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

321–330 of 660 posts

Re: Limitarianism: The Case Against Extreme Wealth

#321

Post by scythe »

MR4D wrote: post #117
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…

> How about we just don’t empower a central planning body to make monetary decisions… For people that might argue with this statement, I’d highly suggest reading the book The Panic of 1907 . And if you’re wondering I’m bringing up a book about 1907 instead of 1929, then that should lead you to go read the book.

Monetary policy could probably be implemented through some other means than real estate, which is what I interpreted the suggestion to mean. QE as it has existed was a real example of Friedman's "nothing so permanent as a temporary government program": a reaction to the housing bubble becoming a default tool of monetary policy.

Re: Limitarianism: The Case Against Extreme Wealth

#322

Post by TheOtherHobbes »

jimbokun wrote: post #184
Voultapher wrote: post #110

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Wealth, at least the way we measure it, is inextricably tied to modernity. The system you say is a "good thing" is literally speedrunning the destruction of our biosphere. I think you'd be hard pressed to find a system more effective at destroying our world. What many see as prosperity, is irreconcilable with sustainability. I find that's an uncomfortable thought.

It's not a difficult problem to reconcile capitalism and sustainability from a technical perspective. Just a question of political will. Carbon taxes. Water prices reflecting scarcity. Compensating people living in rain forests to not cut down their trees. Capitalism is still the best tool we have for setting prices and incentivizing efficiency. Just needs to be guided to place appropriate prices on externalities.

Water prices reflecting scarcity are not a solution for water scarcity.

The problem is not enough water. You can't make water by taxing it.

All you're doing is making it less accessible for people lower down the hierarchy - which makes it even scarcer, because people at the top of the hierarchy end up hoarding it and/or profiteering.

Which is why price signals are one of the dumbest of all possible ways of managing resources. They're a political non-solution to a physical problem.

You may try to argue that "incentizing efficiency" means more water is produced. But that is empirically false.

The only real competition is capitalism is for shareholder cash. Customers are thrown overboard if their interests conflict with that goal.

None of this solves the physical, tangible problem of providing a stable water supply.

If you're having trouble understanding this, ask the people in Flint MI how making imaginary money game tokens more important than providing a usable utility has worked out for them.

You might also want to look into why the UK's water companies are currently dumping raw sewage into rivers. Hint: because they can, and because it's more profitable than filtering it first.

Re: Limitarianism: The Case Against Extreme Wealth

#323

Post by ebb_earl_co »

JackFr wrote: post #230
dools wrote: post #123

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The best interest rate policy is zero, which is the natural rate of interested in a floating exchange rate economy. Fiscal policy is the only tool through which equity can be managed. Monetary policy is pointless.

Zero is the natural interest rate? That’s ludicrous. A dollar today is always going to be worth more than a dollar tomorrow.

Why is this the case about the worth of a dollar?

Re: Limitarianism: The Case Against Extreme Wealth

#324

Post by Draiken »

MacsHeadroom wrote: post #211
yellowapple wrote: post #199

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Unemployment has never been lower, with jobs growing every month of the past year. January 2024 saw the most growth followed closely by December 2023. https://www.axios.com/2024/02/02/us-jobs-report-january-2024

Unfortunately unemployment numbers don't mean shit if you still can't even pay your rent with your salary.

This focus on unemployment is absurd. It has nothing to do with the wealth gap.

More people working, but always with less wealth, while companies keep getting richer.

We could as a society literally end unemployment at any time by redistributing some of the wealth. We don't because it's more profitable to have people worrying if they will be able to eat every month.

Re: Limitarianism: The Case Against Extreme Wealth

#325

Post by yellowapple »

germandiago wrote: post #301
yellowapple wrote: post #188

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Is watching those around you starve/freeze to death due to having $0 (or less!) not a reason to care about whether some people make more than $15M? How many people could that hoarded wealth have housed and clothed and fed?

I think that is a wrong perspective. Of course many people care about that. The problem is that by looting rich people you will not end up with the problem. In fact, you can make the problem much bigger mid-term by killing incentives and making people into poverty... Cuba or Venezuela were richer than Spain in the 50s just to give you a couple of examples. And Venezuela has natural resources. What happened? Well, yes…

> I think that is a wrong perspective.

It's the only perspective that matters.

> In fact, you can make the problem mich bigger mid-term by killing incentives and making people into poverty...

Being limited to $15 million is a far cry from "killing incentives and making people into poverty".

Re: Limitarianism: The Case Against Extreme Wealth

#326

Post by kagakuninja »

rockemsockem wrote: post #219
CorrectHorseBat wrote: post #154

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>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? Starting land to fund cancer research is fine, but I don't see why we need billionairs for that? Multiple people can fund it. They are going to work alone in that lab either. >It's not as if the money wealthy people have is just in physical gold coins in their swimming pools. And…

Needing more people for funding just adds friction to an already hard problem and will reduce the number of such things that get started. I fundamentally agree with your arguments, but not your conclusion. IMO we need a greater number of rich folks and fewer ultra rich ones. Those with over 100 billion dollars simply cannot spend it, which means capital is not being allocated at all! Bill Gates has so many employees…

>Needing more people for funding just adds friction to an already hard problem and will reduce the number of such things that get started.

Because governments can't fund projects?

Not sure what you are arguing for, but IMO there is this idea of the "great men" who build cool things like Space-X. So we should let the wealthy keep their great wealth so that we get more companies like Space-X.

Except what we really get is more corporate looting, oppression and monopoly, plus the hyper-wealthy having excessive influence over government.

If the wealth is spread around, and we no longer have to be wage slaves our whole lives, then collectives of like-minded people could band together and build cool things. We do see that in the open-source world, but most contributors are not earning money they need to pay bills.

Re: Limitarianism: The Case Against Extreme Wealth

#327

Post by PaulDavisThe1st »

rockemsockem wrote: post #287
PaulDavisThe1st wrote: post #273

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"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…

It's not just government that fails and makes bad choices. So I'm not interested in questions that frame the distinction as being between private decision making and public decision making. We have agree that no human organization will always make the best decisions, so the question is how do we try to improve the chances?

There was a lot of interest in this in the 1960s, but it fell away as neoliberalism triumphed, and with it the idea that some sort of multiplicity of private actors will always make the best possible choice that we could. I don't believe this, especially since "multiplicity" has frequently come down "a few, maybe 2 or 3".

Yes, I love cooperatives, though they are hard to make sustainable and successful. Big projects requiring lots of resources should be hard to start, and should start only when we agree that devoting lots of resources to the problem is the right thing to do, via a democratic process. Problems that require very few resources do not need to meet such standards, and efforts to solve them can come and go as people feel like doing.

Re: Limitarianism: The Case Against Extreme Wealth

#328

Post by yellowapple »

germandiago wrote: post #296
yellowapple wrote: post #182

Earlier quoted context omitted.

By what authority are those assets "yours" in the first place? Whence did those assets originate?

I suspect it is not someone that came and gave it for free. So I would say they should belong to the keeper right now. And if it was a gift, it would still be a property transfer. So still his.

> I suspect it is not someone that came and gave it for free.

I suspect that whatever price was charged was a bargain compared to what it's actually worth - and thus the transfer was at the expense of the rest of society.

> And if it was a gift, it would still be a property transfer. So still his.

And if that "gift" was stolen from someone else beforehand?

Re: Limitarianism: The Case Against Extreme Wealth

#329

Post by satellite2 »

ebb_earl_co wrote: post #323
JackFr wrote: post #230

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Zero is the natural interest rate? That’s ludicrous. A dollar today is always going to be worth more than a dollar tomorrow.

Why is this the case about the worth of a dollar?

Because you can invest it in the riskless asset and have a dollar and some interest tomorrow.

Re: Limitarianism: The Case Against Extreme Wealth

#330

Post by ksplicer »

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…

> All you'd do is add all the inefficiencies of politics into business-level decision making.

While I'm sympathetic to that line of thought, I feel like it ignores the reality that most business-level decision making is already inefficient and political. Where is the competition and fairness when a sustainable business is bought out, prices increased and development halted to wring out every bit of value, and then sold off for parts to competitors when no profit is left? There are so many common business practices that are actively hollowing out the free market.

Post reply on HN