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The rich 0.01% can’t own everything in a free market because they still need to profit by selling their products and services to the rest of humanity. And for t

The rich 0.01% can’t own everything in a free market because they still need to profit by selling their products and services to the rest of humanity. And for that to happen, the rest of humanity still needs to be earning money. The market will solve this by itself, if governments don’t fuck it up. If everything is owned by a small group of people (which communists say it’s the government) that’s communism not capitalism. Capitalism requires people making transactions in order to achieve the main goal of generating profits.

api 9y ago
The majority of humanity can work for subsistence level wages. The primary economic activity of the rich can be gambling, which typically takes the form of repeated inflation of asset and financial instrument bubbles. The rich can also make money selling luxury goods to one another and to an upper middle (professional) class. That class would still exist but would be relatively small like the priestly and knight classes of feudal Europe. This isn't optimal from an economic perspective nor does it result in the greatest wealth for the rich or anyone else, but it seems to be how things unfold. All we need is powdered wigs and merkins and we'll be in 17th century France. The problem is that the rich are human and humans don't respond to Skinner boxes any differently from rats. The lower classes generally can't lose themselves in Skinner boxes because they must engage in something resembling productive work to survive. The rich on the other hand are untethered from this demand and will naturally find whatever Skinner boxes present themselves. Financial speculation, literal gambling, hedonism (Trump with his porn stars etc.), and palace intrigue (which in the modern age takes the form of political maneuvering or media/celebrity drama) are all Skinner boxes that deliver those dopamine hits with escalating spacing between doses that we're wired to become addicted to. Super-wealthy people who engage in productive work (e.g. Jeff Bezos or Elon Musk) are so notable because they're rare. Maybe they have some inborn or conditioned resistance to Skinner boxes that most people lack.

api 9y ago

The majority of humanity can work for subsistence level wages. The primary economic activity of the rich can be gambling, which typically takes the form of repeated inflation of asset and financial instrument bubbles. The rich can also make money selling luxury goods to one another and to an upper middle (professional) class. That class would still exist but would be relatively small like the priestly and knight classes of feudal Europe. This isn't optimal from an economic perspective nor does it result in the greatest wealth for the rich or anyone else, but it seems to be how things unfold. All we need is powdered wigs and merkins and we'll be in 17th century France. The problem is that the rich are human and humans don't respond to Skinner boxes any differently from rats. The lower classes generally can't lose themselves in Skinner boxes because they must engage in something resembling productive work to survive. The rich on the other hand are untethered from this demand and will naturally find whatever Skinner boxes present themselves. Financial speculation, literal gambling, hedonism (Trump with his porn stars etc.), and palace intrigue (which in the modern age takes the form of political maneuvering or media/celebrity drama) are all Skinner boxes that deliver those dopamine hits with escalating spacing between doses that we're wired to become addicted to. Super-wealthy people who engage in productive work (e.g. Jeff Bezos or Elon Musk) are so notable because they're rare. Maybe they have some inborn or conditioned resistance to Skinner boxes that most people lack.