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There are two approaches to this - one says something like "they have too much money, tax it and spend it on the poor / shaping society". The other is "if you

There are two approaches to this - one says something like "they have too much money, tax it and spend it on the poor / shaping society". The other is "if you stop people from earning bazillions you won't get innovation. I am not a fan of either particularly (well of course we want to tax people and spend it to create a better society, it's just that sentence is basically all politics ever, not a specific policy to enact) I prefer the idea that a billionaire is a market failure. It's not like there are no millionaires looking up and going, well that guy deserves his wealth and I am just going to accept my lot in life" If we see a billionaire in a given industry - let's ask "what regulations will they really really hate to see removed or created?"

coldtea 6y ago
>* The other is "if you stop people from earning bazillions you won't get innovation.* We had tons of innovation in the past (even more important things than today) when people didn't earn bazillions from them...
- robertlagrant 6y ago
  And now we have global reach. Windows can be sold everywhere for no extra cost. That was never the case before software. Spotting a trend is not as good as understanding a trend.
- ummonk 6y ago
  When? We’ve had more innovation in the last 200 years than any era before, and billionaires have been a fact of life during this period.
  - ironman1478 6y ago
    A lot of the innovations come from funding from the government. Things like green energy, the internet, and soon self driving cars all come from funding for the government, either through incentives (like the DARPA self driving challenges a few years ago) or just straight up state sponsored research. You don't need billionaires to make things happen. Also, I will ask, where are all the billionaires who actually spend their money to do good once they've amassed their wealth? Bill Gates has done this, but lots of these people are abject failures at actually using their money directly to do good. They might have innovated in while they were acquiring their money, but once they get it they don't seem so innovative anymore.
    - ghufran_syed 6y ago
      >"where are all the billionaires who actually spend their money to do good once they've amassed their wealth?" You mean like these people? "40 of America's wealthiest people" https://givingpledge.org/About.aspx https://givingpledge.org/About.aspx
  - coldtea 6y ago
    Most of that innovation was from government funding, regularly paid researchers (remember XEROC PARC?), regular scientists and professors, and so on. Hardly any of that was funded by billionaires...
crazygringo 6y ago
> I prefer the idea that a billionaire is a market failure. Not at all -- the market is working exactly as intended (as long as it's not coming from externalities, like pollution that's not being paid for). What's failing isn't the market, but taxation. We should be celebrating billionaires because they've succeeded in delivering better, cheaper products than other people. But we should also be taxing them at 90+% by that point. Again -- it's not market failure. It's taxation failure.
- coldtea 6y ago
  >as long as it's not coming from externalities, like pollution that's not being paid for When it comes to crazy wealth, most of it comes from externalities - from environmental to paying workers poorly.
- maest 6y ago
  > the market is working exactly as intended I'm not saying that's what you're saying, but a lot of people tend to treat the market as intrinsically morally correct. As in, if something is the outcome of the market working correctly, then that thing is the "correct" outcome. So, if billionaires appear as a result of the market doing its thing, then billionaries are morally entitled to their money. I'm not sure I buy that argument.
  - crazygringo 6y ago
    I definitely don't buy it either. The market has nothing to do with morality. It's simply a question of efficiency: are people as a whole better off, utility wise? But as long as everyone is making voluntary, non-coerced trades (labor for $, $ for products), then by definition they are better off. There's no moral aspect to it, just economic efficiency/"progress". But that doesn't mean you get to keep everything you make. The market is a tool, not an end. If you kept everything, there'd be no taxation, no government, no education, nothing else, and it would be a moral disaster. The moral element comes into play with taxation: because you (as a billionaire) benefit extraordinarily from the country's systems put into place -- contract enforcement, courts, roads, education of your workers, everything -- you are morally obligated to pay your "fair share" of that back. The only people who claim people are entitled to 100% of the money they make are a subset of libertarians/anarchists. It's not a very popular opinion, since it makes society pretty much unworkable.
okintheory 6y ago
There's a big thing missing from this picture: If you have $ 1 billion, then you will eventually have $ 10 billion (40 yrs of 6 % returns), and your kid could easily end their life with $ 100 billion (add 40 more yrs). Is that ok?
- bluedevil2k 6y ago
  Why wouldn’t it be OK? They pay their income tax every year, legally, why should the government get even more of their money? The whole estate tax thing has always bothered me, the government double dipping on your money and acting like someone looking to profit from people’s death.
  - ironman1478 6y ago
    Well, there is nothing bad/good necessarily, but it doesn't really feel right imo. How is it fair for somebody to benefit from something without having worked for it? There is a baseline level of providing for children, providing education, providing housing, caring, etc. but such high levels of wealth being passed on makes no sense and is just obscene. The estate tax doesn't really effect many people, only an extremely small subset (some quick googling shows that over 11 million has to be passed down). Also, the estate tax also exists to prevent things like landed gentries. Nobody wants a society of rent seekers.
    - bluedevil2k 6y ago
      The whole stock market is built on the premise that you don’t have to work for the company to benefit from its success. Why is a family’s success any different? If a parent works hard, makes money, pays his taxes and wants to give that money to a child, it seems obscene to me that the government steps in and takes yet another cut of the money. The parent paid their income taxes on the money already. I believe in his death he owes capital gains on his stock holdings. So all the money that’s passed down has been taxed fairly already.
      - ironman1478 6y ago
nraynaud 6y ago
the innovation part is false. A lot of Enlightenment innovation come from people who had little to do in their life and science/engineering was their hobby. A lot of nobility, monks, etc.
MichaelRazum 6y ago
Similar in Germany a lot of voices say: Billionaires are immoral and shouldn’t exist. Kind of terrifying that success is made evil. What would be the consequences? Well you wouldn’t have tesla or spacex. As far as I see a self made billionaire is much more capable spending money then the government. In my opinion that is the main point.
- thundergolfer 6y ago
  Success is not being made evil. That is a highly perverse twisting of the idea. Nearly all success in the world involves no billionaire. SpaceX’s achievements are at least partially the credit of Elon, and it is a possibility that his billionaire status was necessary for getting SpaceX off the ground, but a massive government loan was also involved. Also, man went to the moon 60 years ago with no billionaire involved. A massive success.
- jasonwatkinspdx 6y ago
  It's insane how this mythology persists. SpaceX would not exist without two things: 1. All the space race era research NASA published openly with no strings. 2. US Gov as SpaceX's anchor customer. I mean Elon is currently going after 16 billion in government grants related to this stuff. His success story IS LITERALLY THE OPPOSITE of this "government sucks entrepreneurs rule" nonsense cheerleading.
  - MichaelRazum 6y ago
    Still it is true: Without Elon no Spacex. Without Elon no Tesla. That is a fact. Would Elon not be billionaire I would bet both companies would have never existed.
    - jasonwatkinspdx 6y ago
      The companies as formed probably not, but some company occupying those opportunities? Inevitable imo. Both were strongly supported by the underlying trends and context. There was gonna be an explosion in EVs based on the trajectory of lion pricing alone. Making an aspirational/braggart product is a fairly straightforward strategy to tap into that moving top to bottom. SpaceX is competing with a deliberately created government monopoly. Those fat margins would have attracted someone sooner or later. What mattered was the willingness to push through the legal challenge to get a seat at the table.
dylan604 6y ago
> The other is "if you stop people from earning bazillions you won't get innovation. A lot of innovation comes from someone precisely because they have no money. Sure funding helps do a lot of research, but necessity is the mother of all invention.

coldtea 6y ago

>* The other is "if you stop people from earning bazillions you won't get innovation.* We had tons of innovation in the past (even more important things than today) when people didn't earn bazillions from them...

robertlagrant 6y ago
And now we have global reach. Windows can be sold everywhere for no extra cost. That was never the case before software. Spotting a trend is not as good as understanding a trend.
ummonk 6y ago
When? We’ve had more innovation in the last 200 years than any era before, and billionaires have been a fact of life during this period.
- ironman1478 6y ago
  A lot of the innovations come from funding from the government. Things like green energy, the internet, and soon self driving cars all come from funding for the government, either through incentives (like the DARPA self driving challenges a few years ago) or just straight up state sponsored research. You don't need billionaires to make things happen. Also, I will ask, where are all the billionaires who actually spend their money to do good once they've amassed their wealth? Bill Gates has done this, but lots of these people are abject failures at actually using their money directly to do good. They might have innovated in while they were acquiring their money, but once they get it they don't seem so innovative anymore.
  - ghufran_syed 6y ago
    >"where are all the billionaires who actually spend their money to do good once they've amassed their wealth?" You mean like these people? "40 of America's wealthiest people" https://givingpledge.org/About.aspx https://givingpledge.org/About.aspx
- coldtea 6y ago
  Most of that innovation was from government funding, regularly paid researchers (remember XEROC PARC?), regular scientists and professors, and so on. Hardly any of that was funded by billionaires...

crazygringo 6y ago

> I prefer the idea that a billionaire is a market failure. Not at all -- the market is working exactly as intended (as long as it's not coming from externalities, like pollution that's not being paid for). What's failing isn't the market, but taxation. We should be celebrating billionaires because they've succeeded in delivering better, cheaper products than other people. But we should also be taxing them at 90+% by that point. Again -- it's not market failure. It's taxation failure.

coldtea 6y ago
>as long as it's not coming from externalities, like pollution that's not being paid for When it comes to crazy wealth, most of it comes from externalities - from environmental to paying workers poorly.
maest 6y ago
> the market is working exactly as intended I'm not saying that's what you're saying, but a lot of people tend to treat the market as intrinsically morally correct. As in, if something is the outcome of the market working correctly, then that thing is the "correct" outcome. So, if billionaires appear as a result of the market doing its thing, then billionaries are morally entitled to their money. I'm not sure I buy that argument.
- crazygringo 6y ago
  I definitely don't buy it either. The market has nothing to do with morality. It's simply a question of efficiency: are people as a whole better off, utility wise? But as long as everyone is making voluntary, non-coerced trades (labor for $, $ for products), then by definition they are better off. There's no moral aspect to it, just economic efficiency/"progress". But that doesn't mean you get to keep everything you make. The market is a tool, not an end. If you kept everything, there'd be no taxation, no government, no education, nothing else, and it would be a moral disaster. The moral element comes into play with taxation: because you (as a billionaire) benefit extraordinarily from the country's systems put into place -- contract enforcement, courts, roads, education of your workers, everything -- you are morally obligated to pay your "fair share" of that back. The only people who claim people are entitled to 100% of the money they make are a subset of libertarians/anarchists. It's not a very popular opinion, since it makes society pretty much unworkable.

okintheory 6y ago

There's a big thing missing from this picture: If you have $ 1 billion, then you will eventually have $ 10 billion (40 yrs of 6 % returns), and your kid could easily end their life with $ 100 billion (add 40 more yrs). Is that ok?

bluedevil2k 6y ago
Why wouldn’t it be OK? They pay their income tax every year, legally, why should the government get even more of their money? The whole estate tax thing has always bothered me, the government double dipping on your money and acting like someone looking to profit from people’s death.
- ironman1478 6y ago
  Well, there is nothing bad/good necessarily, but it doesn't really feel right imo. How is it fair for somebody to benefit from something without having worked for it? There is a baseline level of providing for children, providing education, providing housing, caring, etc. but such high levels of wealth being passed on makes no sense and is just obscene. The estate tax doesn't really effect many people, only an extremely small subset (some quick googling shows that over 11 million has to be passed down). Also, the estate tax also exists to prevent things like landed gentries. Nobody wants a society of rent seekers.
  - bluedevil2k 6y ago
    The whole stock market is built on the premise that you don’t have to work for the company to benefit from its success. Why is a family’s success any different? If a parent works hard, makes money, pays his taxes and wants to give that money to a child, it seems obscene to me that the government steps in and takes yet another cut of the money. The parent paid their income taxes on the money already. I believe in his death he owes capital gains on his stock holdings. So all the money that’s passed down has been taxed fairly already.
    - ironman1478 6y ago

nraynaud 6y ago

the innovation part is false. A lot of Enlightenment innovation come from people who had little to do in their life and science/engineering was their hobby. A lot of nobility, monks, etc.

MichaelRazum 6y ago

Similar in Germany a lot of voices say: Billionaires are immoral and shouldn’t exist. Kind of terrifying that success is made evil. What would be the consequences? Well you wouldn’t have tesla or spacex. As far as I see a self made billionaire is much more capable spending money then the government. In my opinion that is the main point.

thundergolfer 6y ago
Success is not being made evil. That is a highly perverse twisting of the idea. Nearly all success in the world involves no billionaire. SpaceX’s achievements are at least partially the credit of Elon, and it is a possibility that his billionaire status was necessary for getting SpaceX off the ground, but a massive government loan was also involved. Also, man went to the moon 60 years ago with no billionaire involved. A massive success.
jasonwatkinspdx 6y ago
It's insane how this mythology persists. SpaceX would not exist without two things: 1. All the space race era research NASA published openly with no strings. 2. US Gov as SpaceX's anchor customer. I mean Elon is currently going after 16 billion in government grants related to this stuff. His success story IS LITERALLY THE OPPOSITE of this "government sucks entrepreneurs rule" nonsense cheerleading.
- MichaelRazum 6y ago
  Still it is true: Without Elon no Spacex. Without Elon no Tesla. That is a fact. Would Elon not be billionaire I would bet both companies would have never existed.
  - jasonwatkinspdx 6y ago
    The companies as formed probably not, but some company occupying those opportunities? Inevitable imo. Both were strongly supported by the underlying trends and context. There was gonna be an explosion in EVs based on the trajectory of lion pricing alone. Making an aspirational/braggart product is a fairly straightforward strategy to tap into that moving top to bottom. SpaceX is competing with a deliberately created government monopoly. Those fat margins would have attracted someone sooner or later. What mattered was the willingness to push through the legal challenge to get a seat at the table.

dylan604 6y ago

> The other is "if you stop people from earning bazillions you won't get innovation. A lot of innovation comes from someone precisely because they have no money. Sure funding helps do a lot of research, but necessity is the mother of all invention.