Ask HN: Why are billionaires not giving more money away?

No there's not. Move away from the fancy cities. Move to country and places like Detroit. I did, I'm in Detroit metro. You can buy houses here for what folks pay for a car

Diet for a Small Planet also found that at the time the book was written, there were no countries incapable of feeding their people. Starvation mostly had roots in political problems, including civil war. It wasn't due to an absolute lack if food.

Sending food to starving countries often isn't a panacea. Frequently, the same political problems that caused the starvation in the first place prevent the food from getting distributed to the people who most need it. If it does get distributed, it can change the tastes of locals, who will now want to purchase a Western diet that they can't really afford. This leads to more hunger as people reject a diet of affordable local traditional foods and spend money on meat and wheat and other products beyond their means.

The first half of the book is a political piece. The second half is a vegetarian cookbook. It is one of the best books I have read.

My latest related thing, brand new. Still fleshing it out.

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=15781531

I concur 2) was nitpicky :)

Regarding your statement "let's use force to take from productive people and give it to unproductive people" which is not that good of an idea in the first place from economics perspective (proven empirically in many countries many times)."

Firstly, one can easily argue force to take wealth is already in place. Most people would pay less tax if it was voluntary. Try not paying your tax and see what happens. So pretending this taking by force system doesn't already exist is ignorant or misleading for rhetoric. The discussion really should be about levels of taxation, not should there be taxation (ie forceful taking of money).

Secondly, I'd be interested in where your empirical evidence comes from regarding how taking money 'from productive people" is a bad thing. And clarify 1) productive and wealthy are not the same and should be recognised and clarified what is being debated. I assume we are staying with the core discussion of taking money from billionaires in general, and not focusing on billionaires that rent seek vs value add. And for your empirical evidence, I assume your looking at the usual quoted countries at the more extreme edges like Communist Russia or Venezuela. But please point me somewhere if I'm wrong.

I would suggest you look at history more openly. You should find empirical evidence suggests some level of redistribution is hugely beneficial. No economy in the world has transitioned to first world status without significantly balancing wealth distribution during this time. This could be coincidental but I doubt it. Look at western Europe, Japan, US, Canada, Australia etc through the 19th century. These became first world as they built the service and mass consumer economy. How you ask I am sure? We'll it was many things and redistribution of wealth and assets was a paradigm shift during this transition for all nations, much like what china is attempting now. People make the mistake of thinking first world countries are 'capitalist' in a much more pure sense than reality. All these countries have significant redistribution policy already, most more so during boom times. Think about education, health, unemployment systems, fire departments, roads, libraries, vehicle authories etc

So my general point is that outside the fanatical fringe, people shouldn't debate whether wealth redistribution good or not, but what level of redistribution, or on what financial terms is it beneficial. I dont claim to know whats right, but I feel places like Venezuela massively overcooked policy left, whilst many western nations are swinging a bit too right these days.

"Firstly, one can easily argue force to take wealth is already in place." That's exactly what I had in mind just maybe was not clear enough. Welfare economics/socialism has a lot of support on emotional level and it is understandable that people who might be struggling are asking questions like in this thread. But if we are discussing economic policies we want to implement then a simple analysis and understanding on the very basics on how things work quickly reveals that it's not as simple as "lets take it from the rich and give it to the poor and everyone will be happy". Taxes are necessary but I would argue that welfare is not what it should be used for at all.

About empirical evidence of socialism failures - countless examples where underdeveloped countries tried it - Russia & co (some not voluntary like my country Lithuania), Cuba, Venezuela, Nicaragua (and actually majority of south/central America so no need to list all of them), Somali, Libya (and actually mostly all worst African states where USSR were heavily involved no need to list it), good latest example from Africa is Zimbabwe, from Asia largest one is India, Bangladesh, Yemen, Cambodia, Vietnam, Burma, Laos etc. Basically any poor country you can think of - it will have a history of some form of socialism. Nice example is China. You can compare it to Taiwan and Hong Kong. Also you can compare China 50 years ago and now (despite being communist on paper now it's one of the most capitalist countries in the world in reality and it's very good for them). North vs South Korea. Just too many examples. Redistribution simply does not create any wealth. Some very rich countries can get away with it but even current day Sweden on the very top on ease to do business lists. And Sweden is already very rich so they have something to redistribute (https://mises.org/library/sweden-myth)

I guess we look at 19th century extremely differently. For me it was as laissez-faire as probably possible. Current levels of redistribution and inefficiency of it would have been unimaginable back then. We should be very thankful for our ancestors who were working so so so hard. We are currently standing on the shoulders of those giants that started this exponential growth of technology that improved our lifes so much in the last couple hundred of years. Especially USA which to this day is world's economical, industrial, technological and innovation locomotive. Even logical arguments why redistribution though taxes are working for me seems like mental gymnastics and doesn't really much sense. Why would would someone should be efficient with someone else's money even if he has good intentions? Why would redistribution create larger pie to everyone? 19 century is a great example to me how human potential can be unleashed with freedom (from a lot of things at that time - religion, taxes, regulation etc).

I don't disagree with your conclusion. I would avoid left vs right labels though. There is some unavoidable reality on how the world works and labels clouds our judgment and we make emotional decision based on what is "morally" right or wrong and not adapting and working with what we actually have in reality. Every country is actually capitalistic (including USSR and North Korea). The only difference is who control that capital. It's ironic that in capitalist countries it's usually controlled by people (people of merit who often are creators and innovators) and in "communist" countries it is controlled by "government" - usually people with no merit and very often very evil ones. The ones who are good at getting at the top in the power pyramid. Where do you think computer would be invented and would reach all the regular folks?