A better first-order approximation to reality, is "Billionaires Exploit".
A second order approximation is that Billionaires exploit a) the political system by funding politicians indirectly so they will implement policies that enhance profits, b) poor employees by paying them a wage they cannot live on without government subsidies while keeping them in precarious arrangements to avoid union benefits and c) natural resources by avoiding costs which should be inherent [ eg. defer cost of redressing carbon pollution and recycling ].
Paul meets the best kind of proto-billionaire - innovators who aspire to _make_ something useful, or at least something that people want - and perhaps doesn't get to interview the appalling idle-rich dynasty billionaires who inherit obscene wealth, and cannot spend money faster than it grows.
We should not be congratulating Gates on investing money in Vaccines - we should have taxed him properly and used that money to fund vaccines/healthcare and climate initiatives. Then perhaps the 15 copies of windows 'tax' - which I paid for but never used because I installed linux - would be distributed democratically.
Look around.. what part of the world is not on fire ? Startups are not the solution to our current evils. I would suggest that we have abandoned the fair rules that governed our economy, and our democracies, weakening our systems and institutions - and this has put us in peril.
Covid is merely a kick-the-tyres test before the real game of climate change, and we have failed that test. The pandemic has exposed dire systemic weaknesses. If one 9/11 per day of aunties dying is not enough to wake us up, will the permanent melting of the ice caps even be noticed ?
Printing digital cash to prop up stock prices is a great way to get us through a pandemic induced economic shock, but we need to learn from this quickly, and rebuild our institutions - a free market works only if people can trust that the rules of the market are fair. We must rapidly align the engine of enterprise to our global survival : tax the uber-rich brutally, spend it wisely in the war on climate change.
A better first-order approximation to reality, is "Billionaires Exploit".
A second order approximation is that Billionaires exploit a) the political system by funding politicians indirectly so they will implement policies that enhance profits, b) poor employees by paying them a wage they cannot live on without government subsidies while keeping them in precarious arrangements to avoid union benefits and c) natural resources by avoiding costs which should be inherent [ eg. defer cost of redressing carbon pollution and recycling ].
Paul meets the best kind of proto-billionaire - innovators who aspire to _make_ something useful, or at least something that people want - and perhaps doesn't get to interview the appalling idle-rich dynasty billionaires who inherit obscene wealth, and cannot spend money faster than it grows.
We should not be congratulating Gates on investing money in Vaccines - we should have taxed him properly and used that money to fund vaccines/healthcare and climate initiatives. Then perhaps the 15 copies of windows 'tax' - which I paid for but never used because I installed linux - would be distributed democratically.
Look around.. what part of the world is not on fire ? Startups are not the solution to our current evils. I would suggest that we have abandoned the fair rules that governed our economy, and our democracies, weakening our systems and institutions - and this has put us in peril.
Covid is merely a kick-the-tyres test before the real game of climate change, and we have failed that test. The pandemic has exposed dire systemic weaknesses. If one 9/11 per day of aunties dying is not enough to wake us up, will the permanent melting of the ice caps even be noticed ?
Printing digital cash to prop up stock prices is a great way to get us through a pandemic induced economic shock, but we need to learn from this quickly, and rebuild our institutions - a free market works only if people can trust that the rules of the market are fair. We must rapidly align the engine of enterprise to our global survival : tax the uber-rich brutally, spend it wisely in the war on climate change.