4 ms·

Easy. More money compounds faster. First, he likely got that wealthy by taking aggressive positions. Meaning he is comfortable with it. Second (and this is ob

Easy. More money compounds faster. First, he likely got that wealthy by taking aggressive positions. Meaning he is comfortable with it. Second (and this is obviously an extreme example). Say I have $50m. I borrow another $25m. I put all of that money in a single concentrated position, that is very likely to go up (i.e. Amazon). It doubles in a year. Now you made $75m (excluding some interest payments).

jondubois 8y ago
>> Easy. More money compounds faster Obviously, there is a limit as to how much money a single individual can have - It doesn't need to be written into law. Wealthy individuals are a flaw of capitalism and the system will always keep trying to get rid of them. If someone has too much money, working people will stop trying to produce goods and services for each other; instead, they'll focus all their attention and energy on trying to extract money from the rich person. That's kind of what happened with the tech industry in the past few years; nobody is really trying to provide value to regular people (that's just a pretext); instead, everyone is trying to extract value from rich investors; that's where the money is. If you want to make money, why bother go after regular people who don't have much? Our whole economy today is built around fooling rich people out of their capital. Which is easier; 1. To convince 100K working class people to give you $10 each in exchange for 100K units of goods/services or 2. To convince 1 wealthy person to give you $1 million in exchange for a 4-slide pitch deck and a speech that you put together the night before.
- repomies6999 8y ago
  No one has designed the system.
- comboy 8y ago
  You are describing a self regulating system. In your opinion the problem is that some people have too much money, so why do you see as a problem the fact that the system is actively working to transfer this money elsewhere?
  - ItsMe000001 8y ago
    > the fact that the system is actively working to transfer this money elsewhere? A one-guy example vs. "the system" - which overall clearly works towards concentrating wealth, not towards distributing it. https://www.economist.com/finance-and-economics/2014/11/06/forget-the-1 https://www.economist.com/finance-and-economics/2014/11/06/f... Or do you really see "the system" (especially when left alone) work towards spreading wealth away from the rich? Even just away from the concrete person who are rich right now, to new people, even if the overall distribution remained the same. As far as I know not even the second option is happening, being rich seems to be very much "genetic" (in quotes, of course), to different degrees in different countries but even in the best of cases a clear trend. In any case, I'm a little confused about who meant to say what and whom I should be responding to since it was the OP who wrote > Wealthy individuals are a flaw of capitalism and the system will always keep trying to get rid of them. Edit: just to poke some fun at The Economist whose link I posted, here is another one from the same paper with a contradicting headline: https://www.economist.com/books-and-arts/2017/06/29/why-the-20-and-not-the-1-are-the-real-problem https://www.economist.com/books-and-arts/2017/06/29/why-the-... EDIT^2: Before anyone else mentions it, I find discussions such as these silly: https://www.pbs.org/newshour/economy/is-increasing-income-inequality-a-myth https://www.pbs.org/newshour/economy/is-increasing-income-in... To me this is a discussion about how wet water really is. With tens of millions uninsured, articles like this: https://www.theguardian.com/world/2017/dec/01/un-extreme-poverty-america-special-rapporteur https://www.theguardian.com/world/2017/dec/01/un-extreme-pov... -- I think discussions like the linked one are like discussing if there really is more or less water coming through the leak in the roof (or the ship's hull). Overall, over longer periods, the problem does not seem to be going away one bit. Whether it gets half a percentage point worse or better depending on the measurement period and the measures chosen, so what. The main point remains.
skrebbel 8y ago
that is very likely to go up If that's very likely, it'd already be up.
- RandomInteger4 8y ago
  They mean very likely from the trader's perspective.
anonu 8y ago
> More money compounds faster. Not really. X% interest compounds at the same speed if you have $100 or $100 million in your account.

jondubois 8y ago

>> Easy. More money compounds faster Obviously, there is a limit as to how much money a single individual can have - It doesn't need to be written into law. Wealthy individuals are a flaw of capitalism and the system will always keep trying to get rid of them. If someone has too much money, working people will stop trying to produce goods and services for each other; instead, they'll focus all their attention and energy on trying to extract money from the rich person. That's kind of what happened with the tech industry in the past few years; nobody is really trying to provide value to regular people (that's just a pretext); instead, everyone is trying to extract value from rich investors; that's where the money is. If you want to make money, why bother go after regular people who don't have much? Our whole economy today is built around fooling rich people out of their capital. Which is easier; 1. To convince 100K working class people to give you $10 each in exchange for 100K units of goods/services or 2. To convince 1 wealthy person to give you $1 million in exchange for a 4-slide pitch deck and a speech that you put together the night before.

repomies6999 8y ago
No one has designed the system.
comboy 8y ago
You are describing a self regulating system. In your opinion the problem is that some people have too much money, so why do you see as a problem the fact that the system is actively working to transfer this money elsewhere?
- ItsMe000001 8y ago
  > the fact that the system is actively working to transfer this money elsewhere? A one-guy example vs. "the system" - which overall clearly works towards concentrating wealth, not towards distributing it. https://www.economist.com/finance-and-economics/2014/11/06/forget-the-1 https://www.economist.com/finance-and-economics/2014/11/06/f... Or do you really see "the system" (especially when left alone) work towards spreading wealth away from the rich? Even just away from the concrete person who are rich right now, to new people, even if the overall distribution remained the same. As far as I know not even the second option is happening, being rich seems to be very much "genetic" (in quotes, of course), to different degrees in different countries but even in the best of cases a clear trend. In any case, I'm a little confused about who meant to say what and whom I should be responding to since it was the OP who wrote > Wealthy individuals are a flaw of capitalism and the system will always keep trying to get rid of them. Edit: just to poke some fun at The Economist whose link I posted, here is another one from the same paper with a contradicting headline: https://www.economist.com/books-and-arts/2017/06/29/why-the-20-and-not-the-1-are-the-real-problem https://www.economist.com/books-and-arts/2017/06/29/why-the-... EDIT^2: Before anyone else mentions it, I find discussions such as these silly: https://www.pbs.org/newshour/economy/is-increasing-income-inequality-a-myth https://www.pbs.org/newshour/economy/is-increasing-income-in... To me this is a discussion about how wet water really is. With tens of millions uninsured, articles like this: https://www.theguardian.com/world/2017/dec/01/un-extreme-poverty-america-special-rapporteur https://www.theguardian.com/world/2017/dec/01/un-extreme-pov... -- I think discussions like the linked one are like discussing if there really is more or less water coming through the leak in the roof (or the ship's hull). Overall, over longer periods, the problem does not seem to be going away one bit. Whether it gets half a percentage point worse or better depending on the measurement period and the measures chosen, so what. The main point remains.

skrebbel 8y ago

that is very likely to go up If that's very likely, it'd already be up.

RandomInteger4 8y ago
They mean very likely from the trader's perspective.

anonu 8y ago

> More money compounds faster. Not really. X% interest compounds at the same speed if you have $100 or $100 million in your account.