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One underappreciated point about this is that there’s no reason to think billionaires would be good at this. Billionaires who made their fortune through their
by mlthoughts2018 8y ago
One underappreciated point about this is that there’s no reason to think billionaires would be good at this.
Billionaires who made their fortune through their own invention or business acumen are exceptionally good at making money and protecting wealth. That doesn’t mean they are good at producing a different instrument of value, like some measure of environmental health or social well-being. You pretty much have to convert those social problems into a format where it’s an inescapable wealth problem if they don’t solve it. But if you leave it up to their discretion, they’ll either lack focus because they are focused on making or protecting wealth, or they’ll be out of their depth trying to generate non-profit outcomes which is a skill they don’t have.
Imagine if we put an earned wealth cap of $1 billion dollars of total worldwide assets, and then we said that to exceed that wealth cap, youhave to reach specific societal level social and environmental wellness milestones. Kind of like Elon Musk’s current Tesla compensation, but applied to all billionaires.
No family businesses, no offshore accounts, no shell companies, no way to leave wealth in non-cash assets. You hit 1 billion, any increase of wealth beyond it from any source is immediately seized by the government and held in untouchable escrow until you demonstrate hitting societal wellness outcomes.
- jgroszko 8y agoYou could spend a lot of money lobbying for those laws to go away before you hit $1bn...
- mlthoughts2018 8y agoOf course it’s an unrealistic proposal. I’m just saying if we couldn’t enforce something like that, then asking billionaires to solve world crises is like asking a professional basketball team to win the gold in synchronized swimming.