I was surprised how slim the reviews were of the billionaires given the hours spent on it TBH. I think we do a disservice oversimplifying the impact (or lack thereof of billionaires) and not hold them to a stricter standard. Below are some examples of things I would have mentioned.
Bill Gates has tried to keep the IP of COVID vaccines from being released to manufacturers of countries like India. I don’t think the case of COVID IP is open and shut, but it’s quite possible that Gates is contributing to lots of unecessary COVID deaths.
Elon Musk did a great service by making electric vehicles trendy, but he is also really hurting the climate by working against public transit and pushing car ownership. To the extent we produce new vehicles, they should be electric. But addressing climate change means reducing car ownership/car production not maintaining or growing the status quo—building electric cars is still significantly harmful to the environment.
You mention Elon’s allged intention to make Twitter a better public good which has often been brought up in terms of free speech. But you don’t mention Elon has an anti-free-speech track record of going after (legitimate) critics of him and trying to get them deplatformed. We should be concerned how he might actually lead Twitter.
Jeff Bezos’ Amazon unecessarily pushes consumerism which is quite harmful for the environment, as you point out with Arnault. Amazon would still be thriving without trying to manipulate people’s psychology to get them to buy more things. This is also arguably bad for the consumer if they make purchases that end up being of little value.
For what it’s worth, Gates broke a lot of IP law in Microsoft’s origins and didn’t become philanthropic until Microsoft was under investigation for being a monopoly.
It’s omissions like these that make me think this post contributes more so to bad discourse about billionaires than a good discourse.
Don’t take it personally. I think you could resolve this stuff by being more holistic in the review. Or if this is just an idea you are playing around with, then I would leave off the grades.
I think I disagree with most of the points on your comment, which is kind of surprising. Though I do think that they are interesting in a red-teaming kind of way.
I think we do a disservice oversimplifying the impact (or lack thereof of billionaires)
I agree that the impact is going to be multifaceted, but I think that most of it will be dominated by the first few factors. More specifically, I think that impact is probably something like lognormally distributed, and that an estimate which only takes into account the first few components fundamentally makes sense
Bill Gates has tried to keep the IP of COVID vaccines from being released to manufacturers of countries like India. I don’t think the case of COVID IP is open and shut, but it’s quite possible that Gates is contributing to lots of unecessary COVID deaths.
It seems very likely to me that expropriating IP leads to less innovation in the next disaster.
Elon Musk did a great service by making electric vehicles trendy, but he is also really hurting the climate by working against public transit and pushing car ownership. To the extent we produce new vehicles, they should be electric. But addressing climate change means reducing car ownership/car production not maintaining or growing the status quo—building electric cars is still significantly harmful to the environment.
I’m not sure whether this point stands when you consider what the counterfactual would have been. I think that the most likely counterfactual is that people would have been producing and buying normal cars, whereas now not only Tesla but also other major manufacturers are producing electric ones. I probably agree that electric cars aren’t as good if the energy comes from coal plants instead of from renewables. But pushing for electric vehicles still enables advances in renewables to cash out into more renewable vehicles, so I think that his Shapley value is high.
Maybe there is something I’m missing? What do you think would have happened in the absence of Tesla? Or maybe you think that lead/lithium batteries are just very harmful? That is something I know less about.
You mention Elon’s allged intention to make Twitter a better public good which has often been brought up in terms of free speech. But you don’t mention Elon has an anti-free-speech track record of going after (legitimate) critics of him and trying to get them deplatformed. We should be concerned how he might actually lead Twitter.
Not convinced, but hard to articulate why.
Jeff Bezos’ Amazon unecessarily pushes consumerism
I’d think that this effect is mild in comparison with the efficiency gains.
Gates broke a lot of IP law in Microsoft’s origins
I don’t really care about this in comparison with his philanthropy and the Giving Pledge.
So overall I think that your points are good in a red-teaming kind of sense, but that they ultimately don’t switch the impacts around. E.g., if you consider grades as indicative of the order, it would surprise me if these considerations moved that around.
You mention Elon’s allged intention to make Twitter a better public good which has often been brought up in terms of free speech. But you don’t mention Elon has an anti-free-speech track record of going after (legitimate) critics of him and trying to get them deplatformed. We should be concerned how he might actually lead Twitter.
Are you predicting that Twitter will be worse along the free speech dimension if Musk takes control of it? If so, what metrics would you use to operationalize this prediction?
I was surprised how slim the reviews were of the billionaires given the hours spent on it TBH. I think we do a disservice oversimplifying the impact (or lack thereof of billionaires) and not hold them to a stricter standard. Below are some examples of things I would have mentioned.
Bill Gates has tried to keep the IP of COVID vaccines from being released to manufacturers of countries like India. I don’t think the case of COVID IP is open and shut, but it’s quite possible that Gates is contributing to lots of unecessary COVID deaths.
Elon Musk did a great service by making electric vehicles trendy, but he is also really hurting the climate by working against public transit and pushing car ownership. To the extent we produce new vehicles, they should be electric. But addressing climate change means reducing car ownership/car production not maintaining or growing the status quo—building electric cars is still significantly harmful to the environment.
You mention Elon’s allged intention to make Twitter a better public good which has often been brought up in terms of free speech. But you don’t mention Elon has an anti-free-speech track record of going after (legitimate) critics of him and trying to get them deplatformed. We should be concerned how he might actually lead Twitter.
Jeff Bezos’ Amazon unecessarily pushes consumerism which is quite harmful for the environment, as you point out with Arnault. Amazon would still be thriving without trying to manipulate people’s psychology to get them to buy more things. This is also arguably bad for the consumer if they make purchases that end up being of little value.
For what it’s worth, Gates broke a lot of IP law in Microsoft’s origins and didn’t become philanthropic until Microsoft was under investigation for being a monopoly.
It’s omissions like these that make me think this post contributes more so to bad discourse about billionaires than a good discourse.
Don’t take it personally. I think you could resolve this stuff by being more holistic in the review. Or if this is just an idea you are playing around with, then I would leave off the grades.
I think I disagree with most of the points on your comment, which is kind of surprising. Though I do think that they are interesting in a red-teaming kind of way.
I agree that the impact is going to be multifaceted, but I think that most of it will be dominated by the first few factors. More specifically, I think that impact is probably something like lognormally distributed, and that an estimate which only takes into account the first few components fundamentally makes sense
It seems very likely to me that expropriating IP leads to less innovation in the next disaster.
I’m not sure whether this point stands when you consider what the counterfactual would have been. I think that the most likely counterfactual is that people would have been producing and buying normal cars, whereas now not only Tesla but also other major manufacturers are producing electric ones. I probably agree that electric cars aren’t as good if the energy comes from coal plants instead of from renewables. But pushing for electric vehicles still enables advances in renewables to cash out into more renewable vehicles, so I think that his Shapley value is high.
Maybe there is something I’m missing? What do you think would have happened in the absence of Tesla? Or maybe you think that lead/lithium batteries are just very harmful? That is something I know less about.
Not convinced, but hard to articulate why.
I’d think that this effect is mild in comparison with the efficiency gains.
I don’t really care about this in comparison with his philanthropy and the Giving Pledge.
So overall I think that your points are good in a red-teaming kind of sense, but that they ultimately don’t switch the impacts around. E.g., if you consider grades as indicative of the order, it would surprise me if these considerations moved that around.
Are you predicting that Twitter will be worse along the free speech dimension if Musk takes control of it? If so, what metrics would you use to operationalize this prediction?