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More than that. In my opinion, it's better to offer lots of small equal opportunities (which means certain forgiveness) than one big equal opportunity (which yo
by js8 7y ago
More than that. In my opinion, it's better to offer lots of small equal opportunities (which means certain forgiveness) than one big equal opportunity (which you can get easily wrong). That's why I would favor a minimum basic income, which gives people a small opportunity to do better every month, although it has its downsides, too (I wouldn't want to replace all public services with it).
Also, this only addresses the low-end of the inequality, for example people being poor. But inequality (of power, money are just a proxy for that) also causes problems at the high-end, because power corrupts and the more power you have, more corrupt you can become. So it is desirable to limit that too.
I wouldn't mind if there was a cap on personal wealth (say $10M), but many people feel it's wrong. I don't think it's necessarily unfair, I mean if economics is a competition (and not a power grab), in other competitions you don't get an advantage if you have been previously a winner (for example, Usain Bolt doesn't get to start 10m ahead because he won all the races up to that point). Even though people in other competitions start at the same line again, it actually doesn't seem to affect their willingness to participate. I don't know why people believe business should be any different.
- logicchains 7y agoIf you have a system that caps personal wealth, you've just given more power to the people running the system. And if it's like any such system that's existed historically (e.g. communist Russia and China essentially capping personal wealth at zero), the people running the system will end up accumulating way more wealth than the cap (and way more power than in a system that didn't give the rulers such strong influence over people's lives).
- thaumasiotes 7y agoWang Mang ( https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wang_Mang https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wang_Mang ) capped personal wealth in the first century at a level much higher than zero. It was still a total disaster as far as history tells us, though in this case the official histories are overtly hostile to Wang Mang. The theory is always available, though, that history hates him so much because his policies were so awful.
- js8 7y agoCapping personal wealth at zero (or less than wealth per capita for that matter) is obviously a nonsense, so you should be careful with this strawman. Reasonable amount probably starts at some multiple of that. Of course, you need democracy too. Since the beginning, the democratic concept was about equality of access to political power among citizens. In many ways, it's what traditional anarchist/liberal left is about - equality in power (egalitarianism?) and not necessarily in the outcome.
- logicchains 7y ago>Capping personal wealth at zero (or less than wealth per capita for that matter) is obviously a nonsense, so you should be careful with this strawman. Reasonable amount probably starts at some multiple of that. There's not much more power needed to cap wealth at zero than at 10 million: the enforcement infrastructure would be the same.
- deleted 7y ago[deleted]
- ramblerman 7y ago> wouldn't mind if there was a cap on personal wealth (say $10M) > Even though people in other competitions start at the same line again I think limiting personal wealth is too extreme personally. But you could still even the starting line, as you put it, by limiting inheritance.
- ptah 7y agoinstead of capping wealth, traditional societies had jubilees where after a certain number of years all debt is reset to zero