[wilonth]

Why are people even arguing about space travel vs solving poverty? Just imagine if all of Musk's wealth is seized by the US government, would that solve poverty or homelessness or even make a difference? Obviously not, Musk's billions are barely a drop in a bucket. The US government printed and spent Trillions during the pandemic, and that barely made some people's life better.

Most of the problems that we're having on Earth, including poverty, homelessness and climate change, are in fact socio-political problems and they can't be solved with any realistic amount of money. The only way to solve them is through either strong socio-political coordination or very advanced technology (AI, nuclear fusion etc.)

[MisterTea]

> The only way to solve them is through either strong socio-political coordination or very advanced technology

Those won't work either. "strong socio-political coordination" translates to "You must think like us or else." And what will AI or nuclear fusion do? Even with free energy and money people will still have issues between them.

There is no magic bullet to solving the ails of a large modern society outside of dismantling said large society.

[thesuitonym]

$2000 went to each person, the rest went to businesses. Allegedly, a lot of it was for "paycheck protection" but we saw that not all of it went there.

[throwoutway]

I’ve noticed several politicians (including the one in the article) using false binary dilemmas as a premise to pander for votes. Even though, like you pointed out, trillions have been printed and yet lives have not improved.

They know they can’t fix it but they pander to the votes

[schwartzworld]

> Just imagine if all of Musk's wealth is seized by the US government, would that solve poverty or homelessness or even make a difference? Obviously not, Musk's billions are barely a drop in a bucket.

https://www.globalgiving.org/learn/how-much-would-it-cost-to...

Looks like we could end homelessness for about 20 billion. Elon Musk, born into wealth because his parents had a diamond mine in apartheid South Africa, is worth over 220 billion.

[wilonth]

Except that the US government has Trillions to spend and they absolutely do not need Musk's wealth to do this. 20 billions is nothing for the US government's budget, why don't they end homelessness? Again, a socio-political problem that money alone cannot solve.

[schwartzworld]

> why don't they end homelessness?

Easy, because the Democrats are feckless at best and the Republicans are a death cult.

[FuriouslyAdrift]

Musk was not born into wealth and lived in squalor in Canada with his divorced mother at one point. He self-made his wealth when his first company (with his brother Kimbal) was bought by Compaq during the dotcom boom of the early 1990's. He rolled that cash into his next company, x.com, which merged with Confinity to create a little company called Paypal.

[status200]

Elon "funding secured / sued by the SEC" Musk was absolutely born into wealth. His father co-owned an Emerald mine in Zambia, he went to a private high school in Pretoria, and attended Universities in South Africa and Pennsylvania.

Further reading: "As a result of this, the teenage Elon Musk once walked the streets of New York with emeralds in his pocket. His father said: “We were very wealthy. We had so much money at times we couldn’t even close our safe,”"

source: https://web.archive.org/web/20211215175402/https://www.indep...