Comment by Dylan16807
1 day ago
> Why is "that person gets to be extraordinarily wealthy" for inventing the future rather than "we all chipped in so we could all benefit" for inventing the future?
Well obviously we want a lot of the benefit to be the latter. But if you don't have some of the former, then almost no multi-billion-dollar-cost inventions get made in the first place.
Yuri Gagarin was the first man in orbit, and that was absolutely a multi-billion dollar invention.
Alan Turing didn't pursue his ideas because he wanted to get wealth beyond imagining.
Mondragon makes billions of dollars annually, and strongly limits executive pay.
I think it's very reasonable to assume that we can, we have historically, and currently do, make multi-billion dollar investments for the good of all. The idea that it requires some profit incentive is, imo, a pernicious falsehood.
> Yuri Gagarin was the first man in orbit, and that was absolutely a multi-billion dollar invention.
That was government-funded. Most projects aren't that lucky. And are any governments funding self-driving cars?
> Alan Turing didn't pursue his ideas because he wanted to get wealth beyond imagining.
I said multi billion dollar cost. Not multi billion dollar benefit. He's not an example.
> Mondragon makes billions of dollars annually, and strongly limits executive pay.
Have they made any inventions that required a billion dollars or more? Ten billion?
But you saying "makes billions" is exactly what I'm talking about. It's great that they don't pay a lot of money to executives and the workers own things. But the company invested money and the company profited. It didn't all go to making the world a better place.
You avoid particularly wealthy people when a coop can self-fund, but the coop is still trying to profit off the result of the research. And if a risky research project ever can't be self-funded, then whatever/whoever makes the loan might make a huge profit. If that incentive isn't there, the loan doesn't happen and the research doesn't happen.
> I think it's very reasonable to assume that we can, we have historically, and currently do, make multi-billion dollar investments for the good of all. The idea that it requires some profit incentive is, imo, a pernicious falsehood.
It doesn't require it, but if you make it possible to profit off research then you end up with much more money spent on research.