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Neither category should exist. The fact billionaires exist is an indictment against our system and how we allocate resources.

lotsofpulp 6y ago
So what should happen to your assets when the total of their market capitalization crosses the $1B line?
- IanCal 6y ago
  In good idle games they shift the goal once you hit more boring levels. Stealing partly from someone else I can't find a reference for: Ownership capped at 1 billion, you get a sticker saying "I won capitalism" and all further growth and income goes to the government for social programs. You get a new ticker that estimates lives saved and people homes/fed/educated - that becomes your new boasting figure. Not entirely serious but extreme wealth should be considered a bug. Perhaps it's true that the best system overall always results in this but it's worth considering that it might not be.
  - canofbars 6y ago
    Do you think billionaires would just stop and let the system collect their money? My first thought is they would just donate all ownership over the cap to family members. They could probably continue this forever before every family member gains $1B
    - newen 6y ago
      Seems perfectly fine to me. Gifts are taxed in the US. If it causes resulting problems, deal with it then. Don't let perfection be the enemy of good.
      - buzzerbetrayed 6y ago
        How is this considered "good" in this scenario? Income is taxed anyway. So how to rerouting money away from "taxed income" to "taxed gifts" help anything?
        IanCal 6y ago
        It would mean that income is taxed twice or equivalent to it being taxed higher. Under a core assumption here that the tax revenue is used to help, this is better than it not happening. More importantly though, it's not a precise tax plan it's intended to show the absurdity of the outcome we currently have rather than show a particular way out. That the answers are often "but there would be loopholes" rather than "having people amass much more wealth is inherently good for us all" is telling.
        8note 6y ago
        This wealth might not be accumulated through income, and thus not taxed as income?
    - mcintyre1994 6y ago
      Couldn’t you just cap non-charitable gifts to something like $1 million lifetime per recipient in that case? I doubt that’d be particularly controversial with anyone who isn’t a multi-millionaire, unless I’m missing something.
      - IanCal 6y ago
        Or cap them on the donor.
    - IanCal 6y ago
      Perhaps missed the end of the comment there. Edit - though, they do. They already do. Not at the same level but they do let the government take their money. And also, how else would they increase their score on the next level?
    - 8note 6y ago
      That's still a better outcome though? The result is that wealth is distributed to more people
  - Privacy846 6y ago
    > Ownership capped at 1 billion, you get a sticker saying "I won capitalism" and all further growth and income goes to the government for social programs. You get a new ticker that estimates lives saved and people homes/fed/educated - that becomes your new boasting figure. But that would be a lie since most of that money/value was created by other people, most likely their employees.
    - buzzerbetrayed 6y ago
      First off, those employees have been paid already, so I'm not sure what the relevance is. If they agreed to work for 100k/year, and forgo the risk of starting a company, why should they get more than the agreed upon price after the company does well? It may be in the companies interest to give them a bonus to keep them around, but that's a separate issue. Second, the only way you can argue they created more value than the founder of the company is in aggregate. But they also likely made more money than the founder in aggregate. A company tries to pay employees based on the value they bring. If a CEO makes 10,000,000/year, it's probably because the company thinks that CEO is worth it (adds more value than that). So it's silly to point out that the 1000 engineers below him add more value in aggregate. Why, yes.. they also get paid way more than 10,000,000/year in aggregate. And if the CEO/founder flat out owns the company then all this talk is irrelevant. It's theirs. They can do what they want. If they hired people to build the company for them and the people agreed, good for them. Sounds like a beneficial negotiation for both parties. Edit: I'm not necessarily arguing for or against the existence of billionaires. That's a tough problem that I don't think I know the answer to. I'm just saying that pointing out that "employees add the real value to the company" is a dumb argument.
      - 8note 6y ago
        Does the employee still get that money if the company goes under? People getting pink slips says that they're taking on just as much risk as the founder. Signing that contract does not guarantee the 100k/year
        buzzerbetrayed 6y ago
  - somethoughts 6y ago
    Yes - this! Perhaps it should be "Ok yay you won, now did you win in cheat mode (by exploiting people and reasources) or real mode!" Since Forbes is the default scoreboard perhaps when it makes its Billionaires List, instead of a basic sort ranked by on net worth, Forbes should incorporate Environmental, Social and Governance like factors similar to those starting to be used for Equity investing [1] and do a final ranking based on ESG*net worth. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Triple_bottom_line https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Triple_bottom_line
    - 8note 6y ago
      Nah, it's an option for starting againm.in video games you get to win in the initial difficulty, but then you can start again in plus mode
      - somethoughts 6y ago
        Yes - that's fair - that's the Andrew Carnegie and Alfred Nobel style of gaming. After winning first in cheat mode, play again in real mode!
  - jessaustin 6y ago
    ...you get a sticker... Consider for a moment what privileges would have to attach to this sticker, in order for the billionaires to let this through Congress. Definitely they would still want to have control of dominant cultural narratives, and they'd still want to write all the laws, and those of them who appreciate fabulous personal possessions would still appreciate those. The administration of this sticker would be quite complicated...
    - atq2119 6y ago
      You've pretty much summed up why billionaires shouldn't exist: their existence is incompatible with democracy. (I don't know how best to fix this either.)
    - IanCal 6y ago
      It's telling that the responses to a non-serious tax plan are not on the topic "why billionaires existing is inherently good" but like this where you argue that billionaires have too much control over the democratic process for it to be implemented and a concern over the administration of a small scale sticker run.
- tshaddox 6y ago
  I don’t know, many some more of the value of those assets could go to the workers who created the value.
  - jskajakzkjx 6y ago
    Who’s going to invest the capital and do the work to run a company that develops technology (eg. hiring the tens of thousands of people required to fabricate 5 nm chips and build cell phones) if there is no way to become a billionaire off of it? I figure the people who are capable of that kind of stuff would put all their efforts toward overthrowing the system instead if that’s what the rules were.
    - wyre 6y ago
      I thought the reason for the advancement for science and technology was for the betterment of humankind and not dreams of becoming a billionaire.
      - jskajakzkjx 6y ago
        I buy it for basic research that a few people in a lab can do, but it seems hard to coordinate the efforts of tens of thousands of people that way. You need ruthless prioritization of different initiatives and performance incentives for management and other stuff that public servants and academics aren’t that big on.
    - tshaddox 6y ago
      Is there no one who would invest capital in order to earn only hundreds of millions of dollars?
      - jskajakzkjx 6y ago
        What if many billions in capital are needed, and there’s risk too? It’s just not worth getting involved unless you can earn billions.
- tartoran 6y ago
  > So what should happen to your assets when the total of their market capitalization crosses the $1B line? People who created enormous value in the past were rich but not filthy rich and that was not their goal in the first place. Most of them were happy enough to be paid back in respect, recognition, credit, fanfare, veneration etc..
  - imgabe 6y ago
    I'm sorry, what? What people are you referring to? I've read a fair amount about the gilded age robber barons and such. They were definitely not content to be paid back in "respect, recognition, fanfare". In fact that is more of a distraction and nuisance, and occasionally a liability or danger. The sorts of business practices used in the past to amass and keep wealth make anything today look like kiddie stuff.
    - tartoran 6y ago
      Yep
  - sumedh 6y ago
    > but not filthy rich What is your definition of filthy rich?
  - old-gregg 6y ago
    > People who created enormous value in the past were rich but not filthy rich Rockefeller's net worth was about 2% of US GDP. IIRC, that's still a record.
- codyb 6y ago
  I also am not sure how you're supposed to tax something like stock. If Bezos sold all of his stock in Amazon, well, for one he'd certainly be worth a lot less fairly rapidly as the stock collapsed based on his massive sale of it. He's taxed on the sale of his stock as far as I understand it, although the capital gains tax should presumably be higher than the tax on earned wages. It seems sensible that when you're putting hours in, you'd get taxed at a lower rate than someone whose money made them more money. But... if Bezos has 10 million shares and they're worth 100 billion dollars, do you... take his shares away even if he's not selling them just because his assets are worth more than a billion dollars? I think it's fair to say the current state of affairs where his employees are working at barely livable wages and getting carted away in ambulances from his warehouses is certainly untenable. At that point the federal government needs to step in and say that these places aren't paying these workers enough to live a comfortable lifestyle and support a family. It's too bad the extremely wealthy are also so able to pervert our systems of governance through lobbying efforts which they can afford.
  - 8note 6y ago
    Taxings loans against the stock would do it, I think? You can't use the stock based wealth without asking it, unless you take out a loan with the stock as collateral.
- atq2119 6y ago
  Moving the assets above the line to a social wealth fund whose profits will be paid out equally to all residents of the country. Such funds already exist in several countries (and US states), no reason why we can't get creative about how to grow them.
api 6y ago
Who would allocate resources better?
- chillwaves 6y ago
  The government, controlled by the people.
  - deleted 6y ago
    [deleted]
  - deleted 6y ago
    [deleted]
  - ajmadesc 6y ago
    The problem is finding a way to implement a government controlled by the people. I respect the optimism though
    - chillwaves 6y ago
      It's a lot more difficult to do with billionaires around, especially the ones appointed to cabinet level positions in government.
  - themacguffinman 6y ago
    If the government or any similar bureaucracy could actually allocate resources better, we wouldn't have so many failed planned economies and not a single successful example compared to capitalist economies.
    - jrsala 6y ago
      This is a false dichotomy. GP did not suggest a planned economy as a solution, and more generally a planned economy is not the only alternative to wanton capitalism where government rather has more control over resources.
- oblio 6y ago
Aunche 6y ago
I think most people agree that a book author deserves a couple dollars every time someone purchases their media. JK Rowling's stories have been read and watched billions of times? Who deserves to control that capital more than JK Rowling herself?
- Frondo 6y ago
  Let her control it til the end of the tax year, and then let her help fund the system that made her fabulously wealthy.
  - Aunche 6y ago
    The government is made up of people who make mistakes even if they have the best of intentions. It doesn't make sense for a bureaucrat to have more control of the wealth than the person who created that wealth purely from her imagination.
    - sjm 6y ago
      A government that makes some "mistakes" is far better than the alternative. Just ask the town a bunch of libertarians took over. [0] 0: https://newrepublic.com/article/159662/libertarian-walks-into-bear-book-review-free-town-project https://newrepublic.com/article/159662/libertarian-walks-int...
      - Aunche 6y ago
        I'm saying that it's reasonable to expect a significant fraction of the wealth that you created, which is true in every developed country. I'm not advocating for libertarianism.
        sjm 6y ago
        So do you really believe any single person is so "brilliant" (or whatever adjective you want to use) to have truly created or earned billions of dollars through their own brilliance alone? Do you think Jeff Bezos is 1,310,000x more deserving of his wealth than the average American household? IMO it's not reasonable at all past a certain point to continue to amass this kind of wealth that is a by-product of a broken system driven by exploitation, a system in this stage clearly set up for the rich to get richer while those struggling remain stagnant at best.
RestlessMind 6y ago
Not really. If someone designs a COVID vaccine tomorrow and decide to charge just 1$ for every person receiving that, I would not begrudge them becoming a billionaire when a billion people benefit from that vaccine. That is some real value created and delivered to the society.
- jessaustin 6y ago
  I think probably there will be some costs associated with creating and manufacturing this vaccine...

lotsofpulp 6y ago

So what should happen to your assets when the total of their market capitalization crosses the $1B line?

IanCal 6y ago
In good idle games they shift the goal once you hit more boring levels. Stealing partly from someone else I can't find a reference for: Ownership capped at 1 billion, you get a sticker saying "I won capitalism" and all further growth and income goes to the government for social programs. You get a new ticker that estimates lives saved and people homes/fed/educated - that becomes your new boasting figure. Not entirely serious but extreme wealth should be considered a bug. Perhaps it's true that the best system overall always results in this but it's worth considering that it might not be.
- canofbars 6y ago
  Do you think billionaires would just stop and let the system collect their money? My first thought is they would just donate all ownership over the cap to family members. They could probably continue this forever before every family member gains $1B
  - newen 6y ago
    Seems perfectly fine to me. Gifts are taxed in the US. If it causes resulting problems, deal with it then. Don't let perfection be the enemy of good.
    - buzzerbetrayed 6y ago
      How is this considered "good" in this scenario? Income is taxed anyway. So how to rerouting money away from "taxed income" to "taxed gifts" help anything?
      - IanCal 6y ago
        It would mean that income is taxed twice or equivalent to it being taxed higher. Under a core assumption here that the tax revenue is used to help, this is better than it not happening. More importantly though, it's not a precise tax plan it's intended to show the absurdity of the outcome we currently have rather than show a particular way out. That the answers are often "but there would be loopholes" rather than "having people amass much more wealth is inherently good for us all" is telling.
      - 8note 6y ago
        This wealth might not be accumulated through income, and thus not taxed as income?
  - mcintyre1994 6y ago
    Couldn’t you just cap non-charitable gifts to something like $1 million lifetime per recipient in that case? I doubt that’d be particularly controversial with anyone who isn’t a multi-millionaire, unless I’m missing something.
    - IanCal 6y ago
      Or cap them on the donor.
  - IanCal 6y ago
    Perhaps missed the end of the comment there. Edit - though, they do. They already do. Not at the same level but they do let the government take their money. And also, how else would they increase their score on the next level?
  - 8note 6y ago
    That's still a better outcome though? The result is that wealth is distributed to more people
- Privacy846 6y ago
  > Ownership capped at 1 billion, you get a sticker saying "I won capitalism" and all further growth and income goes to the government for social programs. You get a new ticker that estimates lives saved and people homes/fed/educated - that becomes your new boasting figure. But that would be a lie since most of that money/value was created by other people, most likely their employees.
  - buzzerbetrayed 6y ago
    First off, those employees have been paid already, so I'm not sure what the relevance is. If they agreed to work for 100k/year, and forgo the risk of starting a company, why should they get more than the agreed upon price after the company does well? It may be in the companies interest to give them a bonus to keep them around, but that's a separate issue. Second, the only way you can argue they created more value than the founder of the company is in aggregate. But they also likely made more money than the founder in aggregate. A company tries to pay employees based on the value they bring. If a CEO makes 10,000,000/year, it's probably because the company thinks that CEO is worth it (adds more value than that). So it's silly to point out that the 1000 engineers below him add more value in aggregate. Why, yes.. they also get paid way more than 10,000,000/year in aggregate. And if the CEO/founder flat out owns the company then all this talk is irrelevant. It's theirs. They can do what they want. If they hired people to build the company for them and the people agreed, good for them. Sounds like a beneficial negotiation for both parties. Edit: I'm not necessarily arguing for or against the existence of billionaires. That's a tough problem that I don't think I know the answer to. I'm just saying that pointing out that "employees add the real value to the company" is a dumb argument.
    - 8note 6y ago
      Does the employee still get that money if the company goes under? People getting pink slips says that they're taking on just as much risk as the founder. Signing that contract does not guarantee the 100k/year
      - buzzerbetrayed 6y ago
- somethoughts 6y ago
  Yes - this! Perhaps it should be "Ok yay you won, now did you win in cheat mode (by exploiting people and reasources) or real mode!" Since Forbes is the default scoreboard perhaps when it makes its Billionaires List, instead of a basic sort ranked by on net worth, Forbes should incorporate Environmental, Social and Governance like factors similar to those starting to be used for Equity investing [1] and do a final ranking based on ESG*net worth. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Triple_bottom_line https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Triple_bottom_line
  - 8note 6y ago
    Nah, it's an option for starting againm.in video games you get to win in the initial difficulty, but then you can start again in plus mode
    - somethoughts 6y ago
      Yes - that's fair - that's the Andrew Carnegie and Alfred Nobel style of gaming. After winning first in cheat mode, play again in real mode!
- jessaustin 6y ago
  ...you get a sticker... Consider for a moment what privileges would have to attach to this sticker, in order for the billionaires to let this through Congress. Definitely they would still want to have control of dominant cultural narratives, and they'd still want to write all the laws, and those of them who appreciate fabulous personal possessions would still appreciate those. The administration of this sticker would be quite complicated...
  - atq2119 6y ago
    You've pretty much summed up why billionaires shouldn't exist: their existence is incompatible with democracy. (I don't know how best to fix this either.)
  - IanCal 6y ago
    It's telling that the responses to a non-serious tax plan are not on the topic "why billionaires existing is inherently good" but like this where you argue that billionaires have too much control over the democratic process for it to be implemented and a concern over the administration of a small scale sticker run.
tshaddox 6y ago
I don’t know, many some more of the value of those assets could go to the workers who created the value.
- jskajakzkjx 6y ago
  Who’s going to invest the capital and do the work to run a company that develops technology (eg. hiring the tens of thousands of people required to fabricate 5 nm chips and build cell phones) if there is no way to become a billionaire off of it? I figure the people who are capable of that kind of stuff would put all their efforts toward overthrowing the system instead if that’s what the rules were.
  - wyre 6y ago
    I thought the reason for the advancement for science and technology was for the betterment of humankind and not dreams of becoming a billionaire.
    - jskajakzkjx 6y ago
      I buy it for basic research that a few people in a lab can do, but it seems hard to coordinate the efforts of tens of thousands of people that way. You need ruthless prioritization of different initiatives and performance incentives for management and other stuff that public servants and academics aren’t that big on.
  - tshaddox 6y ago
    Is there no one who would invest capital in order to earn only hundreds of millions of dollars?
    - jskajakzkjx 6y ago
      What if many billions in capital are needed, and there’s risk too? It’s just not worth getting involved unless you can earn billions.
tartoran 6y ago
> So what should happen to your assets when the total of their market capitalization crosses the $1B line? People who created enormous value in the past were rich but not filthy rich and that was not their goal in the first place. Most of them were happy enough to be paid back in respect, recognition, credit, fanfare, veneration etc..
- imgabe 6y ago
  I'm sorry, what? What people are you referring to? I've read a fair amount about the gilded age robber barons and such. They were definitely not content to be paid back in "respect, recognition, fanfare". In fact that is more of a distraction and nuisance, and occasionally a liability or danger. The sorts of business practices used in the past to amass and keep wealth make anything today look like kiddie stuff.
  - tartoran 6y ago
    Yep
- sumedh 6y ago
  > but not filthy rich What is your definition of filthy rich?
- old-gregg 6y ago
  > People who created enormous value in the past were rich but not filthy rich Rockefeller's net worth was about 2% of US GDP. IIRC, that's still a record.
codyb 6y ago
I also am not sure how you're supposed to tax something like stock. If Bezos sold all of his stock in Amazon, well, for one he'd certainly be worth a lot less fairly rapidly as the stock collapsed based on his massive sale of it. He's taxed on the sale of his stock as far as I understand it, although the capital gains tax should presumably be higher than the tax on earned wages. It seems sensible that when you're putting hours in, you'd get taxed at a lower rate than someone whose money made them more money. But... if Bezos has 10 million shares and they're worth 100 billion dollars, do you... take his shares away even if he's not selling them just because his assets are worth more than a billion dollars? I think it's fair to say the current state of affairs where his employees are working at barely livable wages and getting carted away in ambulances from his warehouses is certainly untenable. At that point the federal government needs to step in and say that these places aren't paying these workers enough to live a comfortable lifestyle and support a family. It's too bad the extremely wealthy are also so able to pervert our systems of governance through lobbying efforts which they can afford.
- 8note 6y ago
  Taxings loans against the stock would do it, I think? You can't use the stock based wealth without asking it, unless you take out a loan with the stock as collateral.
atq2119 6y ago
Moving the assets above the line to a social wealth fund whose profits will be paid out equally to all residents of the country. Such funds already exist in several countries (and US states), no reason why we can't get creative about how to grow them.

api 6y ago

Who would allocate resources better?

chillwaves 6y ago
The government, controlled by the people.
- deleted 6y ago
  [deleted]
- deleted 6y ago
  [deleted]
- ajmadesc 6y ago
  The problem is finding a way to implement a government controlled by the people. I respect the optimism though
  - chillwaves 6y ago
    It's a lot more difficult to do with billionaires around, especially the ones appointed to cabinet level positions in government.
- themacguffinman 6y ago
  If the government or any similar bureaucracy could actually allocate resources better, we wouldn't have so many failed planned economies and not a single successful example compared to capitalist economies.
  - jrsala 6y ago
    This is a false dichotomy. GP did not suggest a planned economy as a solution, and more generally a planned economy is not the only alternative to wanton capitalism where government rather has more control over resources.
oblio 6y ago

Aunche 6y ago

I think most people agree that a book author deserves a couple dollars every time someone purchases their media. JK Rowling's stories have been read and watched billions of times? Who deserves to control that capital more than JK Rowling herself?

Frondo 6y ago
Let her control it til the end of the tax year, and then let her help fund the system that made her fabulously wealthy.
- Aunche 6y ago
  The government is made up of people who make mistakes even if they have the best of intentions. It doesn't make sense for a bureaucrat to have more control of the wealth than the person who created that wealth purely from her imagination.
  - sjm 6y ago
    A government that makes some "mistakes" is far better than the alternative. Just ask the town a bunch of libertarians took over. [0] 0: https://newrepublic.com/article/159662/libertarian-walks-into-bear-book-review-free-town-project https://newrepublic.com/article/159662/libertarian-walks-int...
    - Aunche 6y ago
      I'm saying that it's reasonable to expect a significant fraction of the wealth that you created, which is true in every developed country. I'm not advocating for libertarianism.
      - sjm 6y ago
        So do you really believe any single person is so "brilliant" (or whatever adjective you want to use) to have truly created or earned billions of dollars through their own brilliance alone? Do you think Jeff Bezos is 1,310,000x more deserving of his wealth than the average American household? IMO it's not reasonable at all past a certain point to continue to amass this kind of wealth that is a by-product of a broken system driven by exploitation, a system in this stage clearly set up for the rich to get richer while those struggling remain stagnant at best.

RestlessMind 6y ago

Not really. If someone designs a COVID vaccine tomorrow and decide to charge just 1$ for every person receiving that, I would not begrudge them becoming a billionaire when a billion people benefit from that vaccine. That is some real value created and delivered to the society.

jessaustin 6y ago
I think probably there will be some costs associated with creating and manufacturing this vaccine...