BILLIONAIRES

How does anything magnificently monumental happen?  More recently, wars inspired the USA to change the world with two incredible accomplishments:  The Manhattan Project and the Apollo Project.  The former was to beat Hitler build an atomic bomb, leading to victory in World War II, and latter to bankrupt the Soviet Union to end the Cold War.

The first one listed above, the Transcontinental Railroad, was built by three private companies over public lands provided by government grants and financed by state and federal subsidy bonds.  The leader of the organization was Leland Stanford, who went on to found Stanford University.  Hoover Dam was financed by a $140 million mortgage loan from the U.S. Treasury, and was finally paid off in 1987.  President Herbert Hoover pushed the bill in Congress during the great depression.  He was in the Pioneer Class of 1891 at Stanford, and that tower is named for him.  

However, he makes all the lists for worst presidents of U.S.  Here he is #9 and Donald Trump is #2.  With Trump at the bottom are usually Andrew Johnson and James Buchanan. Incidentally, by far, Trump has been the richest president, and only billionaire, with Washington #2, Jefferson #3 and Hoover #8.

In this 21st century we are now threatened by global warming, and it will take the combined efforts of the entire world to overcome this problem.  While there has been some progress, the danger is perhaps too subtle that we will probably need something fearsome like tens of millions one hot summer dying to catalyze any real solution.  I have suggested The Venus Syndrome to throw a two-by-four clout into the fray.

Billionaires seem to be romantically spurred by outer space, in particular the colonization of Mars.  It's their money, and as my posting on THE ULTIMATE EVOLUTION OF LIFE indicated, perhaps they are rightfully being foresightful.

Personally, I think it is premature to spend so much money today to do what we might need to do some time in the future, like a millennium from now.  We have urgent current needs on Planet Earth today, and the Blue Revolution offers an opportunity to accomplish so many things for the benefit of both our economy and environment, while creating commodities for profit.  Watch my TEDx talk of a few months ago.

Simply:

• A thousand meters deep in the ocean is a FREE cold water resource capable of providing electricity, freshwater, hydrogen, range of sustainable bioproducts, exciting living habitats and the potential for both remediating climate warming and preventing the formation of hurricanes.

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  Envisioned is a simple two-step process leading to perhaps a thousand nations at sea someday:
• $150 million to build and operate the Pacific International Ocean Station to develop the science, technology and pre-commercialization of enterprises for next generation fisheries, marine biomass plantations and assortment of sustainable options.
• By 2050, $150 billion to build the first ocean city to host the 2050 World Ocean Expo.

But the big question is how to get to even step one.  Governments and companies are just not capable of investing such sums.  The one answer is a billionaire or two or more.

Since Blue Revolution Hawaii formed a dozen years ago, we determined that the optimal, and maybe only, pathway was through an inspired billionaire.  The individual who suggested this strategy was Guy Toyama, who unfortunately passed away a decade ago at the age of 42.  From my remembrance:

Guy's legacy might well be Blue Revolution Hawaii and the Pacific International Ocean Station.  A couple of years ago, we were having lunch in Kona when he mentioned how billionaire Gordon Moore had provided funds to initiate the Thirty Meter Telescope Project.  As Guy had an office at Keahole Point at the entrance of the NELHA, why not the Blue Revolution with support from a billionaire?  Thus was born Blue Revolution Hawaii, which proposed the Pacific International Ocean Station.  Guy created the presentation for PIOS, which I presented at the Seasteading Institute's conference in San Francisco.  

Axios just published:  China is making new billionaires much faster than the U.S.

• China and the U.S. together have 55% of the world's known billionaires.
• China as 1133 to the U.S.'s 716, with a growth rate three times that of America.
• China has three cities with the most billionaires.  New York City is #4.
• 60-70% of all female billionaires in the World are from China.
• However, the American billionaires control 32% of all combine wealth, compared to China's 27%.
• The total market cap of Apple, Microsoft, Amazon and Alphabet are equivalent to the top 500 most valuable non-state controlled companies in China.

Forbes annually ranks billionaires.  Curently:

• #1    Elon Musk  $266 B  U.S.
• #2    Jeff Bezos  $191 B  U.S.
• #3    Bernard Arnault  $172 B  France
• #4    Bill Gates  $135 B  U.S.
• #5    Warren Buffett  $126 B  U.S.
• #6 - #9 from the U.S.
• #10  Mukesh Ambani  $96 B  India
• #16  Zhong Shanshan  $71 B  China
• #27  Zhang Yiming  $50 B  China
• #100  Li Xiting  $17 B  Singapore
• #200  Stefano Pessina  $10 B  Monaco
• #300  Stewart and Lynda Resnick  $8 B  U.S.
• #400  Philippe Laffont  $7 B  U.S.
• #500  Huang Yi  $6 B  Hong Kong
• #600  Marc Rowan  $5 B  U.S.

Donald Trump was still a billionaire last year at $2.5 billionaire, but missed making the Forbes Top 400 billionaires list for the first time in 25 years.  He has apparently lost $600 million since the pandemic started.  Forbes also indicated that his debt total now is $1.3 billion.  However, various sources, all saying that it is essentially impossible to accurately determine how much he is really worth, nevertheless seem to also say that as of this month he is a billionaire.

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