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> A rich kid is much more likely to leave an impact on the world A rich person is subsidized by society. Why should we optimize fiscal policy to enable them an

by yTh0 6y ago

> A rich kid is much more likely to leave an impact on the world A rich person is subsidized by society. Why should we optimize fiscal policy to enable them and let them leave an outsized impact on the world? Especially when the outsized impact of the rich is inequality, anti-democratic political norms, and environmental destruction? They have no skills, or information advantage. Just a network effect advantage through monopoly of a shared value store. I see little difference with this system compared to monarchy or theology rule, which were also hierarchical, with ones power based on closeness to power, and monopoly of value store and public time economy. To clarify, I mean wealthy non-doers. Hedge funds, old wealth, etc. Doctors, engineers, etc., sure let us give them our ear. Unskilled rich are a drain on public agency.

bidirectional 6y ago
> To clarify, I mean wealthy non-doers. Hedge funds, old wealth, etc. What does this mean? How are hedge funds unskilled or non-doers in the manner that heirs are? I'd say the average hedge fund analyst is probably as accomplished/skilled/hard working as the average doctor or engineer.
- pc86 6y ago
  Certainly more-so than the average [software] engineer. There's no 6-week bootcamp for hedge funds and there's no "typing JavaScript into a computer" equivalent. We can argue all day about whether hedge funds are good, bad, or useful, and reasonable people will disagree on the answer, but you'd be hard-pressed to make a cogent argument that the average software engineer works even nearly as hard as the average hedge fund analyst.
- yTh0 6y ago
  The value they claim to unlock is completely made up. People need logistics to move materials to enable people to do stuff. Not speculative emotional guidance on ephemeral value stores. Most of them are, or are funded by, inherited wealth to service fiscal policy memes.
- randycupertino 6y ago
  Speaking as someone who worked in private equity, our Principal had generational wealth- literally he was an Italian count and his family money came from the Crusades. The people who made the investments and ran the fund came from State University of New York at Buffalo. The count had a team of three assistants and one's entire job was to coordinate shipping cases of wine from his vanity winery to everyone their kids encountered to lubricate the wheels of their success in life. Elite squash trainer might take on the son? Case of wine to the wife. College tour? Case of wine to the tour leader. I was an analyst reporting directly to the CFO and wasn't an assistant but would routinely get asked to do lifestyle chores like help the count's uncle hook up their ipod to their Range Rover's bluetooth. Hence why I left finance and went into medicine which is more of a meritocracy.
  - cercatrova 6y ago
    Wow, the wine shipping is an incredible way to influence people. I should try that more often. So far I've only been sending small gifts over to people, or hand written letters. I know in sales this sort of stuff works very well but it also works well in day to day life.
  - moneywoes 6y ago
    How has the transition been?
tubesebut 6y ago
> Unskilled rich are a drain on public agency. Indeed, and much of this comes down to hereditary wealth - one of the world's great evils. What we should do as a society is, whenever a person gains above a certain threshold of wealth and refuses to give it up to the state, they are forcibly sterilized and banned from adopting, thus ensuring no heirs. And anyone who already has offspring has their wealth taxed at 100% above that threshold. This might sound dystopian, but just imagine if this policy had prevented George W Bush from ever being born. That in itself would be a public good.
- okwubodu 6y ago
  This is an extremely unhinged comment.
  - tux3 6y ago
    This is not an exaggeration, I had stopped reading their comment before the truly deranged part and would not have noticed.
    - tubesebut1 6y ago
      There was nothing deranged about my comment. Eliminating the Bush family line, for example, before they managed to create a dynasty of wealth and power, would have been a benefit to humanity. If you don't have an argument against it other than "that's truly deranged!" then that's your problem really.
  - tubesebut 6y ago
    It's a reasonable trade-off for those who seek wealth above all else. Want to get absurdly wealthy? Fine, but you're part of the eunuch class now. This way, as a nation we can harness those rare useful wealth-obsessed people, while preventing them from creating hereditary lines of societal parasites. It's a win-win.
  - walshemj 6y ago
    Yes I suspect they don't mean they would give up on inheriting their mum & dads home
pacman2 6y ago
"A rich kid is much more likely to leave an impact on the world" I quoted this as a neutral fact. That things might or could be better otherwise is a total different question.
- yTh0 6y ago
  Qualify it as such in the original post. Some search engine can come along in N days, weeks, months, and provide that snippet out of the context you intended. Social media is not a friends backyard fire pit. The information peddled here isn’t necessarily lost to memory the next day. I don’t know you so none of this should be considered a personal attack. I’m just taking information and expanding on it.
  - pacman2 6y ago
    "Qualify it as such in the original post." It is unfortunate that people seem not to be able to distinguish between a neutral fact and an endorsement. Just recently I posted something I consider a fact and since I was afraid if could be controversial, added that this is not meant in a judgmental way. The bulletin board owner took this to a meta level and argued that it was exactly this add-on that showed that it was meant in a judgmental way and banned me.
    - yTh0 6y ago
      It’s been shown that words mean different things given geographical region. One brain is not composed of the same experiential model, and as a result, neurological model, as others. Physics > chemistry -> biology -> humans -> metaphor and analogy. Kind of my mental road map for information hierarchy. If it’s not physically quantifiable it probably falls into some category like “relative metaphor and analogy”.
  - tarboreus 6y ago
    This seems unnecessary, since it's obvious from context. Endless caveats are death in writing and readability. We have modal verbs like "should" for a reason, and OP chose not to use them, making the communication clear.
chrismcb 6y ago
"unskilled risk are a drain on public agency" what does this mean? How are they a drain?
oceanplexian 6y ago
There are a lot of assumptions baked into this statement. For example what does unskilled mean? Who gets to decide it? Would you consider an artist or a musician unskilled? A diplomat? Those people don’t code or perform surgery but most people would consider them skilled and those careers positive contributions to society. Someone who is wealthy may not have skills as you describe it, but if they are investing their wealth in the stock market for example, it could be argued they have a much more outsized positive impact on society than the average person.
- yTh0 6y ago
  It could be argued but it’s a large assumption on its own. Stock markets are recent inventions; some hand wavy way of saying “this is exactly the right way to store value!” Why must that ideal be externalized onto others? Why do I have to believe some hedge fund is indeed worth N dollars? Mendacity of the elderly is not a good enough justification for belief. Correctly engineering a road, medicine, or making art does not at all rely on such belief.
voisin 6y ago
> A rich person is subsidized by society. What?
dang 6y ago
Could you please stop creating accounts for every few comments you post? We ban accounts that do that. This is in the site guidelines: https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html. You needn't use your real name, of course, but for HN to be a community, users need some identity for other users to relate to. Otherwise we may as well have no usernames and no community, and that would be a different kind of forum. https://hn.algolia.com/?query=community%20identity%20by:dang&sort=byDate&dateRange=all&type=comment&storyText=false&prefix&page=0 https://hn.algolia.com/?query=community%20identity%20by:dang...

by yTh0 6y ago

bidirectional 6y ago

> To clarify, I mean wealthy non-doers. Hedge funds, old wealth, etc. What does this mean? How are hedge funds unskilled or non-doers in the manner that heirs are? I'd say the average hedge fund analyst is probably as accomplished/skilled/hard working as the average doctor or engineer.

pc86 6y ago
Certainly more-so than the average [software] engineer. There's no 6-week bootcamp for hedge funds and there's no "typing JavaScript into a computer" equivalent. We can argue all day about whether hedge funds are good, bad, or useful, and reasonable people will disagree on the answer, but you'd be hard-pressed to make a cogent argument that the average software engineer works even nearly as hard as the average hedge fund analyst.
yTh0 6y ago
The value they claim to unlock is completely made up. People need logistics to move materials to enable people to do stuff. Not speculative emotional guidance on ephemeral value stores. Most of them are, or are funded by, inherited wealth to service fiscal policy memes.
randycupertino 6y ago
Speaking as someone who worked in private equity, our Principal had generational wealth- literally he was an Italian count and his family money came from the Crusades. The people who made the investments and ran the fund came from State University of New York at Buffalo. The count had a team of three assistants and one's entire job was to coordinate shipping cases of wine from his vanity winery to everyone their kids encountered to lubricate the wheels of their success in life. Elite squash trainer might take on the son? Case of wine to the wife. College tour? Case of wine to the tour leader. I was an analyst reporting directly to the CFO and wasn't an assistant but would routinely get asked to do lifestyle chores like help the count's uncle hook up their ipod to their Range Rover's bluetooth. Hence why I left finance and went into medicine which is more of a meritocracy.
- cercatrova 6y ago
  Wow, the wine shipping is an incredible way to influence people. I should try that more often. So far I've only been sending small gifts over to people, or hand written letters. I know in sales this sort of stuff works very well but it also works well in day to day life.
- moneywoes 6y ago
  How has the transition been?

tubesebut 6y ago

> Unskilled rich are a drain on public agency. Indeed, and much of this comes down to hereditary wealth - one of the world's great evils. What we should do as a society is, whenever a person gains above a certain threshold of wealth and refuses to give it up to the state, they are forcibly sterilized and banned from adopting, thus ensuring no heirs. And anyone who already has offspring has their wealth taxed at 100% above that threshold. This might sound dystopian, but just imagine if this policy had prevented George W Bush from ever being born. That in itself would be a public good.

okwubodu 6y ago
This is an extremely unhinged comment.
- tux3 6y ago
  This is not an exaggeration, I had stopped reading their comment before the truly deranged part and would not have noticed.
  - tubesebut1 6y ago
    There was nothing deranged about my comment. Eliminating the Bush family line, for example, before they managed to create a dynasty of wealth and power, would have been a benefit to humanity. If you don't have an argument against it other than "that's truly deranged!" then that's your problem really.
- tubesebut 6y ago
  It's a reasonable trade-off for those who seek wealth above all else. Want to get absurdly wealthy? Fine, but you're part of the eunuch class now. This way, as a nation we can harness those rare useful wealth-obsessed people, while preventing them from creating hereditary lines of societal parasites. It's a win-win.
- walshemj 6y ago
  Yes I suspect they don't mean they would give up on inheriting their mum & dads home

pacman2 6y ago

"A rich kid is much more likely to leave an impact on the world" I quoted this as a neutral fact. That things might or could be better otherwise is a total different question.

yTh0 6y ago
Qualify it as such in the original post. Some search engine can come along in N days, weeks, months, and provide that snippet out of the context you intended. Social media is not a friends backyard fire pit. The information peddled here isn’t necessarily lost to memory the next day. I don’t know you so none of this should be considered a personal attack. I’m just taking information and expanding on it.
- pacman2 6y ago
  "Qualify it as such in the original post." It is unfortunate that people seem not to be able to distinguish between a neutral fact and an endorsement. Just recently I posted something I consider a fact and since I was afraid if could be controversial, added that this is not meant in a judgmental way. The bulletin board owner took this to a meta level and argued that it was exactly this add-on that showed that it was meant in a judgmental way and banned me.
  - yTh0 6y ago
    It’s been shown that words mean different things given geographical region. One brain is not composed of the same experiential model, and as a result, neurological model, as others. Physics > chemistry -> biology -> humans -> metaphor and analogy. Kind of my mental road map for information hierarchy. If it’s not physically quantifiable it probably falls into some category like “relative metaphor and analogy”.
- tarboreus 6y ago
  This seems unnecessary, since it's obvious from context. Endless caveats are death in writing and readability. We have modal verbs like "should" for a reason, and OP chose not to use them, making the communication clear.

chrismcb 6y ago

"unskilled risk are a drain on public agency" what does this mean? How are they a drain?

oceanplexian 6y ago

There are a lot of assumptions baked into this statement. For example what does unskilled mean? Who gets to decide it? Would you consider an artist or a musician unskilled? A diplomat? Those people don’t code or perform surgery but most people would consider them skilled and those careers positive contributions to society. Someone who is wealthy may not have skills as you describe it, but if they are investing their wealth in the stock market for example, it could be argued they have a much more outsized positive impact on society than the average person.

yTh0 6y ago
It could be argued but it’s a large assumption on its own. Stock markets are recent inventions; some hand wavy way of saying “this is exactly the right way to store value!” Why must that ideal be externalized onto others? Why do I have to believe some hedge fund is indeed worth N dollars? Mendacity of the elderly is not a good enough justification for belief. Correctly engineering a road, medicine, or making art does not at all rely on such belief.

voisin 6y ago

> A rich person is subsidized by society. What?

dang 6y ago

Could you please stop creating accounts for every few comments you post? We ban accounts that do that. This is in the site guidelines: https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html. You needn't use your real name, of course, but for HN to be a community, users need some identity for other users to relate to. Otherwise we may as well have no usernames and no community, and that would be a different kind of forum. https://hn.algolia.com/?query=community%20identity%20by:dang&sort=byDate&dateRange=all&type=comment&storyText=false&prefix&page=0 https://hn.algolia.com/?query=community%20identity%20by:dang...