https://youtu.be/IP2EKTCngiM?si=X6or1a_ViN867nV2

The episode in question.

It's a thing I noticed from self observation. My fantasies about a billion dollar windfall are things like provide free high-speed internet to the populated parts of the world. All of them. It takes about $30 billion to feed the entire human population for a year (mostly freight). A smaller package would be to become a (figurative) god in Haiti by unconditionally rescuing them from a handful of humanitarian crises. A bronze statue of you would be in every public park there for centuries.

There are very real sometimes globe-spaning humanitarian projects that billionaires could afford with a signature (if costing them a Twitter, more or less) that would leave a mark in history dwarfing Carnegie or Rockefeller or Nobel or Gates. And we have thousands of billionaires and not one is trying.

Leeja Miller did a video ( on YouTube ) on how the usual charities billionaires use do actually very little, and they could do way better paying that money as taxes and letting social safety net programs and public science do those things instead. (e.g. Philanthropy is wholly a grift.) So yes, we have zero billionaires doing anything with their money but hoarding it like so many boxes of unused pogs and Funko Pops in the garage.

The issue is that capital is power, it's not just spending money. So the moment you stop using your money as capital to exercise power over others you stop being a capitalist.

The thing is though, nobody got wealthy without using that power, and that process is self-reinforcing. It's a kind of addiction. By the time you're a hundred millionaire you're surrounded by flunkies whose paycheck depends on you sticking around and letting them wield your capital power on your behalf. They will strenuously advise you to keep your investments, and it's hard to work against that pressure.

You are insulated from the day to day minutiae and the consequences of your decisions, and you have to justify in your own mind the decisions that got you here. To break out of that requires a profound crisis of conscience, but you're extremely wealthy and you are insulated from any consequence that could possibly cause that crisis.