rebeccmeister | (Reply)

From:

More broadly, isn't [...] immortality [...] actual, substantive good
;) Um, R? This paragraph has a lot of word salad, mixed with a little cherry-picking.

But besides that...

But there's also a chicken-and-egg problem[...]
Yup, there is. And there's two classes of reasons for it:

1) Bad reasons: that's just the nature of bootstrapping; exponential growth starts out taking forever. Vicious cycles of them who has gets (or virtuous cycles, depending what one thinks of the groups involved).

2) Good reasons: the little groups are incompetant, uninvested, cliquish, wasteful, and/or dishonest.

Having run and help run a number of shoestring to fancier shoestring groups, it's hard to tell from the outside which is which without detailed investigation. That's asking a lot of people who often don't have tons of resources themselves. Throwing money around at random doesn't really help, but often enriches the wrong groups at the expense of the right ones.

tax the rich already, and please take that money and give it to the poor.
Sing it, sister, sing it! I have my own ideas about who's rich and who's poor -- there are multiple definitions of both -- the taking and giving parts, and the utility of third parties, as well.