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> efforts to redistribute wealth mostly destroy it Not sure what you mean by this. Isn't the goal here to destroy a lot of wealth? Wealth is a relative term -

> efforts to redistribute wealth mostly destroy it Not sure what you mean by this. Isn't the goal here to destroy a lot of wealth? Wealth is a relative term - someone with $1B is not rich because 1B is an inherently big number, they are rich because $1B is orders of magnitudes greater than what most people will make in their lifetimes. Making people all have about the same in the bank other would destroy wealth.

weberc2 9y ago
He means that by trying to redistribute wealth, we end up with less overall to go around. Something like a smaller GDP, though I don't know if that's the metric the parent has in mind. I also don't know how true this argument is; I'm just the messenger.
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mac01021 9y ago
While relative wealth definitely has value (mostly because it enables you to afford the labor of others), wealth itself is not fundamentally relative. - Almost everyone today (in western, developed nations) has more purchasing power than almost everyone did 100 years ago. Doesn't that mean that everyone is more wealthy? - As new technology is developed, Alice's wealth depends less on Bob's poverty, because she can rely more on automation and less on Bob's labor. This might cause tremendous problems for Bob, but that's besides the point. Bob can now (if he manages to prosper) become immeasurably wealthy without reducing Alice's wealth in the least. - You could make millions of dollars selling farm equipment. It seems clear that, in doing this, you are accumulating wealth. But it is not clear that your success needs to be at anyone's expense. Presumably your customers are buying your wares because your product helps them build wealth too. If the market is saturated, your success might come at the expense of your competitor's, but that seems like a different phenomenon from the idea of relative wealth that you've described above.
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weberc2 9y ago

He means that by trying to redistribute wealth, we end up with less overall to go around. Something like a smaller GDP, though I don't know if that's the metric the parent has in mind. I also don't know how true this argument is; I'm just the messenger.

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mac01021 9y ago

While relative wealth definitely has value (mostly because it enables you to afford the labor of others), wealth itself is not fundamentally relative. - Almost everyone today (in western, developed nations) has more purchasing power than almost everyone did 100 years ago. Doesn't that mean that everyone is more wealthy? - As new technology is developed, Alice's wealth depends less on Bob's poverty, because she can rely more on automation and less on Bob's labor. This might cause tremendous problems for Bob, but that's besides the point. Bob can now (if he manages to prosper) become immeasurably wealthy without reducing Alice's wealth in the least. - You could make millions of dollars selling farm equipment. It seems clear that, in doing this, you are accumulating wealth. But it is not clear that your success needs to be at anyone's expense. Presumably your customers are buying your wares because your product helps them build wealth too. If the market is saturated, your success might come at the expense of your competitor's, but that seems like a different phenomenon from the idea of relative wealth that you've described above.

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