and have enough money to quite literally solve most of the world’s problems
That’s true-ish from a strict finances perspective.
But consider the island of Haiti. We could “solve” the problem of chronic poverty on the island by simply showing up with boatloads of food and clothing and other consumer goods. But it would be a temporary fix, at best. A real investment - just on this tiny island - would mean large scale infrastructure improvements. And that takes an enormous amount of materials plus labor plus the logistics to move it all and assemble it.
What we’re describing isn’t strictly a monetary problem. Its an engineering - and, to a greater extent - economic organization problem. Showing up with bricks of cash would be less beneficial than dredging their harbors and building out new power plants and fixing all the damage done by the last big earthquake. And that latter bit requires real engineering, which requires education, which requires skilled professionals willing to bring Haitians in and train them in the work necessary to improve the island.
And while we probably could perform a project like this across Haiti, by employing the Billionaire Money + Excuse Unused Capacity of global industry, I question whether we could do it globally. Not without reorienting an enormous amount of our existing infrastructure towards these tasks.
When people talk about “market economy v command economy”, this is the kind of problem they’re really facing off against. Not just “how do we pay for food?” but “how do we organize the supply chain from the farms/fisheries to the dinner tables?”
We could “fix” Haiti’s problems with far less than we’re currently spending to control their population. But that would mean building large earthquake resilient housing, energy, and transport components. And those buildings would divert the labor supply from making cheap textiles and agricultural goods. And that would mean people who buy cheap from Haiti’s functionally-still-enslaved population wouldn’t get to 100x mark-up the end products when they were sold in the US at American retail rates.
That’s what we’re really discussing when we talk about “billionaire wealth” versus “solving the world’s problems”.
Do Haitians get to live for themselves? Or do they spend all their waking hours making life cheaper for other people?