Right? If I had enough money that I could make a serious dent in local or even global poverty without noticing the change in my lifestyle, and I just... chose not to, I have no idea how I could sleep at night.
This is just human nature.
People who are at wealth level x tend to say, "I can't believe that people at wealth level x+1 aren't more generous!" all the while ignoring their own lack of desire to give generously to people at wealth levels x-1 and below.
As a college student and young adult I had always envied his fame, his intelligence, his money (post-Reddit acquisition), and the strength of his convictions. And yet, in that moment in early 2013, he was dead, and I was working a good job at Google (and this was 2013 Google, when it was still a nice place to work doing things that I could generally approve of). And he'd died doing the stuff that I wanted to do but had been too chickenshit to actually carry out.
I think that this illustrates why the world is the way it is. All the true altruists are dead, killed for their altruism. It is adaptive, in a survival sense, to think of yourself and your own survival and not worry too much about other people. Ironically, this is what my therapist was trying to get me to realize.
But I think this also goes back to the GP's point. When people at wealth level x give to people at level x-1, it doesn't raise the people at x-1 up to x. It brings the person at x down to x-1. There are more people at x-1 than x, after all; you could give everything you had away and mathematically, it would lower your net worth significantly more than it would raise theirs. And of course, it doesn't do a damn thing about the people at x+1. Why can't they donate instead, where their wealth would do an order of magnitude more good?
There actually do exist people who are like that: they would rather spread their wealth around the people at wealth level x-1, joining them at that level, than raise themselves up to x+1. I've met some; most poor people are far more generous than rich people are. That is why they are poor. But then, it doesn't solve the problem of inequality, they just disappear into the masses of people at level x-1.
So thats essentially communism right? Is human nature incompatible with communism or is capitalism incompatible with human nature?
In the American golden age of capitalism from ~1950-1970, the top marginal tax rate was 90%, and so you didn't have CEOs get paid more than about 3x the median worker, because the government would get it all. Instead, they got perks. Private jets. Positions at the company for their kids. Debaucherous holiday parties. Casual sexual harassment of secretaries.
In Soviet communism, all production was centrally planned by government bureau run by party members. It was not uncommon for these bureaus to make mistakes, leading to severe shortages for the population. Nevertheless, these shortages never seemed to really hit the party members responsible for making the plans. Power has its perks.
And that's also why reforms attempting to reduce economic inequality need to focus on power rather than money. There have been a number of policies that do meaningfully raise standards of living for the poor: they're things like the 13th amendment to the (US) Constitution, the 1st amendment, the jury trial system, free markets, anti-monopoly statutes, bans on non-competes, etc. What they all have in common is that they preserve economic freedom and the power to make your own living against people who would seek to restrict that freedom and otherwise keep you in bondage.
No, I'm talking about wealth level X*100. For them, the difference between $100M and $1B is basically no difference in the quality of life to that family. They'd have 1 fewer megayachts. They could give away $900M, and eliminate hunger forever in a large city or a small state. $100B is 100x that again, they could give away $99.9B, still have $100M, and solve poverty in most _countries_.
Or, if they don't want to, we institute a 90% wealth tax on everything over $10M, and solve it ourselves.
> For them, the difference between $100M and $1B is basically no difference in the quality of life to that family.
I think money at that level is not about family quality of life. It's usually about buying companies, launching product lines, etc.
> They could give away $900M, and eliminate hunger forever in a large city or a small state. $100B is 100x that again, they could give away $99.9B, still have $100M, and solve poverty in most _countries_.
Ehhh...
Most people who have $X billion don't really have that. They just have controlling shares in a company that's worth a lot, and media companies like Forbes enjoy making headlines by pretending that's cash. Actually turning that into cash would be impossible.
Of course, they can still turn meaningful percentages of it into cash and give it away, that's true. And I think more billionaires should.
But also, many problems aren't money problems. For example, simply flooding a state or a small city with money isn't going to "solve hunger forever." Hunger and poverty are more often an issue around distribution and logistics, infrastructure, politics, culture and conflict, and things like that. Huge cash giveaways famously tend to disappear and accomplish very little.
The single biggest force that reduces suffering and poverty in an enduring way, imo, is the creation and proliferation of technology. Vaccines that are cheaper to produce. Water filtration systems that are easier to maintain. Seeds and crops that are heartier and more durable. Healthcare that's more affordable and available. Etc. Advances like this have reduced more suffering and ended more poverty and counteracted more famine and saved more lives than any amount of charity ever has or could.
What I would like to see more of is billionaires and even super-talented non-billionaires starting more organizations that are a force for good. Or using money from profitable enterprises to fund unprofitable-yet-charitable enterprises.
It also isn't an economically isolated enterprise: Ukrainian grain shipments traversing into Europe via Polish roads and not heading to Africa via their ports caused a bunch of price crashes which became political flashpoints.
I bet no-one has ever thought of that before. You should present that idea at the UN.
And yes that includes the controversial poor population hotspots of africa that have grown super rapidly beyond multiples of what the land can provide
But also just the same places like arizona with comparatively rich folk growing the urban desert sprawl
You could turn up reliably and distribute quite a lot of food, and yet at the end of the day find there's still a famine.
But then again, Musk is going to turn out to be one of the great mass killers of world history with his destruction of USAID. Why would he spoil that by helping some folks?
> But then again, Musk is going to turn out to be one of the great mass killers of world history with his destruction of USAID. Why would he spoil that by helping some folks?
If you consider turning off an program that a group of people aren't particularly entitled to as equivalent to mass murderers who pulled the trigger on people like Stalin and Mao, maybe you need to take a long hard look at yourself. Suppose yanking USAID prompts the creation of a more efficient, more local solution that feeds more people. Will you give Musk the credit of saving people's lives?
Well before someone comes out with a ludicrous bad faith hypothetical.
> Suppose someone had [ludicrous bad faith hypothetical]
Whoops.
> Solve the fucking problem, don't put a very expensive bandage on it.
That only works for the most trivial of problems. Anything complex will need expensive bandages until a complex solution can be worked out and, more importantly, implemented correctly.
> maybe you need to take a long hard look at yourself.
I have, many times, and that's how I turned from a bad faith edge lord posting this kind of hypothetical drivel defending the indefensible for years into a slightly less problematic member of society. And I will continue to take long hard looks at myself to try and improve further.
> Suppose yanking USAID prompts the creation of a more efficient, more local solution that feeds more people.
Again a bad faith hypothetical but let's assume this does happen - great! That would be grand. It still won't take away from Musk being responsible for one of the biggest mass murders in history.
i dint particularly like musk. i would say he is shitty. your moral compass is fucked up.
This is not too disimilar from the case of the billionaire.
[1] Excepting some Galaxy Brain philosophies like Effective Altruism
He had the kind of money that can hire expensive projects on trust that payment in full will be rendered, but only kept his money by often not paying out.
As with all things Trump, even up to the new ballroom not having a front door despite the massive staircase, his wealth is more in appearance, and less in actual assets…or was. Of course, someday maybe we will know the true extent or shortfall of his bank accounts
He may not have been that successful as a businessman, but his whole clan are monetising the Whitehouse.
Good news is that you would sleep fine at night. No matter how destructive your existence was, and how much of a net negative you were to the world, you would still think very highly of yourself.