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Challenging the myth that the rich are specially-talented wealth creators

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Re: Challenging the myth that the rich are specially-talented wealth creators

#151

Post by ommunist »

golergka wrote: post #100
MichaelBurge wrote: post #82

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think capital allocation is sometimes too abstract for people to see the value in. If I bought some land, built a windmill with my bare hands out of stone and wood that I cut and shopped myself, and became the flour producer for the entire region, people tend to say it's a deserved reward. If I bought that company, paid people to do all the work setting up a dozen more windmills, paid people to manage the new bigge…

There's one thing this communist logic doesn't take into account: risk. Ownership and risk are inherently tied to one another. Thinking only about scenarios where this risk already passed and then calling owners "parasites" is survivorship bias in the purest form.

Communists took ultimate risk when they risked their lives overthrowing capitalism as a system, being it Russia in 1917 or Cuba in 1953.

Re: Challenging the myth that the rich are specially-talented wealth creators

#152

Post by nxzero »

jonknee wrote: post #132
nxzero wrote: post #29

Very rich are just average people; meaning there's a mix of types of people that are very rich; aka billion or more. Feel like most people have never known anyone super rich or for that matter, very poor. Lastly, while it's true that there are more super wealth individuals than likely any point in history currently - the quality of life is also better on average too.

> Very rich are just average people; meaning there's a mix of types of people that are very rich; aka billion or more. Being very rich is by definition not being average. There are ~1,800 billionaires in the world and none are average.

I see, then what by definition is an average person?

Re: Challenging the myth that the rich are specially-talented wealth creators

#153

Post by ommunist »

PythonicAlpha wrote: post #84
jonathankoren wrote: post #56

Earlier quoted context omitted.

They won't need people to clean their rooms and empty their trash. That's what the robots are for. They just stay their safe rooms with Tom Perkins waiting for his kristallnacht.

Then, they also can enjoy the (sole) company of robots.

Butlers are cheaper and more comfortable.

Re: Challenging the myth that the rich are specially-talented wealth creators

#154

Post by a_small_island »

ams6110 wrote: post #143
Joeri wrote: post #112

Earlier quoted context omitted.

100.000 british men simply cannot control 350 million Indians, if those Indians refuse to cooperate. Throughout history it has been the case that sustained perceived inequality inevitably leads to revolution. We're nowhere near that point, but if trend lines continue and the middle class gets wiped out, it will happen. Democracy is supposed to prevent things from getting that bad, but we have seen that free elections…

The election is looking like it will come down to Trump v. Sanders. Both of whom were the LAST choice of the "elite" who supposedly are pulling all the puppet strings.

>Trump v. Sanders

Why do you think this?

Re: Challenging the myth that the rich are specially-talented wealth creators

#155

Post by onetimeusename »

jsprogrammer wrote: post #120
onetimeusename wrote: post #110

There are a few things I disagree with. 1) Income from rent is not unearned. The reason it is called unearned is because nothing new was created. However, many services are this way. For example, fees paid to lawyers, or insurance fees and so on. Income earned from rent is income that comes from providing a service which is shelter or land for other uses. 2) Investment income is not parasitic. A share is a portion of…

Shelter and land are not a service but a physical resource.

They are a physical resource but renting them is subject to contractual agreements between parties because what is actually being paid for is a _right_ to use land not the land itself. A renter must provide maintenance of a property for example. Another way to think of it is to say that a taxi provides a service temporarily, not the physical car itself. Renting is similar.

Re: Challenging the myth that the rich are specially-talented wealth creators

#156

Post by aoeusnth1 »

5350-uiop-1130 wrote: post #131
adwhit wrote: post #35

HN tends to be extremely reactionary to posts like this. Perhaps because the tech/startup scene is all about getting rich quick, or perhaps because HN has come to partially reflect the personal views of PG. There will be a reckoning. The world is 'unsustainably unequal' at the moment. There are huge problems on the horizon - superbugs, climate change, resource depletion, environmental degradation, overpopulation. The…

The problem is one of gross, immoral and unjustifiable inequality. Everything else is just semantics, conjecture and informed or misinformed opinion. I hope I live to see the day when the parasites of society meet their reckoning as I believe the idea of a more equal society coming about by reason as totally naive and foolhardy.

So... let's kill all the greedy Jews that charge interest for their money lending? /s

No thanks.

I think a few reforms are enough to make things fair - a UBI, capital gains treated as normal income, and political funding reform.

We don't need any more of these: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mass_killings_under_Communist_...

Re: Challenging the myth that the rich are specially-talented wealth creators

#157

Post by foobarian »

mbfg wrote: post #41
adwhit wrote: post #35

HN tends to be extremely reactionary to posts like this. Perhaps because the tech/startup scene is all about getting rich quick, or perhaps because HN has come to partially reflect the personal views of PG. There will be a reckoning. The world is 'unsustainably unequal' at the moment. There are huge problems on the horizon - superbugs, climate change, resource depletion, environmental degradation, overpopulation. The…

i understand your sentiment here, and in the view of history this is true. The problem is that now, or very soon, we are/will be in a state where the 1% can easily put down the 99% politically, socially, financially and yes militarily. So there may be a reckoning at some point. But it will and badly for the 99%. This was mostly true throughout history as well, it's just become a more certainty now.

Moreover, it there ends up being a violent reckoning, the outcome will be the 1% will be swapped out for a different 1% which will likely be worse than they are now. E.g. military junta or a bunch of mobsters.

Re: Challenging the myth that the rich are specially-talented wealth creators

#158

Post by ommunist »

nazgob wrote: post #150
ommunist wrote: post #33

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Hardly thousands. 240 000 people die every year in car accidents and no one prohibits cars. Millions died in WW2, but it is not the USSR to blame for it. How many Indians were killed for the US to prosper? We are speaking about fhe better system you never tried. No rich, no poor, everyone has a job.

Why its not USSR to blame? USSR allied with Nazi Germany and attacked many free nations. Finland, Estonia, Latvia, Lithuania, Poland. Everywhere leaving destruction, death and misery. War war followed with bloody enforcement of communism in occupied nations.

Sorry to disappoint you, but Latvia, Estonia and Lithuania happily united with USSR the way Austria was united with Germany. And since my father was born in exact place and time you are referring to, I can make you sure that my family archive contains enough proof of the view that is quite contrary to your rhetorical exercise.

In just 10 years after WW2 ended, Latvia for example, became from being allotments of Britain and Sweden a modern industrial country. And now this time is called in Latvian school history books 'the period of unnecessary development'.

Re: Challenging the myth that the rich are specially-talented wealth creators

#159

Post by zanny »

morgante wrote: post #140
zanny wrote: post #87

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is the primary problem with the discourse. People can agree pretty universally a tyrant, dictator, or emperor is a bad thing. You do not want heredity to determine power, and you do not want one individual to have violent dominance over anyone else, because you will often be the "anyone else" if you are not the aggressor. But that is about the only difference between how the modern gears of power operate versus…

> Rather than just kill your brothers and claim the throne and execute the dissidents and having your firstborn son inherit the crown from you, your children inherit ludicrous wealth that translates into the same power to buy the violent arm of the state for your own ends. Except inherited wealth is at all-time lows. If you look at the richest people in the world today, the majority of them made their own way into th…

I should have worded it better, but it is not just strictly biological children. There is an entire cultural social class above what most call "rich" that encompasses the heads of major universities, companies, investment firms, and governments that represent a fraction of one percent of the population but have consistently controlled the vast majority of capital and have gradually increased their ownership stake since the most democratized periods surrounding World War 2 (though they were only so democratized because the pool of people in consideration was smaller - part of the problem in modern global capitalism is that almost everyone on the planet is now a participant, and thus there are now billions of people to exploit and bully than millions in industrialized western states that simply cut ties to the rest of the world with the death of classical imperialism in the early 20th century).

In reality, money might not stay in one families direct hands, but upward mobility is at generational lows in the west, and in particular the number of successful new businesses, and those which elevate anyone out of the working class into either middle or upper class, are diminishing significantly[1].

[1]: https://www.imf.org/external/pubs/ft/sdn/2015/sdn1513.pdf

Re: Challenging the myth that the rich are specially-talented wealth creators

#160

Post by pjdemers »

About "rent seeking" and "passive income": Everybody gets old. Technology companies don't hire the old. And in technology, old is > 45. Which isn't that old given that my life expectancy is about 85. So, darn right I'm "rent seeking". And I save like mad so I can generate "passive income". I assume that I will be pushed out of the workforce very soon - and I don't want to live on welfare for 40 years. Nor do I want to be restocking the shelves at Target when I'm 80.
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