Holy smokes:

In a conversation with Charlie Rose at a TED conference on Wednesday, Page said he wanted his money going to capitalists like Musk — those with big ideas for changing the world— according to a report at Wired.

He thinks Musk's vision for going to Mars "to back up humanity" is inspired. He said, "That’s a company, and that’s philanthropical."

According to some people on Twitter, Page even went as far as to suggest that everyone give their money to a corporation that was trying to accomplish big stuff. 

We're not sure if he's being literal or figurative here. There are surprisingly few write-ups of these comments on the Web.

It seems as if he's making a larger point, which is that the right company run by the right person can have a major effect. 

Larry Page is in a position to funnel billions of dollars from Google into such a project while he's alive.

It's kind of like when Warren Buffett channeled some of his money to the Gates Foundation.

But this isn't a foundation Larry Page is talking about. It's a mission to Mars.

We started to sponsor a Tibetan nun in India. She is 6 years old and we will cover her living and education for as long as needed.   Probably about 20 years. 

Total cost about 10,000 dollars. 

If she sticks with it, she will go from orphan to a highly educated skilled woman for less money than we spend for one year of day care.  

I honestly cannot comprehend people's priorities. 

That's so beautiful! Thank you for that :) I find the most amazing thing in the world when you can give people a chance to succeed in live, specially and mainly through education! I hope she gets as much as possible of what you guys are doing.

Juliana, you're right, that is beautiful.

From the point of view of having a ton of money and wanting it to make a game-changing, net positive impact for society, it makes great sense.

It's an AWESOME idea!

Life is not a game to be changed. 

Even the language is a mess. 

In the aggregate, there is no metric on a global scale that shows the Internet has improved the quality of life in any "game changing" way over the past 25 years. Changed life for many without question, but improvement is debatable.   

Technology and interconnected systems. the religion of sorts, is actually increasing risk and destabilizing society.  An attack on power grids in a multitude of forms can shut down transfer for months.  

http://m.utsandiego.com/news/2014/Mar/20/attack-exposes-risk-blackouts-lasting-months/

Putting aside the risk of malicious acts, if not for the Feds 5 Trillion dollar balance sheet, Google would be no better than half the value it is today. 

Living in bubbles is not a good long term strategy. Treating life and human relations as a game played by irrational actors is even worse. 

From a game theory view, the expected value of infinite iterations of Russian Roulette is death. 

No worries the billionaires have it all under control. Why would Page give it to another like him and not some decentralized crowd?  Because their ilk love to hang around together sharing goat penis appetizers. 

http://m.vice.com/en_uk/read/eating-goat-penis-with-americas-one-percent?utm_source=vicetwitteruk

It's an AWESOME idea to bet on Elon Musk... 

Anthropocentric intentions about backing up homo sapiens by establishing a first settlement on Mars sounds groovy to me.  

Go Elon, go!

Elon does seem to be the only person talking seriously about it.

He's done a lot more than talk about it, he's seriously on the way there, consider:

SpaceX--afordable rockets, required to bring more assets off-world

Solar City--affordable energy generation technologies, required to power off-world settlements

Tesla Motors--affordable off-world power plants, required to translate power into work related applications

If anyone thinks these revolutionary industries aren't related and integral then you're not paying attention...

Likewise with his Hyperloop--affordable, self-contained mass transportation that will function even better in lower pressure atmospheres

This is all prelude, he's prototyping the essential science and physical building blocks here on Earth of what's going to be required to colonize Mars...all at the same time.  

Freaking visionary genius...

Where is my jet pack?

I have been driving a car for 30 years and the greatest advance is a remote starter that warms my ass. 

I still don't get 20mph

Mark,

1. I remember they had jet packs back in the 1960s...

2. You're probably driving the wrong cars...

3. Ahh, try the accelerator? or see #2 above if you happen to be referring to mpg and mph was a typo...

Damn autocorrect and dyslexia

Yes 20 mpg. 

I have to have an SUV for 3 row seating. 

Haha, then you're big pimping and rolling Texas style... why would you want anything less, or more?

Big pimping with three car seats and two passengers. 

Point being the tech hype and space travel  is BS. It is more dystopian bullshit,  I will save humanity. Do we go to mars before or after the world ends because of an unpredictable event?

I grew up with a physicist engineer that built some impressive technology. My father was the director of RD for what is now Thermo Fisher.  His college roommate designed the aegis missle systems with a pencil and slide rule.  

And you know what? They are old and their wives died and realize they wasted the bulk of their lives. 

They are alone and depressed and both will tell you the world is worse now and they did not make a positive difference. 

The reason Musk is a billionaire is he is a smart player that leveraged the upward transfer of wealth off of  a 20 trillion dollar taxpayer gift.

No one is living on mars in 20 years.  

Three car seats--awesome!  How old are they?  My daughter's just 8 months old now...

Hmmm, sincere condolences on the family career experience.  I can't say their world view is or isn't an accurate description of the world, but I respect that they have strong feelings about it.  I choose different strong feelings about it.

I'd say we will definitely have the technical ability to live on Mars by 2034.  Whether or not Elon or anybody else will be there is a different story for a variety of ever increasing and unexpected unknown unknowns.  But again, I'd bet we will continue producing the technical abilities to do so with ever increasing speed of functional progress, not hype.

I don't see PayPal being bought by Ebay for $1.5 Billion in 2002 as being Elon's play on the upward transfer of wealth off a $20 trillion dollar taxpayer gift, which I assume you to mean was the much later taxpayer bailout of Wall Street after the CDO driven housing market bubble collapsed, back in 2008ish?  That's the only taxpayer gift at that bulk level of money I'm aware of recently.  And I'm pretty sure TARP and all the other Fed transfers and off-balance sheet shenanigans didn't show up as a gift or pool to the benefit of SpaceX, Solar City or Tesla after 2008, at least as far as I can tell from some direct relationships with founding investors in those companies.

And don't be too absolute in your null set assertion: there's also a Mars in western North Carolina.  It's a small town, but I'll bet there'll be people living on there in 20 years...

There is also a Mars Pa. 

The point again is the world is littered with histories of dead people that are going to change the world, while billions live like they did thousands of years ago or worse. 

When I was a kid I met Ken Olsen. My neighbors were his Vice Presidents at DEC. He is dead and was a lunatic.  The stories my friend's parents would tell about his insane instabilities were  amazing.

He was a radical Christian dominionist that supported the Family and Billy Graham agenda. (I also went to college with Billy's grandson who now teaches at Liberty)

Bill Gates saw him as one of the greats and I think they are insane. 

eBay pay pal ... Google ...The concentric bubbles and privitization of public technology that created a bubble that crashed which created bailouts and twist and Qe, 15 trillion in defense spending in 30 years equal to national debt....

I used to hang some at the Duquesne Club. They have a founders room. The founders Frick, Mellon, Carnegie, Westinghouse... I live in Allegheny West, at one point the richest neighborhood in the world.  Most of the mansions fell to the ground and many were drug and prostitution houses before people restored them.  

The greater probability than Mars is that the same people that are building the technology to get us there are going to get us all killed first. 

Everything was falling apart and the next day NASA gave him a billion dollar contract. 

Wow these self made men are awesome 

http://m.huffpost.com/us/entry/4232477/

Now I never said that Elon was a self-made man.  Nor am I interested in cultivating that fantasy about any man, woman or religion--there is no such thing as a self-made people or ideas, period.  We all benefit from the many seen and unseen among us.  And it's amazing at what does gain favor, persist and perish across this brief twilight of a waking dream we call life.

My only point is that Elon is visible, nameable and meet-able and influencing a movement that one can observe, grasp and participate in or not.  As opposed to observing the collective billions of nameless and ungraspable people soiling themselves in stone age fashion and lamenting that it's the only pervasive reality across this complex, contradictory and competitive multi-verse...and one we sure as hell don't want to join or expand upon.

I'm saying we have a choice.  In fact, many choices... 

Choose wisely.

*i should be clear. I am not saying all of these people are not brilliant and well meaning in their own heads. You have to be bright to play the system to syphon off trillions of dollars after sovereigns sell paper. 

I am saying they are all going to die and while they live they hoard the resources to preserve humanity. 

Delusion at is core. 

Well, I'm more of a Taoist regarding our infinite intellectual ability for illusions and delusions as there is only that at the core and the periphery of thoughts, ideas and judgments.

The map is not the territory...