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Limitarianism: The Case Against Extreme Wealth

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Re: Limitarianism: The Case Against Extreme Wealth

#231

Post by mwigdahl »

missedthecue wrote: post #179
yedava wrote: post #103

Extreme wealth is a symptom of an underlying problem - inhumane exploitation. People can get that rich because the economic system says that it is perfectly acceptable for a class of people to pee in bottles/diapers in order to maximize profits. The solution for this doesn't have to target the rich explicitly. We can strengthen labor laws; update anti-monopoly laws. Make human dignity the central argument. This will…

Wealth isn't zero-sum. Your earnings aren't extracted at a cost to someone else.

You are correct, economic activity under capitalism is positive-sum. And that makes the exploitative behavior of megacorporations and their leaders that much worse. The economic pie is growing rapidly, but ruthless cost-focused management that treats employees as "resources" keeps unskilled laborers continually on the edge.

The larger the organization, the more the leaders can insulate themselves from the human reality on the ground, which in turn makes it easier to justify policies that fail to treat workers with basic human decency, let alone provide them the opportunity to share in the the economic surplus they produce.

It takes work and discipline for leaders to avoid this without external coercion, and that is in demonstrably short supply.

Re: Limitarianism: The Case Against Extreme Wealth

#232

Post by devbent »

jimbokun wrote: post #197
laserlight wrote: post #173

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). 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 d…

> 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.

Eh, worked well enough for Singapore.

Also it worked well enough for the founding of many great companies.

Ford, GE, Intel, Microsoft, Google, companies started by people who were experts in their field.

Traditionally that is how things went. Sadly the meme of a dedicated management class has taken hold on America and we've decided that people who actually understand what a business does aren't needed to run the business.

That leads to crap like airplanes falling apart, software companies who are just barely able to release software, and hospitals that are so misran they are unable to afford actually treating patients.

Re: Limitarianism: The Case Against Extreme Wealth

#233

Post by jimbokun »

lostlogin wrote: post #92
FredPret wrote: post #73

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I didn't say "ban the idea". I said "ban the ambition to control the lives of others". The best counter to these jumped-up mini-Mao's is to spread the power far and wide; to have lots of little decision-makers rather than a few grand ones; to have those little decision-makers make tons of small but important decisions every day, rather than trusting everything to one election every few years.

I think that the description ’mini-Mao’ fits both the ambition to blocking others from excess wealth and the behaviour we are seeing from some billionaires. Extremes promote extremes. Getting lots of people to make lots of small decisions is not easy and the masses are not necessarily that sensible. Delegating decision making to a chosen representative is the least bad system seen so far, but has a way to go.

> Getting lots of people to make lots of small decisions is not easy and the masses are not necessarily that sensible. Delegating decision making to a chosen representative is the least bad system seen so far, but has a way to go.

I'm with William F. Buckley on this one:

> “I would rather be governed by the first 2,000 people in the telephone directory,” he said, “than by the Harvard University faculty.”

https://quoteinvestigator.com/2017/10/31/telegovern/#google_...

Re: Limitarianism: The Case Against Extreme Wealth

#234

Post by rufus_foreman »

thefaux wrote: post #147
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.

Personally I find private land ownership a kind of ridiculous concept. Our current system provides the convenient and necessary fiction of land ownership but ultimately to the extent there is an owner, it is always the state.

Are you alluding to real estate taxes, or something else? I know that you have to pay property tax to keep your land, but you have to pay property tax to keep your car, and I don't see how that means that the state owns your car.

I think the current system, and specifically the Supreme Court under Roberts has done an excellent job protecting individual property rights from the state. The Roberts court gets criticized for protecting those rights too much.

Re: Limitarianism: The Case Against Extreme Wealth

#235

Post by yulker »

jimbokun wrote: post #208
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've thought for years that we should place at hard cap on wealth somewhere around $10 or $15 million. Where's the empirical evidence that such a cutoff benefits society as a whole? > I've argued we should combine this with a move towards a worker owned economy - in which businesses are democratic institutions governed by the people who do the work involved. I like the German system of giving labor a board seat. We…

Not to be snarky, but how could there be empirical evidence for anything that hasn't been done before?

Re: Limitarianism: The Case Against Extreme Wealth

#236

Post by satellite2 »

FredPret wrote: post #32
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.

No, people don't know this. The degree of economic and historical naiveté has really skyrocketed in recent decades. "Let's just try a planned society one more time , THIS time will be different, look how nice and kind we are!" is a perfectly reasonable statement to many educated people today. It's really an indictment of the education system.

You are mocking people using a false dichotomy. Complaining that some individuals shouldn't be able to control trillion in wealth don't imply a push for centrally planned economies.

Re: Limitarianism: The Case Against Extreme Wealth

#237

Post by devbent »

missedthecue wrote: post #165
rsoto2 wrote: post #153

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"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 ris…

> If they didn't think so, they'd still be choosing to shop at Sears and Kmart

Let's be clear: Amazon has been responsible for the shutting down of so many in-person businesses that entire product categories are can only be purchased on Amazon.

The choice is a false one.

Re: Limitarianism: The Case Against Extreme Wealth

#238

Post by rockemsockem »

yedava wrote: post #103

Extreme wealth is a symptom of an underlying problem - inhumane exploitation. People can get that rich because the economic system says that it is perfectly acceptable for a class of people to pee in bottles/diapers in order to maximize profits. The solution for this doesn't have to target the rich explicitly. We can strengthen labor laws; update anti-monopoly laws. Make human dignity the central argument. This will…

You know that not every company is Amazon, right? You can't just generalize those terrible experiences to every company.

I happen to agree that there needs to be some big legal changes to ensure workers at Amazon and other companies are treated better, because before Amazon it was Walmart, and in 50 years it'll probably be another company. But that doesn't mean you can use Amazon as a reason to legislate personal wealth away.

Re: Limitarianism: The Case Against Extreme Wealth

#239

Post by WalterBright »

guhidalg wrote: post #204
WalterBright wrote: post #168

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What cost is allowing Bezos to exist?

Search for “pee in bottles” in this thread.

People have always peed in bottles when they're on a long drive, piloting an airplane long distance, on a sailboat, and so on. Some peoples' bladders have a short fuse, and carry a bottle.

Do you think Lindberg brought a port-a-potty along with his Spirit of St Louis? I remember the opening sequence in a Jeff Bridges movie where he pulls over in his car and dumps his pee bottle.

P.S. My dad was a B-17 navigator in WW2. I asked him what did they do when had to go. He said an empty ammo box was used. What was done with the full box? "Extra bombs over Germany!"

Re: Limitarianism: The Case Against Extreme Wealth

#240

Post by poncho_romero »

WalterBright wrote: post #212
poncho_romero wrote: post #177

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Who said anything about communism? This is a false dichotomy.

The parent did: "you'd be hard pressed to find a system more effective at destroying our world"

Fair enough. Still, I would disagree. Communism was tried and failed, its environmental effects (while bad) were therefore limited. Capitalism has endured great challenges for much longer, and despite increasing discontent with the system in many areas of the world, doesn’t appear likely to go anywhere. If that’s the case, the prodigious output of environmental harm capitalism generates won’t go anywhere either. Green energy and green technology won’t stop all instances of microplastics polluting our rivers or junk toys collecting in landfills.
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