I mean, we can do both, right? Though surely the issue is the order of priorities of spending said money, not just that it was spent on a particular thing (and afaik there are pretty reasonable criticisms of the Gates foundation and similar orgs)
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Replying to @ReluctantPotato @falk_moritz
There are tons of reasonable criticisms, but that billionaires don't put a lot of money toward world hunger isn't one of them. The unfortunate fact remains that hunger is more of a political problem than a technology problem, so it is less easy to throw money at it blindly.
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And as their apparent unpopularity in the media and on places like Twitter should make apparent, it's unclear that "billionaires" are really in much of a position to solve political problems - and most people complain loudly when they _do_ involve themselves in politics.
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So I tend to see things like electric cars and space exploration as great things for billionaires to be doing, because they can expend resources towards technology we need whilst simultaneously not involving themselves in political problems where they just make things worse.
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Personally, my problem isn't with space race fueling tech innovation. The innovation is good. My problem is with billionaires existing. So when I complain about the fact that billionaires spend their money incorrectly I'm mostly just upset about the fact that they can.
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Replying to @jchmoe @cmuratori and
Which I realize is mostly subjective and people might disagree with me and that is fine, because that's why we have elections. But part of the system that makes it possible for billionaires to exist is also part of the system that causes lots of inequality and suffering.
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To be fair to the "system", it causes a lot less inequality and suffering than all the previous systems. That said, one has to assume that it is not the best because it would be odd if humans had already arrived at optimal world economics.
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Replying to @cmuratori @jchmoe and
I do think it's a lot harder to move global systems forward than people realize, however, which is one of the frustrating things about reading Twitter. I would argue most people don't understand most things about most systems, and definite couldn't improve them in practice :)
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Replying to @cmuratori @jchmoe and
Which is not really a knock on people, it's just that the current state is one we've arrived at through a complex systemic evolutionary process that was under no one's direct control, and it is a very complex and difficult to understand thing that people simplify at their peril.
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Yeah, fair enough. It's all more complex than most people make them out to be, and lots of decisions aren't as obvious if you factor in all the minute details. But our media promotes simple statements and strong opinions, so we rarely get the chance to discuss nuance..
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Well I appreciate it, at the moment, that we are sort of doing so :)
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