That's one of the most disappointing things to me. These people have such resources and the limit of their vision is: bang young girls, accumulate bling, push divisive hateful politics, start wars.
That's it. That's the best they can do.
Even nominally selfish far-sighted things like genuinely funding a deep research program for life extension is not really something they're into. I mean some of them are "into" it in that they talk about it and occasionally toss money at things but they're not interested in funding or being involved in the kind of multi-year high-focus moonshot program it would actually take to deliver. The problem is that's hard and it takes a long time when banging girls and winning power games is instant dopamine.
It makes me keep thinking of paperclip maximizers. It's like we are paperclip maximizers, only our paperclips are sex and dopamine hits from winning power games. A paperclip maximizer with such resources would squander it all on paperclips, and we squander it all on these goal functions built in by evolution. Are we actually intelligent or just clever animals? We can seek what we want, but we don't think much about what we want to want.
To put that in context, Wikipedia says about Carnegie:
> he gave away around $350 million (equivalent to $6.9 billion in 2025 dollars), almost 90 percent of his fortune, to charities, foundations and universities
Those famously "richest Americans" were worth single digit billions in today's money. Musk is reportedly worth $600-800 billions. Imagine what he could do with that money. The Gilded Age industrialists were already devils, but to say the quality of the ultra-rich today is in the gutter would be an offense to the gutter.
It seems like when someone does a historical analysis of the wealth of these past tycoons, they often don't do a simple inflation calculation, they relate the wealth to the GDP of the US at the time. By that measure, both Rockefeller and Carnegie were quite a lot more wealthy than single-digit billions, though maybe not quite the same level as Elon Musk.
What makes Musk's wealth really incredible is how much of it is based on hot air (TSLA).
I think about how we could've paid for two brand new, gigawatt-scale nuclear power plants for the same amount of money as Elon Musk flushed down the toilet to try to shut down a website he didn't like. Extreme wealth is a mental illness, and wealth caps are healthcare.
He’s not “doing something with his insane wealth”. He’s wealthy because he’s doing something. The moment he announces he’s stepping back and going to be boring he loses half his wealth or more.
God does not come down from the heavens and bestow money that one spends on what one chooses. People value his companies because he’s there. TSLA will instantly collapse in valuation if he exits.
At this point I wish he had shut it down. Instead he turned into a mouthpiece for the right and duped his followers into thinking he’s “liberated” the site and made it into some bastion of free speech.
If you can guarantee two brand new gigawatt scale nuclear power plants for $44b then you can raise that money easily. The problem isn’t the access to money that prevents it. It’s that the the number of NRC approved reactors built since it came into existence is countable on your fingers.
I’m not even kidding. If you can pass the regulation, environmental, land permits, local opposition etc. you will be a hundred millionaire maybe a billionaire.
This is just patently false. There are many companies and workers that have the knowledge required to pass NRC approvals. The NRC are not some NIMBY gatekeepers for the nuclear industry they do care about safety and the have a vested interest in getting reactors approved and under construction
There are just not that many people building nuclear reactors because it's very a expensive process and other investment vehicles are way more ludicrous
Also bonus addendum I just realized, the NRC has a plain writing plan
"We will also use plain writing for all notices that inform you of meetings and significant actions. We will even use plain writing for specialized technical publications, but we will consider the needs and subject matter expertise of our intended audience. In addition, we will use plain writing to develop licenses, license amendments, and guidance documents. Such documents are primarily intended for our licensees, who are technically proficient in nuclear matters. Nonetheless, we believe that these documents must be clear, concise, and well-organized because they explain how to comply with NRC requirements. In cases where these documents must necessarily be written in considerable technical detail, we will develop a brief executive summary to make the content accessible and easy for you to understand."
So, if you can read and understand plain English how about you go make yourself a couple billion dollars.
I fail to see how British sarcasm qualifies as a personal attack. Specifically in reference to plain English that is the specification of the NRC as cited
I'm a fan of British wit, but these things don't necessarily translate across contexts. On a broad and shallow internet forum like HN, a line like "if you can read and understand plain English how about you go make yourself a couple billion dollars" pattern-matches to boxed wine sarcasm, not ripping port sarcasm.
It's incredibly distressing, but I think the issue here lies with 'we'. Those at the very top are a very, shall we say, unique group. Those who seek power at such a level are not like the rest of us. There's established research showing that psychopathic and sociopathic traits are vastly more common among the "CEO class". It's not that wealth and power _makes_ them so, it's that relatively few are willing to be completely amoral or malicious in order to obtain as much power as possible. I believe that this effect is greatly magnified at the very top.
It's a tale as old as Plato: those most likely to WANT to rule are exactly the 'candidates' who absolutely should not.
Are they unique? What would happen to an ordinary person if you gave them a billion dollars?
One of the things this does is gets you surrounded by supplicants and yes-men trying to tell you what you want to hear to get your money. It destroys social feedback. Nobody will tell you you're wrong. This is not good for mental health.
Imagine you suddenly had $100MM. You never have to work again and can do practically whatever you want. But most of us appreciate experiences with the company of others.
Who would you be able to spend time with? Most of your friends and family would still have to work. Of course, you could offer them to leave their jobs and give them money so they won't have to worry and they could spend time with you. But then it leads to the social feedback issue, so even those closest to you don't want to rock the boat.
There is the undocumented 3rd option of actually running for office oneself if you're (correctly) certain no quality candidate will be produced for the position.
> These people have such resources and the limit of their vision is: bang young girls, accumulate bling, push divisive hateful politics, start wars.
I really don't like how Bill Gates and Microsoft made their money, but at least he has realized that in his twilight years to try to make amends via humanitarian work. Buying the stairway to heaven.
