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It sounds like you don’t think allocating capital to new business ventures or supporting the funding of existing businesses counts as supporting society?

Businesses are made up of people, and last I checked all of the things I use on a day to day basis come from companies. Companies seem pretty important.

Why do things like venture funding, which I think a lot of billionaires do engage in directly or indirectly, not count as supporting society?

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In a free market with competition, probably yes.

The market is far from free, big money is near impossible to compete against. In effect, when they pour tens of billions the work that gets done could have been done perhaps with millions.

Take a look at Chinese AI accomplishments and at what point it has been achieved. Granted plagiarism might be reducing some of the costs, but in a free market, things would have been a lot cheaper.

Similar example India's accomplishments in space.

Business ventures use long-term, curiosity driven research and educated workers to produce goods/services as a byproduct of generating profits for their owners.

If the owners are not paying taxes that fund education or long-term research, nor directly funding same, then they're both short-sighted and parasitic.

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