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Depends on your ethical framework. A utilitarian could claim that after the point where the marginal value of the dollar to the rich person is so low that seizi

Depends on your ethical framework. A utilitarian could claim that after the point where the marginal value of the dollar to the rich person is so low that seizing it results in higher global utility, even taking into account the angst and disincentives on the rich as a result. Is society better off if you take 100 mil in income from Larry Ellison and Sundar pichai and build a few hundred units of low income housing? Even if it pisses off ellison and Google pays pichai less the next year?

seibelj 7y ago
I see the wealthy person as someone who is clever and disciplined. The government is neither clever nor disciplined. I believe letting the billionaire keep his or her money is more likely to increase world utility. Elon and Bezos send people to space with the wealth they fairly gained. The government prints trillions of dollars every year to fund their deficits and wars. If the government needs another billion dollars, it’s quite easy for them to create it. Why seize money from the rare person who is talented enough to make so much of it?
- pmoriarty 7y ago
  Let's say some incredibly talented person "fairly" comes to own all the water in the world. All the rest of us would depend on this person to live, and he/she could choose which of us lives or dies simply by not selling us any water. Would you want to live in such a world? Or do you think maybe the rest of us deserve to have some of that water, even if we're not as clever and we didn't "fairly" earn it? Dialing back to the real world, all these billionaires and other elites are having very real outsize impacts on the lives of the less wealthy -- from whether/where/how they work, to how they and their children get educated, to what information we have access to, to who goes to jail and who goes free, who goes to war and against whom, and who lives or dies. Incredible wealth gives people incredible power, and the concentration of this incredible power in the hands of a small minority is distorting the world in ways those not in this minority are having trouble swallowing, no matter whether this concentration of wealth and power was "fairly" arrived at or not.
  - bluecalm 7y ago
    If you are concerned about that focus on anti monopoly laws not taxes. If one person owns all the water so you prefer a solution that forces them to give % of income derived from it to others or do you prefer a solution that prevents them from owning all the water?
    - pmoriarty 7y ago
      Anti-monopoly laws are not enough (even if we ignore the problems of regulatory capture). If all the water was owned by three people instead of one person, or even by five people, or a thousand, there'd still be the other seven billion of us which would die of thirst if these thousand commanded. But, yes, giving up some of what they own is one way of dealing with it... though one could argue that by the time they have control of all that water or wealth, it's too late, because by then they have so much power that they, not you, get to call the shots. Another way is to change the system so that they don't gain so much control in the first place, and so that water (or wealth) is distributed more equitably among all seven billion of us instead of just a tiny few.
- TFYS 7y ago
  The government sent people to space decades ago. Elon and Bezos would be nowhere near sending people to space without the work government has done. The government spends trillions on wars exactly because of the power concentration you are defending. It's not the common man that decides to go to war, it's the network of wealthy people who benefit from it.
drstewart 7y ago
> A utilitarian could claim that after the point where the marginal value of the dollar to the rich person is so low that seizing it results in higher global utility, even taking into account the angst and disincentives on the rich as a result. A utilitarian could (and has) claimed that this marginal dollar occurs at the point where you have the bare minimum to survive: https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/Y4Adk743X2ZoMBSBi/does-utilitarianism-require-extreme-self-sacrifice-if-not https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/Y4Adk743X2ZoMBSBi/does-utili... >"For example, utilitarianism apparently endorses killing a single innocent person and harvesting their organs if it will save five other people. It also appears to imply that donating all your money to charity beyond what you need to survive isn’t just admirable but morally obligatory. " So I don't think a strictly utilitarian argument is sufficient.
- joshuamorton 7y ago
  > A utilitarian could (and has) claimed that this marginal dollar occurs at the point where you have the bare minimum to survive There's a few problems with this line of reasoning: 1. Its not clear to me that this argument is being made by a utilitarian, as you claim 2. You at least appear to show a misunderstanding of what "the marginal dollar" is. Every dollar is the marginal dollar. Its just that the relative value of dollar 1 (which you need to survive) is greater than the relative value of dollar 1 Billion, which you use to, uhhh, buy an island. I think what you're saying is that there is a point where the marginal value of your dollars is low enough that you are ethically obligated to donate them is at or around subsistence level, and that might be true, but it leads to the third problem: 3. Even for a strict utilitarian, if you take into account externalities, the right thing to do might not be to take all the money away from people. If you're optimizing for something like reducing death, reducing everyone in the US to subsistence level probably isn't the best solution: you'll likely do something unwarranted like cause a revolt. This has two major net negatives: a bunch of people die in the revolt, and you end up losing a lot of your money, either because you spend it to put down the revolt or because you don't and you lose and people take it back. 4. While improving the life of those in absolute poverty is a laudable goal, it's not clear that it makes sense for a government to do that, except when it ends up being beneficial to the government or its people. In other words, a government's moral imperative probably doesn't extend (far) beyond its borders. > So I don't think a strictly utilitarian argument is sufficient. People often forget about externalities. On the other hand, if you think of the supply of billionaires as a revenue source, and then you think of there being decreasing demand for being a billionaire as taxes go up, but increased revenue per billionaire as taxes go up, you can draw up supply and demand curves and optimize to maximize revenue from billionaires (or people in general really, its just that the marginal rates can likely be higher on billionaires and they're the talking point of the day). If there are 100 billionaires, and you tax 2% more, and 1 billionaire moves away, you're still up on revenue. I often hear people arguing that we should operate our government more like a business.

seibelj 7y ago

I see the wealthy person as someone who is clever and disciplined. The government is neither clever nor disciplined. I believe letting the billionaire keep his or her money is more likely to increase world utility. Elon and Bezos send people to space with the wealth they fairly gained. The government prints trillions of dollars every year to fund their deficits and wars. If the government needs another billion dollars, it’s quite easy for them to create it. Why seize money from the rare person who is talented enough to make so much of it?

pmoriarty 7y ago
Let's say some incredibly talented person "fairly" comes to own all the water in the world. All the rest of us would depend on this person to live, and he/she could choose which of us lives or dies simply by not selling us any water. Would you want to live in such a world? Or do you think maybe the rest of us deserve to have some of that water, even if we're not as clever and we didn't "fairly" earn it? Dialing back to the real world, all these billionaires and other elites are having very real outsize impacts on the lives of the less wealthy -- from whether/where/how they work, to how they and their children get educated, to what information we have access to, to who goes to jail and who goes free, who goes to war and against whom, and who lives or dies. Incredible wealth gives people incredible power, and the concentration of this incredible power in the hands of a small minority is distorting the world in ways those not in this minority are having trouble swallowing, no matter whether this concentration of wealth and power was "fairly" arrived at or not.
- bluecalm 7y ago
  If you are concerned about that focus on anti monopoly laws not taxes. If one person owns all the water so you prefer a solution that forces them to give % of income derived from it to others or do you prefer a solution that prevents them from owning all the water?
  - pmoriarty 7y ago
    Anti-monopoly laws are not enough (even if we ignore the problems of regulatory capture). If all the water was owned by three people instead of one person, or even by five people, or a thousand, there'd still be the other seven billion of us which would die of thirst if these thousand commanded. But, yes, giving up some of what they own is one way of dealing with it... though one could argue that by the time they have control of all that water or wealth, it's too late, because by then they have so much power that they, not you, get to call the shots. Another way is to change the system so that they don't gain so much control in the first place, and so that water (or wealth) is distributed more equitably among all seven billion of us instead of just a tiny few.
TFYS 7y ago
The government sent people to space decades ago. Elon and Bezos would be nowhere near sending people to space without the work government has done. The government spends trillions on wars exactly because of the power concentration you are defending. It's not the common man that decides to go to war, it's the network of wealthy people who benefit from it.

drstewart 7y ago

> A utilitarian could claim that after the point where the marginal value of the dollar to the rich person is so low that seizing it results in higher global utility, even taking into account the angst and disincentives on the rich as a result. A utilitarian could (and has) claimed that this marginal dollar occurs at the point where you have the bare minimum to survive: https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/Y4Adk743X2ZoMBSBi/does-utilitarianism-require-extreme-self-sacrifice-if-not https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/Y4Adk743X2ZoMBSBi/does-utili... >"For example, utilitarianism apparently endorses killing a single innocent person and harvesting their organs if it will save five other people. It also appears to imply that donating all your money to charity beyond what you need to survive isn’t just admirable but morally obligatory. " So I don't think a strictly utilitarian argument is sufficient.

joshuamorton 7y ago
> A utilitarian could (and has) claimed that this marginal dollar occurs at the point where you have the bare minimum to survive There's a few problems with this line of reasoning: 1. Its not clear to me that this argument is being made by a utilitarian, as you claim 2. You at least appear to show a misunderstanding of what "the marginal dollar" is. Every dollar is the marginal dollar. Its just that the relative value of dollar 1 (which you need to survive) is greater than the relative value of dollar 1 Billion, which you use to, uhhh, buy an island. I think what you're saying is that there is a point where the marginal value of your dollars is low enough that you are ethically obligated to donate them is at or around subsistence level, and that might be true, but it leads to the third problem: 3. Even for a strict utilitarian, if you take into account externalities, the right thing to do might not be to take all the money away from people. If you're optimizing for something like reducing death, reducing everyone in the US to subsistence level probably isn't the best solution: you'll likely do something unwarranted like cause a revolt. This has two major net negatives: a bunch of people die in the revolt, and you end up losing a lot of your money, either because you spend it to put down the revolt or because you don't and you lose and people take it back. 4. While improving the life of those in absolute poverty is a laudable goal, it's not clear that it makes sense for a government to do that, except when it ends up being beneficial to the government or its people. In other words, a government's moral imperative probably doesn't extend (far) beyond its borders. > So I don't think a strictly utilitarian argument is sufficient. People often forget about externalities. On the other hand, if you think of the supply of billionaires as a revenue source, and then you think of there being decreasing demand for being a billionaire as taxes go up, but increased revenue per billionaire as taxes go up, you can draw up supply and demand curves and optimize to maximize revenue from billionaires (or people in general really, its just that the marginal rates can likely be higher on billionaires and they're the talking point of the day). If there are 100 billionaires, and you tax 2% more, and 1 billionaire moves away, you're still up on revenue. I often hear people arguing that we should operate our government more like a business.