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  • This is an interesting conundrum, actually. The big question at its core being:

    Can you ever do enough good through philanthropy, so that it offsets the damage you had to do, in order to become a billionaire? Can even all the billionaires in the world do enough good with their money, to offset the damage done by a system, that allowed for them to become billionaires?

    I, personally, don't think it is possible.

    To give an actual answer: I think, the world would definitely be better, but unless those billionaires collectively used all the power their money provides, to do away with money and the possibility of billionaires altogether, I don't think it would amount to all that much.

  • The world would be better if there were no billionaires. That would be a huge help. Nobody should be allowed to amass that much wealth. And a financial system set up to prevent such a thing would ideally also offer more of a level playing field as far as individual wealth goes.

    “Billionaires” (multi-millionaires in the late 18- early 1900’s) did help back in the day - they built libraries, schools, hospitals, orphanages, etc… but they were still absolute bastards that were anti-labor, killed people to avoid paying them more or giving them a decent work week, imported, abused, and discarded labor, among many other rich-barely-controlled-asshole things they did.

  • The Owenites and other Utopian Socialists of old would rise from their graves, vindicated at long last for, against all odds, finally succeeding.

  • We don't have the supply to fill the demands to simply throw all billionaires money into solving every crisis. That is why wealth inequality is so vast. Dollars are a made up system. In its raw form it's just paper. Backed by the govt. Where as it used to be backed by the gold standard which is why we hoard so much gold. That is a real tangible asset.

    Paper is just paper its artifical, it's only good once spent. You can have infinite money if they forever printed it. Instead we balance inflation and deflation and finite supply that is dwindling the more we clear cut and strip the earth.

    • We don’t have the supply to fill the demands

      What makes you say that? Making food and housing and medical care for everyone isn't impossible

      • It really isn't, but as long as those resources are distributed through a market, there are problems even if you add money. Say the billionaires truly are incorruptible angels and put all their money to providing food and shelter, the not-yet-billionaires in the market suddenly have incentives to raise prices, withhold food to the market while prices are rising as a speculative gambit, stuff like that.

        That's one of the mechanisms through which the system itself, that produces billionaires, makes it at least hard or - imo - even impossible to truly undo the damage it does to create such billionaires, even when you have those billions. Another example is corruption: As soon as you put a lot of money into an issue, it creates an incentive there to funnel money away in secret, to provide false solutions that don't solve anything, to scam, etc. A friend of mine worked on projects providing water infrastructure in countries in Africa from philanthropic and international aid funds, and he did get often frustrated telling how some projects simply vanish halfway through, because someone down the line had basically run off with the money (not that the projects were wholly useless, either, but they failed to fundamentally solve things by just throwing money at them). Someone like Bill Gates, as another example, has been unironically doing a lot of good as a philanthropist, but all his money still wasn't able to truly tackle the root causes of the problems in the countries where he supports healthcare and such things - and inevitably, some of the funds he provided were used on glamour projects or ineffectual, nice-sounding strategies, or ended up in outright corruption. And at the same time, the question remains, what the system that made him a billionaire caused in damages to begin with.

        That's why I still think you can't really tackle all these problems without doing away with a market structure, exchange value, capital accumulation, etc. - i.e., why I remain a dirty commie, instead of just arguing for redistribution (redistribution and more social-democratic, beneficial investment is still good, but you gotta always aim for the abolition of private property and capital accumulation as an end goal, imo).

        Oh, and I just realised my ramble kind of missed OP's point, which is also important: All the money caught up in the three-digit multi-billionaires net worth? It's not representative of true goods and labour, it is what Marx would have called "dead" capital. As soon as it is used for anything but as financial capital, it can drive inflation massively, which connects to part of my first point.

        EDIT: Another example that just came to my mind for how this can impact things - Mansa Musa and the stories surrounding his lavish spending during his Hajj, basically crashing the local economies. So, even pre-capitalist systems had to deal with these dynamics.

      • We certainly have the housing and buildings, I am doubtful we have the medical supplies and medical machines like MRI and others. Look at 2020 during covid where the medical workers did not have PPE and how the supply chain was/is still stressed. We also lack the natural resources where we can just throw money aka paper at problems and their gone forever.

        The govt. Balances our money system based on supply and demand well they try like all govts. The earths resources are finite and we have consumed them at such an accelerated rate that even now we have supply chain issues on certain rare earth metals and all other natural resources. The war in Ukraine aside from Nato and russia being so close is actually over trillions of dollars worth of rare earth metals and natural resouces. Which Russia needs to revitalize their economy. Also why Trump wants to settle a deal beneficial to the US, trump doesn't care about the war he wants access to the mineral deposits.

        I also think that we likely have the food supply currently, in the future not so much due to climate change. We all see the impacts daily which will continue to worsen, and eventually water will be scarce causing migration of people as the globe shifts it's weather events to different locations. We won't lack water it'll just be too uneconomical to transport it to where it's needed due to weight and our archaic fuel sources.

        The food isn't the hard part right now. It's transportation of goods to locales like deep into Africa as an example so we would have to consolidate people to reach everyone most effeciently. Then we can solve the issues you speak of.

  • @return2ozma Let's say I'm a billionaire and I want to help the world.

    Firstly declare that I have hoarded too much, and that it is about time to change from leadership to collective guidership.

    The surplus values should not be hoarded with me, but shared among the workers.

    There would be several focus forward, such as how to move towards moneyless and needs based economy.

    I would use the framework of the oakframe to guide forward, and the machineframe to avoid pitfalls.

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