I’m aware of the concept of loss aversion, but I think it as an explanatory factor for macro economics is a red herring: one of a long list of diversions in the grand company of all trickle-down economics.
People say that the without arbitrary incentives for arbitrary wealth that hard work and innovation won’t happen. Demonstrably false! The Internet that the current cartel is looting was a public private partnership! The best software these days is done substantially by passionate hobbyists!
People point to Silicon Valley and say “this wouldn’t be possible in Europe”. Then they point to the market capitalizations of the vampire megacorps that the world would be far better without as the success story.
People make other arguments slightly craftier: punitive taxes on the mega wealthy wouldn’t raise enough revenue to matter. True, but that’s not the point of a punitive wealth tax: the point of a punitive billionaire tax is to deprive billionaires of godlike power to restructure society in their own interest.
Anyone outside a few narrow bubbles can see that this is going very badly.
I’ll agree with you this far: it’s going to be a tall hill to climb to get people with homes worth 20 times what they paid and 401ks to vote for a sane future. But this is a comparatively recent phenomenon: older people used to be obsessively concerned with the prospects of younger people for trivial biological reasons.
These days? That “blood boy” transfusion thing Thiel is always on about? It’s a terrifying metaphor for the bigger picture. The procedure was pioneered so a father could keep his daughter alive at great risk to himself.
For some reason we now tolerate if not celebrate the vampire ideal of running that backwards.