlation between status/popularity and skill.
- The motto 'people over products' has been taken to such an extreme that products and tangible results seem to have been completely removed from the equation.
- Those who have the money to make a difference don't lead, instead, they follow trends.
If we solved these problems, society would be much, much better. Unfortunately solving these problems goes against the interests of wealthy people.
NASA's budget is ~18 billion a year. So out of 180 billion dollars they would have needed to devote ~500 million and then just fund it themselves.
So it's not really a money issue.
(SLS is bigger than the Falcon Heavy, but it's smaller than the BFR. There's a good chance the BFR will fly before the SLS.)
I think it's hard to argue against this; it's something that governments don't often do well. We need risk-takers who can try out new new approaches, get things done cheaply, and commit to a plan over the course of multiple election cycles.
Space launch is a case in point. I just read a book about solar power satellites [1], that went through the history of advanced launch programs in the U.S. Nothing ever got done because every few years, the new set of elected officials decided they wanted a different plan.
So all the ideas for new plans finally were abandoned, and now we've settled on an extremely risk-averse approach: the SLS, a disposable rocket using technology from the Space Shuttle. Politicians like it because it keeps the big contractors happy and puts jobs in a lot of districts, but it can't hope to expand access to space in the way the BFR is likely to do, because it will cost several billion dollars per launch [2].
If we don't like depending on billionaires, then we'd better figure out how to make daring and creative governments. Until we do, I'm glad there are people willing and able to spend their own money on fixing the problems that governments aren't fixing. I don't understand the view that only our governments should try to make the world better.
[1] https://www.amazon.com/Case-Space-Solar-Power-ebook/dp/B00HN...
"The would-be world-changers are applying innovative and evidence-based approaches in clinics and classrooms, where elected politicians are often too timid to risk failure, captured by entrenched interests or unwilling to spend public money on experimentation."
Corporations and the ultra rich are pretty new arrivals in the picture and I am willing to give them the benefit of the doubt. Especially since their track of record during the last century is net positive (much more good things coming out of them than bad).
And especially considering the “new” way they made their money, through adding value instead of the old way through being born into is, stealing and pillaging...
I'm not convinced that we can't have the former without the latter. But that would mean limiting the latter and there is not much political will to do so.
Implicit in this question is the idea that the destabilizing effects are actually a large amount of the banking activity. I would argue they are not, we just hear about that far more often because it's bad news, and bad news is more interesting. The rote, mundane functionality of all banks, including the big ones, is mostly under the radar and (in my opinion) vastly underappreciated with respect to banks' occasional tendency to throw the system out of whack. In particular, I would posit that the latter is more a manifestation of common economic activity than it is to a centralized and consolidated banking infrastructure. Or, more succinctly, that economic activity at the modern scale does not sustain itself without these banks working more or less as they do now.
There are certainly improvements to be made, for sure. But I personally discount the possibility that those improvements would radically reshape banking infrastructure or significantly reduce the volatility cycle we encounter every decade or two.
This is fairly naive and also misses the fact that corporations have been around for a very long time too and don't have a great moral track record either. The Dutch East India Company at its peak dwarfed any modern corporation in terms of wealth and power[1] and was incredibly exploitative and corrupt. The British East India Company caused Opium addiction in China and kickstarted the colonisation of India. Industrial capitalists created (and still create) inhumane working conditions for their workers. If you count the whole sum of human misery created by the economic demands of the slave trade it becomes harder to even confidently assert that governments or religions have caused more evil.
This is not necessarily to say that corporations have caused more evil than governments or politics, but they do have a long track record of evil too and shouldn't be given "the benefit of the doubt" any more than any other organisation with a large amount of power.
[1] http://www.visualcapitalist.com/most-valuable-companies-all-...
Well, by launching many rockets burning hundreds of tons of kerosene each, SpaceX kinda offsets Tesla's clean energy efforts.
And yet its much easier to find a cellphone than it is to find food and water. There are literally people still dying of starvation and yet there is something to be done about it.
We've evolved into buying more and more stuff, improving our everyday life by little bits such as upgrading from iphone 7 to 8, while there are still people out there that don't have something to put in their stomach, don't have the means to basic healthcare and don't have a roof over their head for when its cold and raining.
If you so want to improve the world, start off the basics and then move on.
Exclusively on certain markets - large, developed, and rich enough. While on other markets taking advantage of cheap labor and loose employee protection... and while paying the taxes in none of these markets... you forgot to add.
Ps.: The free market is not that system.
Note: The print title of this article was "The billionaires and the Falcon Heavy". Probably more appropriate given the actual content.
Spoiler: Article contains lightweight, anti-tech snobbery...
".. and Henry Ford ruthlessly made fortunes and then established foundations to enlighten the masses and ensure world peace long after their death. "
... is how it is meant regarding Ford. Enlightening the masses about the jews evil conspiracy and ensuring world peace by helping nazi domination?
Take Bill Gates. 20 years ago he was evil incarnate, his company caught in lying, cheating, corrupting. Now his PR team made sure he is regarded as one of the good ones. For the last few years, you saw post in HN, reddit, imgurs, all singing the goodness of his heart. And then comments followed.
No matter how many article you had decades ago stating all the wrong MS did, it's all water under the bridge. No ones remember. Clean slate.
Now people are even saying that Bush Jr. was "not so bad".
In 10 years, people will say Trump was ok.
Well, I never considered him to be the evil incarnate, even though I am for free software as long as I can remember. But yes, the hatdred towards him has declined.
But I think it might also have to do with him stepping a bit away from Microsoft and focusing more on his foundation (even though I don't believe, that his foundation is really doing so good). And Microsoft in general being not that important anymore.
Why?
But the other things, like helping with Computers means helping establishing Microsoft Monopoly.
And supporting heavily chemicalized monoculture farming, as a means to end hunger, I am very sceptical as a means to sustainable provide food production.
Especially when we all are also part of the economy and therefore by your logic also responsible for every war and famime etc.
So it is our hypocrisy as well.
But related: you know, that there have been wars and famine and poverty since the beginning of humanity(and before) ?
But I guess it's ok, if you fight Malaria.
And aiding a dictator sounds bad, but when "aiding" simply means doing business with him, then you can blame allmost the whole world. As we all are buying things that were at least partly made in dictatorships. And what is the alternative?
Not doing business with states who have not our perfectly nice democratic governments?
And don't get me wrong, I don't like Microsoft for making exclusive deals with any governments to strenghten their monopoly, but "evil" is something different.
Like what I came across yesterday again,
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/My_Lai_Massacre
and the fact, that there was a public outrage in the US, for convincting one of the murderers. And not so much about the massacre or the cover up itself.
And that this does not seem to have changed fundamentaly regarding the ongoing drone war, imprisoning innocent people for years in Guantanamo, torturing, massacring etc. etc.
So blaming only the rich seems hypocrite to me, when the very normal base of the people don't think or act that nice by themself. As far as I know over 70% consider Snowden to be a traitor ... so what can you expect?
Why do we even have to, yet again, bring the burden of the proof to fight a PR orchestrated with millions of dollar ?
It's an impossible to win fight to tell the sky is blue to people if the minute they don't look at it anymore, they doubt it and ask for proof.
Also, it's not safe to assume that everyone has read the same things you've read, and knows the same things you do. You have to be prepared to present your evidence during every conversation. Those are table stakes.
Reporting from where, precisely? And how does it negate Gates’ philanthropy? We need to see details. What may be obvious to you is entirely unobvious to us.
> Why do we even have to, yet again, bring the burden of the proof to fight a PR orchestrated with millions of dollar?
Because claims require the burden of proof in general, and extraordinary claims require extraordinary proof. What is your claim exactly? That the Gates Foundation has not, for example, nearly eradicated polio? That they weren’t even involved in the 99% reduction of its incidence? We’re debating with you in good faith by explaining what we see, it would be nice if you acknowledged us as intellectual peers and bothered to humor us with some evidence. You’re refuting our evidence with...nothing, and you haven’t given us evidence to refute. What are we supposed to do, just believe you?
> It's an impossible to win fight to tell the sky is blue to people if the minute they don't look at it anymore, they doubt it and ask for proof.
Look, if you want to rant into a void, continue carrying on like this. If you want to seriously convince people, you need to make an effort with falsifiable claims and some evidence instead of going on about a grand conspiracy to make Bill Gates look good.
What an incredibly effective conspiracy, to spend billions of dollars helping people. How nefarious of them, who would have thought of that!
Yeah, no.
I want to hear from you how, specifically, Microsoft’s high valuation (and thereby most of Gates’ wealth) is a product of war, famine, and poverty. I want concrete evidence, not handwaving, and not global capitalist conspiracies. If you can’t provide that, your claims are intellectually dishonest and you’re spreading a narrative.
What exactly is the problem with "buying a stairway to heaven?" If you're actually doing good work, how is this criticism not just a vacuous attack?
I'm just annoyed that the rest is forgiven because of it.
It sends a toxic message: be a ruthless businessman today, and, if you succeed, donate money you don't need before dying and people will call you a saint.
I'm a liberal voter, but I found the liberal reaction to Trump's election to be extreme. People thought it was the end of the free world and progress as we know it. Someone I knew spent a large sum of money on a bomb shelter.
When your assessment is that low, is there really anywhere to go but up in the future?
But in hindsight that all seems a lot less evil to me than what today's giants are doing: vacuuming up our personal lives and delivering them to the NSA, cultivating addiction and depression in children to increase ad views, etc.
1990s/2000s Microsoft seems saintly to me by comparison.
You have to know this level of hyperbole is baiting Godwin’s Law...
I’ll come right out and say it: I never thought Microsoft’s activity was that bad, and I never really understood the ire that Bill Gates received. I agree it was worth antitrust action, but the way people talked about him and the company has always struck me as self-righteous and hollow. There were just so many worse people and things that it seemed silly in my opinion, and sort of lacking in awareness about the broader context of the country or even the world. In fact I would go so far as to say people carrying on about him like this made it more difficult to take Microsoft’s anti-competitive behavior seriously because it stifled honest conversation. If Gates is anything remotely close to “evil incarnate”, then what adjective would you use to describe, I don’t know, Kim Jong Un? Do you see why it’s hard to take your point seriously when your proclamation is that over the top? How can we communicate in good faith if that’s where you’re starting from?
People diminutize the fact that Gates has spent billions of dollars of his own wealth both leading initiatives and helping others along for inarguable good in the world by calling it “PR” - if that’s PR, what isn’t? How can we reasonably and rationally discuss the legitimately impressive humanitarian achievements of the Gates Foundation or Microsoft without you just dismissing it as the machinations of someone hellbent on a quest for power? What satisfies your bar for altruism?! Listening to descriptions of the man, you’d think he was literally burning puppies and kittens alive in the early days of Microsoft while blasting The Imperial March, like some kind of macabre cartoon villain.
Have some perspective. It was an internet browser.
... a bit more than that.
But also not "literally burning puppies and kittens alive in the early days of Microsoft while blasting The Imperial March" ...
More to the point, when people talk about Gates like this, it's both dismissive of his very legitimate philanthropic accomplishments and stifling to any well-reasoned, neutral conversation we could have about Microsoft's legitimate failings.
Let's put aside the silliness of dismissing actual philanthropy by complaining that it puts people in a positive light. If I take the parent commenter's thesis at face value, then Bill Gates' philanthropy is a public relations conspiracy designed to get people to forget "how bad he was" in his Microsoft years. Frankly, I can only hope more CEOs become so publicly vilified for anti-competitive practices that they decide they need to start foundations to spend billions of dollars reducing various life threatening diseases by double digit percentages.
So yes, you could say I'm willing to look the other way, or at least more fondly, when it comes to Bill's Microsoft years. If his public relations strategy is to make himself look good by doing good, then I don't have anything to complain about. What are we supposed to do, nod to each other and say, "Yes, but let's not forget about how evil his company was in the 80s and 90s..." in a somber tone every time his philanthropic works comes up?
It's ridiculous. And most of the vocal proponents of this idea are intellectually insulting, with passive aggressive remarks that accuse people of being shills in a web of lies.
And there's a lot of weirdness in there, including the obviously lunatic claim "The U.S. (et al.) effectively built and maintained the Nazi war machine for the entirety of World War 2."
WWII was a wildly profitable enterprise.
Re: slave labour, see: https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/northamerica/usa/...
BBH: https://www.google.com.uy/amp/s/amp.theguardian.com/world/20...
More on Ford: https://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-srv/national/daily/nov98/n...
The quora answer I was calling questionable was https://www.quora.com/Did-Ford-sue-the-US-government-for-bom... which is very different - while it seems that there were Americans illegally collaborating, that's a very different claim to the US supporting Nazi Germany.
I am a long time Economist reader. The publication is consistent in quality and its viewpoints. You don’t have to agree with its views, but it does not lack credibility.