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Limitarianism: The Case Against Extreme Wealth

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Re: Limitarianism: The Case Against Extreme Wealth

#261

Post by naasking »

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 argued we should combine this with a move towards a worker owned economy

While I'm sympathetic to this ideal, I don't think it works. All you'd do is add all the inefficiencies of politics into business-level decision making. Democratic processes should be reserved for governing shared resources, like water and air, where independent decision making has pathologies, and independent hierarchical systems are good for optimizing efficiency and value for all other goods and services. We just have to ensure there's competition and fairness for good outcomes.

Re: Limitarianism: The Case Against Extreme Wealth

#262

Post by rockemsockem »

DrNosferatu wrote: post #220
rockemsockem wrote: post #206

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Much better to have a large number of wealthy actors deciding how to allocate capital than just one (the government). Certainly we can do with higher taxes for the ultra wealthy though. It's hard to imagine what one can do with 100 billion dollars that you can't do with 10 billion.....

But the government is (in principle) elected democratically.

That doesn't mean it always makes the best decisions. It seems valuable to have those who are so inclined with enough resources to try things that the government can't or won't try. We've gotten so many good things through this process. I'm not saying the government shouldn't do stuff, it very much should.

Re: Limitarianism: The Case Against Extreme Wealth

#263

Post by askafriend »

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.

Nobody is stopping you from contributing more. In fact, contributions to charity are tax exempt.

But if you want to contribute more to the government directly, others here have pointed you to some good resources.

Re: Limitarianism: The Case Against Extreme Wealth

#264

Post by PaulDavisThe1st »

tomoyoirl wrote: post #145
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 (by some metric) than an arbitrary political process A key advantage of leaving it to the rich is that when rich people fail, they tend to end up losing their wealth and power, hurting mostly themselves — while even a political process that isn’t being corrupted or gamed by someone powerful is badly incentivized t…

(I see you edited your post to add the last line).

Elon is not "ruining his own money". He gained control over large quantities of economic and financial resources, and because of the way our society works, he gets to "ruin" those resources by choosing to direct them to the purchase of an asset followed by its degradation.

But there's an opportunity cost to all that: what might have happened in Elon was not in a position to command the utilization of the wealth that purchased Twitter? What else might that wealth have been used for? What might it have been accomplished?

Re: Limitarianism: The Case Against Extreme Wealth

#265

Post by rockemsockem »

devbent wrote: post #210
rockemsockem wrote: post #206

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Much better to have a large number of wealthy actors deciding how to allocate capital than just one (the government). Certainly we can do with higher taxes for the ultra wealthy though. It's hard to imagine what one can do with 100 billion dollars that you can't do with 10 billion.....

Let's just have a really large number of reasonably well to do actors deciding how to allocate capital. After all, wisdom of the crowds and all that!

I honestly can't tell if you're being sarcastic or not.

It seems impossible to perfectly allocate capital, of course there will be stupid and actively harmful allocations. But the government does both of those things too.

So yes it is legitimately good to have a really large number of actors allocating capital, to in ADDITION to the government.

Re: Limitarianism: The Case Against Extreme Wealth

#266

Post by Draiken »

tomoyoirl wrote: post #145
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 (by some metric) than an arbitrary political process A key advantage of leaving it to the rich is that when rich people fail, they tend to end up losing their wealth and power, hurting mostly themselves — while even a political process that isn’t being corrupted or gamed by someone powerful is badly incentivized t…

What? You're ignoring all the lives he ruined to play with that company. Sure, he lost money, but he has plenty to lose.

He wrecked a company and thousands of lives. They pay the price, not him.

It's always the workers that pay the price.

Re: Limitarianism: The Case Against Extreme Wealth

#267

Post by educaysean »

yulker wrote: post #235
jimbokun wrote: post #208

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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?

That's true. Although when embarking on a brand new frontier without any empirical evidence available, one would assume there's ample theoretical evidence to make up for it. In this case both appear to be lacking.

Re: Limitarianism: The Case Against Extreme Wealth

#268

Post by crotchfire »

Will you cap the wealth of corporations too?

Because if not, people with insatiable appetites will simply seek control of those corporations rather than direct control of piles of money.

Personally I'm an advocate of the exact opposite of what seems to be proposed here: controls on corporate size rather than individual wealth. Living cells don't grow without bounds; at a certain point they get too big and are forced to divide. Simply imposing a tax on corporate size (not a limit) would accomplish this.

Industries where massive size is simply unavoidable (e.g. passenger airplane manufacturing) would simply pay the tax; any economic distortions can be nulled out by reducing the industry's VAT rate in proportion to average size-tax paid by that industry. In all other industries smaller competitors would have the persistent advantage of lower tax costs, allowing them to eventually undermine the bloated colossuses.

Re: Limitarianism: The Case Against Extreme Wealth

#269

Post by jimbokun »

PaulDavisThe1st wrote: post #246
jimbokun wrote: post #217

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> This presupposes there is some way to know what human nature is. Empirical observation. Look what happened in all the 20th century communist countries.

Empirical observation is only a way to determine what is, and not what could be. Since we know that human behavior ("nature") is substantively malleable, we need to know what could be, not merely what is.

That's the problem.

It's not ethical to perform experiments on human subjects without their explicit consent.

That's why the Institutional Review Board was created:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Institutional_review_board

You can't just perform experiments on large groups of people to see what will happen.

Re: Limitarianism: The Case Against Extreme Wealth

#270

Post by PaulDavisThe1st »

WalterBright wrote: post #243
devbent wrote: post #222

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I have faith that an Olympic athlete is a lot better about making diet and exercise decisions than I am. Smart athletes let technocrats (e.g. scientists and doctors) make those decisions for them! In the case or billionaires, we know Zuckerberg is really good at making social media apps. That doesn't mean he's good at anything else! Plenty of talented rich people have demonstrated that given the chance they'll lose…

I bet you'll find their track record is a lot better than that of non-wealthy people. Most non-wealthy people I know do a lousy job of managing their finances. Frontline ran an episode a few years ago about 401k plans. They found that the wealthier the employee was, the better returns they had on the company 401k plan, despite the fact that the plan was identical for all the employees.

OK, so people who are good at managing their money are ... drum roll, please ... better at managing their money.

This is a tautology.

The question is not whether rich people are better at running their own finances, it is whether they are the best people to be making resource allocation decisions.

In US capitalism, the argument for coupling the two normally consists of "well, they want to make money, so they will do what people want, and so we get what we want and they get rich and that's good".

This is just so absurd that it's really not worth deconstructing.

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