Surprise, surprise!
The top 50 billionaires could pool 99% of their wealth without it changing their quality of life at all, and have enough money to quite literally solve most of the world’s problems. We’re talking trillions of dollars that could be put to use for good.
They don’t because that’s not how psychopaths work.
and have enough money to quite literally solve most of the world’s problems
That’s true-ish from a strict finances perspective.
But consider the island of Haiti. We could “solve” the problem of chronic poverty on the island by simply showing up with boatloads of food and clothing and other consumer goods. But it would be a temporary fix, at best. A real investment - just on this tiny island - would mean large scale infrastructure improvements. And that takes an enormous amount of materials plus labor plus the logistics to move it all and assemble it.
What we’re describing isn’t strictly a monetary problem. Its an engineering - and, to a greater extent - economic organization problem. Showing up with bricks of cash would be less beneficial than dredging their harbors and building out new power plants and fixing all the damage done by the last big earthquake. And that latter bit requires real engineering, which requires education, which requires skilled professionals willing to bring Haitians in and train them in the work necessary to improve the island.
And while we probably could perform a project like this across Haiti, by employing the Billionaire Money + Excuse Unused Capacity of global industry, I question whether we could do it globally. Not without reorienting an enormous amount of our existing infrastructure towards these tasks.
When people talk about “market economy v command economy”, this is the kind of problem they’re really facing off against. Not just “how do we pay for food?” but “how do we organize the supply chain from the farms/fisheries to the dinner tables?”
We could “fix” Haiti’s problems with far less than we’re currently spending to control their population. But that would mean building large earthquake resilient housing, energy, and transport components. And those buildings would divert the labor supply from making cheap textiles and agricultural goods. And that would mean people who buy cheap from Haiti’s functionally-still-enslaved population wouldn’t get to 100x mark-up the end products when they were sold in the US at American retail rates.
That’s what we’re really discussing when we talk about “billionaire wealth” versus “solving the world’s problems”.
Do Haitians get to live for themselves? Or do they spend all their waking hours making life cheaper for other people?
Connect your circle of thought. If we buy Haiti a bunch of food and deliver it, we have created the jobs and infrastructure to solve the issue precisely in the manner you describe. We have redirected the economy to solve the problem. You seem to take issue with the idea that the solution did not arise from capitalist market forces. Well no shit, that’s kind of why we have the problem.
If we buy Haiti a bunch of food and deliver it, we have created the jobs and infrastructure to solve the issue precisely in the manner you describe.
We’ve created an import market, which is good for folks who aren’t Haitian who are shipping to the island.
But we haven’t created points on the island to receive the new cargo (their port system is in shambles) or distribute it (roads still wrecked from the earthquake, very few warehouses or retail facilities to distribute to local populations) or use it (no reliable electricity or housing).
You seem to take issue with the idea that the solution did not arise from capitalist market forces.
Just the opposite. I believe capitalist market forces are a big reason why Haiti remains poor. Keeping the majority of the population clustered along the coast and forced to compete for sweatshop jobs at the lowest conceivable bidding rate means foreign firms have monopolized the labor capacity of the island while denying them the ability to develop their own domestic capital (roads, power, housing, etc).
Getting construction materials to the island, along with skilled engineers to both rebuild shattered infrastructure and train up locals to maintain/expand on what was built, is the only real path to prosperity. And its denied to the Haitian people deliberately, in order to keep them subservient and to enrich the folks exporting their labor product off the island for pennies on the dollar.
Showing up with bricks of cash would be less beneficial than dredging their harbors and building out new power plants and fixing all the damage done by the last big earthquake.
Show up with bricks of cash, and harbor-dredgers, electric generators, and construction companies will be racing each other to figure out how to get them from you.
construction companies will be racing each other
Construction companies run by billionaires aren’t going to be lining up to rebuild the third world, when they profit from it staying demolished.
Toussaint Louverture’s Ghost haunts that island, and guys like Bloomberg and Koch won’t be happy till it’s fully exorcised.
Nasser’s Egypt, Mosaddegh’s Iran, Pinochet’s Chile, Kim’s Korea, Castro’s Cuba? They’re not getting rebuilt at any price.
I’m not here to simp for billionaires, but, how could you expect them to be competant ebough to do the organizing required to spend the money in am effective way as to solve all the worlds problems. Like, really break down what you’re asking. Do you think the softest people on the planet have what it takes? The governments of the world need to step up, sieze these assets, and use them to solve the problems of the world, not John Dipshits, grandson of billionaire.
how could you expect them to be competant ebough to do the organizing required to spend the money in am effective way as to solve all the worlds problems.
I don’t expect them to.
The governments of the world need to step up, sieze these assets, and use them to solve the problems of the world
Yes, a global, unified governmental body who’s sole purpose is to better life on this planet, would be a good start. Give them a trillion dollars and see how dramatically better our existence can become.
Really, another way of putting is that if wealth was distributed more effectively (i.e. no such thing as billionaires and nobody is poor), then everyone would have a common goal to keep things balanced, lest they lose it all to a handful of rich guys.
Most of the world’s major problems literally cannot be solved by an injection of funds alone.
I’m acutely reminded of when that guy said $6 billion would solve world hunger, Musk basically replied “prove how and I’ll give you the money right now”, and the response was a combination of impotent sputtering and backpedaling about how it would now help, but not solve.
Also, the majority of that “wealth” is a price tag, not cash dollars. If you bought a baseball card for $5 and it’s now worth $100, you didn’t create $95, you know.
Most of the world’s major problems literally cannot be solved by an injection of funds alone.
It’s about what that amount of money would go towards: education, healthcare, housing, food security, environmental protection, wildlife preservation, social programs, etc.
… how it would now help, but not solve.
We can solve these problems with targeted funding that gets to the root of the problem. For example, rather than simply distributing food, you educate and equip communities with the ability to grow their own. Even low-cost water purification in some parts of the world can make a massive difference to literally millions of people.
Lifting people out of poverty, even by having a universal basic income, would solve a ton of issues facing those populations: low education, poor health, food security, programs for kids/teens, more equitable transportation, etc.
We’re not talking about sending off grands for a few thousand dollars or even several million. We would have TRILLIONS to use towards implementing solutions. And that money would continue to come, because these rich assholes collect and hoard money faster than anyone can spend it.
We literally have enough food to feed everyone. But there are people who will prevent everyone from being fed because having control over the food gives them power (e.g. warlords in Africa).
The bottom line is, you can’t solve world hunger until you solve world peace, and the fact is that you can’t buy peace.
the response was a combination of impotent sputtering and backpedaling
Literally an NPR article on the subject, outlining how that sum could solve world hunger.
In response to Musk’s request for details, Beasley (head of the World Food Program) tweeted him the math: “$.43 x 42,000,000 x 365 days = $6.6 billion.”
That’s how much it would cost to provide one meal a day for one year to this population in need, says WFP. The agency would deliver this “meal” in the form of food aid, cash or vouchers.
The food aid, says WFP, consists of commodities such as rice, maize and high-energy biscuits.
Then Musk claimed to have donated $5.7B several weeks later. However, this money was not directed to the WFP
Musk estimated in December that he would pay “over $11 billion” in 2021 taxes. A large donation could help to offset that price tag.
So it looks like Musk was looking for a large tax write-off, not a cure-all for world hunger. And when he found a viable place to dump his money, he took it. This wasn’t about food aid at all. It was about Musk figuring out what he could buy for the price of a tax cut.
Billionaire -> max 9 billions Multiply by 50 that’s a maximum of 450 billion dollars.
Trillion not reached.
… 10 billion dollars is still a billionaire. Or is this a comment that nobody has 10 billion dollars?
Or is maybe this a misread of the OP? By “pool 99 percent of their wealth” they mean the other direction. As in the billionaires keep at most 10 billion and the rest goes to better the world.
I mean, yeah. Most people don’t even come close to that when adding up everything they earn in a lifetime. So to get a billion before 30, where more than half of your life was in school and growing up. Not much to generate wealth for investments. Building companies takes time and money too and you’re not going to be a billionaire from working enough regular jobs.
I wonder where all that wealth would go if they suddenly died from accidents, and any potential heirs or next of kin also died.
It would literally vanish. Wealth is not cash. If Amazon disappeared one day, not a single person’s (poor or not) bank account would get bigger as a result.
Murderous envy is all that’s thinly-veiled here.
not a single person’s (poor or not) bank account would get bigger as a result
Likely not, but I’d like to think the social reforms with an attack on the wealthy would bring some of our rights back and help with our standards of living issues our poor currently face thanks to the wealthy systematically disabling the things that brought prosperity and protected people. While you call it murderous envy, others might call it true social justice.
Someone in another thread said something that resonated in me. Helps show how big a billion is…
One million seconds is a bit more that 11 days, One billion seconds is over 31 YEARS !
TIL: Everyone who has been alive less than 1 Billion Seconds and has over 1 Billion Dollars needs to have their wealth forcibly redistributed because you can’t even pretend they “worked for it”.
You didn’t earn a dollar a second, 3600 dollars an hour, starting the second you were born?
Yeah, this is meaningless though.
Net worths are guessed (you literally can’t perfectly accurately audit total net worth in any practical way) price tags. When it comes to individual assets like stocks, that price tag is dictated by the market (basically, everyone other than the owner) that essentially assert “if you sold this, I’d be willing to pay $X to buy it from you”.
A price tag is not cash. An asset becoming more valuable is not equivalent to the mint printing bills. And owning shares in businesses that are actively involved in the economy is literally the opposite of “hoarding”.
The wealth gap between the very top and the destitute was MUCH smaller 100 years ago. But poverty was MUCH more common then, too. So then why do so many act like that gap widening is at fault for the poverty that still exists?
Also in latest news… Research shows humans need oxygen to survive.