Would You Maroon Jeff Bezos in Space?
The Political Orphanage
Andrew Heaton
4.9 • 1000 Ratings
🗓️ 22 July 2021
⏱️ 36 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
Over a hundred thousand people signed a petition calling to ban the world's richest man from returning to Earth: "billionaires shouldn't exist."
In this episode we explore the difference between relative growth and actual growth. And determine if liquidating the rich would solve the world's economic problems.
Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | Hello and welcome to the political orphanage, an island away from all that partisan bickering and reflexive idiocy |
| 0:14.8 | where we can poke problems with sticks and then roast marshmallows on them. |
| 0:19.2 | I'm your host, Andrew Heaton. |
| 0:27.0 | There are two buttons in front of you. |
| 0:31.5 | A green button and a red button. There's also a reset button but don't touch that that'll screw up our |
| 0:34.4 | thought experiment. If you press the green button the wealth of everyone in the |
| 0:39.1 | world doubles their actual wealth we're not just adding zeros to bank accounts. We're increasing assets here. |
| 0:45.8 | They're home, they're closed, their DVD collection. Everything doubles. Everyone is twice as wealthy |
| 0:52.2 | if you hit that button. |
| 0:55.0 | If you press the red button, Jeff Bezos gets marooned in space. |
| 1:02.0 | He's in space right now for real incidentally. Fun trivia question. At the moment, |
| 1:06.9 | Elon Musk is the wealthiest man on Earth because Jeff Bezos is not actually on Earth. |
| 1:12.2 | The billionaire founder of Amazon shot in Jeff Bezos is not actually on Earth. |
| 1:13.1 | The billionaire founder of Amazon shot into the sky on Tuesday morning aboard Blue Origins |
| 1:17.8 | New Shepard Rocket. |
| 1:19.5 | He's floating around up there right now with his brother eating astronaut ice cream or playing |
| 1:25.2 | with squirt guns maybe duck hunting I don't really know what billionaires do in |
| 1:29.7 | zero-g environments but he's doing it right now. On first glance the choice between the |
| 1:36.1 | red and green button is a no-brainer is it not? I'm gonna hit that green button so |
| 1:40.7 | hard I bruised my knuckle. You're welcome earth. Merry Christmas all |
| 1:45.4 | you destitute farmers in sub-Saharan Appalachia. Probably you agree with me. |
| 1:51.7 | It sounds good doesn't it? Every one in the world |
... |
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