4 ms·

Appropriate Inheritance tax can cure it;

• Applejinx 7y ago
  Surprisingly tiny Wealth Tax is even more effective at curing it. The part that's interesting is not where it's transferred from one entity to another, it's the extremity of the phenomenon in the first place. The distributions we currently see have no excuse or purpose. It's fine talking about the value of exceptional individuals, but if a Jeff Bezos is even ten thousand times better than your average schmoe, never mind 'millions of times better', then he would be able to have his influence without the aggregated power given him through accumulation of capital. Never mind whether his dumb kid deserves to have the accumulated power of entire countries abstracted into the form of capital: HE himself has no business possessing that kind of power on top of his functional exceptionalness. He can damned well fend for himself, and will likely still be a big winner and have all he could wish. He has no right to the accumulated power our system awards him, on top of what he can do with his own intelligence and efforts. It's a magnifying effect, fully exploited by just the sort of person Bezos is. Concerns of inheritance only highlight the problem. The parent is not that much superior to the dumb kid, and humans do not merit so much importance (as 'exceptional individuals') as our system claims they do. The BEST you can hope for is a crazy person like Elon Musk, aiming for some quixotic goal while they blunder around causing damage… and that's a best case scenario.