"The problem isn't that we have billionaires but that the system doesn't make more millionaires and billionaires"
Discuss?
Do we need billionaires?
31–40 of 144 posts
Re: Do we need billionaires?
#32> risk-takers who are badly needed But at what point does marginal private incentive stop helping innovation and start damaging democracy? For sure risk-taking deserves reward but the size of the reward matters
But when they fail, they fail upwards. These risks are always on the backs of everyone else. For example, they take risks by using chemicals (that they know) can kill people, by the time people get cancer they are retired, there are no claw-backs. More recently you commit actual fraud, get convicted but then get a pardon and somehow end up with money again running the next "scam". These people never take real risks.…
100% see this times article about how musk only hit 19% of his targets on time:
https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2026/06/02/technology/el...
Re: Do we need billionaires?
#33Human being, with very few exceptions, is corrupted by power. And a billion dollars is immense amount power. You can make your opponent's life a living hell with a hundred thousand and buy or figure out a way to frame extortion material from almost any decision maker with a million. See how wars are being started tweeting from the toilet seat by a man who has never known anything but power to harm others. See the man…
> See how wars are being started tweeting from the toilet seat by a man who has never known anything but power to harm others. To be fair: it is not Trump only who is addicted to warfare. You have a whole industry that benefits from war and thus wants warfare. Trump is just, in addition to being corrupt, really really not that clever. And now he is old and has dementia - amazing how the USA can so easily become subve…
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Re: Do we need billionaires?
#34[dead]
Re: Do we need billionaires?
#35I heard a while back that the average person will see about a million of their currency over their lifetime. So we can take a million dollars to be about 1 lifetime's worth of money. Elon is currently sitting on 817,000 lifetimes worth of money. I feel like we could have like a >95% income tax when you are worth more than like $20 million and it wouldnt actually matter too much to the people who would cap it out? Of…
Power and influence.
Re: Do we need billionaires?
#36I don't necessarily intrinsically have a dislike against billionaires per se. However had, if you look at the USA, where basically billionaires are dictating policies (Elon mass-firing people at DOGE, showing a chainsaw and right-arm gesture antics) - this simply undermines and cripples democracy. This, in addition to it being unfair that they aren't really contributing their due share to society usually; and no, cre…
Billionaire's always influenced policy. Rockefeller, Carnegie, Ford and Morgan were much more powerful than Egon, Bezos or Gates.
In Ancient Greece you had a larger gap between rich and power. Landowners vs farmer. In the early 6th century BC, inequality was so extreme that poor farmers regularly sold themselves or their families into slavery just to pay off debts and survive.
If we only learned more about history we might be more thankful for where we really are.
Re: Do we need billionaires?
#37> Surely there has to be some number that pushes individual wealth from a net benefit for the country to a net detriment? Surely we are seeing lots of data and examples right now where we can start to come up with that line as a society? Surely it’s very reasonable that we might want to develop policy to make it hard for an individual to end up with more than, say, ten billion dollars1. That doesn’t seem very controversial to me.
This seems very controversial to me. Why does increasing wealth eventually cause negative outcomes? What do you mean by “make it hard”?
This article skips over justifying its argument. I don’t think, for example, that someone should have come along to Warren Buffett in the late 80s and said: “Your company is too successful, you can’t be the full owner of it anymore”
Individual, founder-led companies are a good thing, especially if the companies are very successful. You’re more likely to force these companies into being led by investors and private equity if you don’t let the founders lead them.
Re: Do we need billionaires?
#38It seems to me that even here on HN, way too many people think in the binary "rich-poor" schemes.
Ironically, what produces billionaires quite reliably, is precisely the growing global middle class, which is now estimated to number around four billion. If 4 billion people can spend, say, 200 USD a month on various non-necessities, much of that enormous stream of cash will naturally flow to some big corporations producing universally demanded services and will make their main shareholders billionaires.
If Africa ever gets to the living standards of Asia, expect even more billionaires. Etc.
Re: Do we need billionaires?
#39It's very unlikely any mainstream political class is going to take serious action anywhere to forbid them, but a few take action to limit them. Too few I think. The (mis-attributed to Lenin and Stalin) quote "The capitalists will sell us the rope with which we will hang them." is quite big in this. A little humility and a lot more tax-paying could save the trillionaire classes from the tumbrils but they lack the emot…
Many people would've seen the tweet: "Ok how about this: No more billionaires. None. After you reach $999 million, every red cent goes to schools and health care. You get a trophy that says, “I won capitalism” and we name a dog park after you." If there isn't the political will to ramp up taxes on extreme wealth, I'd be interested to know how much effort there is in pitching legacy projects (more exciting than dog pa…
I know you meant it as a joke, but a regional mayor of Bucharest, Romania is currently pushing to have a Trump park.
Re: Do we need billionaires?
#40I heard a while back that the average person will see about a million of their currency over their lifetime. So we can take a million dollars to be about 1 lifetime's worth of money. Elon is currently sitting on 817,000 lifetimes worth of money. I feel like we could have like a >95% income tax when you are worth more than like $20 million and it wouldnt actually matter too much to the people who would cap it out? Of…
To me it all comes down to time. If you have money to cover your needs, you functionally have control over your time. And your time is more or less the closest analogue to your actual life.
The tragedy of course is that the vast majority of people have no real control over their time, and the free time they do have is aggressively fought over by media corporations and advertisers convincing them they need to work more to buy more.