[CorrectHorseBat]

>Why shouldn't a billionaire be capable of starting a genetics lab to fund cancer research and pay for it in cash, if they are so inclined?

Starting land to fund cancer research is fine, but I don't see why we need billionairs for that? Multiple people can fund it. They are going to work alone in that lab either.

>It's not as if the money wealthy people have is just in physical gold coins in their swimming pools.

And it's not as if taxing that wealth makes that fact go away.

What's different is that when all that wealth is concentrated with a few people, they get to decide what research they spend it on and which jobs are created. And that's a bad thing, it's a threath to democracy.

[rockemsockem]

Needing more people for funding just adds friction to an already hard problem and will reduce the number of such things that get started.

I fundamentally agree with your arguments, but not your conclusion.

IMO we need a greater number of rich folks and fewer ultra rich ones. Those with over 100 billion dollars simply cannot spend it, which means capital is not being allocated at all! Bill Gates has so many employees just dedicated to spending his money responsibly, and he still keeps getting richer.

[kagakuninja]

>Needing more people for funding just adds friction to an already hard problem and will reduce the number of such things that get started.

Because governments can't fund projects?

Not sure what you are arguing for, but IMO there is this idea of the "great men" who build cool things like Space-X. So we should let the wealthy keep their great wealth so that we get more companies like Space-X.

Except what we really get is more corporate looting, oppression and monopoly, plus the hyper-wealthy having excessive influence over government.

If the wealth is spread around, and we no longer have to be wage slaves our whole lives, then collectives of like-minded people could band together and build cool things. We do see that in the open-source world, but most contributors are not earning money they need to pay bills.

[rockemsockem]

I very specifically said that the government should fund projects and personally I think it should fund more. But they can't do everything and they won't always have the foresight to fund everything worth funding.

I am arguing that more-or-less randomly allocating wealth to individuals to then re-allocate will produce better results and the larger number of individuals, above a certain amount of wealth necessary for grand projects, the better. I think we are better off when we have a diversity of directions in funding grand projects. There is a very real cap on how much money is actually necessary for great projects. No one needs 100 billion dollars to do any particular thing. Idk where the line is, probably the high hundred millions or low billions?

We also really need better wealth distribution in the middle too, but the main post's assertion is literally "no rich people" so I'm arguing against that because private investment has created an incredible amount of the good things we enjoy every day. I'm not talking about the "great men" I'm talking about boring people writing checks for new companies that they think sound cool.