3 ms·

If I hoard a billion news papers clippings I'm a mad man but if I hoard billions of dollars I'm a hero this seams like a bit of a paradox in itself no?

techbio 5y ago
So do both?
JumpCrisscross 5y ago
> if I hoard billions of dollars If you literally "hoard," as in store it up and hide it away [1], yes, that would be crazy. But nobody does that. Those billions are invested and working. [1] https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/hoard https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/hoard
- corobo 5y ago
  Well as long as it's technically not hoarding, problem solved! Nobody is hungry anymore :) Come on mate you know what we mean.. I'm not even calling to get shot of billionaires, I just want them to pay their damn taxes
  - JumpCrisscross 5y ago
    > Come on mate you know what we mean I know what you mean, and I agree with you. But OP was literally calling for a wealth cap [1]. [1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=28956273 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=28956273
    - jamesandthewolf 5y ago
      A wealth cap why is this looked at as such a bad thing, your body has caps, the environment has caps, earth has a cap on how much it could handle. But na don't touch money or cap that, as that would not be fair instead allow it to keep going uncheck and spinning out of control we will fix it when it's no longer a situation we can live or exisit in. Is that a better option? Just let it explode and blame something else
- jamesandthewolf 5y ago
  I understand people need money to make money, I get it, but surly we could place a cap on it. The super rich are no different from the kings and queens of old, they just are called by different names like CEO or some other three letter thing.
  - JumpCrisscross 5y ago
    > we could place a cap on it Why? What benefit does society gain from telling Elon Musk, years ago, no more money, go buy cars and nice dinners, you're not allowed to start SpaceX or get involved with Tesla? Also, it's trivially sidestepped. Japan is a culture with notoriously uncompetitive executive pay. As a result, one, its ambitious tend to not do their work there. And two, many firms have the entire family on the payroll. (Beyond that, a deep system of patronage.)
    - jamesandthewolf 5y ago
      What benefit does humanity gain when not everyone has the same opportunity and has died in a war or from lack of health care, as their country was not able to help them due to wealth accumulation in one area. How many Elon Musks never have been, because we removed even the chance of them to exist your argument is flawed.
      - JumpCrisscross 5y ago
        > when not everyone has the same opportunity and has died in a war or from lack of health care, as their country was not able to help them due to wealth accumulation in one area The U.S. government is more than able to spend on these things today. Spending isn't constrained by taxation. We don't do those things because we don't want to. It's magical thinking to imagine that if we expropriated wealth, that it would be spent on what you want it spent on. Also, if only we had historical examples of governments that confiscated wealth, and how that turned out for its poor...
    - dTal 5y ago
      Ideally, the value that Elon Musk has captured would instead go to an institution that we collectively control, like NASA, and we would accomplish the same things but in a more accountable way. Is it really right and fair that society is ploughing money into Mars colonization, without any of us having been consulted, just because some nerd got "disruptive" with banking regulations? In any case, Elon Musk is a pretty bad example because most billionaires do not orient their investment activities around some forward-thinking idealistic goal like Elon has. For every Elon, there's a hundred very boring billionaires who are perfectly content with swinging their wealth around in ways that just make society worse, like lobbying politicians and buying up chunks of economically valuable real estate in cities. Money is power, and power begets more power. People shouldn't be able to circumvent democracy no matter how cleverly they've played the economy game.
- dTal 5y ago
  Investing and working, in order to... make more money? After a certain point - when you can afford literally everything it's possible to want to consume - it's no longer about improving your own quality of life. It's either about increasing your "score", or about increasing your power over others.
Applejinx 5y ago
No. Newspaper clippings don't give you impossible, unaccountable power. Money IS a proxy for power in a way that old newspaper clippings (even of your own great deeds) can never be. If you hoard millions of dollars, it's not really the same: it's effectively saying 'I'm going to do whatever I gotta do, in order to seize unthinkable power over everybody I interact with, and rule them'. The money isn't useful in itself past a certain point, it's keeping score and it's a marker, showing what you can do if you want. It's a lot like if you are able to make nuclear weapons and you're hoarding uranium. It's not an inherent value in the uranium, it's what you're prepared to DO with it and how people must interact with you, knowing that.
- jamesandthewolf 5y ago
  That is something that we need to change, I have no issue with being wealthy I do have an issue when it is something that is misguiding, misleading and breaking the social structures of society just cause "old mate" has a behavioral complex and mental disorder due to potentially a lack of self confidence.
  - Applejinx 5y ago
    Well, that's the key, isn't it? Societally we have a different approach to the basically natural (but not exclusive) human drive to just dominate and rule and conquer those around us. There's laws and rules based on the concept that some people WILL want to beat up those around them, and that this isn't helpful or good. Wealth legitimizes this, and that's the problem. But civilization is a long history of society taking on these problems and slowly, awkwardly solving them only after it became impossible to continue any longer as things stood.
    - jamesandthewolf 5y ago
      Yes some of us do have that mentality the keep your hands off my stack pal, but open source thinking kind of goes against that thinking, sharing and helping. While these elements don't have much gain to the individual to the collective they are the fundamentals. I get the whole money thing yeah it's awesome to be rich, it's awesome to be powerful ok shot bro, what next. I really do feel we should help, respect and build products that respect individuals but also helps the collective cause one day all of us here won't be here! So why not help those who follow us not make the same mistakes over and over again like a pack of (insert any word that is an insult here)

techbio 5y ago

So do both?

JumpCrisscross 5y ago

> if I hoard billions of dollars If you literally "hoard," as in store it up and hide it away [1], yes, that would be crazy. But nobody does that. Those billions are invested and working. [1] https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/hoard https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/hoard

corobo 5y ago
Well as long as it's technically not hoarding, problem solved! Nobody is hungry anymore :) Come on mate you know what we mean.. I'm not even calling to get shot of billionaires, I just want them to pay their damn taxes
- JumpCrisscross 5y ago
  > Come on mate you know what we mean I know what you mean, and I agree with you. But OP was literally calling for a wealth cap [1]. [1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=28956273 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=28956273
  - jamesandthewolf 5y ago
    A wealth cap why is this looked at as such a bad thing, your body has caps, the environment has caps, earth has a cap on how much it could handle. But na don't touch money or cap that, as that would not be fair instead allow it to keep going uncheck and spinning out of control we will fix it when it's no longer a situation we can live or exisit in. Is that a better option? Just let it explode and blame something else
jamesandthewolf 5y ago
I understand people need money to make money, I get it, but surly we could place a cap on it. The super rich are no different from the kings and queens of old, they just are called by different names like CEO or some other three letter thing.
- JumpCrisscross 5y ago
  > we could place a cap on it Why? What benefit does society gain from telling Elon Musk, years ago, no more money, go buy cars and nice dinners, you're not allowed to start SpaceX or get involved with Tesla? Also, it's trivially sidestepped. Japan is a culture with notoriously uncompetitive executive pay. As a result, one, its ambitious tend to not do their work there. And two, many firms have the entire family on the payroll. (Beyond that, a deep system of patronage.)
  - jamesandthewolf 5y ago
    What benefit does humanity gain when not everyone has the same opportunity and has died in a war or from lack of health care, as their country was not able to help them due to wealth accumulation in one area. How many Elon Musks never have been, because we removed even the chance of them to exist your argument is flawed.
    - JumpCrisscross 5y ago
      > when not everyone has the same opportunity and has died in a war or from lack of health care, as their country was not able to help them due to wealth accumulation in one area The U.S. government is more than able to spend on these things today. Spending isn't constrained by taxation. We don't do those things because we don't want to. It's magical thinking to imagine that if we expropriated wealth, that it would be spent on what you want it spent on. Also, if only we had historical examples of governments that confiscated wealth, and how that turned out for its poor...
  - dTal 5y ago
    Ideally, the value that Elon Musk has captured would instead go to an institution that we collectively control, like NASA, and we would accomplish the same things but in a more accountable way. Is it really right and fair that society is ploughing money into Mars colonization, without any of us having been consulted, just because some nerd got "disruptive" with banking regulations? In any case, Elon Musk is a pretty bad example because most billionaires do not orient their investment activities around some forward-thinking idealistic goal like Elon has. For every Elon, there's a hundred very boring billionaires who are perfectly content with swinging their wealth around in ways that just make society worse, like lobbying politicians and buying up chunks of economically valuable real estate in cities. Money is power, and power begets more power. People shouldn't be able to circumvent democracy no matter how cleverly they've played the economy game.
dTal 5y ago
Investing and working, in order to... make more money? After a certain point - when you can afford literally everything it's possible to want to consume - it's no longer about improving your own quality of life. It's either about increasing your "score", or about increasing your power over others.

Applejinx 5y ago

No. Newspaper clippings don't give you impossible, unaccountable power. Money IS a proxy for power in a way that old newspaper clippings (even of your own great deeds) can never be. If you hoard millions of dollars, it's not really the same: it's effectively saying 'I'm going to do whatever I gotta do, in order to seize unthinkable power over everybody I interact with, and rule them'. The money isn't useful in itself past a certain point, it's keeping score and it's a marker, showing what you can do if you want. It's a lot like if you are able to make nuclear weapons and you're hoarding uranium. It's not an inherent value in the uranium, it's what you're prepared to DO with it and how people must interact with you, knowing that.

jamesandthewolf 5y ago
That is something that we need to change, I have no issue with being wealthy I do have an issue when it is something that is misguiding, misleading and breaking the social structures of society just cause "old mate" has a behavioral complex and mental disorder due to potentially a lack of self confidence.
- Applejinx 5y ago
  Well, that's the key, isn't it? Societally we have a different approach to the basically natural (but not exclusive) human drive to just dominate and rule and conquer those around us. There's laws and rules based on the concept that some people WILL want to beat up those around them, and that this isn't helpful or good. Wealth legitimizes this, and that's the problem. But civilization is a long history of society taking on these problems and slowly, awkwardly solving them only after it became impossible to continue any longer as things stood.
  - jamesandthewolf 5y ago
    Yes some of us do have that mentality the keep your hands off my stack pal, but open source thinking kind of goes against that thinking, sharing and helping. While these elements don't have much gain to the individual to the collective they are the fundamentals. I get the whole money thing yeah it's awesome to be rich, it's awesome to be powerful ok shot bro, what next. I really do feel we should help, respect and build products that respect individuals but also helps the collective cause one day all of us here won't be here! So why not help those who follow us not make the same mistakes over and over again like a pack of (insert any word that is an insult here)