8 ms·

One nice thing about having such outsized concentration of wealth is that once the rest of us get totally fed up with this shit, it is much easier to confiscate

One nice thing about having such outsized concentration of wealth is that once the rest of us get totally fed up with this shit, it is much easier to confiscate.

pliny 11y ago
Is it? Since most of their money exists only on paper (they don't just have a bunch of gold in their basement), all you need to do is stop respecting the wealth (change the currency / nationalize the corporations that they own part of / default of the bonds they own), and that scales up for any number of oligarchs.
- RobertoG 11y ago
  You don't need to nationalize anything(1). Property rights are important. We just have to realize that society is the issuer of currency and can just spend when necessary. One of the big debates of the 21th century should be the nature of fiat money. Money is now a social construct (2). Money is infrastructure and it's all that society need to advance common goals (3). (1) except maybe monopolistic public utilities (2)http://www.nakedcapitalism.com/2013/03/what-is-modern-monetary-theory-or-mmt.html http://www.nakedcapitalism.com/2013/03/what-is-modern-moneta...). (3)http://www.nakedcapitalism.com/2015/01/bill-mitchell-demystifying-modern-monetary-theory.html http://www.nakedcapitalism.com/2015/01/bill-mitchell-demysti...
  - wpietri 11y ago
    Few think property rights aren't important. But it's a relatively small number of people who think they're more important than anything else. Property rights fundamentalists, like all fundamentalists, have the emotional benefit of experiencing low cognitive dissonance. But if inequality keeps increasing, they're going to be very surprised when they discover that when push comes to shove, most people value other things over property rights.
- laotzu 11y ago
  >Despising money is like toppling a king off his throne. -Chamfort, yeah, the French guy that shot himself in the head twice and still didn't finish the job
TheLogothete 11y ago
So you don't care that all of humanity is living objectively better now vs. the rest of history. You just care that some people are filthy rich and you don't like them one bit. So, lynch them, take their money, made mostly through their labor and inovation and let the proletariat rule! Nice. Very nice actually, except for the fact that this idea already played out and crashed and burned as the biggest mistake in history.
- ionised 11y ago
  "You have one more grain of rice than you did last year, so stop complaining that that guy over there has 1000 times more than he did last year. Be happy with whatcha got!" Also this; > made mostly through their labor and innovation is demonstrably untrue in many cases.
  - TheLogothete 11y ago
    Yeah that's very emotionally striking and all, but doesn't really put things into perspective, which is very typical for communist propaganda. "One grain of rice" does not even begin to describe how much more prosperous capitalist society is than (post) communist ones.
    - ionised 11y ago
      Except I'm not a communist and I don't believe in communism. I'm just not naive enough to think that the ever widening income inequality and wealth consolidation/hoarding is not a bad thing. And the grain of rice wasn't meant literally.
  - saiya-jin 11y ago
    where is that downvote button when you really need it... anyway, it's pretty damn obvious you didn't grow up in one of those marvelous "socialist/communist" societies that look wonderfully on the paper, yet fail miserably and consistently in real life. I've been there, and still getting to position of understanding naivety of some otherwise clever people in this topic (popular in western europe among young who grew up in a different systems, not sure about rest of the world). All these regimes do is bring out the worst in people in it, get into very ineffective modes of rule and centralized management, gradual (or sudden) loss of various freedoms, etc. Hard work, innovation should be rewarded, not corrupt allegiance to current ruling elite. This mode brings the best out of people in matter of contribution to mankind. What we can improve is the ruleset/boundaries in law, punishing usage of loopholes, off shore taxation and similar. But people on that list didn't get there by avoiding taxes. it would be nice if some Star Trek utopia would work, but we as humans and mankind are just not there yet, for various reasons. Maybe you are, but according to what you wrote, in contrary. Now go throw a rock on some McDonald franchise, that will surely make you feel like contributing to well-being of all of us a bit. or even better - move to Russia, it's a fine example of a country sliding back to where it came from, or even better, true communist paradise - North Korea (let me guess, you don't have something important for that, do you)
vijayr 11y ago
Confiscate and do what with it? Distribute it to the poor? That would only be a (very) short term fix to a long term problem. These billionaires would be replaced by new ones. Perhaps a better solution might be to fundamentally rethink the role of money, work, economy etc in a radically different world (robots, unsustainable population etc).

One nice thing about having such outsized concentration of wealth is that once the rest of us get totally fed up with this shit, it is much easier to confiscate.

pliny 11y ago

Is it? Since most of their money exists only on paper (they don't just have a bunch of gold in their basement), all you need to do is stop respecting the wealth (change the currency / nationalize the corporations that they own part of / default of the bonds they own), and that scales up for any number of oligarchs.

RobertoG 11y ago
You don't need to nationalize anything(1). Property rights are important. We just have to realize that society is the issuer of currency and can just spend when necessary. One of the big debates of the 21th century should be the nature of fiat money. Money is now a social construct (2). Money is infrastructure and it's all that society need to advance common goals (3). (1) except maybe monopolistic public utilities (2)http://www.nakedcapitalism.com/2013/03/what-is-modern-monetary-theory-or-mmt.html http://www.nakedcapitalism.com/2013/03/what-is-modern-moneta...). (3)http://www.nakedcapitalism.com/2015/01/bill-mitchell-demystifying-modern-monetary-theory.html http://www.nakedcapitalism.com/2015/01/bill-mitchell-demysti...
- wpietri 11y ago
  Few think property rights aren't important. But it's a relatively small number of people who think they're more important than anything else. Property rights fundamentalists, like all fundamentalists, have the emotional benefit of experiencing low cognitive dissonance. But if inequality keeps increasing, they're going to be very surprised when they discover that when push comes to shove, most people value other things over property rights.
laotzu 11y ago
>Despising money is like toppling a king off his throne. -Chamfort, yeah, the French guy that shot himself in the head twice and still didn't finish the job

TheLogothete 11y ago

So you don't care that all of humanity is living objectively better now vs. the rest of history. You just care that some people are filthy rich and you don't like them one bit. So, lynch them, take their money, made mostly through their labor and inovation and let the proletariat rule! Nice. Very nice actually, except for the fact that this idea already played out and crashed and burned as the biggest mistake in history.

ionised 11y ago
"You have one more grain of rice than you did last year, so stop complaining that that guy over there has 1000 times more than he did last year. Be happy with whatcha got!" Also this; > made mostly through their labor and innovation is demonstrably untrue in many cases.
- TheLogothete 11y ago
  Yeah that's very emotionally striking and all, but doesn't really put things into perspective, which is very typical for communist propaganda. "One grain of rice" does not even begin to describe how much more prosperous capitalist society is than (post) communist ones.
  - ionised 11y ago
    Except I'm not a communist and I don't believe in communism. I'm just not naive enough to think that the ever widening income inequality and wealth consolidation/hoarding is not a bad thing. And the grain of rice wasn't meant literally.
- saiya-jin 11y ago
  where is that downvote button when you really need it... anyway, it's pretty damn obvious you didn't grow up in one of those marvelous "socialist/communist" societies that look wonderfully on the paper, yet fail miserably and consistently in real life. I've been there, and still getting to position of understanding naivety of some otherwise clever people in this topic (popular in western europe among young who grew up in a different systems, not sure about rest of the world). All these regimes do is bring out the worst in people in it, get into very ineffective modes of rule and centralized management, gradual (or sudden) loss of various freedoms, etc. Hard work, innovation should be rewarded, not corrupt allegiance to current ruling elite. This mode brings the best out of people in matter of contribution to mankind. What we can improve is the ruleset/boundaries in law, punishing usage of loopholes, off shore taxation and similar. But people on that list didn't get there by avoiding taxes. it would be nice if some Star Trek utopia would work, but we as humans and mankind are just not there yet, for various reasons. Maybe you are, but according to what you wrote, in contrary. Now go throw a rock on some McDonald franchise, that will surely make you feel like contributing to well-being of all of us a bit. or even better - move to Russia, it's a fine example of a country sliding back to where it came from, or even better, true communist paradise - North Korea (let me guess, you don't have something important for that, do you)

vijayr 11y ago

Confiscate and do what with it? Distribute it to the poor? That would only be a (very) short term fix to a long term problem. These billionaires would be replaced by new ones. Perhaps a better solution might be to fundamentally rethink the role of money, work, economy etc in a radically different world (robots, unsustainable population etc).