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Limitarianism: The Case Against Extreme Wealth

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Re: Limitarianism: The Case Against Extreme Wealth

#351

Post by arp242 »

helpcatscary wrote: post #229

There’s a lot of comments in here straw manning a book that I would guess very few have actually read. I don’t know if it’s a good argument or not but I’m sure the author is intelligent enough to have considered incentives and the case of central planning in the USSR and it’s not dunking on the author to just blindly bring these cases up as if they disqualify their whole argument. If this three paragraph summary of a…

Approximately no one commenting here has read the book; it's only been out for a day, and while I'm a big fan of "actually read the fucking article before commenting", expecting people to purchase and read an entire book before commenting is a bit much.

IMHO this is a bad submission; not because the book or the premise of it is good or bad, but because all most of us can do is discus the title and (very) brief premise.

Re: Limitarianism: The Case Against Extreme Wealth

#352

Post by mynjin »

ch4s3 wrote: post #251
thunfischbrot wrote: post #122

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Pay your employees more, or be taxed near 100% on the excess gains?

But why? If someone is creating millions of dollars worth of goods or services what moral justification is there for it to be confiscated, particularly at your arbitrary level?

Because, someone doesn't just create millions of dollars of value, teams of people do. And in the current system someone does get to choose where to cut the "sandwich" and they get to choose which side they take. And with negligible repercussion, they choose the largest portion. It's basically incentive to steal. It's basically taking credit for someone else's work. But it's taking their share of wealth.

Re: Limitarianism: The Case Against Extreme Wealth

#353

Post by elefanten »

crotchfire wrote: post #309
OJFord wrote: post #308

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Is a 'cap' not a 'cutoff, limit, or threshold'?

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”

Re: Limitarianism: The Case Against Extreme Wealth

#354

Post by AndrewKemendo »

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.

You’re confusing markets with capitalism

Capitalism requires a philosophical split between labor, productivity, and capital ownership

A market is simply a price clearing mechanism in the context of known exchange rates of commodities, you don’t even need money for it, and says nothing about the ownership composition of the actors making trading decisions

Re: Limitarianism: The Case Against Extreme Wealth

#355

Post by germandiago »

yellowapple wrote: post #328
germandiago wrote: post #296

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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?

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

Then that would be theft and not legitimate property transfer. I was talking about cases where a gift is from someone who earned it and transferred something, a donation.

Not from a government that gifts via regulations or a thief that steals something and donates after the fact. Though there is no difference in either IMHO.

Re: Limitarianism: The Case Against Extreme Wealth

#356

Post by newsclues »

crotchfire wrote: post #268

Will you cap the wealth of corporations too? Because if not, people with insatiable appetites will simply seek control of those corporations rather than direct control of piles of money. Personally I'm an advocate of the exact opposite of what seems to be proposed here: controls on corporate size rather than individual wealth. Living cells don't grow without bounds; at a certain point they get too big and are forced…

I’m more in favour of having rules on who can own (how much) of certain types of businesses, like infrastructure and military equipment.

Re: Limitarianism: The Case Against Extreme Wealth

#357

Post by [deleted] »

FredPret wrote: post #99
lostlogin wrote: post #92

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think that the description ’mini-Mao’ fits both the ambition to blocking others from excess wealth and the behaviour we are seeing from some billionaires. Extremes promote extremes. Getting lots of people to make lots of small decisions is not easy and the masses are not necessarily that sensible. Delegating decision making to a chosen representative is the least bad system seen so far, but has a way to go.

I want to believe you are well-intentioned, but > the masses are not necessarily that sensible is an absolutely toxic sentiment. "We, the smart ones, will decide for them" has led to disaster every time.

[deleted]

Re: Limitarianism: The Case Against Extreme Wealth

#358

Post by AndrewKemendo »

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…

Exactly this

This concept that there is a well defined polar opposite to western “freedom” capitalism is so far from reality in literally any economic history understanding

Not only that but the USSR was in no sense Marxist Communist. It was well known that the Lenin-Trotskyist Bolshevism was the core, specifically the command economy part.

That regime coopted the philosophy of Marxism well after his death.

That’s what happens when both sides are spinning the same propaganda.

BTW I’m equally not a fan of Marxist material dialectic as I am the trotsy-lenin unholiness or the American oligopolies.

We need a true state-free attempt at anarcho socialism but that’s nearly impossible as such a concept fundamentally threatens the basic structure of the modern state.

Re: Limitarianism: The Case Against Extreme Wealth

#359

Post by spacecadet »

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 - in which businesses are democratic institutions governed by the people who do the work involved.

100%

Re: Limitarianism: The Case Against Extreme Wealth

#360

Post by jongjong »

At this stage, I'd vote for any proposal which equalizes wealth. Limiting wealth, UBI...

The most interesting proposal I've heard recently basically suggested that instead of governments selling bonds (to the central bank and to the markets) when it creates new currency for public spending, it should essentially just give the newly created bonds to citizens since it's the people's money anyway that it's loaning out... It would have to split them equally among all citizens.

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