Didn't go well for South America in the 60s and 70s but perhaps, as economists are prone to saying, "this time will be different".
The fact that a handful of individuals have half a trillion dollars to throw at something that may or may not work while working people can pay the price of a decent used car each year, every year to their health insurance company only to have claims denied is insane.
This is disputed [1]. In reality, a handful of individuals have the capital to seed a half-a-trillion dollar megaproject, which then entails the project to raise capital from more people.
[1] https://www.wsj.com/tech/musk-pours-cold-water-on-trump-back...
Also the guy disputing it is trying to regain control of an entity that he was too distracted to hold to its original mission, is on record as agreeing with the statement that Jewish people are the enemies of white people, takes copious amounts of mind-altering substances daily, has lost billions of dollars on purchasing a company that had a path to (modest) profitability, and did what could easily be seen as a Roman salute at an inauguration speech. Maybe he's not a great source of statements on objective reality, even within the AI industry.
With regard to the monetary amount, understand, once you reach a certain point, the amount of capital held by the quantity of individuals we're talking about is immaterial. Any capital they raise is usually derived from the labor of others and they operate a racket to prevent any real competition for how that capital is distributed by the labor or the customers who are the source of their actual wealth. The average Oracle employee (I know a few), for example, probably has a few more immediate things they want the surplus value of their labor to be spent on than Larry's moonshot. However, he ultimately controls the direction of that value through a shareholder system that he can manipulate more-or-less at-will through splits, buybacks, and other practices.
His customers would probably also like to pay less for what are usually barely Web 2.0 database applications. Of course, he has the capital to corner markets and shove competition out of the space.
All of this is to say when you reach this amount of money in the hands of one individual, they're more likely to regularly harm people than beat the odds on their next bet in a way that actually uplifts society, at least in a way that could beat the way just disbursing that capital among those who created it could.
This is a valid conflict of interest. That means we should closely scrutinize his claims. From what I can tell, he's added up correctly in respect of the named backers' wealth and liquidity.
> a paper that is literally named after a place where the vast majority of people have never had to do any real labor in their lives
Yes, we should ignore bankers when it comes to questions about money...
Do you have an actual claim? Or is it all ad hominem?
> capital they raise is usually derived from the labor of others and they operate a racket to prevent any real competition for how that capital is distributed by the labor or the customers who are the source of their actual wealth
They're capitalists, herego they can raise unlimited wealth?