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I’m sure you’re a reasonable person and could come up with a reasonable tax rate on generational wealth, but I have zero faith that we will elect reasonable peo

I’m sure you’re a reasonable person and could come up with a reasonable tax rate on generational wealth, but I have zero faith that we will elect reasonable people to make these sorts of decisions.

TeMPOraL 8y ago
So what you're saying is that the cure will be worse than disease? If that's so, then I guess we agree there's a somewhat concavey-looking function of "limiting generational wealth transfer" -> "sustainable benefit to civilization". Which shifts the problem from "whether to do it at all" to "how to move towards maximum without screwing up". It's a harder problem, but civilization is essentially built of attempts to solve such problem. Here's to hope that maybe our descendants will learn how to do it right.
- remarkEon 8y ago
  >It's a harder problem, but civilization is essentially built of attempts to solve such problem. I fundamentally, emphatically disagree with this. I think it's a weird rewriting of history to think that "Civilization was built by trying to stop wealth transfers within powerful families". Do I think a lot of wealth is trapped within a few families, and that might be a problem? Sure. Do I think that the ability to destroy generational wealth transfers is what made Civilization? No, and I think it's absolutely crazy to think so. It ignores every great family in history that did everything from win wars to build railroads.
  - digitaltrees 8y ago
    I think their argument was that civilization iterates on solutions to many social problems by adjusting policy over time so that human coordinated behavior is effective. The argument above isn’t focused on wealth transfer in particular. Civilization experiments with policy. At the extreme, there is a push towards consolidation and monopolies and this is counterbalanced by the rule of a unhappy mob. This causes policy to shift over time.

TeMPOraL 8y ago

So what you're saying is that the cure will be worse than disease? If that's so, then I guess we agree there's a somewhat concavey-looking function of "limiting generational wealth transfer" -> "sustainable benefit to civilization". Which shifts the problem from "whether to do it at all" to "how to move towards maximum without screwing up". It's a harder problem, but civilization is essentially built of attempts to solve such problem. Here's to hope that maybe our descendants will learn how to do it right.

remarkEon 8y ago
>It's a harder problem, but civilization is essentially built of attempts to solve such problem. I fundamentally, emphatically disagree with this. I think it's a weird rewriting of history to think that "Civilization was built by trying to stop wealth transfers within powerful families". Do I think a lot of wealth is trapped within a few families, and that might be a problem? Sure. Do I think that the ability to destroy generational wealth transfers is what made Civilization? No, and I think it's absolutely crazy to think so. It ignores every great family in history that did everything from win wars to build railroads.
- digitaltrees 8y ago
  I think their argument was that civilization iterates on solutions to many social problems by adjusting policy over time so that human coordinated behavior is effective. The argument above isn’t focused on wealth transfer in particular. Civilization experiments with policy. At the extreme, there is a push towards consolidation and monopolies and this is counterbalanced by the rule of a unhappy mob. This causes policy to shift over time.