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Limitarianism: The Case Against Extreme Wealth

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Re: Limitarianism: The Case Against Extreme Wealth

#361

Post by MR4D »

username332211 wrote: post #318
MR4D wrote: post #117

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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.

Let's see.. "In 1907 there was a financial crisis. We learned our lessons and created an institution to prevent the next crisis. So, the next time things went south in finance, in 1929 there was no crisis. There was a catastrophe instead."

If I ever write a book, I’m going to ask you to write the intro!

Love it!

Re: Limitarianism: The Case Against Extreme Wealth

#362

Post by nox101 »

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…

The problem is some places are more desirable than others. Penthouses, even if they're not big, they are, for most people, more desirable than the bottom floor. They have a view. They're away from noise. They're often away from rats, roaches, ants which start at the bottom.

Similarly any place on the side of a hill, a cliff, a beach, ... You're unlikely to ban such places (all buildings 1 story?) Even if you managed that they're the house on the quiet street and the loud house next to the highway/trainline/airport

You could try to make such places merit based but that only turns into a different kind of bribe and cronyism. Money is at least, somewhat obtainable by anyone. Plenty of people were not rich and became rich, maybe by luck, but at least it's a higher rate of churn than central authority has ever been.

Re: Limitarianism: The Case Against Extreme Wealth

#363

Post by jacobn »

tsimionescu wrote: post #132
thinkski wrote: post #68

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Organized by an employer, capital, and management. The orchestration, decision making, done well, is the difference between a highly valuable well functioning company, and dysfunctional paralysis. There are now multiple examples in history (pre-1989 Poland, Soviet Union, DPRK, etc.) that show the communal ownership of industry by labor does not create a high standard of living, enabled by plentiful goods, services, a…

At what point was labor communally owning industry in the Soviet Union or DPRK? Did Stalin or Kim ever ask a laborer for their opinion on how a factory should be run? Or give them a penny of the work they were doing? The Soviet block and DPRK was exactly as close to socialism as it was to democracy: 100% in their propaganda, 0% in reality. Or would you say democracy doesn't work because the Democratic People's Republ…

The problem with collectivism is less with collectivism as platonic ideal (which has a lot of romantic appeal), and more with the inevitable concentration of power it requires and thereby enables.

The reason there has been no successful implementation of it is that the process of enacting it is inherently fragile. And some bastard is going to exploit that fragility.

Then you're screwed and we end up with the bountiful historical examples that people love to cite & then others refute as "that's not real xyz-ism".

You're absolutely correct that they're not "real" xyz-ism. And that should make you very worried about supporting something that has the same or similar end goals as those initiatives once had.

Re: Limitarianism: The Case Against Extreme Wealth

#364

Post by vacuity »

rufus_foreman wrote: post #275
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 Do you think your standard of living under such a system would be lower, the same, or higher than it is now? I think it would be much lower. I think most people will stop working when they stop getting paid. Some I guess would spend money as fast as they make it on experiences and services and other things that do…

Even if that's true, I think a lot of people have a long way to go before reaching $10 million in wealth, and there always would be, so it's not like there are just a few "chosen ones" who could do so much more if they were motivated to earn $1 billion, and society will suffer otherwise.

Re: Limitarianism: The Case Against Extreme Wealth

#365

Post by mynjin »

abdullahkhalids wrote: post #130
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 don't have a problem with someone being a billionaire per se. Assuming, of course, the wealth was earned without worker exploitation. However, I do take strong offense to politico-economic systems where the billionaire has more political power than a poor person. In the current system in almost every country, both individual super rich people and collectively the top 1-5% have enormously more political power than t…

It seems likely that the only way to become a billionaire is through worker exploitation, collusion, cheating the system through tax evation and asset laundering, etc.

I think politico-economic interference is the crux of the problem.

For example, someone with $10 million are trying to maintain their lifestyle, they want to know what stocks, bonds, and certificates, and real estate to invest in.

Someone with $100 million are trying to leverage through venture capital, joining corporate boards, owning platforms, etc.

Someone with $1+ billion will find that the most cost effective way to keep and gain wealth is buying lobbyists, campaign donations, starting and controlling some non-profits that have tax and spending incentives, getting favors by giving politician's kids high profile jobs, and any other innumberable political grift that maintain their wealth status and that only really work at that scale.

I wouldn't care if billionaires were just hoarding some money. But they are not, and all this while they pay bad wages and have even shoved off the cost of training for their jobs onto society and the labor force who have to speculate and pay for their own training.

Re: Limitarianism: The Case Against Extreme Wealth

#366

Post by roenxi »

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…

The most frustrating part of economic arguments, right there.

There is an official policy that prices will go up exponentially, controlled by a tiny committee who implements the policy by, effectively, money printing. The official justification is a just-so story with no compelling evidence that I've ever seen. We seem to have gotten there because politicians don't like sound management any more than anyone else and just borrow and spend until the money runs out. And the outcome is asset owners get an enormous leg up over everyone else and the biggest asset owners get privileged.

Given the level of this-sounds-crazy in the policy mix there should be much better justifications for all this policy than people accept. We should routinely be seeing actual studies by real economists justifying this madness. It looks like trash policy.

Re: Limitarianism: The Case Against Extreme Wealth

#367

Post by BobaFloutist »

yellowapple wrote: post #175
lostlogin wrote: post #20

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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. Wouldn’t a tax system that steeply ramps up, includes property and tends to it’s loopholes (family trusts, property etc) achieve most of this?

A land value tax alone would address the vast majority of this, considering that virtually all wealth derives from land access/ownership.

Almost anyone that's making substantial money off of land is already paying property tax on it, as well as any income tax that applies. Now, the income and the property taxes they're paying are in many cases woefully inadequate, but I'm pretty sure the solution to that is to improve the tax system and patch the loopholes, not to add a separate additional tax for everyone to keep track of.

Re: Limitarianism: The Case Against Extreme Wealth

#368

Post by yedava »

rockemsockem wrote: post #238
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 wea…

I'm not singling out any one company. Walmart did indeed pioneer labor exploitation. Amazon just made it more efficient. Facebook, Google got rich off surveilling users and eroding user privacy rights. Focusing on some specific companies serves to obfuscate the fact that this is an exploitative economy built up over decades with policies that weakened society at large. A relatively tiny section of society became powerful enough to rearrange society to their benefit.

Bring up the topic of central planning and you'll have everyone pointing out the folly of putting all the power in the hands of a few people. Our corporation ruled society is not that far off from a centrally planned dystopia. Instead of patting our backs comparing ourselves to the communist bloc, we need to focus on the technology we have today and what possibilities the technology could have opened up, and ask why the said possibilities haven't become a reality.

Re: Limitarianism: The Case Against Extreme Wealth

#369

Post by vacuity »

medo-bear wrote: post #64
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 agree with this except just to point out > Because that's the point at which you have enough wealth to live a comfortably middle class lifestyle for the rest of your life 15M is far from middle class by any measure. 15M affords you a big city place, a place for winter holidays, and a place for summer holidays. With still left to have spoiled little kids (and possibly spoiled grand children). Also, 15M is not static…

Yeah, my family lives very comfortably in the US, all things considered ("upper middle class"??), but still far from having $15 million in total wealth.

Re: Limitarianism: The Case Against Extreme Wealth

#370

Post by ebb_earl_co »

satellite2 wrote: post #329
ebb_earl_co wrote: post #323

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Forgive my naïveté, but if it’s riskless, how are you getting interest from investing in it?
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