> For example, Elon Musk would be forced to sell all but a minuscule sliver of his shares in Tesla, SpaceX, etc and give the proceeds to the tax man. He'd be out on his arse and replaced by an executive hired by whoever bought the shares. It would be the death of Tesla and SpaceX as we know them.
The point is that Musk would/should never have gotten to such an oversized amount of control in the first place, and thus these businesses wouldn't be in any danger at all from such a move because they'd already be staffed by competent people who wouldn't need his approval or "executive powers" to run things. And if Tesla and/or SpaceX can't stay afloat without Musk, then I'd argue they're failures, or at the very least shouldn't have gotten this big while still being dependent on him.
Besides, so what if companies fail? They're not people, they should never be more important than people. As long as the people are taken care of we should be fine with businesses failing. It leaves room for others, and stops tying up human output for unproductive endeavors.
> This would take the ownership of huge swathes of the companies in the world out of the hands of the people who created them and operate them and into the hands of random executives with little or no track record.
Who's giving you this idea? The whole point is to give more power/control back to the people running those companies, i.e. the workers making stuff, serving people, maintaining, etc. No-one is arguing to blindly dilute ownership of companies among the populace _just_ to keep from having billionaires. This is scare-mongering at its finest.
> Finally, if everyone who's currently an investor in these companies, but has more than $20m also get taxed down to $20m, who is going to buy all the shares?
The wealth being taxed doesn't just vanish into thin air. If so many currently wealthy investors are being taxed down, it stands to reason that the redistribution of said wealth would mean that _more_ investors appear.
Also, from an ideological point of view, it seems more democratic to have many smaller investors, than allow a few to accrete such wealth that they can do such things as bully or starve projects of investment for personal reasons.
> It's nonsense like this that is why Marxist experiments the world over have caused such havoc and misery on unimaginably vast scales
Funny how someone who immediately thinks to reference "Marxist experiments" in response to an argument for better wealth redistribution, can't envision an economy without a top-level executive being vital for a company to survive, or investments being impossible if 1 person can't do it all by themselves. Seems like a really fragile model to me.
Meanwhile, these Marxist experiments aren't broiling the planet for an extra 50 years to milk profit off of fossil fuels, nor expecting people to sacrifice their health and time to themselves to work 50-,60-,70- hour workweeks without getting an ounce of recognition whether they do a good job or just adequate. Or how about leaving people to die of poverty because there's no direct profit to be had in them?