[TeMPOraL]

There are more important observations to make:

- The budget of a democratic nation isn't under direct control of its constituents, so average selfishness of the citizens has nothing to do with it.

- A democratic nation has lots of interests jockeying for the budget, and can easily swallow arbitrary amounts of money.

- Almost all of that money is spent on improving the things for that nation, so a nation state is not the best organization to task with solving a global/international problem.

Most importantly though, the more diffused the money, the less effective it is. Coordinating people costs a lot (think of how much charities spend on advertising!). With his fortune, Gates can just drop $60M on some promising anti-malaria activity; in the alternative reality d-d/you are proposing, it's unlikely that 600 of his employees would suddenly coordinate to drop their $100k on that operation; most likely, no money would be donated at all.

So the argument essentially boils down to focus. Much like with distractions and personal productivity, both the market and a government budget can absorb arbitrary amounts of diffuse money with little of value to show for it; it takes focused, bulk money under control of a person to move the needle on some issue.

[js8]

I don't buy the focus argument. It looks to me as an argument against free market, towards some kind of central planning. Focus can be surprisingly inefficient.

Isn't the whole point of free market that the money end up distributed to citizens (consumers), who then choose what to do with it, and what problems to tackle?

I also think we have Bill Gates (very focusedly) fighting malaria on one side, and Koch brothers (also focusedly) fighting for coal on the other. I am not convinced that in the sum, the side of Bill Gates has won.

If we perhaps diffuse the money, maybe we will actually find enough people to fight malaria, but there will be less people willing to spread lies about climate change. Because there are actually more ordinary people having trouble with malaria than ordinary people having trouble what to do with a coal mine once coal mining gets out of fashion.

[TeMPOraL]

It is an argument against free market - to the extent that some people think it's a panacea for all problems. It isn't.

Free markets work best when needs are diverse and not easy to identify. The money flows along feedback loops and finds its way to where it serves best. At least for a while, until those with money use it to redirect more money towards them. But that's a topic for another day.

Ultimately, both Gates and Koch brothers got their money in the free market. It's hard to have one without the other. I think it's best to encourage more rich people to be like Gates, because we'll always have plenty of Kochs.

[mozey]

> Coordinating people costs a lot

Does it really? Even before social media and the internet, what put humans apart was our ability to co-ordinate efficiently

[TeMPOraL]

Yes. We coordinate efficiently in small groups. Less than Dunbar's number, generally. Beyond that, we use hierarchical governance, laws, money and markets as crutches.