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.
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!
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.
> 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-found...
At least that's what we've been voting for.
... 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.
That said, this book actually exists.
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.
again, i dont think this is a matter of political party. it's a matter of capital interference in politics.
I don't think any of the folks pushing for deregulation of media ownership (to allow it to consolidate) and defanging anti-trust and cutting rich people's taxes and reducing government social spending or other spending that competed with potential "market solutions" or made the labor force less-desperate, or pushing anti-union policies, while promoting the view that "actually all of that is good for normal people, so you should vote for the party promoting it... also, the blacks and gays are out to get you, in case that other argument didn't convince you" had in mind getting someone like Trump, specifically, into power, though without their actions over several decades it surely wouldn't have been possible.
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.
Libertarians may want to ask themselves what happens to the private sector - aerospace, energy, R&D, infrastructure, education - when public investment stops.
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.
https://www.simonandschuster.com/books/Abundance/Ezra-Klein/...
The public sector doesn't work because it's been sabotaged by the private sector.
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!
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.
Examples: healthcare, food and water for sustenance; insurance; pollution; parks and roadways, residential property; respectively.
American healthcare is literally what you get with unregulated capitalism. Your statement makes no sense.
I wish we had completely unregulated capitalism, so that middle class people would have more weapons to climb up society instead of paying the bill for everyone while drowning in debt and soulcrushing careers.