
We can’t leave it to billionaires to solve the world’s problems - seek3r00
https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2020/feb/21/billionaires-bloomberg-bezos-government-mega-rich
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0x1221
I'm really not a fan of the rising trend to attack billionaires just because
they're billionares. There are plenty of points that each of the mentioned
individuals can be legitimately criticised on. Their level of wealth or the
decision to donate it to one cause or another is _not_ a valid point of
criticism.

~~~
anonsivalley652
Their balance sheet isn't the point, it's what they did and are doing to get
there that is the point:

\- taking away healthcare from the poor, killing people

\- destroying/privatizing what was once free and part of the shared
commonwealth

\- privatizing what never should've been profit-motivated in the first place:
hospitals, prisons, schools and so on.

\- "deregulating" removing pollution and safety protections that were written
in blood

\- spending money to corrupt the political process in order to buy passage of
laws

\- underpaying workers so they have to live in their cars and cheating them
out of the profits they helped create

 _It is difficult to get a man to understand something, when his salary
depends on his not understanding it._ \- Upton Sinclair

(One could also call it the "Upton Sinclair-effect".)

~~~
mantas
Maybe it'd be more productive to criticise people based on those points.
Rather pick a somewhat correlating group.

How about we pick a skin color correlating with petty crimes and then draw
conclusions on that? Not so cool, huh...

~~~
viklove
Your skin color isn't based on your actions, but your wealth is. It's not a
fair comparison to make. You should be judged for your actions.

~~~
mantas
Exactly, people should be judged for their actions. Not for skin color or net
worth.

One's wealth isn't automatically a result of bad actions. It's a very accurate
comparison. Generalisation is generalisation.

~~~
viklove
> One's wealth isn't automatically a result of bad actions.

It almost always is, though. Skin color never is. I don't agree with your take
at all.

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nickpp
I much more trust the billionaires to solve the world's problems than the
politicians.

I know it's popular to rain crap on rich people (just see Hollywood's long
list of well moneyed villains) but in the Real World I have many billionaires
I respect and admire (from Gates to Musk and Bezos) and ZERO politicians.

~~~
adrianN
Benevolent dictators are the most effective may to govern, but it's really
hard to prevent malicious dictators from rising in such a system.

~~~
nickpp
All the dictators I know were non-billionaire politicians first.

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anonsivalley652
I think the operative word is _We,_ because left to their own device drivers
billionaires (and soon-to-be the first "Tyrell Corporation" trillionaire):

\- narcissism, greed & hubris

\- political, regulatory & media captures

become the dominating gradient vectors which tends to aggregate capital in the
hands of those with the most power and extract it from those with the least.
(Not a conspiracy theory, but a diffuse set of circumstances, patterns,
attitudes and behaviors that snatch externalities and collapse from the jaws
of success.)

~~~
huffmsa
If the government was competent, Tyrell and Wayland Yutani wouldn't be the
interspacial leaders in space mining, would they?

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datashow
Another funny thing is, "we" usually attack both millionaires and
billionaires. Now, millionaires are forgiven. It seems many of "we" become
millionaires.

~~~
cryptica
Or more likely it means that millionaires have more social and political
influence than before.

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kthejoker2
The real issue is we can't leave it to billionaires to decide what the world's
problems are.

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HellDunkel
The real dilemma is our eroding trust in politicians. Why is this happening?

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thosakwe
Why is this flagged? Stop using a moderation feature as a downvote (or maybe
the flag threshold should be raised higher).

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cryptica
The government needs to make it undesirable to become a billionaire. There
should be an upper limit as to how much money you can have.

Most of the world's problems are caused by millionaires trying to become
billionaires - Beyond a certain point, it's all zero-sum games that destroy
society.

~~~
cryptica
No one complains when the government creates regulation to artificially help
boost rich people's wealth but if I make a comment about artificially limiting
billionaire's wealth, people who are not even billionaires care about that?
Even though it doesn't affect them personally??

Then they go around preaching the doctrine of capitalistic self-interest.

The law of capitalistic self-interest according to Milton Friedman basically
says: Take the money from wherever you can get it, however you can get it.
Billionaires have a lot of money, so why don't we all collaborate and take it?
Why the double standard?

Why is everyone collaborating against the lower and middle classes? If you're
reading this, you're the middle class! Unless these billionaires are paying
you to down-vote, the law of capitalistic self-interest says screw them.

~~~
mantas
Usually such regimes end up in shortage of toilet paper.

~~~
scottlocklin
Japan seems fine, better than the US even in almost every way, yet they have
1/8 the number of per capita billionaires the US does.

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_the_numbe...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_the_number_of_billionaires)

Pretty sure they have a greater variety of toilet paper than the US does.

~~~
mantas
When did Japan artificially limit wealth of their billionaires?

I'm sure their economical issues of 90s and 00s did hit their wealthy quite a
bit though. But that's not exactly artificial limitation.

~~~
scottlocklin
Nobody but you used the statement "artificially limit wealth" anywhere.
Obviously the Japanese have some policies in place which discourage these
social menaces from growing and taking over their political system. What's
wrong with adopting some of those? Works for them, and doesn't impact their
prosperity or standard of living in any way.

~~~
mantas
Did you read the comment that I originally replied to? Dude said that in plain
text.

Japan is a funny case actually. Massive corporations play a big role there.
Both historically and nowadays. Yes, those big corporations take care of their
workers. But it doesn't change the fact, that the rich are barely limited in
that country.

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huffmsa
Firs thing this article takes a shot at is Bezos deploying $10b "like Gates
before him."

Gates has, to my knowledge, been vastly more successful than any government
program at reducing malaria and getting people vaccinated.

Which is an exact antithesis of the subheading of the article.

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mam2
You clearly cant leave it to governements.. whuch one is the worsr devil ?

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bobosha
This is a false dichotomy, to put it mildly.

Bill Gates singlehandedly did more to eradicate Polio & several other deadly
diseases than multiple Governments, WHO, and several development orgs over
several decades!

This demonization of the billionaires is uncalled for, many of them do plenty
of good for society on balance.

