[CyanBird]

The second niche as a rule of thumb pollutes-more-than-God already(0)

I am skeptical that lifting barriers to them polluting more would land any type of net benefit given that ultra-luxury products such as said jets don't tend to land outsized downstream advancements than let's say, funding basic sciences such as what Boeing or Airbus are already doing

(0) https://www.oxfam.org/en/press-releases/billionaire-emits-mi...

If it could be proved that things like faster private jets or faster planes could benefit in a sizeable and proportionate way to the general public, then yeah I would be in favor of this too, but as it stands I don't find the available info compelling, I'd rather them to pay more taxes

[verandaguy]

You're preaching to the choir; human progress isn't proportional to the number of billionaires with fleets of Gulfstreams (or rather, if it is, there's almost certainly no causation there).

[aaomidi]

I’m constantly in pain about how much human ingenuity takes the back seat just to keep the wheels turning in lives. If we actually tried to meet most of the requirements for people, creative thinking would flourish.

[seventytwo]

100%.

I like to bring up the question of how many startups and how much innovation is stifled because people stay with their jobs because of the healthcare.

[jandrewrogers]

Isn’t Europe evidence of the answer to this question?

[aaomidi]

Healthcare isn’t the only thing keeping people back.

[oceanplexian]

I’m not a billionaire apologist, but billionaires get a lot of flak for using private aircraft where it makes a lot of sense.

Zoom is not a valid substitute when you’re trying to make high stakes decisions that involve millions - billions of dollars and complex relationships in multiple time zones. Saying that human progress depends on it is a bit dramatic but these folks allocate large amounts of capital and have an outsized impact on the economy.

[CyanBird]

Sure, but the private jet usage is not exclusively to said high level meetings.... If it were, then the Oxfam piece above would be singing a quite different tune