And our defense budget increases

[TaraJo]

That's exactly the problem.  Whenever billionaires can turn a profit by convincing the government to piss money away on something, we're gonna spend away.  Private prisons aren't much better.  I mean, seriously, remember how Republicans were constantly bitching about government spending when Obama was president?  Now that their man is in charge, the first thing they do is approve funds for more military and a big, ridiculous wall.  Cut government spending, my ass.

Part of me wants to find a way for billionaires to turn a profit by fighting poverty, educating people and expanding healthcare.

Do it.  That's my fundamental motivation in what I do, and I don't think there's any other legitimate way to achieve it.  I want to show people that giving things away with abandon will turn a higher profit, not by reference to some stuffy paper about how indeterminate pricing and voluntary pay leads people to, collectively, pay more for a product x...but on a practical level at the foundation of our economy...and in the process feed people.

I want to, but I have worries there, too.  When something is built on the back of corporate greed, it is easily corrupted.

The prison system is a perfect example.  Before we had private prisons, we had problems with prison over crowding.  I remember reading newspaper articles talking about prisons having to put 3 or 4 people in a cell that was only supposed to house 2 people.  Other prisoners didn't even get a mattress to sleep on, having to sleep on hard concrete.  And in the process of fixing this problem, the idea of private prisons came up.  At first, it seemed to solve the problems: pay corporations to house prisoners at their facilities.  Unfortunately, it didnt take long for the corporations that profit from those prisons to start lobbying the government for their benefit.  Politicians started getting tougher and tougher on crime, locking more people up, locking them up with longer sentences and giving them so little support when they leave that they wind up coming right back to prison again.  So prison over crowding was fixed, but we created a bigger problem in the process.

So, if we were to use corporate greed to fix the problems with healthcare or education or poverty, it might work.... or it might make things worse.  I really can't tell what will happen in the future, but what I can tell you is that whoever turns a profit from whatever programs we put in place, they'll find a way to corrupt it into them getting all the money while crumbs are left for the people who need it.  I'm really starting to think our whole socio-economic system isn't going to get better until it implodes on itself.