The fact that a handful of individuals have half a trillion dollars to throw at something that may or may not work while working people can pay the price of a decent used car each year, every year to their health insurance company only to have claims denied is insane.
This is disputed [1]. In reality, a handful of individuals have the capital to seed a half-a-trillion dollar megaproject, which then entails the project to raise capital from more people.
[1] https://www.wsj.com/tech/musk-pours-cold-water-on-trump-back...
Also the guy disputing it is trying to regain control of an entity that he was too distracted to hold to its original mission, is on record as agreeing with the statement that Jewish people are the enemies of white people, takes copious amounts of mind-altering substances daily, has lost billions of dollars on purchasing a company that had a path to (modest) profitability, and did what could easily be seen as a Roman salute at an inauguration speech. Maybe he's not a great source of statements on objective reality, even within the AI industry.
With regard to the monetary amount, understand, once you reach a certain point, the amount of capital held by the quantity of individuals we're talking about is immaterial. Any capital they raise is usually derived from the labor of others and they operate a racket to prevent any real competition for how that capital is distributed by the labor or the customers who are the source of their actual wealth. The average Oracle employee (I know a few), for example, probably has a few more immediate things they want the surplus value of their labor to be spent on than Larry's moonshot. However, he ultimately controls the direction of that value through a shareholder system that he can manipulate more-or-less at-will through splits, buybacks, and other practices.
His customers would probably also like to pay less for what are usually barely Web 2.0 database applications. Of course, he has the capital to corner markets and shove competition out of the space.
All of this is to say when you reach this amount of money in the hands of one individual, they're more likely to regularly harm people than beat the odds on their next bet in a way that actually uplifts society, at least in a way that could beat the way just disbursing that capital among those who created it could.
Hyperbole much?
[0]: https://www.yahoo.com/news/elon-musks-drug-becoming-problem-...
This is a valid conflict of interest. That means we should closely scrutinize his claims. From what I can tell, he's added up correctly in respect of the named backers' wealth and liquidity.
> a paper that is literally named after a place where the vast majority of people have never had to do any real labor in their lives
Yes, we should ignore bankers when it comes to questions about money...
Do you have an actual claim? Or is it all ad hominem?
> capital they raise is usually derived from the labor of others and they operate a racket to prevent any real competition for how that capital is distributed by the labor or the customers who are the source of their actual wealth
They're capitalists, herego they can raise unlimited wealth?
Given that all of the capital and implementation is private anyways, I am not even sure why this was announced with Trump on stage. To me it seemed like a spectacle to help Trump in return for maybe favorable regulation on things like antitrust or copyright or AI regulation or whatever.
This money is managed by small amounts of people but it is aggregated from millions of investors, most of these are public companies. The US spends over 10x that amount on healthcare each year.
The "free movement of capital" only ever seems to move the capital one direction: up to the people who needed the labor of others to reach such wealth.
I am sorry that you feel you are downwardly mobile, but you should not assume your experience generalizes.
This is, in fact, a generalized experience: [0]
[0]https://www.pewresearch.org/social-trends/2019/02/14/millenn...
- there is a shortage of housing
- predatory loans for higher education
- chronic health crisis due to terrible government health policy and guidelines
- globalization has led to an international labor market
The last point may be bad for many Americans but an unequivocal good for the world. Global poverty has seen an incredible drop in the past 70 years. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Extreme_poverty#/media/File:Wo...
I would put that more on a failure of culture to value healthy living and activity. I wouldn't call that the responsibility of the government. Perhaps lack of clarity on ownership is related to the crisis itself.
There are lots of problems with our current approach to healthcare, but insurers aren’t charging you way more than the cost to counterparty on that contract should be.
A graph of the stocks for UnitedHealth, Elevance (formerly Anthem) and Cigna shows that they're all on the growth track for the last five years.
If a subscriber pays them what they do, and they don't have money to pay a claim declared medically necessary by a medical doctor, but do have the money to forward to a retirement fund, they are charging too much.
Most of the rest of the industrialized world seems to grasp this concept, and their people live longer.
You'd think the healthy working population wouldn't be that much of a burden to care for as well, but they have to go out of pocket and get insurance to provide for themselves after providing for everyone else.
There is a lot of graft going on for this to be the case. It may not be the fault of insurance companies but someone is stealing a great deal of money from the American people.
Now here's the million dollar question; are you aware of this obvious fact? Have you ever heard someone frame the socialized medicine debate in this way: "If we could be as efficient as the UK we could give you free healthcare AND cut your taxes!". If not, why not?
[0]https://www.statista.com/statistics/283221/per-capita-health...
au·tar·ky /ˈôˌtärkē/ noun economic independence or self-sufficiency. "rural community autarchy is a Utopian dream" a country, state, or society which is economically independent. plural noun: autarkies; plural noun: autarchies