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I feel like billionaires and private capital in general should not have that much power over the world because it's undemocratic. Bill Gates is going the right

I feel like billionaires and private capital in general should not have that much power over the world because it's undemocratic. Bill Gates is going the right thing and I would hopefully do the same thing as him in his shoes, but do we need more Koch brothers spending money where they think it will do good?

ernst_klim 7y ago
> but do we need more Koch brothers spending money where they think it will do good? Would you rather prefer a Stalin guy in charge of funds and money? You are talking about extremes here, as if private money are inherently bad, while governments are inherently good and democratic. Even in our "liberal democracies" governments spend on bailouts, subsidies for big biz, countless wars, foreign bloody dictatorships. This is better than Koch brothers? Democratic, hah? The good thing about private money is the diversity, there are different rich people, on the scale from Hitler to Jesus, with different ideals and views, spending on different things. With governments it's way more centralized, and if your government is fucked, it's abysmally fucked due to the concentration of power.
- asdfman123 7y ago
  The argument that any kind of wealth distribution is akin to Soviet-style communism is the extreme idea. It's been practiced peacefully throughout Europe. Authoritarianism is a different political dimension.
  - afiori 7y ago
    That is not wealth distribution, that is a social state that prioritize the minimal needs of its people. Rich people poses no problems with that. (many people who do are rich and they use their money as a tool to get more money, but being rich itself is not a problem)
  - ernst_klim 7y ago
    > The argument that any kind of wealth distribution is akin to Soviet-style communism There is no such argument in my comment. The comment explicitly states that saying that any private money are evil is akin to saying that any gov is evil because Stalin. > It's been practiced peacefully throughout Europe. Wealth redistribution is very modest here. Germany, Switzerland, Sweden and Finland are one of the most liberal countries in the world (way more liberal than US), and the redistribution here is mostly from middle class to the poor, rather than from rich to the poor, with the huge emphasis on voluntarism (Sweden and Finland don't even have minimum wage).
deleted 7y ago
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rayiner 7y ago
> need more Koch brothers spending money where they think it will do good? Yes?
afiori 7y ago
I believe this is missing the point. Both the way you can accumulate money and the stuff you can buy are determinant in saying whether billionaires are moral or not. What I see here is an economy of scale and I am much more worried about the erosion of a middle class than with the presence of billionaires. If I properly remember the reasoning about the effectiveness of the Gini coefficient what you desperately should try to defend is the possibility of upward mobility. What cannot be denied is that the international market and freedom of services allowed an unprecedented economic boom, for this to stable across time you need to allow people to become rich (especially if money is counted as "projected prices of stuff that might never get sold" as for amazon). You also need a strong social net so that weaker social classes are protected, but we should move away from the mentality that wealth is theft.

ernst_klim 7y ago

> but do we need more Koch brothers spending money where they think it will do good? Would you rather prefer a Stalin guy in charge of funds and money? You are talking about extremes here, as if private money are inherently bad, while governments are inherently good and democratic. Even in our "liberal democracies" governments spend on bailouts, subsidies for big biz, countless wars, foreign bloody dictatorships. This is better than Koch brothers? Democratic, hah? The good thing about private money is the diversity, there are different rich people, on the scale from Hitler to Jesus, with different ideals and views, spending on different things. With governments it's way more centralized, and if your government is fucked, it's abysmally fucked due to the concentration of power.

asdfman123 7y ago
The argument that any kind of wealth distribution is akin to Soviet-style communism is the extreme idea. It's been practiced peacefully throughout Europe. Authoritarianism is a different political dimension.
- afiori 7y ago
  That is not wealth distribution, that is a social state that prioritize the minimal needs of its people. Rich people poses no problems with that. (many people who do are rich and they use their money as a tool to get more money, but being rich itself is not a problem)
- ernst_klim 7y ago
  > The argument that any kind of wealth distribution is akin to Soviet-style communism There is no such argument in my comment. The comment explicitly states that saying that any private money are evil is akin to saying that any gov is evil because Stalin. > It's been practiced peacefully throughout Europe. Wealth redistribution is very modest here. Germany, Switzerland, Sweden and Finland are one of the most liberal countries in the world (way more liberal than US), and the redistribution here is mostly from middle class to the poor, rather than from rich to the poor, with the huge emphasis on voluntarism (Sweden and Finland don't even have minimum wage).

deleted 7y ago

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rayiner 7y ago

> need more Koch brothers spending money where they think it will do good? Yes?

afiori 7y ago

I believe this is missing the point. Both the way you can accumulate money and the stuff you can buy are determinant in saying whether billionaires are moral or not. What I see here is an economy of scale and I am much more worried about the erosion of a middle class than with the presence of billionaires. If I properly remember the reasoning about the effectiveness of the Gini coefficient what you desperately should try to defend is the possibility of upward mobility. What cannot be denied is that the international market and freedom of services allowed an unprecedented economic boom, for this to stable across time you need to allow people to become rich (especially if money is counted as "projected prices of stuff that might never get sold" as for amazon). You also need a strong social net so that weaker social classes are protected, but we should move away from the mentality that wealth is theft.