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Limitarianism: The Case Against Extreme Wealth

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Re: Limitarianism: The Case Against Extreme Wealth

#281

Post by WalterBright »

yoyohello13 wrote: post #258
WalterBright wrote: post #239

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

I figgered someone would fixate on that. Well done!

Re: Limitarianism: The Case Against Extreme Wealth

#282

Post by gmac »

crotchfire wrote: post #268

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…

Yes, I think you could make the case that entities of any sort — corporations or individuals alike — should be allowed to exceed the threshold only if they’re under some kind of democratic control. And obviously that’s not a get-out that individuals can use.

Re: Limitarianism: The Case Against Extreme Wealth

#283

Post by germandiago »

newzisforsukas wrote: post #136
boppo1 wrote: post #35

How about we just don’t empower a central planning body to make monetary decisions that devalue wages & salaries while inflating asset prices? QE & LIRP have literally been “rich get richer, poor get poorer: the policy”. People educated enough in finance to follow the effect tend to be in the asset-holding camp so there is less complaint. I’m not advocating high rates as good for the poor; I’m championing shaping the…

[flagged]

Well, depends on who you ask... there are well-structured ways of thinking on intervention or non-intervention on both sides.

Re: Limitarianism: The Case Against Extreme Wealth

#284

Post by crotchfire »

gmac wrote: post #282
crotchfire wrote: post #268

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…

Yes, I think you could make the case that entities of any sort — corporations or individuals alike — should be allowed to exceed the threshold only if they’re under some kind of democratic control. And obviously that’s not a get-out that individuals can use.

The Commanding Heights, eh?

I think this has been tried already, unfortunately.

Re: Limitarianism: The Case Against Extreme Wealth

#285

Post by rufus_foreman »

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

How would hoarding of gold, in and of itself, be bad? Say someone goes out and works and makes money, and they take the money and buy gold coins and keep them in a safe, or fill up a swimming pool so they can dive into their hoard of gold like Scrooge McDuck. They are contributing to society, and to the extent they hoard gold, asking nothing back for what they have contributed.

It's like what Charlie Munger did. Made a massive fortune, spent his whole life doing it, had an amount of money that he could have used for extravagant spending, could have bought whole islands in Hawaii, could have bought politicians. But he didn't. He earned the money, earned dividends on the money, piled up all the money in a hoard. Then he died.

Re: Limitarianism: The Case Against Extreme Wealth

#286

Post by guhidalg »

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…

Just read the story https://www.forbes.com/sites/katherinehamilton/2023/05/24/de...

I'd rather live in a world where Amazon employees have time to pee on the job and Jeff Bezos has $10M less. Iterate until Jeff Bezos only makes ~10^2 what the median Amazon employee makes instead of ~10^6.

Re: Limitarianism: The Case Against Extreme Wealth

#287

Post by rockemsockem »

PaulDavisThe1st wrote: post #273
rockemsockem wrote: post #262

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

"it doesn't always make the best decisions" isn't the standard here. No human organization always makes the best decision. The question is: how best to make decisions about resource allocation? Do we favor this being the domain of (primarily) already rich and powerful people? Can we even imagine an alternative?

I agree that no human organization will always make the best decisions. That's why I'm advocating for a larger number of human organizations making decisions independently (as much as is possible in the world today). I was also being somewhat soft in my language, so let me amend it to, sometimes the government makes bad choices and fails to invest in crucial areas.

Are you advocating for more organizations created as cooperatives and the like? I think that would be great too. However a lot of ambitious projects like curing diseases, inventing new materials, building spacecraft, and more require a lot of money.

It's much easier to start on these things if you can skip fundraising from thousands of individuals.

Re: Limitarianism: The Case Against Extreme Wealth

#288

Post by germandiago »

hackererror404 wrote: post #52
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…

Some things cost way more than 10 or 15 million in terms of investment. Why shouldn't a billionaire be capable of starting a genetics lab to fund cancer research and pay for it in cash, if they are so inclined? Also almost all of super wealthy people's "wealth" is tied up in assets that are funding entire economies. This money is creating jobs, allowing for affordable loans, the money is working for many other people…

That is exactly what I thought also.

Re: Limitarianism: The Case Against Extreme Wealth

#289

Post by rajup »

devbent wrote: post #237
missedthecue wrote: post #165

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Come on. You make it sound as if Amazon started a campaign to directly shut these in-person businesses down. The reality however is more mundane and exactly what parent comment mentioned: people voted with their feet and dollars, the in-person businesses that did shut down could not adapt and we are all the better for it.

Re: Limitarianism: The Case Against Extreme Wealth

#290

Post by shkkmo »

naasking wrote: post #261
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 goo…

You're aware that all publicly traded companies are run by a democratic system where the voters are shareholders?

The only change here is who limiting who allowed to own shares to people work are directly involved.

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