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Imposing a wealth cap like that is a fantastic way to assure that those basic needs will never be met. Over the past two centuries, billions of humans have bee

Imposing a wealth cap like that is a fantastic way to assure that those basic needs will never be met. Over the past two centuries, billions of humans have been lifted out of poverty. Approximately zero percent of that came from the redistribution of existing wealth. All of it came from raising economic productivity. And that vast majority of those productivity gains had foundations built by entrepreneurs seeking great fortunes.

protoman3000 5y ago
> Over the past two centuries, billions of humans have been lifted out of poverty > by entrepreneurs seeking great fortunes No. It was technological innovation, made by the brightest heads of our species that did science themselves or at publicly funded institutions. The private sector took these innovations to manufacture and accumulate, while the innovators were criminally underpaid.
- dcolkitt 5y ago
  Honest question: have you ever successfully created and released a new product? Innovation isolated in a lab is all well and good, but ultimately does nothing to directly improve lives. It's only the first step in a long journey. Now you need to figure out how do scale up production? How do we control costs to keep it affordable to the average person? How do we get people aware of the product? Who do we target as early adopters? How do we incorporate feedback from real usage back into the engineering of the product? How do we design the product so it's intuitive and appealing to use? How can we convince investors to take the risk and give us the capital needed to get this process under way? How do we plan and budget for production to accommodate projected growth? Are there legal or regulatory considerations? How do we coordinate all the people that need to work together to make this happen? Ask anyone who's actually successfully launched a product how far the gap is between "works in a lab" to "widespread distribution and adoption". Engineers are part of the equation, but they often arrogantly assume they're the only ones that matter. That's why there's no such thing as a company that's only engineers. Entrepreneurs are the ones responsible for coordinating all the complex work that needs to come together to actually get a product into the hands of consumers.
  - protoman3000 5y ago
    > Now you need to figure out how do scale up production? How do we control costs to keep it affordable to the average person? How do we get people aware of the product? Who do we target as early adopters? How do we incorporate feedback from real usage back into the engineering of the product? How do we design the product so it's intuitive and appealing to use? How can we convince investors to take the risk and give us the capital needed to get this process under way? How do we plan and budget for production to accommodate projected growth? Are there legal or regulatory considerations? How do we coordinate all the people that need to work together to make this happen? These are all valid questions whose answers are necessary, but ultimately they are solved problems for which we often can just copy the solution from previous iterations. Somebody just needs to do it and I don’t see why these persons should get far far more than the lions share. Let them get remunerated and also substantially, but not the most. The vast majority of entrepreneurs does not deserve renumerations of such high proportions, they just get them because they can. Past accumulation, capital structures, capital dependency, path dependencies - which ultimately are all just positions of power - allow the entrepreneur class to squeeze out such high returns. But they’re not even the root of the problem, because they are squeezed out by the financial class who has the privilege of squeezing others out by virtue of having squeezed out others before. We have these systems of hierarchical exploitation and accumulation for thousands of years, but saw only real improvement with technological innovation.
david927 5y ago
> came from entrepreneurs seeking to build great fortunes $20 million per person is a great fortune. Show me any innovation that came from someone wanting more.
- dcolkitt 5y ago
  Elon Musk was worth more than $20 million before taking over Tesla and SpaceX. Jeff Bezos was worth more than $20 million before Amazon started AWS. Sergey and Larry were worth well more than $20 million before Google launched Gmail. Jack Dorsey was well more than $20 million before starting Square. Stephane Bancel was worth much more than $20 million when he became CEO of Moderna. Steve Jobs was worth much more than $20 million before starting NeXT or Pixar, or returning to Apple to build the iPod, iPhone and iPad. Andrew Carnegie was worth more than the equivalent of $20 million before US Steel. John Rockefeller was worth more than the equivalent of $20 million before starting Standard Oil. Edison was worth more than $20 million before starting General Electric. Howard Hughes was worth more than $20 million before starting his aviation business. Carl Bosch was worth more than $20 million before commercializing nitrogen fixation.
  - david927 5y ago
    - Elon Musk took over Tesla and SpaceX. He was not the innovator there. - Did Bezos think of AWS? I think not. It was literally selling excess processing capacity. - Gmail was not innovative; it was just a better client. Web-based mail had been around for a while. - I'm not sure how innovative Square is but I don't think any of it would have to do with Dorsey. - The NeXT was based on innovation coming from Alan Kay. The iPod wasn't innovative; it was just a hit. The iPhone was already underway when Jobs came back. The iPad is a bigger iPhone. Big companies don't mean innovation; they often mean acquiring innovation and monetizing it. All the big innovations of the 20th century were accomplished by individuals who did not do so based purely on financial incentive. That's a myth. "Let's not feed kids crying themselves to sleep at night from hunger because that might mean we won't get iPads with blue casing." Shame on you.
    - 5y ago
ruined 5y ago
>Over the past two centuries, billions of humans have been lifted out of poverty. Approximately zero percent of that came from the redistribution of existing wealth. really? you think land reform and mechanization in russia, china, and former colonies had nothing to do with that? wage raises and other victories of labor organizing? welfare and schools and transit and healthcare and other public services? most of the poverty in the world that one can say has been lifted probably comes directly from all those efforts. it's easy to miss that viewpoint in america, where our wealth came from the homesteading of an entire continent (made available by genocide, pretty redistributive) and then food and manufacturing exports to a bombed-out world (implementing those reforms and supported by intentional redistributive funding from us) which turned around over decades and provided us manufacturing services to supply our consumption. when you don't look more than two steps ahead it looks like pure entrepreneurship. but you have to remember most of humanity doesn't live in the core of this empire, where land was free and consumption markets were far away.

protoman3000 5y ago

> Over the past two centuries, billions of humans have been lifted out of poverty > by entrepreneurs seeking great fortunes No. It was technological innovation, made by the brightest heads of our species that did science themselves or at publicly funded institutions. The private sector took these innovations to manufacture and accumulate, while the innovators were criminally underpaid.

dcolkitt 5y ago
Honest question: have you ever successfully created and released a new product? Innovation isolated in a lab is all well and good, but ultimately does nothing to directly improve lives. It's only the first step in a long journey. Now you need to figure out how do scale up production? How do we control costs to keep it affordable to the average person? How do we get people aware of the product? Who do we target as early adopters? How do we incorporate feedback from real usage back into the engineering of the product? How do we design the product so it's intuitive and appealing to use? How can we convince investors to take the risk and give us the capital needed to get this process under way? How do we plan and budget for production to accommodate projected growth? Are there legal or regulatory considerations? How do we coordinate all the people that need to work together to make this happen? Ask anyone who's actually successfully launched a product how far the gap is between "works in a lab" to "widespread distribution and adoption". Engineers are part of the equation, but they often arrogantly assume they're the only ones that matter. That's why there's no such thing as a company that's only engineers. Entrepreneurs are the ones responsible for coordinating all the complex work that needs to come together to actually get a product into the hands of consumers.
- protoman3000 5y ago
  > Now you need to figure out how do scale up production? How do we control costs to keep it affordable to the average person? How do we get people aware of the product? Who do we target as early adopters? How do we incorporate feedback from real usage back into the engineering of the product? How do we design the product so it's intuitive and appealing to use? How can we convince investors to take the risk and give us the capital needed to get this process under way? How do we plan and budget for production to accommodate projected growth? Are there legal or regulatory considerations? How do we coordinate all the people that need to work together to make this happen? These are all valid questions whose answers are necessary, but ultimately they are solved problems for which we often can just copy the solution from previous iterations. Somebody just needs to do it and I don’t see why these persons should get far far more than the lions share. Let them get remunerated and also substantially, but not the most. The vast majority of entrepreneurs does not deserve renumerations of such high proportions, they just get them because they can. Past accumulation, capital structures, capital dependency, path dependencies - which ultimately are all just positions of power - allow the entrepreneur class to squeeze out such high returns. But they’re not even the root of the problem, because they are squeezed out by the financial class who has the privilege of squeezing others out by virtue of having squeezed out others before. We have these systems of hierarchical exploitation and accumulation for thousands of years, but saw only real improvement with technological innovation.

david927 5y ago

> came from entrepreneurs seeking to build great fortunes $20 million per person is a great fortune. Show me any innovation that came from someone wanting more.

dcolkitt 5y ago
Elon Musk was worth more than $20 million before taking over Tesla and SpaceX. Jeff Bezos was worth more than $20 million before Amazon started AWS. Sergey and Larry were worth well more than $20 million before Google launched Gmail. Jack Dorsey was well more than $20 million before starting Square. Stephane Bancel was worth much more than $20 million when he became CEO of Moderna. Steve Jobs was worth much more than $20 million before starting NeXT or Pixar, or returning to Apple to build the iPod, iPhone and iPad. Andrew Carnegie was worth more than the equivalent of $20 million before US Steel. John Rockefeller was worth more than the equivalent of $20 million before starting Standard Oil. Edison was worth more than $20 million before starting General Electric. Howard Hughes was worth more than $20 million before starting his aviation business. Carl Bosch was worth more than $20 million before commercializing nitrogen fixation.
- david927 5y ago
  - Elon Musk took over Tesla and SpaceX. He was not the innovator there. - Did Bezos think of AWS? I think not. It was literally selling excess processing capacity. - Gmail was not innovative; it was just a better client. Web-based mail had been around for a while. - I'm not sure how innovative Square is but I don't think any of it would have to do with Dorsey. - The NeXT was based on innovation coming from Alan Kay. The iPod wasn't innovative; it was just a hit. The iPhone was already underway when Jobs came back. The iPad is a bigger iPhone. Big companies don't mean innovation; they often mean acquiring innovation and monetizing it. All the big innovations of the 20th century were accomplished by individuals who did not do so based purely on financial incentive. That's a myth. "Let's not feed kids crying themselves to sleep at night from hunger because that might mean we won't get iPads with blue casing." Shame on you.
  - 5y ago

ruined 5y ago

>Over the past two centuries, billions of humans have been lifted out of poverty. Approximately zero percent of that came from the redistribution of existing wealth. really? you think land reform and mechanization in russia, china, and former colonies had nothing to do with that? wage raises and other victories of labor organizing? welfare and schools and transit and healthcare and other public services? most of the poverty in the world that one can say has been lifted probably comes directly from all those efforts. it's easy to miss that viewpoint in america, where our wealth came from the homesteading of an entire continent (made available by genocide, pretty redistributive) and then food and manufacturing exports to a bombed-out world (implementing those reforms and supported by intentional redistributive funding from us) which turned around over decades and provided us manufacturing services to supply our consumption. when you don't look more than two steps ahead it looks like pure entrepreneurship. but you have to remember most of humanity doesn't live in the core of this empire, where land was free and consumption markets were far away.