[satvikpendem]

Even the most magnanimous allocators cannot defeat the realities of boots on the ground in terms of distribution. It is a very difficult problem that cannot be solved top down, the only solution we've seen is growth of economic activity via capitalistic means, lifting millions, billions out of poverty as Asia has done in the last century for example.

[taurath]

You can pay for a lot of people when you have a billion dollars. When you have a trillion, you can move countries.

When someone lives in opulence while the rest of the world burns, the rest of the world doesn’t sit idly.

[djtango]

When you have a billion dollars you can't even give each person in China a dollar.

[lpcvoid]

I argue that if you have literal hundreds of billions of hard cash to burn for stupid things like AI datacenters, you could afford to make the lives of millions of starving people not suck instead, pretty easily so. But to do that, you'd have to try, and that would mean actually doing something good for humanity. Can't have that as a billionaire.

[westpfelia]

Ok but what if I shoot a car into space and buy my own social media company. Surely thats a better use of billions!

[satvikpendem]

Who has hundreds of billions of hard cash for data centers? All of the AI spending has been in IOUs between Nvidia, OpenAI, Coreweave, etc. And even if you did have hard cash, how will you spend those billions? No one actually seems to have a sound plan, like I said. They just claim it can be done.

[cbeach]

> SPIEGEL: Mr. Shikwati, the G8 summit at Gleneagles is about to beef up the development aid for Africa…

> [Kenyan Economist] Shikwati: … for God’s sake, please just stop.

> SPIEGEL: Stop? The industrialized nations of the West want to eliminate hunger and poverty.

> Shikwati: Such intentions have been damaging our continent for the past 40 years. If the industrial nations really want to help the Africans, they should finally terminate this awful aid. The countries that have collected the most development aid are also the ones that are in the worst shape. Despite the billions that have poured in to Africa, the continent remains poor.

https://www.aei.org/carpe-diem/kenyan-economics-expert-devel...

[rounce]

It’s somewhat ironic that the way it has been framed here is as lacking in nuanced understanding as the style of aid which Shikwati argued against in the full interview. Unsurprising we should get a snippet cropped by a right wing libertarian think-tank in such a way that it boils down to simply “hurr aid bad”.

[cbeach]

As always with Marxism, you’re convinced that your flavour of Marxism is new, and will work despite all flavours of Marxism failing in the past.

[rounce]

Not sure what straw man you’re replying to but you seem to overlook that ensuring people are in a state by why they are able to conduct business reliably is a good thing. To do that providing some assistance is often required. Which if you read the full interview with him you’d realise was the point he was making, not that large swathes of people should be sustained to the bare minimum existence entirely on handouts in perpetuity.