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Challenging the myth that the rich are specially-talented wealth creators

blogs.lse.ac.uk

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Re: Challenging the myth that the rich are specially-talented wealth creators

#131

Post by 5350-uiop-1130 »

adwhit wrote: post #35

HN tends to be extremely reactionary to posts like this. Perhaps because the tech/startup scene is all about getting rich quick, or perhaps because HN has come to partially reflect the personal views of PG. There will be a reckoning. The world is 'unsustainably unequal' at the moment. There are huge problems on the horizon - superbugs, climate change, resource depletion, environmental degradation, overpopulation. The…

The problem is one of gross, immoral and unjustifiable inequality.

Everything else is just semantics, conjecture and informed or misinformed opinion.

I hope I live to see the day when the parasites of society meet their reckoning as I believe the idea of a more equal society coming about by reason as totally naive and foolhardy.

Re: Challenging the myth that the rich are specially-talented wealth creators

#132

Post by jonknee »

nxzero wrote: post #29

Very rich are just average people; meaning there's a mix of types of people that are very rich; aka billion or more. Feel like most people have never known anyone super rich or for that matter, very poor. Lastly, while it's true that there are more super wealth individuals than likely any point in history currently - the quality of life is also better on average too.

> Very rich are just average people; meaning there's a mix of types of people that are very rich; aka billion or more.

Being very rich is by definition not being average. There are ~1,800 billionaires in the world and none are average.

Re: Challenging the myth that the rich are specially-talented wealth creators

#133

Post by ommunist »

jsprogrammer wrote: post #120
onetimeusename wrote: post #110

There are a few things I disagree with. 1) Income from rent is not unearned. The reason it is called unearned is because nothing new was created. However, many services are this way. For example, fees paid to lawyers, or insurance fees and so on. Income earned from rent is income that comes from providing a service which is shelter or land for other uses. 2) Investment income is not parasitic. A share is a portion of…

Shelter and land are not a service but a physical resource.

Your ATF in your muscle cells is not a service but physical resource. But what if its release molecular mechanics will be patented? Shall you pay for your every muscular contraction to a patent holder?

I do not stop to fascinate about the very concept of owning the land. How can you own something that preexisted the monkey your ancestors originated from? The answer to this question is the key to understand what are the super rich and why you are living in the city.

Re: Challenging the myth that the rich are specially-talented wealth creators

#134

Post by aoeusnth1 »

sbuttgereit wrote: post #95
ommunist wrote: post #33

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Hardly thousands. 240 000 people die every year in car accidents and no one prohibits cars. Millions died in WW2, but it is not the USSR to blame for it. How many Indians were killed for the US to prosper? We are speaking about fhe better system you never tried. No rich, no poor, everyone has a job.

Hardly thousands That is a barefaced lie. Forgetting the rest of the evil attributable to Communist ideology, the Ukrainian Genocide alone is evidence that it was many more than "hardly thousands": http://www.ncas.rutgers.edu/center-study-genocide-conflict-r... Indeed, one need only consider the ease of which one could immigrate out of USSR, or other Communist states for that matter, to know something was seriously f…

In reply to ommonuist's claim that there is "no such thing as the Ukrainian genocide", see https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Holodomor. There's clearly some doublethink going on trying to justify the mass murder of the system he wants to impose on the West.

Re: Challenging the myth that the rich are specially-talented wealth creators

#135

Post by nickpsecurity »

nathan_f77 wrote: post #6

What's the solution? I hear rants all the time, but no-one ever offers any concrete steps, or suggestions for new laws.

People always do. You can cap what they make at the executive level. The tax system, especially inheritance taxes, can be cleaned up to stop generational pileups of cash. Most importantly, laws should be passed to only allow individual voters to contribute to politicians' campaigns with a cap that prevents the rich from outspending the poor. Tax dollars can provide the rest to candidates that make it past a certain amount of local voting. Strategy, not dollars, will win those elections.

Those would've achieved a lot. There's other ideas like preventing overlapping boards of directors where competitors are in cooperative positions. One can highly tax investments like high-frequency trading that are parasitic on the economy while low taxes on anything highly likely to benefit it. No or few special laws for big companies or the rich. Better balance of budget between social concerns and war department with more focus on education and infrastructure. Subsidizes from taxpayers requiring good terms in company's charter for employees, I.P. licensing, whatever. Many things we can do.

Re: Challenging the myth that the rich are specially-talented wealth creators

#136

Post by jonknee »

nickpsecurity wrote: post #122
Joeri wrote: post #112

Earlier quoted context omitted.

100.000 british men simply cannot control 350 million Indians, if those Indians refuse to cooperate. Throughout history it has been the case that sustained perceived inequality inevitably leads to revolution. We're nowhere near that point, but if trend lines continue and the middle class gets wiped out, it will happen. Democracy is supposed to prevent things from getting that bad, but we have seen that free elections…

Sure they can. Their weapon is the media instead of bullets. They just have to convince at least half of them the British policies benefit them. Plus provide them with guns. They'll shoot the other half for the British. Just like Democrat vs Republican politics and media in the U.S.. Nation can't win if it's divided and fighting each other over the actions of elites who they continue to fund and vote in. ;)

... And yet Gandhi was right. Those 100,000 British men failed and India is today the world's largest democracy.

Re: Challenging the myth that the rich are specially-talented wealth creators

#137

Post by y4mi »

narag wrote: post #117
adwhit wrote: post #35

HN tends to be extremely reactionary to posts like this. Perhaps because the tech/startup scene is all about getting rich quick, or perhaps because HN has come to partially reflect the personal views of PG. There will be a reckoning. The world is 'unsustainably unequal' at the moment. There are huge problems on the horizon - superbugs, climate change, resource depletion, environmental degradation, overpopulation. The…

I hope we can reign in the rentiering, tax-avoiding, propaganda-publishing rich and reclaim democracy before Something Bad happens. Frankly, I don't believe anything really bad happens to very rich people. A nice perk of becoming super-rich.

you must've missed your history lessons then.

the mobs always went for them first and killed their hole families. it hasn't happend in over 100 years though and its likely that it won't happen again, as the rich can buy automated defense systems nowadays that could slaughter any amount of revolutionaries that come knocking on their doors

Re: Challenging the myth that the rich are specially-talented wealth creators

#138

Post by jonknee »

EliRivers wrote: post #65
oconnor663 wrote: post #39

> If you buy some shares in M&S or BP on the stock market, the money you pay goes to the previous owner, not the company. You are what Keynes called a ‘functionless investor.’ When such so-called ‘investments’ pay off they extract wealth from the economy without creating anything in return. This doesn't seem very coherent. How could a company ever sell stock to raise capital, if the people who bought that stock didn'…

How could a company ever sell stock to raise capital, if the people who bought that stock didn't have a functioning market to resell it on? It could be a lifetime or time-limited right to a dividend, with voting rights attached. This would prioritise sustainable profit generation with a long-term view, and eliminate the current malaise of seeking short-term spikes in share price.

... And it would further concentrate global wealth into the hands of a few (after you're no longer getting the dividends where do you think they'll go?).

Re: Challenging the myth that the rich are specially-talented wealth creators

#139

Post by smt88 »

dnautics wrote: post #119
smt88 wrote: post #57

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If something has to be done on a large scale, government has to do it. Massive change has to be through a medium that is culpable and transparent. That is, in theory, a position only a government can or should hold. US government needs thorough reform, but the mechanism of change has to be a government in the end.

Since when are governments "culpable and transparent"?

They aren't completely, but they are more so than private institutions can (or should) be. What alternative is there?

Also, non-military portions of government in the US tend to be surprisingly transparent.

Re: Challenging the myth that the rich are specially-talented wealth creators

#140

Post by morgante »

zanny wrote: post #87
brador wrote: post #28

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Should extremely rich exist as a thing? What benefit does it bring humanity over the alternative?

This is the primary problem with the discourse. People can agree pretty universally a tyrant, dictator, or emperor is a bad thing. You do not want heredity to determine power, and you do not want one individual to have violent dominance over anyone else, because you will often be the "anyone else" if you are not the aggressor. But that is about the only difference between how the modern gears of power operate versus…

> Rather than just kill your brothers and claim the throne and execute the dissidents and having your firstborn son inherit the crown from you, your children inherit ludicrous wealth that translates into the same power to buy the violent arm of the state for your own ends.

Except inherited wealth is at all-time lows.

If you look at the richest people in the world today, the majority of them made their own way into those ranks. They didn't inherit it from anyone.

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