5 ms·

Okay, but think of it this way. Bill Gates is worth 90 Billion, sure fine. What is the entire United States worth? GDP is 18 Trillion, expenditures are 4 tril

by ohyes 10y ago

Okay, but think of it this way. Bill Gates is worth 90 Billion, sure fine. What is the entire United States worth? GDP is 18 Trillion, expenditures are 4 trillion. So if you do something (admittedly kind of dumb), like take the GDP, subtract expenditures, let's pretend the earnings are 14 trillion? Valuing the US at 10x earnings, that would put it at a valuation of 140 trillion dollars. This is horribly incorrect, but I think it still makes a very important point. The richest person's entire net worth is orders of magnitude less than the yearly GDP of a moderately sized country. The key thing in monarchial feudalism is that a single person is the state (Imagine a person worth 'only' 14 trillion dollars, he's got his own airforce, navy, army). Jeff/Bill/Warren et al. aren't on that scale of wealth yet, and it seems that it would be difficult for them to get there without state intervention.

SwellJoe 10y ago
"The richest person's entire net worth is orders of magnitude less than the yearly GDP of a moderately sized country." Economically speaking, the US is not a "moderately sized country". It is the richest country in the world. There are several moderately sized countries with lower GDP than Bill Gates net worth.
- ohyes 10y ago
  I'm not considering US to be a moderately sized country. While you are technically correct (the best kind of correct), this was kind of a brain-fart on my part and not really important to the point. The point is that net worth includes the assumption of future earnings in the valuation. GDP is just one year's production. Bill gates is orders of magnitude less wealthy than Ukraine, for example, even though his net worth is similar to Ukraine's GDP.
  - SwellJoe 10y ago
    I think it is important to the point, that one man is worth the annual GDP of countries that have millions of people. A country is not a person...it's millions of people, and it's nonsensical to say, "Oh, it's not such a big deal, because a nation of millions makes as much in a year as this guy's whole net worth." That's a terrible argument for why the amount of money Bill Gates has is not absurd.
    - ohyes 10y ago
      I'm not saying it isn't absurd I'm saying it isn't comparable to feudalism. (It is indeed a terrible argument for the point I'm not making). In feudalism a single person is the entire state. His wealth isn't comparable, disregarding the extra rights that are conferred from literally being the law of the land as a monarch.
      - SwellJoe 10y ago
        Eh, I guess...but a feudal lord oversaw hundreds, maybe thousands of people. I'm not suggesting feudalism was better than what we have now, or necessarily agreeing with the argument made above about this being feudalism. Let's just all agree that Bill Gates isn't a feudal lord and this isn't feudalism, but rather something else that is probably bad, but it may take us a few generations to figure out exactly why it's so bad and how to avoid it.
      - milesrout 10y ago
        >In feudalism a single person is the entire state. His wealth isn't comparable, disregarding the extra rights that are conferred from literally being the law of the land as a monarch. No, that's not true. That's not at all true.
TheGrassyKnoll 10y ago
Putin kinda has '>... his own airforce, navy, army'.
- ohyes 10y ago
  Yeah, I was thinking about that too. He's definitely the closest.
guelo 10y ago
> expenditures are 4 trillion Your calculation is making my head hurt. I assume by 'expenditures' you mean the US governments budget is about 4 trillion? If so, your $14trillion represents expenditures by the private sector. So if we build a bridge or something it doesn't count into your 10x, for some reason. Sorry this whole argument makes no sense to me.
- ohyes 10y ago
  I was trying to figure out what the "earnings" would be. I probably should have just used 18 trillion and been done with it. Argument is humans aren't on the same scale as governments (even comparing exceptionally rich humans and middle of the road governments). It is easy to verify with a few minutes of thought.
dragonwriter 10y ago
> The key thing in monarchial feudalism is that a single person is the state No, that's (approximately) monarchical absolutism. Feudalism is completely different, because the state (insofar as that term is even loosely valid for feudalism) is a bunch of people, arranged in heirarchy, but each with both rights and obligations both up and down the heirarchy, not one person with absolute power. That's why the transition from feudal government to absolute monarchies in much of Europe was a big deal.
emcq 10y ago
There are 540 billionaires in the US. The top 400 combined are worth 2.4 trillion. That's a remarkable portion of the economy.
- HeavenBanned 10y ago
  We need progressive taxation that goes up to 94% of wealth earned. If we took 94% of Bezo's income, he would still have an island to live on. If we took 94% of Zuckerberg's income, he would still be able to live in a mansion. They just wouldn't be stinking rich. WW2-level taxation is what I'm thinking of - of the FDR type. That's all I have to say. The rest of this thread is glorious and filled with juicy debate.
acoard 10y ago
>The key thing in monarchial feudalism is that a single person is the state (Imagine a person worth 'only' 14 trillion dollars, he's got his own airforce, navy, army). This is entirely wrong. Other people have already commented on what feudalism is, but I wanted to provide a brief high-level history in case people were interested. So let's take the historical look! How did we go from ancient Rome, an imperial monarchy, to feudalism being the law of the land? The seeds of feudalism were sown from the Roman Emperor Diocletian's decision not to tax lords if all commerce took place within a lord's domain. Diocletian was a wonderful Emperor, one of the best, but he was around at a time when the Empire was cannibalizing itself with constant civil wars, making his main goal was peace and stability. To simplify, if I owned a city, and the city blacksmith supplied everyone else in my city, the state (i.e. the Roman Empire) would not take a cut of this. Only if goods flowed into a neighbouring lord's areas would the empire tax it. What's the incentive structure here for the lords? Build up as much as you can within your domain and make it as self-sufficient as possible. It's legal tax avoidance, baby! Because of all the civil wars there were labour shortages, both from bloodshed, devastated landscapes, and people fleeing. What's the solution to this? Outlaw moving, making peasants stay where they grew up and work the job of their father. This made economic planning much simpler, and Diocletian was an economic planner. In doing so, we get serfdom going hand in hand with the seeds of feudalism. Over time, as the Roman Empire waned, this political structure stayed in effect. Power was increasingly ceded to the regional and away from the imperial. Basically, the state collapsed on itself. While we do get the Catholic Church springing up, it only sorta-kinda fills the power vacuum as it's clearly not a state in the same way Rome was. Ambitious lords take more power, filling the vacuum of the the monolithic state. Without a single arbiter to enforce relationships between the lords, fealty and swearing allegiances become much more important. Literally the only thing holding these states together were a few lords word, some marriages, and often some hostages. If it was worth it to break those things, the 'state' would crumble, and everyone knew it. That's basically it. From then, feudalism became the law of the land for around a thousand years (let's roughly say 300AD-1500AD). Then we're onto absolute monarchies, the renaissance, and the bourgeoisie throwing a wrench in everything. In case all that hasn't helped, here's a (probably weak) analogy: monarchies are monoliths, feudalism is microservices. FYI, Diocletian didn't use the word lord, he used dux. Which is where we get duke, doge, duce, etc. We also get the word dioceses here, which the Catholic Church still uses to this day.

by ohyes 10y ago

SwellJoe 10y ago

"The richest person's entire net worth is orders of magnitude less than the yearly GDP of a moderately sized country." Economically speaking, the US is not a "moderately sized country". It is the richest country in the world. There are several moderately sized countries with lower GDP than Bill Gates net worth.

ohyes 10y ago
I'm not considering US to be a moderately sized country. While you are technically correct (the best kind of correct), this was kind of a brain-fart on my part and not really important to the point. The point is that net worth includes the assumption of future earnings in the valuation. GDP is just one year's production. Bill gates is orders of magnitude less wealthy than Ukraine, for example, even though his net worth is similar to Ukraine's GDP.
- SwellJoe 10y ago
  I think it is important to the point, that one man is worth the annual GDP of countries that have millions of people. A country is not a person...it's millions of people, and it's nonsensical to say, "Oh, it's not such a big deal, because a nation of millions makes as much in a year as this guy's whole net worth." That's a terrible argument for why the amount of money Bill Gates has is not absurd.
  - ohyes 10y ago
    I'm not saying it isn't absurd I'm saying it isn't comparable to feudalism. (It is indeed a terrible argument for the point I'm not making). In feudalism a single person is the entire state. His wealth isn't comparable, disregarding the extra rights that are conferred from literally being the law of the land as a monarch.
    - SwellJoe 10y ago
      Eh, I guess...but a feudal lord oversaw hundreds, maybe thousands of people. I'm not suggesting feudalism was better than what we have now, or necessarily agreeing with the argument made above about this being feudalism. Let's just all agree that Bill Gates isn't a feudal lord and this isn't feudalism, but rather something else that is probably bad, but it may take us a few generations to figure out exactly why it's so bad and how to avoid it.
    - milesrout 10y ago
      >In feudalism a single person is the entire state. His wealth isn't comparable, disregarding the extra rights that are conferred from literally being the law of the land as a monarch. No, that's not true. That's not at all true.

TheGrassyKnoll 10y ago

Putin kinda has '>... his own airforce, navy, army'.

ohyes 10y ago
Yeah, I was thinking about that too. He's definitely the closest.

guelo 10y ago

> expenditures are 4 trillion Your calculation is making my head hurt. I assume by 'expenditures' you mean the US governments budget is about 4 trillion? If so, your $14trillion represents expenditures by the private sector. So if we build a bridge or something it doesn't count into your 10x, for some reason. Sorry this whole argument makes no sense to me.

ohyes 10y ago
I was trying to figure out what the "earnings" would be. I probably should have just used 18 trillion and been done with it. Argument is humans aren't on the same scale as governments (even comparing exceptionally rich humans and middle of the road governments). It is easy to verify with a few minutes of thought.

dragonwriter 10y ago

> The key thing in monarchial feudalism is that a single person is the state No, that's (approximately) monarchical absolutism. Feudalism is completely different, because the state (insofar as that term is even loosely valid for feudalism) is a bunch of people, arranged in heirarchy, but each with both rights and obligations both up and down the heirarchy, not one person with absolute power. That's why the transition from feudal government to absolute monarchies in much of Europe was a big deal.

emcq 10y ago

There are 540 billionaires in the US. The top 400 combined are worth 2.4 trillion. That's a remarkable portion of the economy.

HeavenBanned 10y ago
We need progressive taxation that goes up to 94% of wealth earned. If we took 94% of Bezo's income, he would still have an island to live on. If we took 94% of Zuckerberg's income, he would still be able to live in a mansion. They just wouldn't be stinking rich. WW2-level taxation is what I'm thinking of - of the FDR type. That's all I have to say. The rest of this thread is glorious and filled with juicy debate.

acoard 10y ago

>The key thing in monarchial feudalism is that a single person is the state (Imagine a person worth 'only' 14 trillion dollars, he's got his own airforce, navy, army). This is entirely wrong. Other people have already commented on what feudalism is, but I wanted to provide a brief high-level history in case people were interested. So let's take the historical look! How did we go from ancient Rome, an imperial monarchy, to feudalism being the law of the land? The seeds of feudalism were sown from the Roman Emperor Diocletian's decision not to tax lords if all commerce took place within a lord's domain. Diocletian was a wonderful Emperor, one of the best, but he was around at a time when the Empire was cannibalizing itself with constant civil wars, making his main goal was peace and stability. To simplify, if I owned a city, and the city blacksmith supplied everyone else in my city, the state (i.e. the Roman Empire) would not take a cut of this. Only if goods flowed into a neighbouring lord's areas would the empire tax it. What's the incentive structure here for the lords? Build up as much as you can within your domain and make it as self-sufficient as possible. It's legal tax avoidance, baby! Because of all the civil wars there were labour shortages, both from bloodshed, devastated landscapes, and people fleeing. What's the solution to this? Outlaw moving, making peasants stay where they grew up and work the job of their father. This made economic planning much simpler, and Diocletian was an economic planner. In doing so, we get serfdom going hand in hand with the seeds of feudalism. Over time, as the Roman Empire waned, this political structure stayed in effect. Power was increasingly ceded to the regional and away from the imperial. Basically, the state collapsed on itself. While we do get the Catholic Church springing up, it only sorta-kinda fills the power vacuum as it's clearly not a state in the same way Rome was. Ambitious lords take more power, filling the vacuum of the the monolithic state. Without a single arbiter to enforce relationships between the lords, fealty and swearing allegiances become much more important. Literally the only thing holding these states together were a few lords word, some marriages, and often some hostages. If it was worth it to break those things, the 'state' would crumble, and everyone knew it. That's basically it. From then, feudalism became the law of the land for around a thousand years (let's roughly say 300AD-1500AD). Then we're onto absolute monarchies, the renaissance, and the bourgeoisie throwing a wrench in everything. In case all that hasn't helped, here's a (probably weak) analogy: monarchies are monoliths, feudalism is microservices. FYI, Diocletian didn't use the word lord, he used dux. Which is where we get duke, doge, duce, etc. We also get the word dioceses here, which the Catholic Church still uses to this day.