51–60 of 660 posts
What about having a rationally planned democratic society instead of people chasing dollars at the expense of everything? No rich people, just democratic processes accessible to all incl. in production.
I think you'd have to be very clear about how this is different than the previous attempts at such "rationally planned democratic societies".
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…
Why shouldn't a billionaire be capable of starting a genetics lab to fund cancer research and pay for it in cash, if they are so inclined?
Also almost all of super wealthy people's "wealth" is tied up in assets that are funding entire economies. This money is creating jobs, allowing for affordable loans, the money is working for many other people... It's not as if the money wealthy people have is just in physical gold coins in their swimming pools.
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You don't need incentives for high earners to continue working. 1) We can afford for them to stop working. Really, it's okay. People can just chill. We're more than efficient enough for it. 2) People don't need monetary incentives to work. Most of us get bored just chilling. We want to feel useful. We need community. We need something to engage our brains. The vast majority of people, left to their own devices, will…
Do you really think people will go to medical school for 4 years because they are "bored of chilling?"
There are a lot of healthcare systems where the wages aren’t that impressive and the hours are very long. There are benefits beyond money.
Job satisfaction, societal standing, caring about people, etc etc.
I'm wondering if people understand that almost all the pleasures/comforts in modern life were created by people who wouldn't exist in this system.
No, people don't know this. The degree of economic and historical naiveté has really skyrocketed in recent decades. "Let's just try a planned society one more time , THIS time will be different, look how nice and kind we are!" is a perfectly reasonable statement to many educated people today. It's really an indictment of the education system.
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Any solutions that are in conflict with human nature will never be successful. Ambition and envy are basic human traits. At a deeper level, we are beings that measure everything (including light, sound, smell, touch and taste) by way of comparison. Communism fails because no one has anything left to aspire to and everyone is therefore equally miserable.
Wealth caps of 15M is certainly not communism > Ambition and envy are basic human traits No they are not
Hell yeah. You accumulate $100m (or whatever the limit is) and we throw a parade for you. You get an award and your name on a plaque. You won capitalism! and you're not allowed to make another cent
To what end? Innovative companies are literally creating money that did not exist before. Do you think there is a fixed pie of money?
But the mindset of many is still caught up in the uber-conservative (from an economic point of view) mindset dating to the middle ages that wealth is like land: it's just always there, and if you want more, you have to get it from someone else buy buying or seizing.
I'm wondering if people understand that almost all the pleasures/comforts in modern life were created by people who wouldn't exist in this system.
Which are the examples driven by extreme wealth (note: not just regular 1%er wealth and not people who became extremely wealthy - I mean people who expressed that the reason they created something was because they knew it would make them extremely top-0.01% wealthy)?
What about having a rationally planned democratic society instead of people chasing dollars at the expense of everything? No rich people, just democratic processes accessible to all incl. in production.
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…
So you can only have $15mil of assets? But your partner can have $15mil too, as can your kids, and parents. And if that's not enough, you can still try to hoard extra wealth in easier-to-hide forms - whether it's physical gold, bitcoin, art, fine wines, etc.
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 million on a private jet, if I don't, I'll hit the wealth cap!".
Earlier quoted context omitted.
You don't need incentives for high earners to continue working. 1) We can afford for them to stop working. Really, it's okay. People can just chill. We're more than efficient enough for it. 2) People don't need monetary incentives to work. Most of us get bored just chilling. We want to feel useful. We need community. We need something to engage our brains. The vast majority of people, left to their own devices, will…
Do you really think people will go to medical school for 4 years because they are "bored of chilling?"