Here "We" Go Again

Cure cancer... really? That's pretty big news, I wonder why it hasn't gotten out farther.

I think I'd like to nominate the human willingness to pass the buck as the most annoying thing. This is the sort of post that one makes to bask in the likes, upvotes and other forms of Internet applause that come from calling out a problem and laying it squarely at the feet of people who have better things to do than read social media posts by some rando.

"Greed and billionaires" are wonderful targets specifically because most people won't be bothered to stand up for them, and it allows for feel-good slacktivism; the audience can feel good about themselves for being supportive of the stand being taken, but that support comes at absolutely zero cost to themselves. "Billionaires" aren't going around with vacuum cleaners, sucking the money out of everyone's pockets: they're investing in and/or running businesses offering goods and services that everyday people want. Things that people like me (and yeah, I'll own this) would rather have. Would an end to world hunger, global climate change and cancer (I'm still dubious about that last one) be good? Absolutely. Is it worth more to me than the books I just bought the other day? Apparently not.

And I'm not the only one. There are any number of people who would rather spend their money on things that they feel enhance their material well-being than fund capturing human potential. That's how investors and board chairs and chief fill-in-the-blank officers become billionaires in the first place.

There's an idea that a bunch of wealthy people could get together, shell out a bunch of money and make the world a better place overnight, and still remain fabulously wealthy. (Whether or not that would actually be the case, I don't know.) Which is really just another way of minimizing the costs to others of the things that people want.

Presuming that there are cures for cancer that are waiting on nothing more than enough funding to float down from the heavens, it's somewhat within the power of the public at large to solve these problems. Wealthy people became so because the current rules allow for it. So step one is to change those rules.

But that becomes a collective action problem. The legislative majorities needed to enact such policies would require that a pretty good-sized chunk of the populace, at least here in the United States, put aside their differences and work together towards a common goal; and believe that they can reach that goal without inflicting unreasonable amounts of pain on themselves or otherwise doing something unpalatable.

And that's why it becomes easy to blame "billionaires." They could supposedly make all of these problems go away with sweeping acts of charity, and criticizing them for not doing so conveniently does away with all of the arguing and messiness that enduring solutions would entail.