I may change my mind about this in the near future, but right now I feel like Bill Gates is doing better with his money than just about anyone else would. I don’t mean that no one could do a better job, I just mean that I feel like the best thing that someone could do with his money would probably be to try to emulate what he is doing.
The other main thing that I was interested in regarding this notion is the diminishing marginal utility of income. Lots of people seem to implicitly understand it in saying that they want to share it with their friends/relatives. The thing is, I’ve recently come to question whether income really does have diminishing marginal utility, and I’ve got a lead on further discussion of that matter. I hope this becomes illuminated for me soon so that I can update this mess proper.

Oh, the only other minor thing I wanted to say about the Bill Gates Inheritance thing is that that much money carries something with it that about half of the responders caught on to: Money in that quantity grants an immense amount of power. Now, I’m not going to quote the obvious here, but I will say that whatever your true hearts desire, you can either get it, or come as close as possible with that kind of scratch.

Why doesn’t the wikipedia page for cryptomnesia mention busta rhymes song “Dangerous,” which was stolen from that PSA with the singing pills?

Thank you xkcd.

“why can’t we see that when we bleed we bleed the same?”
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I came up with this a little minute ago, and I wrote it in a little notebook. I will simply transcribe. remember: I was angry at the time, and I’m not anymore.

On Saturday, February 9, 2008, while I was brushing my teeth, I realized once and for all the nature of the moral dilemma with which I’d struggled since youth. Perhaps morality exists as an absolute independent of religion. If true, this would mean that my attempt to derive a meaningful morality independent of religion was both in vain and misguided. I threw out absolute morality with absolute religious truth, seeing the latter as unprovable and insubstantial. The baby went out with the bathwater. If my current thinking is right, and there exists an absolute and universal morality for use among people, then the deception I feel at my religious upbringing having appropriated this and presented it in their own name was a shameful crime. If it is true that morality exists, universal and absolute, the religions have no right to claim them as their own, or pass off their worldview as the bitter pill one must take in order to exhibit moral behavior.
/notebook

So, I was upset at the time, but this was the product of me trying to determine if religion were necessary to have morality. I guess I decided it wasn’t.

stolen from
The Dante’s Inferno Test has banished you to the Sixth Level of Hell – The City of Dis!
Here is how you matched up against all the levels:

Take the Dante’s Inferno Hell Test

One of the major problems with income disparity is whether or not upward mobility is possible.

I found this on Digg. It reminds me of the movie “The Pursuit of Happine$$”.

http://abcnews.go.com/Business/Economy/story?id=4298321&page=1

Bill Gates dies suddenly of a heart attack, and it is discovered upon reviewing his will that YOU are the sole recipient of his 56 billion dollar fortune. Assuming that the government takes half(quiet a windfall for Uncle Sam!), how would you spend your newfound 28 billion dollars, assuming it arrived to you in the form of a checking account in your name with an 11 digit balance?
I want to hear honest answers, but feel free to be creative. donate to charity? which one? share with your family? how much? Buy an island somewhere and live out your days free from want? I know what I would do, and I will save that for later.
btw, I thought of this because we were discussing diminishing marginal utility as it pertains to income today, and I couldn’t help wondering how differently other people would use Gates’ money from how he does.

on school