There is an interesting sub-text here which should probably get more attention. Jeff Bezos funded this effort.
Let that sink in for a moment.
When the CIA wanted to get a peak at a Soviet Era sub that sank to 17,000' they paid Howard Hughes to build the Glomar Explorer [1] to go retrieve it. It was a mammoth undertaking which required the financial assistance of a nation state to make it work.
In 1982 when Forbes first started listing the 400 richest people they had 13 billionaires and 75 million made the list [2], which is about 167 million in inflation adjusted dollars [3], and the current lists #400 is is $1.05B so a bit over 6x larger even after inflation is considered.
The interesting bit for me is that the cost of 'getting things done' has not been going up in pace with the 'money people have' so wealth in the private sector is enabling individuals to do what used to take governments. Worse governments are horribly inefficient at doing things that individuals are efficient at (given their fiduciary responsibility to the tax payers)
I talked with some folks at Scaled Composites a bit after their successful X-Prize bid. A common theme was that they could have been successful earlier if it had not been for the red tape put in their way by the government. (some estimated two years earlier but I think that was optimistic).
And you look at the world concerns that arise when North Korea tests 'long range' rockets because building a rocket that can get a meaningful payload into orbit is 98% of the way to being able to drop something out of orbit pretty much anywhere you want.
Its very different world, and I could imagine folks who would sign on for orbital 'work' or excursions knowing that 5 - 10% of them would end up dying horribly. Not something the government can generally tolerate but explorers can.
The risk though is that you end up with a corporation that is has the capability of exploiting space and corporations don't generally sign treaties. That makes for interesting times indeed.
>The interesting bit for me is that the cost of 'getting things done' has not been going up in pace with the 'money people have' so wealth in the private sector is enabling individuals to do what used to take governments.
Wealth has been concentrating as well. If the rich continually get richer, it makes sense that at some point their capabilities become comparable to nation states.
I'd like to look more into this, and thank you for providing some further reading on that. However, regardless of how long wealth lasts, I'm only alive for this generation, so I can't say that it'd change anything for me personally if the trillionaires of 2112 aren't the billionaires of today.
Hundreds of greedy individuals with more power than some countries. What could possibly go wrong?
With barely any oversight, non-existent checks and balances, no social responsibility, an the power to sway the laws that the rest of us must live by, I urge you all to consider where we're headed. To me, at least, it seems that the age of kings is once again upon us.
It's not like government officials are devoid of greed either, by the way. Ever noticed that there are rarely any "poor" or even remotely middle-class person in politics to be seen ?
Private parties are subject to the law. They can be sued. They can be made to repair damage.
Governments ? They have no responsibilities whatsoever. Once their term is done, everything's forgotten and forgiven. Where is their social responsibility? Ever seen a president appear in court an unlawful attack on another country ?
> Ever seen a president appear in court an unlawful attack on another country ?
I have seen some presidents in courts of Justice. Bill Clinton, Jacques Chirac, also in different categories, Milosevic and Saddam Hussein. I would say that this is roughly as common as seeing a wealthy CEO charged for crimes that his company made.
Basically, when you give power to an entity, you must keep in mind what it will cost to remove it when it abuses its power. Corporations or public authorities are not that different in this respect : if a fairly elected body cannot keep them in check, or step in in case of abuses, don't give them power, even if they look "nice".
That is a simple principle to avoid violent conflicts. If NASA says it wants to start inject cesium in huge quantity in the atmosphere, vote them out in the next term (yes, voting can work, even in America). If Exxon wants to do the same, make sure that a justice+police environment exists that can forbid them and coercively force them to not do that.
Wrong answer - you mention presidents who were in trial not for unlawful attacks on other people (Chirac and Clinton) and others who were anyway losing the war they were involved in (Milosevic and Hussein) which is a totally different situation. I have yet to hear about presidents of "democracies" being charged of crimes of war, for example.
> hen you give power to an entity, you must keep in mind what it will cost to remove it
Agree with you, but why is it that in so many countries, elected officials are beyond the law in so many ways ? In France, for example, elected officials benefit of immunities and they cannot be sued during their mandate. How is that fair ?
> voting can work, even in America
Even in America ? A country when you only have a choice between 2 parties does not really qualify as "it's working" to me. It's like choosing between plague and cholera: you basically wonder every time which one is less harmful than the other.
We don't need more policies to protect the environment. If you gave actual ownership rights on the environment, people who own them would defend their ownership and sue polluters for damages and reparation. It's a well known problem called as "tragedy of the commons". When nobody owns anything, everyone will keep destroying the resource until it's gone. That's what's happening with Tuna fishing in the Mediterranean Sea currently. Ownership is the only answer to ensure there will be balance and retribution for unlawful acts.
Forbes 400 only lists Americans and those lists generally don't include people wealthy by the sole virtue of their government functions or closeness to the reigning family. But even when they do, industrialists still dominate.
I'm sure there's a lot of corruption going on at this level but it's just as much "owning the country" as it is "being extorted by the officials". Even in the first world (at least according to professor Lessig):
> “Our current tax system with all its complexities is in part designed to make it easier for candidates, in particular congressmen, to raise money to get back to congress,” Lessig said. “All sorts of special exceptions which expire after a limited period of time are just a reason to pick up the phone and call somebody and say ‘Your exception is about to expire, here’s a good reason for you to help us fight to get it to extend.’ And that gives them the opportunity to practice what is really a type of extortion – shaking the trees of money in the private sector into their campaign coffers so that they can run for congress again.”
With barely any oversight, non-existent checks and balances, no social responsibility, an the power to sway the laws that the rest of us must live by,
What could possibly go wrong?
We know what's going wrong - we're living it. The Federal Government has never been so dismissive of the law than it has been since well before 9/11.
Consider that we've gone to war six times [1] since 1945, never have declared war the way God [2] and the Framers said to in the Constitution.
[1] Maybe five. I'm counting really big efforts, involving at least a division of grunts. Libya made the cut because it irks me that there wasn't even a pretense of asking Congressional permission.
EDIT: I'm sorry, but was my request for a source considered rude? I don't understand the knock. I would really like to see some data showing the consolidation of wealth, if it actually exists.
Your phrasing reads with a sarcastic tone to me, intentional or not.
But I'd also love to see a source, the claim alone does not convince me.
I'm actually not even sure what the claim is, actually -- are we talking about the top 5%? The top 1%? And are we talking about distribution within the entire world or within some specific nations?
I believe at least when you get to talking about the single richest person compared to their nation of residence, the richest person for the past few decades has controlled a smaller percentage of the wealth than in the early to mid 1900s or late 1800s -- see http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_wealthiest_historical_f... -- but beyond that I have no idea how the distribution has changed either worldwide within nations.
I was simply trying to be helpful and providing data in response to someone who wanted some on wealth distribution. I can't believe you thought providing a source to closely related data deserved a downvote.
Sure, wealth and income are not the same, but they must be pretty correlated. I have read that the Gini is higher for wealth that income, but I haven't seen data for American wealth Gini coefficients over time. If you have that data, then you could be constructive and provide it.
they paid Howard Hughes to build the Glomar Explorer
It does not take away from your point to point out that one of the reasons they paid Hughes - instead of just banging up Glomar Explorer themselves - was to provide a cover story for the salvage.
Sea-bed mining was where it was at, according to 'My Weekly Reader' from then.
Its very different world, and I could imagine folks who would sign on for orbital 'work' or excursions knowing that 5 - 10% of them would end up dying horribly.
Work, yes. I don't imagine too many honeymoon flights would be booked unless it was safer than that.
Younger Me would have signed up for working in orbit, given those odds. Probably not now - I'm married, have a mortgage, and kids.
Although the pay would be good and the death benefits would set my heirs up pretty well.
In support: James Cameron's Challenger Deep dive (only the US Navy had before); and "only four entities have put a capsule
into orbit and recovered it - US, China, Russia and Elon Musk."
> Worse governments are horribly inefficient at doing things that individuals are efficient at (given their fiduciary responsibility to the tax payers)
Governments don't have fiduciary responsibility to tax payers.
Fiduciary responsibility has liability, as do all meaningful types of responsibility. Govts are liable for certain types of errors and omissions but other than that....
Democratic governments are "liable" in the sense that they can loose their jobs for screwing up. Or looking like they screwed up. Or getting accused of screwing up. Or because they just got unlucky.
> Democratic governments are "liable" in the sense that they can loose their jobs for screwing up.
Can, but don't. At best, a random staffer loses her job.
Moreover, you wouldn't say that McDonald's is "liable" for serving a hamburger that I don't like because I can refuse to buy their hamburgers and that's a greater consequence, so why would you say that govts are liable because they're subject to even less consequence?
Governments aren't liable. That's a problem. They're both socialized and systemic risk. That's a bigger problem. And, they're usually much larger than any "too big to fail" private company.
>The interesting bit for me is that the cost of 'getting things done' has not been going up in pace with the 'money people have' so wealth in the private sector is enabling individuals to do what used to take governments.
This is a very slippery path for us to be taking, however. Do we really want feudal lords to be the only ones with the power to get big things done? I'm not so sure I'm okay with that. It behooves us all to build, and properly support, better government so that we don't slip back into a world where entitled lords govern us.
Nothing like the Glomar Explorer has ever been built or attempted since. This is just some surface sonar technology at a location that we sorta knew. Not to dilute what Bezos did, but Hughes was seriously crazy.
Let that sink in for a moment.
When the CIA wanted to get a peak at a Soviet Era sub that sank to 17,000' they paid Howard Hughes to build the Glomar Explorer [1] to go retrieve it. It was a mammoth undertaking which required the financial assistance of a nation state to make it work.
In 1982 when Forbes first started listing the 400 richest people they had 13 billionaires and 75 million made the list [2], which is about 167 million in inflation adjusted dollars [3], and the current lists #400 is is $1.05B so a bit over 6x larger even after inflation is considered.
The interesting bit for me is that the cost of 'getting things done' has not been going up in pace with the 'money people have' so wealth in the private sector is enabling individuals to do what used to take governments. Worse governments are horribly inefficient at doing things that individuals are efficient at (given their fiduciary responsibility to the tax payers)
I talked with some folks at Scaled Composites a bit after their successful X-Prize bid. A common theme was that they could have been successful earlier if it had not been for the red tape put in their way by the government. (some estimated two years earlier but I think that was optimistic).
And you look at the world concerns that arise when North Korea tests 'long range' rockets because building a rocket that can get a meaningful payload into orbit is 98% of the way to being able to drop something out of orbit pretty much anywhere you want.
Its very different world, and I could imagine folks who would sign on for orbital 'work' or excursions knowing that 5 - 10% of them would end up dying horribly. Not something the government can generally tolerate but explorers can.
The risk though is that you end up with a corporation that is has the capability of exploiting space and corporations don't generally sign treaties. That makes for interesting times indeed.
[1] https://www.fas.org/irp/program/collect/jennifer.htm
[2] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Forbes_400 (hopefully it is accurate)
[3] http://www.westegg.com/inflation/infl.cgi
[4] http://www.forbes.com/forbes-400/#p_40_s_arank_All%20industr...