4 ms·

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 li

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)
  - ionised 11y ago
    That's an awful lot of words with no substance to basically label me a pinko commie. I'm not a communist, nor have I ever believed communism as a system works. Feel free to continue spouting your gung-ho rhetoric though.
pjc50 11y ago
You know, there doesn't have to be a strict dichotomy between "a dozen people own half the world" and "Stalinism". Other political possibilities exist. ("Their" labour is really an assumption we should challenge: Jim and Christy Walton didn't stack every shelf themselves, there's 2 million other Wal-Mart employees. Perhaps the future is they're all stacked by robots and you have two billionaires plus two million starving people; we might want to find ways of avoiding that future)
- TheLogothete 11y ago
  The person who I'm replying to advocates for confiscating people's money "because they are rich". So, I guess you either did not read it or you simply block it out because you don't want to comment on it, but still wanted to make an argument. I'm sorry. That's not how it works. Waltons might not stack shelves, but they invented vendor managed inventory, which transformed the global supply chain and lead to many, MANY other things coming to reality. They also manage a multi billion dollar company. Perhaps one of those shelf-stacking employees can substitute them for a day. I'm sure it's not a big deal.
wpietri 11y ago
Do you know any filthy rich people? Their money is made mostly through other people's labor and innovation. What they're good at is business, which is organizing and capturing the value of other people's labor and innovation. I don't think there's anything wrong with that. I've started a number of businesses, after all. But let's not worship people whose talent happens to be particular sorts of commerce.
- deleted 11y ago
  [deleted]
- TheLogothete 11y ago
  Depends on what you mean by filthy rich. By my definition (worth >$1bn), I don't know any. I do know several people worth several hudrends of millions tho. They are CEOs of their own companies or companies they helped grow. I don't think anyone works harder than them in their companies. If there is someone, it probably is someone from the upper management. >What they're good at is business, which is organizing and capturing the value of other people's labor and innovation. You say that like it's easy-peasy. Everyone can do it, right?
  - wpietri 11y ago
    > They are CEOs of their own companies or companies they helped grow. I don't think anyone works harder than them in their companies. I also know people in that bracket. None of them work significantly harder than some of the house cleaners and construction workers I've met. And even if they did, it's not like they work 10 million times harder. There are only so many hours in the week. > You say that like it's easy-peasy. Everyone can do it, right? It's not easier than anything else. But it's not appreciably harder. Read Warren Buffet on this. He's one of the best in the world, and he describes his success as coming from talent and luck. E.g.: "I happen to have a talent for allocating capital. But my ability to use that talent is completely dependent on the society I was born into. If I’d been born into a tribe of hunters, this talent of mine would be pretty worthless." I note also that he was born into a family with business experience. His grandfather ran a store; his father, a stock brokerage. That sort of early education is of enormous help. (I know myself; my dad started programming computers in the late '60s.)
deciplex 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. Sort of, yes. But my issue with this is not that the obscenely wealthy have so much more per se - I guess there is a moral argument to make there, but I'm not the one to make since it doesn't bother me too much either. I'm mostly with you on that: speaking in strictly material terms we shouldn't mind too much if a small group of people are much much better off than everyone else, provided that everyone is still looked after and the situation is improving. And, if you're some trickle-down theorist or whatever, you might even say that some people have to be obscenely rich for there to be any progress. I don't agree with that at all, but it's another argument you hear. Anyway, outsized wealth inequality like this need not be just a problem in a material sense though. It's also a problem in a political sense. Wealth and power are pretty highly correlated, but democracy functions best when power is more diffuse. So a concentration of wealth interferes with healthy politics and governance, and that's why I don't like the massive disparity in wealth we see know, and why I think it's very dangerous.

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)
- ionised 11y ago
  That's an awful lot of words with no substance to basically label me a pinko commie. I'm not a communist, nor have I ever believed communism as a system works. Feel free to continue spouting your gung-ho rhetoric though.

pjc50 11y ago

You know, there doesn't have to be a strict dichotomy between "a dozen people own half the world" and "Stalinism". Other political possibilities exist. ("Their" labour is really an assumption we should challenge: Jim and Christy Walton didn't stack every shelf themselves, there's 2 million other Wal-Mart employees. Perhaps the future is they're all stacked by robots and you have two billionaires plus two million starving people; we might want to find ways of avoiding that future)

TheLogothete 11y ago
The person who I'm replying to advocates for confiscating people's money "because they are rich". So, I guess you either did not read it or you simply block it out because you don't want to comment on it, but still wanted to make an argument. I'm sorry. That's not how it works. Waltons might not stack shelves, but they invented vendor managed inventory, which transformed the global supply chain and lead to many, MANY other things coming to reality. They also manage a multi billion dollar company. Perhaps one of those shelf-stacking employees can substitute them for a day. I'm sure it's not a big deal.

wpietri 11y ago

Do you know any filthy rich people? Their money is made mostly through other people's labor and innovation. What they're good at is business, which is organizing and capturing the value of other people's labor and innovation. I don't think there's anything wrong with that. I've started a number of businesses, after all. But let's not worship people whose talent happens to be particular sorts of commerce.

deleted 11y ago
[deleted]
TheLogothete 11y ago
Depends on what you mean by filthy rich. By my definition (worth >$1bn), I don't know any. I do know several people worth several hudrends of millions tho. They are CEOs of their own companies or companies they helped grow. I don't think anyone works harder than them in their companies. If there is someone, it probably is someone from the upper management. >What they're good at is business, which is organizing and capturing the value of other people's labor and innovation. You say that like it's easy-peasy. Everyone can do it, right?
- wpietri 11y ago
  > They are CEOs of their own companies or companies they helped grow. I don't think anyone works harder than them in their companies. I also know people in that bracket. None of them work significantly harder than some of the house cleaners and construction workers I've met. And even if they did, it's not like they work 10 million times harder. There are only so many hours in the week. > You say that like it's easy-peasy. Everyone can do it, right? It's not easier than anything else. But it's not appreciably harder. Read Warren Buffet on this. He's one of the best in the world, and he describes his success as coming from talent and luck. E.g.: "I happen to have a talent for allocating capital. But my ability to use that talent is completely dependent on the society I was born into. If I’d been born into a tribe of hunters, this talent of mine would be pretty worthless." I note also that he was born into a family with business experience. His grandfather ran a store; his father, a stock brokerage. That sort of early education is of enormous help. (I know myself; my dad started programming computers in the late '60s.)

deciplex 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. Sort of, yes. But my issue with this is not that the obscenely wealthy have so much more per se - I guess there is a moral argument to make there, but I'm not the one to make since it doesn't bother me too much either. I'm mostly with you on that: speaking in strictly material terms we shouldn't mind too much if a small group of people are much much better off than everyone else, provided that everyone is still looked after and the situation is improving. And, if you're some trickle-down theorist or whatever, you might even say that some people have to be obscenely rich for there to be any progress. I don't agree with that at all, but it's another argument you hear. Anyway, outsized wealth inequality like this need not be just a problem in a material sense though. It's also a problem in a political sense. Wealth and power are pretty highly correlated, but democracy functions best when power is more diffuse. So a concentration of wealth interferes with healthy politics and governance, and that's why I don't like the massive disparity in wealth we see know, and why I think it's very dangerous.