What a gal. The world would be a much different place if we saw more of this kind of wealth transfer.
Unfortunately, it’s a drop in the bucket compared to the amount of destruction that Jeff and other billionaires have wreaked on US small businesses and the poor.
EXAMPLES:
Billionaires are driving up single family home prices across the US:
https://www.commondreams.org/news/wall-street-buying-houses
https://www.cnbc.com/amp/2023/02/21/how-wall-street-bought-s...
Bezos and Musk fight unionization and workers rights?
https://www.jwj.org/emboldened-billionaires-take-aim-at-new-...
The prison phone market is owned by billionaires: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Inmate_telephone_system
Amazon now accepts SNAP/EBT payments after destroying small businesses:
https://www.paymentsdive.com/news/amazon-now-accepts-ebt-car...
Farmers are not allowed to reuse seeds from billionaire firms:
https://grain.org/en/article/5142-seed-laws-that-criminalise...
Which is a problem for a lot of "tax the rich" schemes. The rich don't actually have that much money relative to the large number of people who want a piece of it. The trick is in the effective deployment of capital but that rarely gets enough focus.
Why else an unelected private citizen (Elon) is able to bully congress? He is going to pour 100 million plus dollars to mess with British elections. More than 60% of the money raised by the GOP this year came from ultra wealthy people. Striking Amazon workers are getting beaten up by cops for using their right to protest. And so on
In China their Elon Musk equivalent can't bully congress. That is Jack Ma, he disappeared for a bit, reappeared and then ... a cynic would say he fled to Japan and has spent the last year or two cowering. Xi Jinping stands unbullied! The question here is who do you want to hold it and why are they qualified? Should Trump have free reign? Should Congress be all-powerful (noting that the likely outcome of that is that power then effectively goes to the whips).
I like the idea of no individual having too much power, but outsiders being able to bully congress seems like a great idea. The US Congress is a disgrace to basic principles of competence, honesty and good governance. The US would be well served by more entities that can challenge and bully them, not less. Private citizens being able to loom over them represents a strength of the US system. Better to have someone transient but competent who is powerful than a known-bad institution.
Nobody (other than billionaires) is happy with congress, their approval rating is the lowest it has ever been. That doesn’t mean we want one man to bully them, especially one as dumb and vile as Musk.
The right way to fight back is by peaceful protests, voting corrupt officials out etc.
> The right way to fight back is by peaceful protests, voting corrupt officials out etc.
Go try that in Hong Kong. If the most powerful man in a country is no threat to the politicians, a group of the smallest certainly aren't and will be lucky to get away just being ignored.
Seriously, the US is better off if Musk can stare down Congress. For all you don't like him, he's better than a group of politicians that looks to the likes of Mitch McConnell for leadership.
In historic or global terms, no. Congress is squeaky-clean compared to your average oligarch.
> Better to have someone transient but competent who is powerful than a known-bad institution.
"transient"? Once an oligarch puts themselves above the government, who is going to take away that power?
A malaria vaccine deployed in the field costs $3/dose, and can be driven down with mass purchases or working with e.g., UNICEF.
Assuming 10:1 vaccines / lives saved, you just paid 18,000,000 to eliminate it. Try 100:1 (180M) and you still have a 80% of your investment left over. How many kids grow up healthy because of that? How many parents grow up grateful? If it's 10,000:1 is it a failure to "only" save 60,000 kids for your entire 2B investment?
And malaria vaccines have an economic ROI of 100s:1, making them one of the most effective charitable investments for lower income countries.
And that's just one of the global maladies that can be directly addressed in a meaningful way with proper investment. Usually, with a Billion-dollar investment, a self-sustaining program can be set up so you get 10x - 100x over the course of the program. You really don't understand how vital and helpful foreign aid is.
There are a number of other high impact things you might want to look into, that produce meaningful changes in a data-driven way.
- internet and accountability for rural schools in developing countries
- Vaccines of any kind save tons of lives
- food and relocation assistance for famine-striken areas
- Early childhood education is a massive economic ROI, and reduces unwanted population growth through women empowerment
- Antiviral treatment to prevent spread of HIV to children during childbirth
- Neonatal care in areas without sufficient infra etc etc
In some cases, 60-80% of children in developing countries who are affected by preventable diseases are treated by charitable organizations, often in cooperation with a developing local hospital system that is built in parallel until it is sustainable. The initial intervention is basically exclusively through foreign aid from major wealthy donors and governments.
The actual solution to this sort of problem is what China did - lots of sweatshop labour, slowly scaling up the business opportunities into higher value sectors to the point where they're starting to look quite competitive against European lifestyles. Charity doesn't cut it for getting big fractions of humanity from poverty into the middle class. Then they don't need some billionaire's charity to give them $3 for vaccines. They have incomes of a few thousand dollars and can afford their own medical treatment.
Besides being fatalistic nonsense, and also ignoring the other net positive, poverty reducing stuff I mentioned, AND being needlessly cruel, you completely ignored the fact that we're taking about free donated vaccines, funded by a billion dollar philanthropist, not a weird market solution where only those who can afford vaccines get to live.
No, I'm not. Put it this way - the country with the lowest income per-capita on Wikipedia is Burundi with maybe $200/head [0]. If you're telling me that the country can't manage something equivalent to an effective average tax rate of 1.5% for a 100:1 ROI life saving vaccine, then the people in that country objectively have bigger problems than kids dying of malaria. Or your numbers are wrong, although I'm inclined to trust them. We're talking amounts of money so small that even Burundi can afford to make that sort of effort.
I mean good on whoever is paying for the vaccines assuming it isn't taxpayers, but they're token amounts of money. Someone on an average wage could afford to make a significant impact at these dollar ranges, MacKenzie Scott being involved is cool and all but not necessary. Most people on the globe are going to get through life without charity from her - she doesn't have enough money. Add all the billionaires together and they still don't.
[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_GDP_(nomi...
The only partial response I have is that, if you had a list of all the problems facing such a country, you might understand why a full country-wide malaria vaccine can't bubble up (but I can't speak particulars). The kinds of orgs I'm referring to have a massive triage problem to tackle with those countries, and targeted investment is always with the goal of "teaching them to fish". You can read their reports and impact statements online with a little research.
I don’t think it undermines your point - being able to save half a million lives is certainly meaningful.
Without the wealth feedback loop part, small amounts of money don't do much.
Most people remain willfully ignorant of their spiritual potential to self-evolve, so sometimes they behave well and other times less so. We must eacho choose to wake from our unconsciousness and consciously embark upon the road to compassion, for there resides our peace and happiness, both individually and collectively.