Billionaires: Existential Threats to Humanity

    SOURCE:  IPSNews.net, 2019-12-17

  • A longer version of this piece appeared in The Financial Express [Dhaka, 2019-12-13]. Anis Chowdhury | WesternSydney.edu.au | Google Scholar, Adjunct Professor at Western Sydney University and the University of New South Wales (Australia); held senior United Nations positions in New York and Bangkok.

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    The social utility of billionaires' existence has come under increased scrutiny, especially during the Democratic Party primaries for the 2020 US Presidential election. Leading newspapers, such as The New York Times, published opinion pieces arguing to abolish billionaires and reflecting on why billionaires engage in illegal insider trading.

    The arguments for abolishing billionaires range from moral grounds to dubious, or outright illegal/criminal sources of their wealth. The billionaires own more than what is needed even for a most lavish life style, and far more than what might reasonably be claimed deserving. Billionaires are seen as manifestations of policy failures as they gain through, inheritance, abusing state-granted patent monopoly power, insider trading, lobbying, tax evasions and corrupting democratic and progressive policy making processes.

    But could billionaires also pose existential threats to humanity

    Some prominent scientists and futurologists think so, based on the impacts of billionaires' carbon-intensive lifestyles and potential control of technological advances, such as genetic engineering (GE) and artificial intelligence (AI).

    Money to burn

    According to an Oxfam report, the richest 10% of people produce half of earth's climate-harming fossil-fuel emissions, while the poorest half contribute a mere 10%. The average carbon footprint of someone in the world's richest 1% could be 175 times that of someone in the poorest 10%.

    A recent CNN report tells that rich people do not just have bigger bank balances, they also have bigger carbon footprints as they own more stuff, and burn more fossil fuel globe-trotting in private jets, travelling in luxury cars and cooling/heating mansions. The jet-setting habits of celebrities produce an astonishing 10,000 times more carbon emissions from flying than an average person.

    A study, published in Ecological Economics, shows that as the rich get richer, CO2 emission rises. Another study, published in Environment and Behavior, finds that rich people emit more carbon, even when they recycle and buy canvas tote bags full of organic veggies.

    Furthermore, the political clout and economic power of the wealthiest individuals prevent regulations on carbon emissions. What matters is not inequality as such, but income concentration at the top end of the distribution.

    Soon there will be space tourism, a novel but green-house-gas intensive activity restricted to the super-rich for US$250,000. The potential for luxury emissions is growing as the number of millionaires worldwide is projected to increase to 63 million in 2024.

    Therefore, the prestigious science journal, Nature Climate Change, argued recently to shift the focus of emissions mitigating efforts from world's poorest people to people at the opposite end of the social ladder -- the super-rich.

    Hijacking Darwin

    Jamie Metzl claims in Hacking Darwin, "From this point onward, our mutation will not be random. It will be self-designed. From this point onward, our selection will not be natural. It will be self-directed." While society might overcome diseases by tweaking individual genomes, GE may also give rise to 'superhumans', "optimised for certain characteristics (like intelligence or looks) and exacerbate inequalities in society." Metzl thinks, new GEs are at once wondrous and terrifying.

    In his posthumously published book, Brief Answers to the Big Questions, Stephen Hawking warned that genetically-enhanced elite could become a dominant overclass that could eventually wipe out the genetic have-nots of a future civilization.

    No doubt, the ultra-rich will become the first superhumans. After all, who can afford the newest, ground-breaking technology? The people who can afford everything else.

    The appearance of superhumans is no longer a science fiction. The Fortune magazine recently predicted that designer babies are coming in 20 to 30 years, and "when baby genes are for sale, the rich will pay". In-vitro-fertilization pioneer Lord Winston has warned that a growing market for fertility treatments could "threaten our humanity", including if the rich were able to pay for so-called "designer babies".

    Mark Thiessen in his The Washington Post opinion piece, wrote, "Only the wealthy would be able to afford made-to-order babies. This means the privileged few would be able to eliminate imperfections and improve the talent, beauty, stature and IQ of their offspring -- thus locking in their privilege for generations. Those at the bottom would not."

    Thus, Marcy Darnovsky, executive director of the Center for Genetics and Society warned, "Genome editing for human embryos is an unnecessary threat to society." David King, a molecular biologist and founder of Human Genetics Alert, cautioned, "Hijacked by the free market, human gene editing will lead to greater social inequality by heading where the money is: designer babies... Once you start creating a society in which rich people's children get biological advantages over other children, basic notions of human equality go out the window. Instead, what you get is social inequality written into DNA."

    Stephen Hawking's warning is ominous, "Once such superhumans appear, there are going to be significant political problems with the unimproved humans, who won't be able to compete. Presumably, they will die out, or become unimportant. Instead, there will be a race of self-designing beings who are improving themselves at an ever-increasing rate."

    Jamie Metzl warns, the goal of improving the human population by GEs can get extremely dangerous. Horrible crimes against humanity were committed in the name of different considerations of "improvement". In 1925, Hitler wrote in Mein Kampf, "The stronger must dominate and not mate with the weaker". Claiming superiority of race, the colonialists wiped away the indigenous people of Americas and Australia.

    End of humanity

    The optimist AI expert and author of Humans Need Not Apply: A Guide to Wealth and Work in the Age of Artificial Intelligence, Jerry Kaplan admits, "The benefits of automation naturally accrue to those who can invest in the new systems, and that's the people with the money."

    Robots will enable capital accumulation without labour. With robotic capital and equipped with an infinite supply of workerless wealth, the super-rich could seal themselves off in a gated paradise, leaving the unemployed sub-humans to rot.

    Peter Frase speculates in Four Futures that the economically redundant hordes "outside the gates" will only be tolerated as long as they are needed. "What happens if the masses are dangerous but are no longer a working class, and hence of no value to the rulers?", he wonders. "Someone will eventually get the idea that it would be better to get rid of them."

    In Guns, Germs and Steel, Jared Diamond described how gaps in power and technology, even without genetic superiority, determined the fates of human societies during the past 13,000 years. Now with 'designer genetic superiority' and weaponised AI -- enabled by concentration of wealth and power -- it would be a world defined by the "genocidal war of the rich against the poor".

    Additional Reading

  • [📌 pinned article] [Linda McQuaig,  theStar.com, 2022-11-17] Billionaires are far from harmless. Fuelling the climate crisis, they’re among the most dangerous people on Earth.  The best hope of averting climate disaster may well be wealth taxes that significantly reduce the wealth and power of the superrich.  |  COMMENT: note the "red flag" on this source, the Toronto Star. An exception is made here based on the credibility of the reporter, Linda McQuaig.

      • Watching Elon Musk reveal himself in recent weeks to be the world's richest buffoon has certainly been entertaining. However, it could lead to the conclusion that billionaires are silly but harmless - which is far from the truth. Yes, they are often silly - but they are rarely harmless. Indeed, they're among the most dangerous people to walk the earth. And I'm not just referring to their hoarding of resources while much of the world goes hungry. The real danger that billionaires pose to humanity is their enormous and largely hidden role in the climate crisis.

      The problem is twofold. First, the carbon footprint of a billionaire is gigantic. By contrast, the poorest half of the world's population - four billion people - hardly contribute to climate change at all. On average, each person in this deprived bottom half of humanity contributes only 1.6 tons of carbon per year. However, the average person in the top one per cent of the global population contributes 110 tons of carbon a year, while the average person in the top 0.01 per cent of wealth contributes a monstrous 2,531 tons of carbon per year. Meanwhile, a billionaire typically contributes a jaw-dropping 8,190 tons. So while the ranks of the superrich are small, their carbon emissions (from private jets, yachts and multiple homes) are so immense - and fast-growing - that they are a key driver of climate change.

      Now we come to the second part of the problem: billionaires' role as corporate owners directing enormous pools of capital towards fossil fuel production and infrastructure. In a new study, Oxfam notes that if the investments of billionaires are factored in, billionaires' average emissions move from thousands of times greater than an ordinary person to more than a million times greater. Oxfam examined the investments of 125 billionaires and found that they were skewed toward fossil fuels. If these billionaires moved their investments to a fund that simply followed the S&P 500, the intensity of their emissions would be reduced by half.

      Billionaires clearly have a choice where to put their money, but there are only rare exceptions to the pattern - such as Patagonia  sportswear billionaire Yvon Chouinard, who put the company's ownership into a trust - declaring "Earth is now our only shareholder. "Most, however, use their capital - and the enormous political clout that comes with it - in ways that further our dependence on fossil fuels, both by investing in fossil fuel production and infrastructure, and by influencing governments to block climate action.

      That influence can be observed at the COP27 climate conference in Sharm el-Sheikh, Egypt  [COP27:  2022 United Nations Climate Change Conference], where more than 600 lobbyists and executives from fossil fuel-related industries are working hard - often ensconced right inside national delegations - to block climate progress. Canada's official delegation includes eight industry supporters, including a senior vice-president of the Royal Bank of Canada  (RBC)  [Royal Bank of Canada] - which invests heavily in fossil fuels.

        [COMMENT, Persagen.com] Environmental groups criticized the Royal Bank of Canada  (RBC)'s financing of oil sands   bitumen extraction and expansion, cumulatively issuing "more than $2.3 billion in loans and financing more than $6.9 billion in corporate debt between 2003 and 2007 for 13 companies including:

      • Canadian Oil Sands Trust,
      • Connacher Oil and Gas,
      • Delphi Energy,
      • Enbridge,
      • Encana,
      • Husky Energy,
      • InterPipeline,
      • Northwest Upgrading,
      • OPTI Canada,
      • Suncor, and
      • TotalEnergies.

        • This opposition was due to the detrimental effect oil sands extraction has on the environment and human health.

        A 2020 report on fossil fuel finance by the Sierra Club and the Rainforest Action Network found that the Royal Bank of Canada (RBC) was the fifth largest funder of fossil fuels in the world, and largest in Canada - investing over $160 billion USD on fossil fuel projects since the 2015 Paris Agreement. This sparked criticism from environmental groups and climate activists.

        Source (2022-11-22): https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Royal_Bank_of_Canada#Environment

      With that kind of insider's seat, no wonder there's so little progress at these global climate gatherings. Given the gigantic carbon footprints of the mega-rich and their oversized political influence, the best hope of averting climate disaster may well be wealth taxes that significantly reduce billionaires' wealth and power. Oxfam argues that wealth taxes could help fund assistance for poor countries devastated by climate change, whose citizens have contributed almost nothing to the problem.

      There are lots of other good reasons to introduce wealth taxes, which have been proposed by U.S. senators Bernie Sanders and Elizabeth Warren, and in Canada by New Democratic Party  (NDP Leader Jagmeet Singh. But, despite the popularity of such taxes as well as the urgency of the climate crisis and other needs, momentum toward them has stalled. Certainly, the government of Justin Trudeau  [29th Canadian Ministry] has never been interested, instead merely imposing extra sales taxes on luxury cars and yachts - taxes which barely impact the superrich. But if Prime Minister Justin Trudeau really were the climate warrior he poses as, he'd be listening less to the Royal Bank of Canada and more to groups desperately trying to save their countries from drowning in rising sea waters.

  • [CommonDreams.org, 2022-12-07] .  But who will save us from them?  |  Strip away the hype, and Musk is just another self-serving plutocratic ravager and cartoonish robber baron whose "genius" lies in taking credit (and profit) from other people.

  • [Truthout.org, 2022-11-03] 465 Billionaires Have Pumped an Eye-Popping $881 Million Into the Midterms.

      • A small group of billionaires who come from the top 0.000002 percent of wealthiest people in the U.S. have spent nearly $900 million in the U.S. federal midterm runoffs this election cycle (2022-11), a new report finds, and could reach $1 billion in political spending by the time the cycle is over. According to a report released Thursday (2022-11-03) by Americans for Tax Fairness (ATF), just 465 American billionaires had donated an unprecedented $881 million by the end of 2022-09 - even before last-minute campaign pushes in the last five weeks before Election Day. This is already more than the amount that billionaires spent in the entirety of the 2018 midterm election. Further, the vast majority of this spending - $643 million, or 73 percent - comes from just 20 billionaire households, including prominent figures like the Koch family  [Koch Family Foundations  |  Charles Koch  |  ...],  Peter Thiel,   George Soros,   Michael Bloomberg and Susan Bloomberg, and Jeffrey Yass  [Jeff Yass]. Of the top 10 donor families, eight lean Republican while two lean Democrat.

      This is a staggering amount of money spent by an astoundingly small number of people in order to influence elections that will affect the entire U.S. population and beyond. The data is a stark illustration of the vast amount of influence that billionaires have over the political system that has been afforded to them by conservative tax cutting and Citizens United v. Federal Elections Commission, which allows billionaires and corporations to spend unlimited amounts of money on elections. Indeed, as the report finds, this small group of billionaires has spent 27 times more on this election (2022-11) than they ever spent around 2010, when Citizens United was decided; in the 2010 election cycle, for instance, billionaires spent $32 million.

      The majority of the $881 million spent this cycle has gone toward Republicans, by a three to two margin, Americans for Tax Fairness (ATF) finds. Democrats have received about 39 percent of the funding, while 59 percent has gone toward Republicans. The rest of the funding, 2 percent, has gone toward causes that most progressives oppose, like supporting Israel or cryptocurrency, ATF finds. There has also been a massive influx of fundraising for Super PACs that are created for a single candidate. Such donations have risen by 150 percent between 2018 and this election cycle, increasing from $128 million to $323 million as of the beginning of 2022-11. About 75 percent of single-candidate Super PAC spending goes toward Republicans, the report finds.

      Such massive injections into elections are often more than just a political donation - they can represent huge tax savings for billionaires in the future or win them other political favors. "They aren't donating to candidates because they like them. This is a transaction," wrote former Ohio state senator   Nina Turner about the report on Thursday (2022-11-03). Indeed, billionaires have gained trillions of dollars of wealth throughout the past few years. This growth is at least partially due to a tax code that is written to favor the rich - in part because billionaires push candidates to do so. Jeff Yass, for instance, has dodged $1 billion in taxes over the past six years, while billionaire donor Ken Griffin spent $54 million to shoot down a tax-raising initiative - a move that is now saving him tens of millions of dollars in taxes each year.

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