391–400 of 660 posts
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Is that still true? I’m probably in a software bubble, but like: none of FAANG have any real land holdings, for instance?
I think it’s not a coincidence that land value tax is popular on Hacker News. Replacing all the taxes that tech companies currently pay with a land value tax that hardly affects them would be an incredible boon.
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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.
Are you alluding to real estate taxes, or something else? I know that you have to pay property tax to keep your land, but you have to pay property tax to keep your car, and I don't see how that means that the state owns your car. I think the current system, and specifically the Supreme Court under Roberts has done an excellent job protecting individual property rights from the state. The Roberts court gets criticized…
You can still drive that car on racetracks and other such places.
The car/house comparison doesn’t make any sense here.
You don’t own the land and never will. You just lease it from the government and we all get that.
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> 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.
Ah yes, 1907 a time of great monetary equity
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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…
There are only two measures of money: No money and not enough money. (Steinbeck)
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…
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.
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But even in your family hypothetical, the overall inequality is still much less than between billionaires and the middle-class (nothing said of the truly destitute). > Or worse still, the super-rich will realise that they can spend many times the wealth cap per year consumable/disposable items (so long as they stay under the cap, or get back there by year-end), and become more wasteful. "Might as well spend a few mil…
Ah yes, here come the arguments for "monitoring". Next come regulations about having to "cooperate". Then the question will be raised as to what happens to those rich people who don't cooperate, or middle class / poor people who, god forbid, don't agree with this plan for society. Pretty soon, you've got your jackboots and your re-education camps.
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…
A few notes... another way to make the economy more worker owned is to have a a portion of the shares of companies held by public entities, which then use dividends for a basic income. Public investment in companies like this could also be a way of incubating industries.
Another note: the biggest problem with businesses being democratic institutions is the pace at which decisions can be collectively made. This is an information systems problem that can be solved by software. Instead of voting for representatives who make decisions, we need an institutional programming language, and people can vote directly on implementations of modifications to this institutional code that defines every institution. Votes are essentially approvals to a PR. No need for intermediaries to misinterpret voters' intentions.
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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.
Why do only the resource allocations of rich people count as the decisions about resource allocation? What about the decisions made by non-rich people? As the bumper sticker says, it seems easier for most people today to imagine the end of the world than to imagine an alternative to corporate capitalism.
We do have Kickstarter, Go Fund Me, etc, but I don't think those have turned out to be great tools for raising a very large amount of money. And I am referring to large capital allocations towards a goal. I wish there was a better version of Kickstarter, but VCs seem like a better tool.
I'm just talking about capitalism and what ideal wealth distributions look like under a fundamentally capitalist system. I think America's system has lots of points for improvement, particularly on the side of worker protection from exploitation, wealth distribution, and campaign finance. But, I still think that we should have individuals wealthy enough to fund weird projects just because they want to. And in fact we should have more than we have today just with less extreme wealth.
What is it exactly that you are saying we should change? Everything? Please be specific.
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Please read the comment again; you have not understood it. No cap is proposed.
No but you have to pick where and how quickly to ramp the tax schedule which will eventually lead to you having to make some “assumptions” about what size (range) is “too big”
Everywhere.
and how quickly to ramp
Yes, that is the one and only tuneable variable. It's a single, obvious scalar, like the interest rate set by a central bank. There's no room for favoritism or shenanighans. Of course, like central bank interest rates, it will be an object of impassioned political debate. That's expected.
which will eventually lead to you having to make some “assumptions” about what size (range) is “too big”
Absolutely false. You're confusing a value with its rate of change. The speed limit on the highway doesn't constrain the length of the road.