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There is an old saying that "if you took all the money away from all the rich people, and spread it around evenly to everyone else, within 2 or 3 years, all the

There is an old saying that "if you took all the money away from all the rich people, and spread it around evenly to everyone else, within 2 or 3 years, all the formerly rich would be rich again having taken advantage of the poor who don't know how to make and keep money". This adage, although heartless to be sure, has some degree of truth to it in my view. The problem is twofold, 1) a lot of people become rich not because they are so smart but because the lack compunction, that is, they feel no remorse for taking advantage of someone else 2) people who come out of poverty often lack the skills to know how to improve their situation, such as a lack of business skills, money management and etc., not having had good role models. In my view, the role of the government should be to check the first, that is to insure that some are not taking advantage too much, obviously this is a far to complex issue to even begin to cover here, but I am just touching on the gist, the second is to lend help to those in poverty through education and training assistance. The third component is of course, the well to do who are willing and able to help and do (e.g. the Gates and others). Thank you for the excellent thought provoking post and many good comments so far.

Retric 11y ago
Depends, if you distribute resources aka stock land etc then you are going to end up with a different set of rich people. If you just redistribute money then it's like handing out money in monopoly after every property is bought, it might make the game take longer but the end game is not going to change.
- branchless 11y ago
  Yes, because just as in the game monopoly when you have land ownership from which you can derive rent you inexorably end up in this situation. All value added flows to the landlords. This was the original point of the game, originally named "The landlords game" and later renamed "Monopoly". http://www.theguardian.com/lifeandstyle/2015/apr/11/secret-history-monopoly-capitalist-game-leftwing-origins http://www.theguardian.com/lifeandstyle/2015/apr/11/secret-h...
- flashman 11y ago
  I wonder how Monopoly would play if you got assessed for Income Tax when you passed Go, or perhaps every fifth turn, instead of when you landed on a particular square.
  - bufordsharkley 11y ago
    > I wonder how Monopoly would play if you got assessed for Income Tax when you passed Go, or perhaps every fifth turn, instead of when you landed on a particular square. The alternative game to ur-Monopoly, that is "Prosperity", had all rents split up when a player landed on a square. The property owner got a rent payment that reflected the value of the houses/hotels, whereas the rent on the land itself was paid to a common fund.[1] [1] http://landlordsgame.info/games/lgp-1932/lgp-1932_rules.html http://landlordsgame.info/games/lgp-1932/lgp-1932_rules.html
  - JWLong 11y ago
    I also wonder how it would go, if it were cashless. Our problem is always that we run out of cash, at some point.
    - imtringued 11y ago
      This already exists http://www.debtproofliving.com/Portals/0/Blog/images/2007/09/monopoly_elec_banking_1.jpg http://www.debtproofliving.com/Portals/0/Blog/images/2007/09...
herbetdangerbri 11y ago
> they feel no remorse for taking advantage of someone else I don't understand what it means 'to take advantage of someone else' in the context of this thread. Is Starbucks taking advantage of me when I want a coffee by selling me a coffee? Is Elton John taking advantage of my desire to see him play live at my party and the fact that there is only one of him by charging me a million dollars to appear? Are the bus companies taking advantage of my need to get to work when they sell me a ticket? I don't get where normal economic transactions and supply and demand becoming 'taking advantage' or 'exploitation'.
- tamana 11y ago
  It's theoretically trivial: most transactions have a surplus. How is the surplus divided between the seller and buyer? More lopsided, more exploitative. Some transactions leave one side even worse off, but they execute due to ignorance, stupidity, or force. Those are obviously exploitative.
- gear54rus 11y ago
  Well that's pretty easy. The most obvious form comes from the good old (bs) saying that 'the real price is what the buyer is ready to pay' (feel free to correct me here as to actual form of that). Hiking up price to a drug (the shkreli story) would be an exploitation and not a 'normal economic transaction'. So would be buying time of some poor workers in China for a dime. And then selling what they make on a 10x margin and pocketing it. There's nothing economic about that, its plain old theft (or deceit, whatever you want to call it). There are more subtle forms, like apple spreading bs about their products being 'the best' and them having a 'vision' and then some uninformed fella buying stuff they make when its sometimes twice the price for objectively comparative product. Like always the devil is in the details. This is all highly endorsed by the 'greed is good' model and it won't stop until we denounce it. No amount of government regulations can change it, snakes will always find a way. It's all in people's heads.
  - deleted 11y ago
    [deleted]
  - 11y ago
sound_of_basker 11y ago
Clinically, I can state that I am a live and let live person. Am not quoting that as a boon or bane. I suspect most people are. And this lot, while they can dig themselves out of poverty, cannot become rich. The reason is there is the small group that does not have the live and let live wired it. That that trait is good or bad is up for debate. It is this small group that ends up being rich given enough catalysts. They think only about themselves.
WalterBright 11y ago
Lots of people know how to create value, i.e. combine A and B and wind up with A*B of value. Take Edison, for example. He made himself a fortune by figuring out how to take a glass bottle and add a bamboo filament, and sell a light bulb.
- tamana 11y ago
  Edison was a capitalist manager and salesman, not much of an inventor. How much value he created vs extracted is up for debate.
  - WalterBright 11y ago
    Not much of an inventor? Read Josephson's biography "Edison". http://www.amazon.com/Edison-Biography-Matthew-Josephson/dp/0471548065/ http://www.amazon.com/Edison-Biography-Matthew-Josephson/dp/... You'll be astonished. There's never been anyone else remotely as prolific an inventor. He pretty much invented the electric power industry. The value of that is almost incalculable. It's hard to see how that is "extractive". Could you name who you consider a real inventor?
awt 11y ago
Read The Anabasis (the Greek version is best) and rethink your conception of exploitation and how the world works, etc.
notthegov 11y ago
I think the problem is most rich people aren't smart. This creates flawed systems, bad business models and poor public infrastructure. I don't know many people in Silicon Valley but I know a lot of rich people. They definitely have a lack of compunction and some use confidence games to scam and exploit people. I am not suggesting they are all bad but 90% act like my friends who live in trailers in the Midwest on welfare. Human nature doesn't care about privilege. I believe education fails to teach critical thinking and tools to face adversity. And this creates situations where rich people lie, or honest investment bankers launder drug money. Or doctors overprescribe drugs, surgeons do unnecessary surgies and rich men exploit young girls. But they all self-rationalize their decisions and never think they are part of the problem. Arrogance, incompetence, greed, stupidity, etc. There are a ton of successful incompetent people. In general, I agree with you that it is the individual's job to transcend these challenges but it is ignorant politicians and lazy wealthy and influential people who sustain a system that has so much friction, so much chaos and so many challenges to overcome to get a fraction of what the alleged "elite" get. My point is, for the most part there is nothing elite about the 1%. There is no secret group controlling the world. If we want to change things, we can.
skybrian 11y ago
If you took all their money away and dropped them in Africa I think they'd have a harder time. Yes, knowledge of social class issues (who you know and how to act to get people with money to trust you) can itself be used to make money, in the right environment. It doesn't mean that educating everyone to behave like the upper classes makes sense. Those skills may not actually work for people who don't look the part or don't have the connections. To the extent that they're adaptive rather than arbitrary class indicators, they might actually be dangerous for someone living in a different environment.
- mruniverse 11y ago
  The saying is about how it believes the rich get rich. Can they get rich if it was all taken away? The saying says yes. If you dropped them in Africa, yes they would have a harder time. But as a whole, probably get rich again.
  - facepalm 11y ago
    Any data to support the "saying"?
nroach 11y ago
Presuming, of course, that the wealthy were in fact the ones who earned that wealth initially versus receiving it generationally. You might see a different distribution on earners versus maintainers.
- pc86 11y ago
  The vast majority of inherited wealth is gone in two generations.
deleted 11y ago
[deleted]
ryandrake 11y ago
> There is an old saying that "if you took all the money away from all the rich people, and spread it around evenly to everyone else, within 2 or 3 years, all the formerly rich would be rich again having taken advantage of the poor who don't know how to make and keep money". What a silly saying. Of course, if you redistribute all the MONEY to everyone, but leave all the means of production in the hands of a few, it's easy to predict that those few would be the ones rich again in 2 or 3 years.
- mruniverse 11y ago
  I don't think the "means of production" is implied. I think it means that the rich deserve to be rich because they can get rich. That it's not just luck that they are rich, but that they know how to get rich. Take it away and they'll get it back. At least that's my take on the saying.
  - ryandrake 11y ago
    That's why the saying is silly. Of course if you redistribute all the money, it will eventually all go back to the people who own the tools that collect people's money. That's all that separates the rich from the rest of us. It's not some mystical "know-how" that they have and we lack. It's simply ownership of wealth-concentrating physical or intellectual property.

Retric 11y ago

Depends, if you distribute resources aka stock land etc then you are going to end up with a different set of rich people. If you just redistribute money then it's like handing out money in monopoly after every property is bought, it might make the game take longer but the end game is not going to change.

branchless 11y ago
Yes, because just as in the game monopoly when you have land ownership from which you can derive rent you inexorably end up in this situation. All value added flows to the landlords. This was the original point of the game, originally named "The landlords game" and later renamed "Monopoly". http://www.theguardian.com/lifeandstyle/2015/apr/11/secret-history-monopoly-capitalist-game-leftwing-origins http://www.theguardian.com/lifeandstyle/2015/apr/11/secret-h...
flashman 11y ago
I wonder how Monopoly would play if you got assessed for Income Tax when you passed Go, or perhaps every fifth turn, instead of when you landed on a particular square.
- bufordsharkley 11y ago
  > I wonder how Monopoly would play if you got assessed for Income Tax when you passed Go, or perhaps every fifth turn, instead of when you landed on a particular square. The alternative game to ur-Monopoly, that is "Prosperity", had all rents split up when a player landed on a square. The property owner got a rent payment that reflected the value of the houses/hotels, whereas the rent on the land itself was paid to a common fund.[1] [1] http://landlordsgame.info/games/lgp-1932/lgp-1932_rules.html http://landlordsgame.info/games/lgp-1932/lgp-1932_rules.html
- JWLong 11y ago
  I also wonder how it would go, if it were cashless. Our problem is always that we run out of cash, at some point.
  - imtringued 11y ago
    This already exists http://www.debtproofliving.com/Portals/0/Blog/images/2007/09/monopoly_elec_banking_1.jpg http://www.debtproofliving.com/Portals/0/Blog/images/2007/09...

herbetdangerbri 11y ago

> they feel no remorse for taking advantage of someone else I don't understand what it means 'to take advantage of someone else' in the context of this thread. Is Starbucks taking advantage of me when I want a coffee by selling me a coffee? Is Elton John taking advantage of my desire to see him play live at my party and the fact that there is only one of him by charging me a million dollars to appear? Are the bus companies taking advantage of my need to get to work when they sell me a ticket? I don't get where normal economic transactions and supply and demand becoming 'taking advantage' or 'exploitation'.

tamana 11y ago
It's theoretically trivial: most transactions have a surplus. How is the surplus divided between the seller and buyer? More lopsided, more exploitative. Some transactions leave one side even worse off, but they execute due to ignorance, stupidity, or force. Those are obviously exploitative.
gear54rus 11y ago
Well that's pretty easy. The most obvious form comes from the good old (bs) saying that 'the real price is what the buyer is ready to pay' (feel free to correct me here as to actual form of that). Hiking up price to a drug (the shkreli story) would be an exploitation and not a 'normal economic transaction'. So would be buying time of some poor workers in China for a dime. And then selling what they make on a 10x margin and pocketing it. There's nothing economic about that, its plain old theft (or deceit, whatever you want to call it). There are more subtle forms, like apple spreading bs about their products being 'the best' and them having a 'vision' and then some uninformed fella buying stuff they make when its sometimes twice the price for objectively comparative product. Like always the devil is in the details. This is all highly endorsed by the 'greed is good' model and it won't stop until we denounce it. No amount of government regulations can change it, snakes will always find a way. It's all in people's heads.
- deleted 11y ago
  [deleted]
- 11y ago

sound_of_basker 11y ago

Clinically, I can state that I am a live and let live person. Am not quoting that as a boon or bane. I suspect most people are. And this lot, while they can dig themselves out of poverty, cannot become rich. The reason is there is the small group that does not have the live and let live wired it. That that trait is good or bad is up for debate. It is this small group that ends up being rich given enough catalysts. They think only about themselves.

WalterBright 11y ago

Lots of people know how to create value, i.e. combine A and B and wind up with A*B of value. Take Edison, for example. He made himself a fortune by figuring out how to take a glass bottle and add a bamboo filament, and sell a light bulb.

tamana 11y ago
Edison was a capitalist manager and salesman, not much of an inventor. How much value he created vs extracted is up for debate.
- WalterBright 11y ago
  Not much of an inventor? Read Josephson's biography "Edison". http://www.amazon.com/Edison-Biography-Matthew-Josephson/dp/0471548065/ http://www.amazon.com/Edison-Biography-Matthew-Josephson/dp/... You'll be astonished. There's never been anyone else remotely as prolific an inventor. He pretty much invented the electric power industry. The value of that is almost incalculable. It's hard to see how that is "extractive". Could you name who you consider a real inventor?

awt 11y ago

Read The Anabasis (the Greek version is best) and rethink your conception of exploitation and how the world works, etc.

notthegov 11y ago

I think the problem is most rich people aren't smart. This creates flawed systems, bad business models and poor public infrastructure. I don't know many people in Silicon Valley but I know a lot of rich people. They definitely have a lack of compunction and some use confidence games to scam and exploit people. I am not suggesting they are all bad but 90% act like my friends who live in trailers in the Midwest on welfare. Human nature doesn't care about privilege. I believe education fails to teach critical thinking and tools to face adversity. And this creates situations where rich people lie, or honest investment bankers launder drug money. Or doctors overprescribe drugs, surgeons do unnecessary surgies and rich men exploit young girls. But they all self-rationalize their decisions and never think they are part of the problem. Arrogance, incompetence, greed, stupidity, etc. There are a ton of successful incompetent people. In general, I agree with you that it is the individual's job to transcend these challenges but it is ignorant politicians and lazy wealthy and influential people who sustain a system that has so much friction, so much chaos and so many challenges to overcome to get a fraction of what the alleged "elite" get. My point is, for the most part there is nothing elite about the 1%. There is no secret group controlling the world. If we want to change things, we can.

skybrian 11y ago

If you took all their money away and dropped them in Africa I think they'd have a harder time. Yes, knowledge of social class issues (who you know and how to act to get people with money to trust you) can itself be used to make money, in the right environment. It doesn't mean that educating everyone to behave like the upper classes makes sense. Those skills may not actually work for people who don't look the part or don't have the connections. To the extent that they're adaptive rather than arbitrary class indicators, they might actually be dangerous for someone living in a different environment.

mruniverse 11y ago
The saying is about how it believes the rich get rich. Can they get rich if it was all taken away? The saying says yes. If you dropped them in Africa, yes they would have a harder time. But as a whole, probably get rich again.
- facepalm 11y ago
  Any data to support the "saying"?

nroach 11y ago

Presuming, of course, that the wealthy were in fact the ones who earned that wealth initially versus receiving it generationally. You might see a different distribution on earners versus maintainers.

pc86 11y ago
The vast majority of inherited wealth is gone in two generations.

deleted 11y ago

[deleted]

ryandrake 11y ago

> There is an old saying that "if you took all the money away from all the rich people, and spread it around evenly to everyone else, within 2 or 3 years, all the formerly rich would be rich again having taken advantage of the poor who don't know how to make and keep money". What a silly saying. Of course, if you redistribute all the MONEY to everyone, but leave all the means of production in the hands of a few, it's easy to predict that those few would be the ones rich again in 2 or 3 years.

mruniverse 11y ago
I don't think the "means of production" is implied. I think it means that the rich deserve to be rich because they can get rich. That it's not just luck that they are rich, but that they know how to get rich. Take it away and they'll get it back. At least that's my take on the saying.
- ryandrake 11y ago
  That's why the saying is silly. Of course if you redistribute all the money, it will eventually all go back to the people who own the tools that collect people's money. That's all that separates the rich from the rest of us. It's not some mystical "know-how" that they have and we lack. It's simply ownership of wealth-concentrating physical or intellectual property.