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

191–200 of 660 posts

Re: Limitarianism: The Case Against Extreme Wealth

#191

Post by jimbokun »

laserlight wrote: post #127
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…

> I strongly prefer a society which permits the existence of Jeff Bezos over one which does not. Can you expand? What did Bezos contribute to society?

Amazon.

Re: Limitarianism: The Case Against Extreme Wealth

#192

Post by missedthecue »

rfwhyte wrote: post #81

The problem I have with extreme, gratuitous wealth, and the inequality that creates it, is that it is fundamentally anti-democratic. It is well known by anyone with a pulse that money = political power, which means those with the most money, have the most political power, and given how just how much wealth so few people in the world have now, an infinitesimally tiny fraction of the population of most democratic count…

The relationship between money and political power is vastly overestimated.

In the US, the mega billionaires are hated in Washington by left and right alike. Bloomberg spent a fortune on his own campaign and didn't win a single state in the primaries.

Even if you look abroad, the billionaires are not the ones with political power. In places like Russia and China, billionaires have to suck up to the politicians or they risk getting disappeared, disbarred, or thrown from windows.

Re: Limitarianism: The Case Against Extreme Wealth

#193

Post by FredPret »

NegativeK wrote: post #126
FredPret wrote: post #96

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Ah yes, here come the arguments for "monitoring". Next come regulations about having to "cooperate". Then the question will be raised as to what happens to those rich people who don't cooperate, or middle class / poor people who, god forbid, don't agree with this plan for society. Pretty soon, you've got your jackboots and your re-education camps.

You made quite a few significant leaps there.

So did the NKVD!

Started as regular police, ended up doing purges 13 crazy years later.

Re: Limitarianism: The Case Against Extreme Wealth

#194

Post by poncho_romero »

thunfischbrot wrote: post #122
ch4s3 wrote: post #28

Earlier quoted context omitted.

So what is your proposal if you own a company, or if some minerals are discovered on your heretofore low value land? It's not really all that uncommon for a company with a sole owner or a partnership to be worth in excess of $15 Million.

Pay your employees more, or be taxed near 100% on the excess gains?

Exactly. Tax the profits, thereby encouraging the company to invest internally in higher salaries, R&D, new equipment, etc.

Re: Limitarianism: The Case Against Extreme Wealth

#195

Post by MacsHeadroom »

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?

Bezos' AWS made cloud computing viable, leading to the last two decades of economic growth without per capita energy consumption (due to datacenter energy efficiency).

Bezos' Amazon lowers the cost and availability of goods of all kinds drastically, enriching everyone (and especially the poorer among us).

The State makes bombs and drops bombs, not Bezos. Bezos deploys capital in ways which have proved to fill market needs. Markets are people. His money is meeting the needs of the people while taxes build bombs.

Re: Limitarianism: The Case Against Extreme Wealth

#197

Post by jimbokun »

laserlight wrote: post #173
simonh wrote: post #148

Earlier quoted context omitted.

He built a company employing over a million people, created novel goods and services, including services my job depends on (AWS). The wealth of a man like Bezos isn't a pile of gold he wallows in like Scrooge McDuck, it exists in his shareholder control of a vast set of companies full of employees and doing productive work. These companies would not exist without his ability to identify new markets, build efficient c…

> He built a company employing over a million people, created novel goods and services, including services my job depends on (AWS). And if Bezos had not founded Amazon, you and others would have been unemployed and poor? > Take away the ability to do that, and who is going to found the new companies? Other people. There are many people who are driven by their non-financial passions that would benefit society. History…

> And if Bezos had not founded Amazon, you and others would have been unemployed and poor?

If nobody founded companies like Amazon, yes many more people would be unemployed and poor.

Bezos is just one example.

> History is full of philosophers, mathematicians, scientists, doctors who weren't after money, yet managed to contribute more than Bezos ever could.

If all the philosophers, mathematicians and scientists and doctors were put in charge of running all the world's companies, we'd be in big trouble. Totally different skill sets.

Re: Limitarianism: The Case Against Extreme Wealth

#198

Post by Exoristos »

dbingham wrote: post #21
FredPret wrote: post #12

Earlier quoted context omitted.

When we allow the state to dictate wealth ceilings, we hand it absolute power.

The state is democratic, not absolute. When the state implements policies like this it is acting as a democratic expression of the community's will. We as a community are saying "We're not going to allow individuals within our community to accumulate undo influence over it."

Polls and studies for years have shown that what elected officials legislate and what voters want rarely line up. Modern democracy has long outgrown representing mere constituents.

Re: Limitarianism: The Case Against Extreme Wealth

#199

Post by yellowapple »

manithree wrote: post #149
kuratkull wrote: post #4

I'm wondering if people understand that almost all the pleasures/comforts in modern life were created by people who wouldn't exist in this system.

Of course they don't know it. They actually believe that the state is better at managing money than the people creating products and jobs.

They're actively destroying jobs at this very moment, not creating them. If I had a nickel for every "we're making record profits, oh and we're also laying off 10% of our employees" announcement, I'd be a billionaire.

Re: Limitarianism: The Case Against Extreme Wealth

#200

Post by WalterBright »

pdonis wrote: post #163
PaulDavisThe1st wrote: post #112

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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…

> a significant part of it is due to Amazon playing zero sum games with its supply chain and its workers

Why would any worker or supplier do an exchange with Amazon where they lose?

Post reply on HN