Since the beginning of the pandemic, the collective net worth of U.S. billionaires has nearly doubled. Tesla (NASDAQ: TSLA) chief executive, Elon Musk, has seen massive wealth gains, pushing his net worth beyond the value of oil giant Exxon Mobil (NYSE: XOM). As of the end of October, Musk became the first human to have a net worth of beyond $300 billion.
At the end of October, the executive director of the United Nations' World Food Program (WFP) David Beasley called on Musk to donate a portion of his immense wealth towards helping to solve world hunger.
"Six billion dollars to help 42 million people that are literally going to die if we don't reach them. It's not complicated," Beasley told CNN, specifically pointing to Musk and Amazon (NASDAQ: AMZN) founder Jeff Bezos.
Musk struck back against the humanitarian official on Twitter (NYSE: TWTR), saying that he'd be happy to "sell Tesla stock right now and do it" if Beasley could explain "exactly how $6B will solve world hunger".
"$6B will not solve world hunger," Beasley responded, "but it WILL prevent geopolitical instability, mass migration and save 42 million people on the brink of starvation. An unprecedented crisis and a perfect storm due to COVID/conflict/climate crises."
Indeed, while CNN falsely reported that Beasley had claimed $6 billion could entirely solve world hunger, he had actually stated that this money could "help solve" world hunger. Current estimates predict that it would take more than $300 billion to solve world hunger by 2030.
Beasley told Musk that he would "be on the next flight" to talk to Musk if the billionaire was willing to listen, saying Musk could "throw me out if you don't like what you hear."
Musk later stipulated that any aid he might provide must have "open source accounting, so the public sees precisely how the money is spent." He also called on the WFP to publish its current and prospective spending details, "Sunlight is a wonderful thing."
Musk also later attacked the humanitarian organization's record, linking to a 2015 report on alleged sexual abuse of children from the Central African Republic by U.N. officials. "What happened here?" Musk tweeted.
While Musk has claimed that he prefers to give donations anonymously, he has seen criticism from humanitarian activists saying he doesn't give enough.This year, he pledged to give away $150 million for contests relating to carbon removal, seemingly the largest Musk donation publicly reported.
The $6 billion gift Musk offered to give if enough transparency was provided would be the largest charitable gift the billionaire has ever made, 40 times higher than the total carbon removal award fund.
Charitable donations meant to help starving people in poverty aren't seen in a positive light by all economists. Some economists argue that those too poor to afford food aren't poor because of the disproportionate allocation of wealth into the hands of the rich, but because of their own inability to make a living. Some argue that the funds which could go towards buying food for 42 million people would be better spent on building capital for companies.
Even those in favor of this sort of aid argue that a single donation of $6 billion is far from good enough.
"Surely the $6 billion would be helpful to the United Nations' World Food Programme, in its mission to reach the most vulnerable people facing severe food insecurity," Jennifer Clapp, a professor and Canada Research Chair in the School of Environment, Resources and Sustainability at the University of Waterloo, told CBC. "But hunger is a complex problem and money alone is not sufficient to address its root causes."
"What a mistake it would be to suggest that would solve world hunger," Herbert Kronzucker, the founder and director of the Canadian Centre for World Hunger Research at the University of Toronto, told CBC. "Oh my god, would we be lucky."
"You cannot solve world hunger in such a way, and certainly not by throwing a one-time amount like this at one United Nations organization," he added.