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I think money earned through voluntary exchange is highly correlated and generally in proportion with value add to society. If we zoom in to particular examples

I think money earned through voluntary exchange is highly correlated and generally in proportion with value add to society. If we zoom in to particular examples, most of them fit into this category. You pay Netflix $15/month because you think it adds more than that much value to your life. Netflix earning that income is a consequence of your judgement of the value add of that service to your life. If Netflix makes billions in profits, it's because people like you thought that it added that much value (and more) to their lives. The same reasoning applies to most things (groceries, personal trainer, hairdresser, etc). There are ways that people can get rich that definitely aren't proportionate to their value add. Cronyism, externalities, hijacking people's dopamine systems, and so on. That's why we need a government that can implement the right policies that maximize the correlation between money earned and value add. There's also things that add large value through positive externalities that don't result in getting rich, such as scientific research, where it's very hard to privatize the benefits. A big problem we have in this discourse is the conflation of the two ways of making money (value add vs extraction) into a single bucket (on the far-left it's all extraction and on the economic-right it's all value-add), which is having a terrible impact on our ability to think clearly about policy and is making regular people resentful and jealous instead of thankful towards the most productive people in our society.

modo_mario 5y ago
>I think money earned through voluntary exchange is highly correlated and generally in proportion with value add to society. If we zoom in to particular examples, most of them fit into this category. When I think of the richest that gained a disproportionate amount of that wealth that left the bottom i generally think of rentseekers, people using anticompetitive practices,(near) monopolies, duopolies or monopsonies, etc Reaching that position has been made easier for many of them due to technological advances indeed but that they're in those and that they're incredibly unhealthy for capitalism is the case none the less. Also definitely cronyism and so on as you mentioned. When we look closely most companies and the people pulling profit from them fit into this category of utilising a form of capitalism that can't be considered healthy for society at large. For example everything from intel and amd artificially extending their IP into perpetuity by strategically extending the standards with new IP every x years to microsoft simply waiting out a competitors bankruptcy in court and abusing their clout for competitive advantage in new markets, apple and google using their duopoly/monopsony positions to charge high rates in their app stores to google dictating webstandards in their favour due to their clout and fucking over competitors, solarcity pulling shady contracts, supermarkt chains pulling a larger share of profit from farmers and other producers despite reducing their value to the distribution chain as their marketshare grows,etc When i think of these i think of people who have gathered value worth countless lifetimes of hard work to a point where it should be impossible becaused it is impossible to be proportionate. People who are generally wayyyyy further away from anyone in this thread wealth wise than we are from a bum on the street. > and is making regular people resentful and jealous Might have something to do with things like social mobility and such declining for so long. Capitalism should not be allowed to devolve into an oligarchy.

modo_mario 5y ago

>I think money earned through voluntary exchange is highly correlated and generally in proportion with value add to society. If we zoom in to particular examples, most of them fit into this category. When I think of the richest that gained a disproportionate amount of that wealth that left the bottom i generally think of rentseekers, people using anticompetitive practices,(near) monopolies, duopolies or monopsonies, etc Reaching that position has been made easier for many of them due to technological advances indeed but that they're in those and that they're incredibly unhealthy for capitalism is the case none the less. Also definitely cronyism and so on as you mentioned. When we look closely most companies and the people pulling profit from them fit into this category of utilising a form of capitalism that can't be considered healthy for society at large. For example everything from intel and amd artificially extending their IP into perpetuity by strategically extending the standards with new IP every x years to microsoft simply waiting out a competitors bankruptcy in court and abusing their clout for competitive advantage in new markets, apple and google using their duopoly/monopsony positions to charge high rates in their app stores to google dictating webstandards in their favour due to their clout and fucking over competitors, solarcity pulling shady contracts, supermarkt chains pulling a larger share of profit from farmers and other producers despite reducing their value to the distribution chain as their marketshare grows,etc When i think of these i think of people who have gathered value worth countless lifetimes of hard work to a point where it should be impossible becaused it is impossible to be proportionate. People who are generally wayyyyy further away from anyone in this thread wealth wise than we are from a bum on the street. > and is making regular people resentful and jealous Might have something to do with things like social mobility and such declining for so long. Capitalism should not be allowed to devolve into an oligarchy.