All I know, is if I was worth $200B and owned the island of Lanai, you would never hear from me again. Ellison, Musk, Zuckerberg and the rest of these weirdos are deeply damaged human beings.
The best things that Bezos (and arguably Bill Gates) did was get divorced. Observe the ex-wives doing what a normal/sane person would do with that amount of money.
What weird stuff have you heard about Eric Schmidt, John Doerr, Zhang Yiming, Jayshree Ullal, or Alex Karp? There are plenty of people who you don't hear much about, but because you don't hear much about them, the other ones tend to take up all of the air in the room.
Though, there's also the argument that making that kind of money makes you even weirder, and having seen glimpses of that through someone I know getting rich, that might also be true.
By definition, average people will make an average amount of money. It takes extraordinary people to make extraordinary amounts of money. Unfortunately, our system seems to be optimized to reward extraordinary psychopaths.
The money itself also isolates them and makes them more likely to become psychopaths, imo. It's a positive feedback loop on whatever differences allowed them to obtain that wealth, and those personality features eventually metastasize.
I often think back to this 90s 60 minute interview with Bezos and wonder, what happened. He was already a billionaire at this point, but he felt so much more ordinary, down to earth, geeky. He seems very much like the developers I meet all the time. What was the catalyst to the changes we see in him today.
And being that rich in and of itself, I imagine. Tony Hseih of Zappos is another interesting story where, if I had that kind of money, wouldn't I try and help all of my friends, if they knew about it?
It seems the real trick is changing who you are, and realizing that, counter to what you may have learned as a child, lying to everybody, especially your friends, is actually a good thing. We only hear about these stories because they get told. Far more mysterious is the lottery winner who got $20 million who calls up Dave Ramsey and asks what to do with it so their son doesn't become a waiter. That is, someone just waiting for their parents to die and get their inheritance. You'll never hear about their boring life where they lived comfortably and gave money to causes they believed in and helped people they know anonymously and didn't cause a scene.
If it's possible for money not to change a person, we wouldn't hear about it, almost by definition, so we can only conclude that it does.
> And being that rich in and of itself, I imagine.
There was a thought experiment posted on Reddit and I think was from elsewhere. Something like:
Imagine you get $1 million dollars a day. You can't keep it -- it's all gotta get spent. You can invest it, sure, but those holdings aren't going to go up as much as, like, another $1 million the next day. And you have to spend it
So at some point you're going to start doing stuff basically on a whim. You're going to get 3 Lambos in different colors -- because you can. You already have the harem, you already have donated to most causes you care about. You've already got a house (houses, really), so now you start thinking about political causes you're mildly interested in, on top of ones you strongly are. And then you can get petty; if you don't like person X? Take out ads on billboards... cuz you can. Or fund their lawsuit against Gawker, cuz fuck em. etc. etc.
IMO because you have to be a psychopath/sociopath to make that amount of money.
We're talking hundred's of billions of dollars here; $20 million is already a big fortune where 2% interest gets you $200,000.
These people (on paper) have 5 orders of magnitude (100,000x) more. At that point you aren't doing all the questionable things it takes to get there for the money. IMO you have to be broken in some way, shape or form to do what it takes to get there.
I am by no means a religious person (ex-Christian, in fact), but 1 Timothy 6:10 seems applicable here.
> For the love of money is the root of all evil: which while some coveted after, they have erred from the faith, and pierced themselves through with many sorrows.
The USA system is made this way. There are other systems in the world (namely the scandinavian countries) that don't allow individuals to accumulate that amount of wealth.
Yes, I probably should have voted a couple extra times to make sure my vote counted, much like a billionaire can, by paying millions of dollars to a marketing firm to do advertising of every kind to push their agenda. Shame on me.
> There are other systems in the world (namely the scandinavian countries) that don't allow individuals to accumulate that amount of wealth.
This is a common misconception. The Scandinavian model has changed rapidly the last few decades. Sweden now ranks higher than the US in number of dollar billionaires per capita, even if none are at Ellison level yet.
Edited to add: in fact, the Scandinavian model has always been more about equality of income, rather than wealth. There are, and has been throughout the 20th century, wealthy dynasties as well as industry tycoons who has largely been left alone by the social democratic system, and indeed viewed more as an important part of the system than anything else. Since the 90s, though, it has changed rapidly, such that today there is no tax on wealth, inheritance, gifts or real estate, as well as a low corporate income tax.
Thanks for explaining some intricacies about taxes, however this does not disprove my point.
1. Scandinavian countries impose higher taxes on their rich VS the US. It does not have to be a wealth tax. Think effective tax rate.
2. Income inequality is lower there compared to the US.
It is a very different system than the US, it's frankly strange to have to argue that.
Nah, this is something you say about a dude who stole your highschool girlfriend, not about the absolute sort of psychopath who could, you know, literally give every kid in America free lunch with little to-no-effect on his own life and money, and just chooses not to.
Unlike hunger, health, etc. that are at the base, Maslow's hierarchy says nothing about fulfilling your AI needs. Even if you argue this is a manifestation of "self", it's at the top, and least impactful for the broadest audience.
> Ellison no doubt genuinely thinks that such an effort is his highest calling, the best contribution he can possibly make to humanity's well-being
It's likely much simpler: Larry thinks the solution to (his) immortality - or longevity at the very least - may be contained in Americans' collective DNA, and AI may be able to tease the answers out.
Ellison has made it clear that he thinks the US needs a Chinese style social credit surveillance system, and is likely concerned that the proles are gonna rise up and sink his boats.
Ellison no doubt is primarily, if not exclusively, concerned with his own well-being even at the expense of humanity. He may or may not actually believe otherwise, but his wealth objectively disqualifies him from being altruistic or even trustworthy.
Be careful what you wish for. Being a billionaire gets you lots of ability to inflict unintentional damage because being a billionaire doesn't necessarily mean you understand how to best solve programs outside of your domain. There's also lots of people who will happily lead you to inflict pain on the world by convincing you that it's actually a solution.
It's not impossible to begin to liquidate fractions at a time to both live on and make the world a better place instead of revelling when the line goes up. Somehow MacKenzie Scott has found a way to be both rich and provide large chunks of cash, over 10 billion now, to causes.
Most philantropy is closer to what MrBeast does than everyone is comfortable admitting. Most times I decide to read into some public philantropy intervention or other, especially those that happen in remote/far off places, it turns out it was a disaster, nothing was achieved, funds were stolen, and the intervention ended up doing more harm than good. Except to the philantropist's brand, which always comes out on top.
Would you think his hundred clean water wells were all just theatre for a video?
It's definitely a PR campaign and virtue signal he is a good guy, but I wouldn't doubt his water wells are fake (or in your case, not valid evidence of anything).
i absolutely think they're 100% just theatre for video
and they may be real, but like a lot of feel good charity things, it's not about building them, it's building ones that are sustainable and that the locals will actually use.
beast shows up, digs some holes, gets some smiles, but all of those holes will require maintenance and tools for the local population to use. they may not be built to withstand local conditions, and don't have real community involvement.
in a year they'll just be another route for nasty shit to leach into the ground, and beast will be on to his next showboating bullshit feelgood episode
Sorry you're getting downvoted. I just saw a yt video about the Live Aid concert in the 80s and it was just sickening how much today's culture shits on them for trying to help. The comments section was very keen on using the failure as an excuse to not donate ("U2 are millionaires, they should donate instead of asking us to!") and using 40 years of hindsight to absolutely slay the musician who organized the event (Bob Geldof).
They raised an enormous amount of money that unfortunately was stolen by an African warlord, and the ones who's hearts were in the right place were hung out to dry over it. Stuff like that erodes my faith in humanity.
Thanks. I knew I'd get downvoted for it. That's why I warned about unpleasantcy in my comment.
> They raised an enormous amount of money that unfortunately was stolen by an African warlord, and the ones who's hearts were in the right place were hung out to dry over it. Stuff like that erodes my faith in humanity.
Exactly my point, you put it better than my crude comment.
It's not about the money, it's for fun and/or belief in the mission.
I agree with you for someone that has a miserable client-service job, such as an investment banker that is still slaving away so he can keep up with the Joneses.
But Musk, Zuckerberg, Ellison can do whatever the fuck they want. They don't need to take shit from anyone, and they get to build products and shape the world.
Musk, for example, wants to get humans to Mars. To the extent he cares about money anymore, it's in service of that goal, which does require a LOT of resources.
With a guaranteed salary of $300k/yr and unlimited free time I could do whatever the fuck I want. I'd plant a garden, brew beer, work on fun home/shop automation projects, build cool car stuff. All while being paid handsomely to do so. And I'd travel, go sailing, go hiking, go snowboarding. But I have no delusions of grandeur about "getting humans to Mars" or whatever, that shit sounds stressful, and like a waste of life.
"Only" is doing a lot of work there. Life is "only" hedonism for billionaires too--it's just that the things they enjoy are all about controlling other people.
toys and trips for yourself are as far as you can think to do with this hypothetical wealth? are there no other people in your life that you'd take care of and help and yes, spoil? It's your hypothetical wealth and not mine, but (after buying whatever toys I want) I imagine I'd spend my time and money helping other people. Having a workshop with every single tool known to man, all to myself, sounds awesome, but also lonely.
I mean I figured that was a given.. Obviously help the people in your life (and not in your life to the extent possible).. But you should already be doing it anyway wealth or not. I just meant that if I didn't have to work for money anymore it would free up time to do a bunch of things that are otherwise just.. dreams for if I'm able to retire someday. I simply can't imagine the mindset of someone who wouldn't take that at the earliest possible opportunity. Also, it turns out if you have a shop and a ton of free time you can use that to help people ;)
That sounds fine by me. Hiring people is work. Managing people is work. It's a fine thing to do if they pay me and I need the money, but I certainly wouldn't seek that out if I didn't have to. I don't suspect many others would either.
"Standard experiences any plebian can buy with money" includes things like westward solo circumnavigation which is a more elite group than humans who have walked on the moon. And you don't really even need that much money to do it. More money wouldn't really make you any more likely to succeed. So not everything comes down to money, you can do some incredible things without much.
I think one of the problems is that a lot of them start deciding "The only thing that can stop a bad guy with a billion dollars is a good guy with a billion dollars." but then they get so caught up in getting a billion dollars that they don't notice themselves becoming a bad guy.
Also it is very common to think that once you achieve X you will be happy and maybe you will be for a moment, but then you start to feel empty again and you think now if I only had Y I would be happy in a never ending cycle. It is human nature.
This doesn't pass muster when there are literally millions of us living perfectly normal lives at $70k a year or less and living enjoyable, "simple" lives with plentiful hobbies.
The reality is that it takes absurdly few resources to make a normal and well adjusted human happy. Happiness doesn't come from money, though unhappiness can come directly from poverty. If you are fed, housed, and have enough free time to explore your interests, and have sufficient social connections, that's usually all it takes. The way quality scales also means that unless you are playing dumb ideological games like "Getting the best", you will have satisfaction beyond your dreams at a 2X price point from the basics. Eating steak every day isn't that much more expensive than eating beans and rice every day, and certainly doesn't require taking home $100k more than the US average.
Even in a high cost of living port city in a liberal place that embraces weirdness and hasn't built a new housing unit in a decade, $150k total before taxes gets you the ability to outbid most other people looking for housing, enables you to afford buying the expensive eggs just because you feel empathy for chickens, allows you to buy beef when it's not on sale as a regular experience because it's more convenient than finding recipes using cheaper meats, allows you to buy a very nice car and pay exorbitant parking for it, gets you more healthcare than you can use, gets you an overpriced getaway vacation a year, and still putting plenty of money into retirement accounts and a savings account, pays for cheaper colleges, allows you to afford an overpriced gaming computer AND consoles, allows you to buy a new VR headset you never use etc. With a small increase in pay or an ability to live away from the city center, you can raise kids with good expected outcomes. Kids are expensive but the people insisting on $50k a year private schooling are literally insane.
If you are still not satisfied with "stuff" at that point, the problem is not money, the problem is you.
The hedonistic treadmill (and more importantly, normalcy bias) does NOT imply that already rich people will seek more wealth. It implies that people who seek wealth will never be satisfied by the amount of wealth they currently have. People who don't seek wealth but still get it will be satisfied with that amount of wealth. If you are happy with your minimal needs met, you will still be happy as a millionaire, and if you are not happy with your needs met, you will continue being unhappy as a trillionaire.
Some broken people have "I need more money" as a trait. We shouldn't build society to optimize around them.
The moment you breach a billion dollars net worth, you should only be allowed to be paid in teams of psychologists dedicated to finding out your fucking issue.
> This doesn't pass muster when there are literally millions of us living perfectly normal lives at $70k a year or less and living enjoyable, "simple" lives with plentiful hobbies.
And yet, the only immortally he will obtain is history remembering him…unfavorably. Paperclip maximizers are weird, but at least we all die eventually. Checks and balances.
What's the name of the disease where people see someone who gained a lot of money by abusing/exploiting/stealing from others and thinks to themselves "They deserve that money"?
Ouch. I really want to believe that capitalism is more like a condition which can be beneficial to the host and population as long as it's carefully managed.
"Damaged" has a particular connotation that is one particular opinion, but we can certainly say they are very different, and presumably got even more different over time from their starting point which was already very different
> This presumes these folks had that part to lose. Based on all available evidence, I don’t believe they had the empathy, compassion, or emotional health in the first place.
Even after climbing the mountain, they can’t stop, they can’t help themselves. It’s just how they’re wired.
Those are basically the same thing though. Acquiring extreme wealth filters out people with empathy; they either never had it or lost it.
This presumes these folks had that part to lose. Based on all available evidence, I don’t believe they had the empathy, compassion, or emotional health in the first place.
Even after climbing the mountain, they can’t stop, they can’t help themselves. It’s just how they’re wired. They don’t know what enough is or feels like.
Are we sure about this? McKenzie Bezos and Melinda Gates are, of course, different -- but they really really really appear to be doing what a normal person would do, given that amount of money.
I kind of agree that in order to amass it, you have to make evil choices over and over again. Being the beneficiary maybe doesn't convey the same kind of psychological damage.
I think it takes a certain kind of determined/ruthless/crazy individual to actually amass that amount of wealth. It's no coincidence that many (most?) ethical billionaires gained their wealth from divorce.
You’re looking at them from an individual basis, they each have a large collection of other individuals that have their personal wealth tied to the wealth of the central billionaire figure. Those individuals are highly incentivized to convince the billionaire to continue increasing their wealth.
One such story may be that Timmy is working hard at your company to help his sick grandma and he needs to stock price to increase 10% this year in order to do so. If you don’t deliver then his grandma will die. Multiply the that by 1000 Timmies with 1000 grandmas and I could see why it might be hard to say no.
I'm not going to empathize with them based on a slightly derivative version of the Nuremberg defense. The fact that this is how they're choosing to deploy their wealth speaks volumes - all for me, nothing for the public good. Why not collectively agree to limit their wealth to a sustainable billion dollars each? They could police each other on that just as easily as the dragon-hoarding they're doing now.
Not even close to the Nuremberg “following orders” defense. Empathy is an essential component to understanding and understanding is an essential component to productive change. This is on the fairly safe assumption that most changes, especially random or chaotic, would be unproductive or even counter productive.
Why would Larry want to change your behavior, or even think about you at all? Requiring such reciprocity as a prerequisite only hurts yourself making it less likely you’ll achieve change or at least the kind of changes you want.
Risk aversion can take different forms. A paranoid Larry Ellison vows to build a security state. A paranoid Andrew Carnegie built libraries, universities, and concert halls.
+1. It's very different gambling $10 million if it's all the money you have, vs if it's just 4.58% of your net worth, as is the case with Ellison for example.
That's an odd assumption to make. HackerNews comments don't really bring any kind of posterity. I chose to do that because it forced me to be more thoughtful and less troll-y with my comments at a time when I found that to be valuable.
This should not be surprising to anyone -- if you consider the following:
> During the 1970s, after a brief stint at Amdahl Corporation, Ellison began working for Ampex Corporation. His first project included a database for the CIA, code-named "Oracle".
I don't like these videos, little benefit. Only thing here: If he wants to start surveillance we should start on him and he should publish it all, so we can monitor him (incl. publication of all financials so we can monitor for financial crimes as well)
Our billionaires are one of our nation's resources and we need to treat them as such. They should have government protection at all times, watching and keeping them safe. Making sure they don't take excessive risks (speeding, driving fast/dangerous cars/boats/etc). Making sure their bodies stay healthy (protect them from drugs/poisoning/heavily prosecute anyone who introduces dangerous chemicals/drugs/alcohol to enter their bodies). They should have a strict healthy diet (food pyramid and only sourced from out safest corporate products, not non-standardized non-corporate food). Testing any sexual partners in advance to ensure no diseases are transferred and publicizing all sexual acts so that the sexual liaisons can't be weaponized against them.
It's time America take our billionaire national resource seriously and implement basic sane/intelligent protections. For the good of society.
"Put all America's data in AI" sounds like this is about training models, but it's not - it's more about RAG:
> "I have to tell [the] AI model as much about my country as I can," Ellison said. "We need to unify all the national data, put it into a database where it's easily consumable by the AI model, and then ask whatever question you like," he said. "That's the missing link."
(Really it's about encouraging governments to buy a whole lot more Oracle licenses.)
Given how much of the world's information infrastructure isn't even digitized yet, this seems more like that pattern where you get executives excited about "AI" just so you can migrate off paper records!
> Really it's about encouraging governments to buy a whole lot more Oracle licenses.
I wish I believed that's all it was. I think Ellison really believes in an extremely authoritarian/oversight government to keep people in line. He's made plenty of statements over time to such and he runs everything he touches that way. I think he's the most dangerous type of all because he (in that tiny stone cold heart of his) really believes he is doing it for the better of people[1]. Of course the rich and powerful like him know better and don't need that, but all the riff raff like us...
[1] Reminds me of this favorite C.S. Lewis quote: "Of all tyrannies, a tyranny sincerely exercised for the good of its victims may be the most oppressive. It would be better to live under robber barons than under omnipotent moral busybodies. The robber baron's cruelty may sometimes sleep, his cupidity may at some point be satiated; but those who torment us for our own good will torment us without end for they do so with the approval of their own conscience."
> I think Ellison really believes in an extremely authoritarian/oversight government to keep people in line.
Is he wrong?
I mean weren't all these billionaires hanging out at Epstein's island because of the lack of oversight? What type of government do you think can keep them in line?
Well no he's not wrong necessarily. It's his opinion. But plenty of kings have justified horrific treatment of people with some underlying truth. For example, the extreme brutality of medieval punishments did discourage criminals, so from that perspective their torture "worked." I think you can make society very safe if you're willing to throw out human rights like Ellison is.
Now that said, do you really think the billionaires and presidents and other top echelon of people will be monitored like us peasants? It's certainly possible, but that will (IMHO) come down to who is in power and implementing that. Even if that person has good intentions, they very well might cave once they have to beg for campaign donations...
This is at least part of what Harold Finch was trying to prevent with his Machine in (Person of Interest)[0]. Having it have access to all of the data was bad enough, but being able to ask it any question you wanted was always a terrifying proposition. Especially if you then consider what happens when that AI starts doing things on it's own (see Samaritan from the same show).
Given the source, no, my first thought was emphatically not "training models," it was -- this crazy bastard is hellbent on world domination. Seriously.
You can thank Nixon and the abandoning of the Gold Standard in 1971 for this problem.
It allowed government to print $ unchecked. When new $ gets printed, it goes to the corporations/rich first, causing inflation for everyone else. This artificially creates an extremely wealthy class.
Not saying the Gold Standard is the solution - it had its own set of problems. But the untying of money from a real, hard asset is what makes the existence of the ultra-rich possible.
Is money printing the problem? I'd say the amount of money in circulation since the 2000s has massively increased not by government printing but by overvaluation of virtual financial products, including stocks.
"The years from the end of World War II into the 1970s were ones of substantial economic growth and broadly shared prosperity. Beginning in the 1970s, economic growth slowed and the income gap widened."
There were substantial policy and economic philosophy changes around this time. The 1970s are the rise of Milton Friedman and the Chicago School of Economics, which led to the Reagan Revolution in the US and Thatcherism in the UK, as well as the Washington Consensus within the IMF & World Bank. Those were the philosophies that drove the privatization and anti-union movements over the following half-century, which decimated the power of labor and removed restrictions on the accumulation of wealth, which directly led to the current state of affairs.
Try an experiment: the current levels of richness may be too much, and we seem to be learning that through lived experience; it may be that we have to dial down the richness and if we go too in the other way we lift the restrictions.
As it currently stands, wealth concentration is at about the same level as in the Gilded Age:
So perhaps adjust tax rates to what they were from about 1950-70. Certainly there were other factors that helped prosperity (in the US) during that time period, but it's probably worth tweaking this variable.
The problem with this approach is that to someone out there, any amount is "too much" Should we start with confiscating all earnings in excess of $100 per month and adjust from there if needed? No matter how ridiculous a thing I propose, if you don't agree then I can easily just say
> Should our inability to unanimously agree on something prevent us from doing anything? No. Let’s start somewhere. We can adjust if we need.
Of course! But looking at the reality of the policy, don't you think that barring a person who turns 18 tomorrow from voting but allowing some other person to vote who is 12 hours older is kind of silly?
We do have to draw a line somewhere in order to get things done, but we should be honest and aware of how arbitrary such a line is. We shouldn't just grab some random number out of our ass and say "we have to start somewhere." My point above is that argument can be used to justify anything no matter how draconian. We need a better standard than just "we have to start somewhere"
Also there is a practical difference between voting and drinking (your examples) and taxation levels (the subject matter). Most reasonable people acknowledge that somewhere around 18 to early 20s people become "adults." Everyone develops at different levels, but the main idea there is not to have children voting in horrible politicians (clearly we adults are good enough at that already, sadlol). Same with drinking. We know that young people are often irresponsible and dangerous with it, and it can damage their brains. They also aren't able to make informed rational decisions as their frontal lobes aren't complete. Compare that to "how much money is too much" and you're going to get a huge and inconsistent range of answers, compared to "at what age should people be able to vote or drink."
I think everyone on this thread is aware that it's an arbitrary line.
That's where the "how rich is too rich?" comment comes from.
That's where the "Let’s start somewhere. We can adjust if we need."
The "start somewhere" is meant to be read in good faith as something achievable.
The history of US taxation shows us that 94% on taxable income over about $2.5 million is achievable, while you have no evidence that 100% taxation above $100 per month is doable.
You can nitpick my examples, but there's plenty more I can do. Why is a 29 year old adult prohibited from being Senator? Why is 65 mph a legal speed limit but 65.1 mph illegal? Why is the reporting limit for cash payments at $10,000 and not $15,000 or $8,000?
When road speed limits for machines were first put into place, the idea wasn't to start and 1 mph and work up from there. They already had vehicles that could do 10mph, and the 4 mph limit was a good walking speed for the flag bearer.
And the recent feedback from Wales is that lowering the urban speed limit from 30 mph to 20 mph reduced the number of people who were killed or seriously injured, by 28 per cent, suggesting the limit was too high, if human lives are important.
You don't need anything beyond that. At that point you're basically just keeping score. There is no need and few wants that would be beyond your grasp.
Sorry, I should have tagged my sarcasm. It should cover every person in the population. A billion dollars is enough money that you and your family for untold generations will never have to work again.
To put some math on that - assuming a market rate of return of ~7% and an inflation rate of, hell, we’ll call it 4%, that’s $30M/yr inflation adjusted forever.
You invest $30M at the same rates, and it generates $900k/yr inflation adjusted forever. That’s the combined income of 10 median families, give or take - which means a billion dollar fortune throws off enough money to comfortably support 10 families per year forever, forever.
Doesn't need to be a binary choice (above/below threshold) - it can be a spectrum -- also known as progressive taxation.
Would this prevent people from working hard and being enterpreneurial? Not sure but I think not -- for 2 reasons:
(i) success at that level requires more than just desire for money, because it requires pushing hard when the going is tough, and unless you care about it you will give up. we have heard this before from others (Steve Jobs?)
(ii) a successfull entrepreneur will still make more money than an employee, so the financial incentive is still there, even with greater taxation.
Take the longest any human being has ever lived, subtract the age of the given person, multiply that many years by the the top 1% of US income, everything over that at the end of the year gets taxed at 100%. Reasonable place to start?
Let's start at $1B. I cannot think of any earthly reason a single individual needs more than $1B worth of wealth. After all, the US presidency apparently only costs $250M to buy.
I would fully support a 100% wealth tax for everything over $1B.
Now, of course, the implementation of such a thing would be enormously complicated. There are a million places to hide your wealth, squirreling it away behind shell companies and dark LLCs which you or a designated agent are a controlling member of.
But in concept, I cannot fathom why a human being could possibly say, "You know, $1B really isn't enough for <this>."
Let's say the maximum amount allowed by a company is determined by the number of people that have a controlling share in the company. If one person controls the company, it's still $1B; if there's 8 people holding 51% of the shares it can hold $8B, etc.
The highest paid person of a company can never be paid more than 10x what the lowest end is earning. Including external contractors like cleaning staff. Very simple.
In school the max grade we can get is 100%, and everyone seems fine with that. People don't seem to complain that there's a cap.
In videogames there tend to be max levels, or max scores. People play them knowing they won't ever hit them, and no one seems to mind.
No one starts a job thinking they can get infinite raises. A lot of people tend to have a general idea of what the max compensation they can expect in their line of work is, and seem to be fine with that.
I think people tend to be pretty ok with theoretical or even hard limits, especially if they're far from them.
And how do you measure riches? Part of the game is hiding the amount of money you actually make so that you’re not taxed on it and it’s not “yours”.
Rich people understand this and exploit it. And those who have the power to change this structure have NO incentive to do so… because they’re also rich.
>And those who have the power to change this structure have NO incentive to do so… because they’re also rich.
And yet we did just that. FDR came AFTER the roaring 20s
All it takes is Americans willing to vote for someone who says "rich people shouldn't exist", but currently Americans seem ideologically opposed to that, and millions instead seem to subscribe to "rich people are the only ones able to accomplish anything" despite ample contrary evidence.
2% on wealth over a billion, simplify tax code to reduce loopholes, add increasing rates at higher income levels like we used to have. That should help.
Importantly, not on income, but on wealth in general. It removes the ability for extremely wealthy people to get around paying much tax with things like capital gains.
Fine by me, a billion is an obscene amount of wealth. I think a smaller percentage is more likely to be passed. Maybe 1% over 100 million 10% over a billion. Too many fools think they might be billionaires someday while the billionaires keep siphoning off wealth. Speedrunning it now that we have the oligarchs in charge in the US.
In the modern world, Elon Musk bought his way into controlling the federal government, Larry Ellison is proposing an autocomplete panopticon, Mark Zuckerberg is building a survival bunker on Hawaii, and the leading cause of bankruptcy for everyone else is medical debt.
what, the modern world in which thousands are allowed to starve while tax dollars are spent on weapons used to commit genocides abroad? the world in which everybody in america needs to own a car because it's not profitable enough to build modern rapid transit systems? oh no, please don't destroy that, it would be terrible
Let's start by testing this system on the people that want to implement it. Larry Ellison would be a good candidate. Now please upload your DNA and all of your other information you want to from us.
As someone who's lived through a despotic regime - there will be more elections. Whether those elections are free and fair is the question. This also explains the haste at which they are attempting to purge non-partisans from government before the midterms.
Purges/closures/subjugations to watch out for: the press, judiciary, election officials, policing functions (FBI, local police, Attorneys general), domestic (sometimes foreign) intelligence. All of those functions have to be neutralized to hold sham elections, and have their results stand.
Your DNA is just a rich mine of new data points about you that they can exploit and use against you. Maybe AI thinks you're more likely than most people to have medical issues and as a result companies now refuse to hire you. Maybe AI decides that your DNA makes you more susceptible to certain addictions or alcoholism and companies selling addictive products target you relentlessly as a result. Maybe your DNA makes AI think you're more prone to criminal activity and the police harass you endlessly until you either end up in prison or move away.
The conclusions AI reaches don't even have to be scientifically valid, they could be nothing more than hallucinations, but that doesn't mean that it won't have impacts on your life or place limitations on your opportunities.
My problem with this is that people like Larry Ellison are more likely to want to use this against other people but would excuse themselves from any consequences.
These models have proven to develop incredible abilities through pattern matching on massive text data, so I wouldn’t be too quick to dismiss the limits of what they could do.
Having them use specialized tools would probably be more effective (e.g. have the reasoning LLM use the DNA LLM), but in the long term with scale… who knows? The bitter lesson keeps biting us every time we think we know better.
The DNA idea and the LLM idea are separate things. The DNA idea is about controlling people. The LLM idea is about hyping an insanely computationally intensive technology with tons of hype and generalized excitement but few (no?) successful commercial applications. The man sells computers. If he can convince the government it's a strategic imperative that we do the AI real good, he just sold a whole lot of it. It's Web 3.0 2.0.
Just so it's clear: he bought Cerner, so he's absolutely got the ability to do that.
It's fine. They were from Kansas City, not SV, so they didn't really matter. It created maximum value for shareholders. That's what determines the greatest possible good... right?
With extreme wealth, the next goal becomes immortality. Ellison and others are obsessed with living longer (or forever) and viewing all their ideas through this lens helps explain their investments in biotechnology and artificial intelligence.
> As you know people, as you learn about things, you realize that these generalizations we have are, virtually to a generalization, false. Well, except for this one, as it turns out. What you think of Oracle, is even truer than you think it is. There has been no entity in human history with less complexity or nuance to it than Oracle. And I gotta say, as someone who has seen that complexity for my entire life, it's very hard to get used to that idea. It's like, 'surely this is more complicated!' but it's like: Wow, this is really simple! This company is very straightforward, in its defense. This company is about one man, his alter-ego, and what he wants to inflict upon humanity -- that's it! ...Ship mediocrity, inflict misery, lie our asses off, screw our customers, and make a whole shitload of money. Yeah... you talk to Oracle, it's like, 'no, we don't fucking make dreams happen -- we make money!' ...You need to think of Larry Ellison the way you think of a lawnmower. You don't anthropomorphize your lawnmower, the lawnmower just mows the lawn, you stick your hand in there and it'll chop it off, the end. You don't think 'oh, the lawnmower hates me' -- lawnmower doesn't give a shit about you, lawnmower can't hate you. Don't anthropomorphize the lawnmower. Don't fall into that trap about Oracle.
> Of course, such a vast database system could also be the precursor to pervasive surveillance – an idea Ellison last year said he feels is desirable and would like Oracle to help facilitate.
I know someone who open sourced their full genome sequence. They did it because their demographics were severely underrepresented in the DNA data, which is largely a collection of European ancestry. If I assumed the best in Larry Ellison, I would hope that this follows the advances in Indigenous LLM's, where AI is able to preserve languages that are being lost daily. My hope would be that AI could also preserve the ancestry of indigenous and underrepresented populations through DNA.
There is a booming trend of comically evil ~80 year old billionaires. If you only have a few years left on Earth, you probably shouldn't be allowed to make decisions on behalf of the people who will actually live long enough to experience the consequences.
The ideal state is every individual has control of their health and DNA information and use models running on their controlled devices to do the monitoring for them.
Maybe there are cases where they want to share this information with subscribers who authenticate and have authorization over some segments of the data. But it absolutely should not be in the hands of others as the default.
Larry should create a platform where anyone can VOLUNTARILY post personal data if they like - - and as long as he and his family members go first. As well as the board and execs of whatever companies will benefit from this. Go for it, and kindly leave the rest of us alone.
It doesn't matter if Larry and a bunch of execs feed all their data into the same AI if they also control the AI or how that AI will be used. They'll be able to protect themselves while still screwing over everyone else.
We can put and someday we will put all data into “AI” systems, but more importantly is to maintain the original source. Still a fear factor to think about future search engines being solely an AI which can’t show me the source of information.
The tragedy of inventing all this cool shit right now is that it comes at a time when the people who'd be in control of it deserve so little trust that we'd be better off not moving ahead with it.
Citing an improvement in healthcare is a very altruistic statement that, as a disabled individual with an expensive maintenance medication need, I find extremely unlikely as a valid premise.
Reminds me of how a bunch of eye-tracking research originally done at MIT to help create smart devices for autistic people to pick up on nonverbal communication got cancelled and repackaged in the adtech space.
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