Both Gates and Buffet promised to give away all their money, but they have only become richer. Gates uses his philanthropic trust to influence decisions that enrich his investments while convincing people he is doing it for good. How long are we supposed to wait for these guys to actually give away that money, or was it just a lie?

Giving away money is a form of undemocratic power, too. A billionaire recently gave away all of his money to the Republican Party in the US, for example.

Even if Gates gives his money to ostensibly non-political organizations, he's still deciding how an enormous amount of power is transferred.

Even Steve Jobs' widow, who is giving small amounts of hundreds of organizations, is reshaping society according to her own design. While I'm aligned with her values for the most part, it is still terrifying to think about all the Powell-Jobs' who have billions that they are spending on things that harm us all.

I don’t know the way around this, but I do think it’s good that power is not centralized in one governmental structure, even if that structure is Democratic, and I also think it’s good that there are a diverse set of philosophies determining how philanthropy should happen.

I don’t know that I love the idea of billionaires being the solution to those two problems, but I do think that some part of our resiliency as a nation is because the government doesn’t have total control over those things.

Not to mention the obvious conundrum that this may be great when the party you support is in power but not so great when they’re not.

> I don’t know the way around this, but I do think it’s good that power is not centralized in one governmental structure, even if that structure is Democratic

If your assertion is that nobody should wield nation-scale power, then I agree, and welcome to anarchism!

If your assertion is that billionaires are an effective check on governmental power, I'm... not seeing it. Particularly given how much power billionaires have to influence the government itself.

They are not a “solution” they are private citizens engaging in activities that are not if your business.

Did you mean to say that are none of my business? I’m not sure what you are getting at here.

Nation-scale power is power to brutalize and kill with impunity. The individuals who wield it are called "politicians". They are dangerous for everyone else

Not all power is violent, and not all avoidable death is caused by violence.

For example, pharmaceutical companies in the US have killed millions of people through marketing and regulatory manipulation.

More to your point: as long as politicians are democratically elected, they can't brutalize and kill with impunity.

What is the alternative here? The majority of the governments discretionary money is allocated toward the military. Should Bill Gates and Elon Musk being putting half their money to developing better jets and missiles? I think it is much better than their money goes to curing diseases, environmental causes, electric cars, and space. A few billionaires choosing to do nothing over than passing it down to children is a small price to pay.

No, we should have billionaires like in my comment above but it shouldn’t be easy to pass all of that to the next generation. Inheritance should be reasonably taxed and if the next generation has the chops to become a billionaire again then they are worthy of it and will actually probably contribute to rapid progress.

So your suggestion is to have governments collect more inheritance taxes on a billionaire's estate. Then those taxes will be used for military purposes, no?

Ironically, some of that military money would go back to Patagonia, through their discretely-held control of the current PCU contract, under which they provide a government-spec'd 7-layer uniform system to special operations units. They haven't always held the contract, and may not hold it in the future, but I always found that fact about Patagonia's business somewhat interesting, mainly due to the public obfuscation, and the perceived distance between the particular product, and Patagonia's "brand identity".

Now I need to go wash the fact that I just used "brand identity" in a sentence off my hands.

And other things but yes. You’ve contributed a lot in life, you still get to keep say 700 million but the next generation needs to prove themselves again (not that they need to with 700 million but it’s a start)