What to do with all that money out there?

I just had a conversation with my daughter about the waste of resources and the diversion of manpower that it takes to mount rescue missions for overly privileged people-- the submersible that explores the wreckage of the Titanic is still missing. I think about the wealthy folks who go up for the minutes-long joyrides into space. The ones who have huge weddings and so on that require whole platoons of security. Part of me wants to say, hey, those events employ many people, so at least there are jobs created by so much hubris. But then, I wonder, what could be done to better humanity, to combat diseases, etc. with that kind of expendable cash?

It's a tough call, but I think that I lean more towards using money of that magnitude to helping the most people. Wealth, to me, has never been a status symbol, any more than notoriety (I honestly do not care that thus and such a person met so and so). If we have one job to do on this planet during our brief sojourn here, it is to make other people, and future generations, better off. Not more wealthy-- the income disparities are an ever-widening gap and the world is populated by more people who truly have needs: clean water, air, secure housing, education, clothing. By better off, I mean safer. Healthier. To provide a cleaner, more wholesome future for the next few generations would be the greatest use of so-called material wealth. 

It's pretty clear, I guess, that I spent my early formative years in the 1970s, and I am purely disgusted with the wrong-headed turn that things have taken. Planting seeds, whether real or metaphorical, makes a lot more sense to me.

Have a good day,

C