Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Limitarianism: The Case Against Extreme Wealth

hive.co.uk

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

161–170 of 660 posts

Re: Limitarianism: The Case Against Extreme Wealth

#161

Post by RandomLensman »

Voultapher wrote: post #110
cosmojg wrote: post #75

Productive wealth is a good thing. It's what made our current society possible. Unproductive wealth is the real devil, the hoarding of inelastic goods like land, gold, and oil. I strongly prefer a society which permits the existence of Jeff Bezos over one which does not. Of course, more strongly than that, I prefer a society which taxes inelastic goods and negative externalities and returns that wealth to the public…

Wealth, at least the way we measure it, is inextricably tied to modernity. The system you say is a "good thing" is literally speedrunning the destruction of our biosphere. I think you'd be hard pressed to find a system more effective at destroying our world. What many see as prosperity, is irreconcilable with sustainability. I find that's an uncomfortable thought.

There was massive personal wealth already in antiquity and also destruction of ecosystems. Not sure that is specific to modernity.

Re: Limitarianism: The Case Against Extreme Wealth

#162

Post by blackbear_ »

kuratkull wrote: post #78
avgcorrection wrote: post #27

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Those things were created by working people, most of whom are not wealthy.

Look at each valuable item that you use often, now look up the salary of the leader of the company that made it. Edit: You wouldn't have that item without that compensation. This should be more traumatic than people make it out to be. You wouldn't have your iphones, twitters, facebooks, vr goggles, steams, ikea tables, etc.

> You wouldn't have that item without that compensation.

You are swapping cause and effect. First comes the item, then the compensation.

Re: Limitarianism: The Case Against Extreme Wealth

#163

Post by pdonis »

PaulDavisThe1st wrote: post #112
cosmojg wrote: post #75

Productive wealth is a good thing. It's what made our current society possible. Unproductive wealth is the real devil, the hoarding of inelastic goods like land, gold, and oil. I strongly prefer a society which permits the existence of Jeff Bezos over one which does not. Of course, more strongly than that, I prefer a society which taxes inelastic goods and negative externalities and returns that wealth to the public…

> Productive wealth is a good thing You have a lot of faith, it seems, in the ability of the already rich to somehow make better decisions (by some metric) than an arbitrary political process. I don't mind if Jeff Bezos the person exists, but I have no reason whatsoever to want him to have control over the scale of resources and decision-making that he does.

> You have a lot of faith, it seems, in the ability of the already rich to somehow make better decisions

Not at all. A large fraction of the "already rich" did not get their wealth by productive efforts. They got it by convincing other people to take the wrong end of zero sum trades, thus siphoning wealth out of other people's pockets into their own. Even in the case of Jeff Bezos, who has certainly created a lot of wealth through Amazon, it's also true that his own personal wealth is not entirely due to that productive effort; a significant part of it is due to Amazon playing zero sum games with its supply chain and its workers.

In other words, the real problem is not wealth accumulation, but wealth accumulation through zero sum games, or more generally through gaming the system instead of producing. (There was a pg essay on this years ago.)

Re: Limitarianism: The Case Against Extreme Wealth

#164

Post by dogman144 »

cosmojg wrote: post #75

Productive wealth is a good thing. It's what made our current society possible. Unproductive wealth is the real devil, the hoarding of inelastic goods like land, gold, and oil. I strongly prefer a society which permits the existence of Jeff Bezos over one which does not. Of course, more strongly than that, I prefer a society which taxes inelastic goods and negative externalities and returns that wealth to the public…

If you’ve got elastic liquid assets, go forth and grow.

If you’ve got property, as in, the asset most normal folks own end to end and drives their wealth - negative externality.

Interesting take.

Re: Limitarianism: The Case Against Extreme Wealth

#165

Post by missedthecue »

rsoto2 wrote: post #153
cosmojg wrote: post #75

Productive wealth is a good thing. It's what made our current society possible. Unproductive wealth is the real devil, the hoarding of inelastic goods like land, gold, and oil. I strongly prefer a society which permits the existence of Jeff Bezos over one which does not. Of course, more strongly than that, I prefer a society which taxes inelastic goods and negative externalities and returns that wealth to the public…

"permits the existence of Jeff Bezos" - your mind on capitalism. What things of importance has Bezos done? End world hunger? Or are we celebrating the death of local stores and malls? What about a society that prevents kids from starving instead of making bombs and satellites for world wars?

Society has collectively voted that Amazon massively improves their lives. If they didn't think so, they'd still be choosing to shop at Sears and Kmart and hosting their software on HP enterprise servers in a musty office basement.

That's all the clear and evident result of the market system which is very democratic. People vote with their dollars every day. The winners of these billions of daily democratic votes rise to the top and losers die out.

Re: Limitarianism: The Case Against Extreme Wealth

#166

Post by WalterBright »

Voultapher wrote: post #110
cosmojg wrote: post #75

Productive wealth is a good thing. It's what made our current society possible. Unproductive wealth is the real devil, the hoarding of inelastic goods like land, gold, and oil. I strongly prefer a society which permits the existence of Jeff Bezos over one which does not. Of course, more strongly than that, I prefer a society which taxes inelastic goods and negative externalities and returns that wealth to the public…

Wealth, at least the way we measure it, is inextricably tied to modernity. The system you say is a "good thing" is literally speedrunning the destruction of our biosphere. I think you'd be hard pressed to find a system more effective at destroying our world. What many see as prosperity, is irreconcilable with sustainability. I find that's an uncomfortable thought.

Communist societies tend to be a lot more destructive of their environments.

The reason is straightforward - people take care of things that they own, they don't take care of things they don't.

For example, which is threatened with extinction - ocean fish, or cows?

Are you more careful with your boss's money, or your money?

And so on.

Re: Limitarianism: The Case Against Extreme Wealth

#167

Post by pdonis »

cosmojg wrote: post #75

Productive wealth is a good thing. It's what made our current society possible. Unproductive wealth is the real devil, the hoarding of inelastic goods like land, gold, and oil. I strongly prefer a society which permits the existence of Jeff Bezos over one which does not. Of course, more strongly than that, I prefer a society which taxes inelastic goods and negative externalities and returns that wealth to the public…

> Unproductive wealth is the real devil, the hoarding of inelastic goods like land, gold, and oil.

They're not wealth if they're hoarded. Undeveloped land, or gold and oil in the ground, are no use to anybody. They're only wealth if they're used. And that requires lots of productive effort to develop the land, or to get the gold and oil out of the ground and into productive use. I agree that unproductive wealth is the real problem, but we need to be careful how we define it.

Re: Limitarianism: The Case Against Extreme Wealth

#168

Post by WalterBright »

guhidalg wrote: post #135
Voultapher wrote: post #110

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Wealth, at least the way we measure it, is inextricably tied to modernity. The system you say is a "good thing" is literally speedrunning the destruction of our biosphere. I think you'd be hard pressed to find a system more effective at destroying our world. What many see as prosperity, is irreconcilable with sustainability. I find that's an uncomfortable thought.

I agree with you, but I think what most people fail at is applying higher-order logic. Yes it is nice that private citizens have Jeff Bezos levels of wealth instead of monarchies or plutocrats, but at what cost? Most people are just unwilling to keep thinking about opportunity costs beyond the obvious.

What cost is allowing Bezos to exist?

Re: Limitarianism: The Case Against Extreme Wealth

#169

Post by nobleach »

medo-bear wrote: post #41
glitchc wrote: post #31

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Any solutions that are in conflict with human nature will never be successful. Ambition and envy are basic human traits. At a deeper level, we are beings that measure everything (including light, sound, smell, touch and taste) by way of comparison. Communism fails because no one has anything left to aspire to and everyone is therefore equally miserable.

Wealth caps of 15M is certainly not communism > Ambition and envy are basic human traits No they are not

As someone who has worked extremely hard to acquire assets great than 15 million, who do you suggest has the authority to come and take some of it away from me. And what will they do with the resources they confiscate?

Re: Limitarianism: The Case Against Extreme Wealth

#170

Post by 303uru »

dbingham wrote: post #6

Adding this to my reading list. I've thought for years that we should place at hard cap on wealth somewhere around $10 or $15 million. Because that's the point at which you have enough wealth to live a comfortably middle class lifestyle for the rest of your life, still pass down a substantial chunk to your children, and never have to earn another cent. I've argued we should combine this with a move towards a worker o…

I agree wholeheartedly with this concept. I wonder if the most realistic way to do it is to hardcap inheritance. As much as I'm uncomfortable with the power hoarding with the Bezo, Gates, Musks of the worlds, I'm much more uncomfortable with their hundred great grandchildren still being the most powerful group on the planet. An honest meritocracy type should even be able to get behind that. Bezos built something, his kids were just born into it. Cap their total inheritance at $15M and call it a day.
Post reply on HN