- AND OTHERS
There is a clear need for millionaires to have more games to play that can occupy their energy constructively. So many have trouble fighting boredom that they have to gamble heavily or take over empires to get excitement into their lives.
In previous times, active philanthropy has often been an absorbing interest, with the gamble taken to see if it will pay off in social benefit.
Readers could supply ideas for particular games that could be played with an income of $1.3 million a week - e.g. a new railway in a recently developed suburb, or subsidising a 'renovate & repair it' scheme that employed Australians rather than imports of new replacement consumer goods increasing our foreign debt.
The only rule to the games would be public benefit, and the general idea is that millionaires could compete for who could do the most towards solving the social and ecological problems of our time.
Payoffs could include names on public works, e.g. 'The David Marriner Museum' on the Queen Vic site in Melbourne, their statues instead of machinery placed as sculptures in public places, and even entries in the Guinness Book of Records.
Then they need not live in fear of Andrew Carnegie's dictum, 'He who dies rich dies shamed'.
Who do you think deserves an income of a million dollars a year - or more? As well as yourself?
The seventeen richest people in the world were once featured in the Herald-Sun. The interesting thing is that most of them got most of their wealth from nature - things that have been around waiting for someone to own them - like land or oil or logs. All they had to do was to get it. If the list were re-written for what they had produced or done themselves, that was good for the lot of us the list might then be re-ordered. It is out-of-date now - the richest people are even richer, but this gives an idea of sources of wealth:
That left one Sultan, two Arab rulers, one Canadian and five Japanese who were only billionaires-plus because they own land or oil. Four on the first list also get a hefty wack of their goodies in the form of property and/or petroleum. Some rose from poverty, but a good few inherited the makings.
Jonathan Swift, the author of Gulliver's Travels, reckoned that the person who did the most good for mankind was the one who 'made two blades of grass grow where one grew before.'
So who are the ten people in the world who would most deserve to be billionaires? - apart from entertainers, who are the easiest people to think of. The trouble is, we don't know the names of most of them, and a good many of them were in team efforts, so you don't know who in the team should get the billion dollars.
But at last I came up with some nominations about people who were alive within the last thirty years who have 'done most' to help the world be a 'better' place. I could not sort them out into any proper order, but it's surely a list that readers might have better ideas about:-
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1. The co-inventor of the binary digital computer, John V. Atanasoff. 2. A developer of television to be a practical proposition. 3. The discoverer of penicillin (was it Alexander Fleming?) 4. A discoverer/developer of immunology for transplants.(Sir Peter Medawar or Sir Macfarlane Burnet?) 5. Schumacher or What was his name -.something like Buckminster Fuller.......or one of those who are getting us on to the track of conserving rather than wasting all our resources. 6. A pioneer of using solar energy. 7. A discoverer of genetic codes. 8. A pioneer in making literacy easier rather than keeping it difficult for most of us. (e.g. Paulo Freire or John Henry Martin) 9. Mao Dzedung. (How is he spelled now?) Whatever one may think of Communist China, and ofwhat Mao did in his old age, the country became a far better place to live in for most people than what they had before. 10. A pioneer of food-growing without depleting the earth. |
If every yungun in school knew about these billionaires, - then there'd be a lot of great ambitions that they could be inspired with, about what they might like to be or do or invent as the Australians of the future.
I find I'm not even sure who are alive or not. Burnet, for example, is not, I think. Well here's a list for people to improve: 1. Electronics: Dick Smith. 2. ....
Who then, have been responsible for Australian dams and bridges and exports and sheep and world-famous cures and inventions? When we look around us, whom should we thank for all the good things people have invented and made? Who were the Australian inventors in surfboarding, even?
Hardly anyone knows .
Perhaps readers could help fill out a list.
Perhaps we should have a statue to the Unknown Famous Australian.