This is why, in my opinion, billionaires are incredibly stupid.
By hoarding wealth and forcing people to live paycheck-to-paycheck, with little-to-no time for self improvement or leisure. With few resources to devote towards education or career-building, you are strangling the pool of people who could make your life better. Who could find the cure for whatever illness finally gets you. Who could invent something you’d never have thought of that will improve your quality of life.
Before the pace of modern technology I can kind of get the impulse, but modern billionaires are operating on rules of ‘how to win’ from 100 years ago. They are – by any metric – not only socially backwards, but fundamentally stupid. They are too dumb to even get being greedy right.
… You just described a monopoly on wealth & prosperity.
Why wouldn’t a billionaire want that for themself? They invest into what they like or grows their empire or prestige whether it’s cancer drugs or dick shaped rockets.
It’s the same logic as a dictator.
Because by limiting access to those resources, they can’t be used in ways you wouldn’t expect.
Sure, you might invest in cancer research. But did you back the right horse? Soon enough? What about the person who would have engineered earlier detection if they had gone to grad school, but the resources that could have been used to provide that are tied up in your net worth?
No concentrated approach will ever have the same results as letting millions of extra people work on their millions of ideas. The chances of someone hitting on something that sticks increase dramatically with the number of people throwing shit against the wall.
They don’t care about abstract “maybe new science” when the reality is they have all the power and can do whatever the fuck they want
Please watch the cgp grey videos on the rules for rulers or read the Dictator’s Handbook.
Sure, it’s aimed towards political leaders, but it can be mapped on many billionaires as well.
It would give you an idea about how one who is at the top would likely respond.
I’ll link it below. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rStL7niR7gs
Not really. They’re just trying to hire private scientists to find a cure for aging and live forever so they can continue their reign.
https://www.standard.co.uk/tech/bryan-johnson-tech-millionaire-reverse-ageing-b1083695.html