Limitarianism: The Case Against Extreme Wealth • Hacker News Board

Re: Limitarianism: The Case Against Extreme Wealth

#251

Post by ch4s3 » Fri, Feb 02, 2024, 10:39 PM UTC

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?

But why? If someone is creating millions of dollars worth of goods or services what moral justification is there for it to be confiscated, particularly at your arbitrary level?

Re: Limitarianism: The Case Against Extreme Wealth

#252

Post by ch4s3 » Fri, Feb 02, 2024, 10:41 PM UTC

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.

Why is a nation-state any less farcical to you than private land ownership? Its even more abstract and far removed from material reality.

Re: Limitarianism: The Case Against Extreme Wealth

#253

Post by devbent » Fri, Feb 02, 2024, 10:42 PM UTC

kuratkull wrote: post #83

alkonaut wrote: post #57

Earlier quoted context omitted.

As I understand it, very few entrepreneurs ever said “this is interesting but if I can’t be a billionaire what’s the point?”. Which are the examples driven by extreme wealth (note: not just regular 1%er wealth and not people who became extremely wealthy - I mean people who expressed that the reason they created something was because they knew it would make them extremely top-0.01% wealthy)?

People start out to create something awesome. People continue when they have the motivation. When you hard cap them in any measurable way, they stop.

> When you hard cap them in any measurable way, they stop.

No they don't.

Satya has a much lower cap earning money at Microsoft then Bill or Balmer did.

Does that make him a worse CEO? Does it mean he is less dedicated?

Very few people who are competitive are competitive because of money.

They want to be known as the best, have the most power, the most influence, run the largest company, their name the most number of history books.

Money is a rough proxy for power, but, to give an example, pharmaceutical companies have an outsized influence in American politics versus how much their CEOs are worth.

Heck for the vast majority of companies their leadership has 0% chance of becoming billionaires. Most industries are too low margin. That doesn't mean the leaders of those companies still don't want to win in their chosen market.

Re: Limitarianism: The Case Against Extreme Wealth

#254

Post by WalterBright » Fri, Feb 02, 2024, 10:43 PM UTC

poncho_romero wrote: post #240

WalterBright wrote: post #212

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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. Gree…

> Communism was tried and failed, its environmental effects (while bad) were therefore limited

I recall reading after the USSR collapsed that Poland was the most polluted country in the world. All due to the rush to industrialize and to heck with the environment.

Chernobyl is another case about communism giving short shrift to environmental considerations.

Re: Limitarianism: The Case Against Extreme Wealth

#255

Post by WalterBright » Fri, Feb 02, 2024, 10:43 PM UTC

pdonis wrote: post #244

WalterBright wrote: post #200

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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?

Because they don't realize it's a zero sum game until they're already playing it, and then their exit options are limited.

People quit Amazon all the time. Nobody is chained to their desk.

Zero-sum games are called "theft", "fraud" and/or "wealth redistribution" schemes.

Re: Limitarianism: The Case Against Extreme Wealth

#256

Post by rockemsockem » Fri, Feb 02, 2024, 10:44 PM UTC

PaulDavisThe1st wrote: post #248

rockemsockem wrote: post #221

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Why would it be better to have fewer entities allocating large chunks of capital?

Who said anything about fewer?

I was taking this last comment

> perhaps not beneficial overall to even have extremely rich individuals at all

To mean there would be fewer. I suppose it depends on where the "extremely rich" line is drawn, but I feel like you must be extremely rich to start a project that normally only a government could start.

Re: Limitarianism: The Case Against Extreme Wealth

#257

Post by JackFr » Fri, Feb 02, 2024, 10:44 PM UTC

NegativeK wrote: post #128

sackfield wrote: post #46

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Whenever people talk about how much wealth is comfortable (or ethical) to have, its usually just a notch above their own (well within their social class status). To be fair I don't know your wealth at all but its just an observation I've had from talking with others about this. The end result of this would be to make these people some of the wealthiest in the country by dragging the wealth curve to just above their l…

> its usually just a notch above their own (well within their social class status). I'm a tech worker in the public sector. To be blunt: tax me more, please.

Ok, big talker, step up:

Gifts to the United States

U.S. Department of the Treasury

Reporting and Analysis Branch 2

P.O. Box 1328

Parkersburg, WV 26106-1328

Re: Limitarianism: The Case Against Extreme Wealth

#258

Post by yoyohello13 » Fri, Feb 02, 2024, 10:45 PM UTC

WalterBright wrote: post #239

guhidalg wrote: post #204

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 WW…

Oh good! We should all aspire to have our work conditions resemble WWII B-17 crews.

Re: Limitarianism: The Case Against Extreme Wealth

#259

Post by littlestymaar » Fri, Feb 02, 2024, 10:45 PM UTC

lostlogin wrote: post #51

eej71 wrote: post #36

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think you'd have to be very clear about how this is different than the previous attempts at such "rationally planned democratic societies".

The ‘central planning committee’ and ‘the 5 year plan’ certainly have some baggage attached.

Yup. Years of propaganda convinced most people that these are exclusive features of Communist dictatorship, when they actually existed in post war capitalist societies as well.

Fun historical fact: the father of the European Union, Jean Monnet, was the head of the “central planning committee” in France in 1950 (and he really wasn't a commie).

Re: Limitarianism: The Case Against Extreme Wealth

#260

Post by PaulDavisThe1st » Fri, Feb 02, 2024, 10:45 PM UTC

satellite2 wrote: post #228

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.

The issue here is the genericity if money. I think hardly anyone would argue that he shouldn't make decisions for Amazon. He is probably the best individual for this. The issue is that controlling Amazon also comes with the possibility of getting out of it and somehow be allowed to control vast amount of resources completely independent of it and possibly built decades or even centuries before Amazon even existed.

One of Bezos' best attributes was (is? no idea) knowing that he was not the best individual to make most of the decisions for Amazon. He had strong ideas about how to hire people, how to create "meta-strategies" and then let the people who he believed actually knew stuff make the choices. So actually, even within Amazon, he almost certainly was not the best person to make almost any of the decisions the company faced.

You final sentence is precisely on point, IMO.