5 ms·

I don't want to be a trillionaire. I want everyone to have a fair standard of living and personal safety and medical care. I also want everyone to have access t

by pavlov 5y ago

I don't want to be a trillionaire. I want everyone to have a fair standard of living and personal safety and medical care. I also want everyone to have access to opportunities to express themselves in art or technology or marketing, so if they make something people want and it doesn't have a deleterious impact on our commons, they can freely gain status or money or whatever they seek. In a world where I am a trillionaire, those gains necessarily have come from exploitation and deep unequality rather than just getting my share of recognition. I don't want history books to remember my name as a robber-baron-slash-Marie-Antoinette, blindly extracting wealth while society collapses.

rhacker 5y ago
> doesn't have a deleterious impact on our commons Most of the time it will. Humans will generally profit and succeed by: Mining, Burning stuff and polluting into waterways. If you limit human progress to "art or technology or marketing" you're ignoring all of the things that make a burger available to you impossible. Let alone any quantity of vegetarian food. Now a world like that IS possible, but not one with nearly 8 billion people.
- beaconstudios 5y ago
  In a choice between sustainable industry and malthusian population control, I choose the former every time.
spansoa 5y ago
> I don't want to be a trillionaire I'm paraphrasing here, but I've always enjoyed the phrases: Rich people still have problems. They just have rich people problems. And: Money doesn't buy happiness, but I'd rather cry in my Ferrari. Or By Mark Manson: Choose your shit sandwich. Choose the pain you want to live with, and choose it wisely.
- BizarroLand 5y ago
  I'm sure rich people have problems too, I just want to see what they're like
  - inglor_cz 5y ago
    Brain cancer or ALS in your loved one or yourself isn't really any better than when you are middle class. Also, if you are rich in a different country than the U.S., you may possibly be a good target for blackmail from your own government. A lot of the Russian oligarchs moved out of Putin's reach just to prevent being taken de facto hostage (or their families). Little man is usually invisible to the top hawks that rule empires.
    - BizarroLand 5y ago
      Yeah, I'm talking about the kind of problems where they have to decide between which is the best of their multiple investment strategies or what car they want to lease for the tax write-offs, picking out which school is prestigious enough for their kids but not so bougie that it could spoil them, that sort of thing. Trying to decide between Fiji or Tahiti for the Summer vacay, because we did the Swiss Alps last winter and now we want something warm and wet. What charity do I support, have I given enough back to the community, what is the best use of my time since I'm not stuck behind a desk 40+ hours a week, that kind of stuff. Throwing brain cancer and tyrants into the mix isn't quite what I meant, those aren't really rich people problems after all. Anyone can be kidnapped or blackmailed somehow, and disease is no respecter of persons.
      - inglor_cz 5y ago
        "Anyone can be kidnapped or blackmailed somehow" True, but doing some things as a high-profile person is more dangerous. I think that the tyranny aspect is not banal. A lot of people live in countries where your highest safety risk wears the crown. KGB won't waste polonium on Ivan Q. Random, but it may be willing to poison an unrepentant's oligarch daughter just to teach everyone a lesson.
        5y ago
- pchristensen 5y ago
  I've always enjoyed "Money doesn't buy happiness, but neither does poverty."
  - TMWNN 5y ago
    My favorite, seen in an Archie comic, is "Money can't buy love, but it can rent a lot of affection".
reese_john 5y ago
> In a world where I am a trillionaire, those gains necessarily have come from exploitation and deep unequality Why?
- addaon 5y ago
  Because there's no indication that we have access to resources to allow the billions of people on the planet to live the life of an (inflation-adjusted) trillionaire. Our exponential-growth model of resource availability and the economy as a whole is limited by basic physics to be a brief window, followed by an unknown duration of quartic growth (at best), finally approaching an asymptote of quadratically-increasing access to resources.
- beaconstudios 5y ago
  In a true meritocracy, a fair system, people are rewarded for their contributions. Do you think Mark Zuckerberg is worth 70 billion because he works 2,000,000 times harder or more effectively than a caterer in facebook's cafeteria? Of course not. Exploitation is when everybody is allocated a fixed wage and incremental raises, and only a tiny subset of the people involved in the company get to reap the rewards of everybody's hard work.
  - rosndo 5y ago
    You’re using the wrong measurements. “Working hard” is meaningless, it’s about your output.
    - beaconstudios 5y ago
      Yes, to be clear I don't mean working hard as in exerting effort - I mean getting results for the business.
    - klyrs 5y ago
      If the cafeteria worker saves 500 highly-paid employees 30 minutes a day, how do we measure their output in a way that supports a lower wage than the people they're providing meals for?
inglor_cz 5y ago
"In a world where I am a trillionaire, those gains necessarily have come from exploitation and deep unequality rather than just getting my share of recognition." Or from crippling inflation. See this banknote. https://www.ebay.com/itm/254366579376 https://www.ebay.com/itm/254366579376

by pavlov 5y ago

rhacker 5y ago

> doesn't have a deleterious impact on our commons Most of the time it will. Humans will generally profit and succeed by: Mining, Burning stuff and polluting into waterways. If you limit human progress to "art or technology or marketing" you're ignoring all of the things that make a burger available to you impossible. Let alone any quantity of vegetarian food. Now a world like that IS possible, but not one with nearly 8 billion people.

beaconstudios 5y ago
In a choice between sustainable industry and malthusian population control, I choose the former every time.

spansoa 5y ago

> I don't want to be a trillionaire I'm paraphrasing here, but I've always enjoyed the phrases: Rich people still have problems. They just have rich people problems. And: Money doesn't buy happiness, but I'd rather cry in my Ferrari. Or By Mark Manson: Choose your shit sandwich. Choose the pain you want to live with, and choose it wisely.

BizarroLand 5y ago
I'm sure rich people have problems too, I just want to see what they're like
- inglor_cz 5y ago
  Brain cancer or ALS in your loved one or yourself isn't really any better than when you are middle class. Also, if you are rich in a different country than the U.S., you may possibly be a good target for blackmail from your own government. A lot of the Russian oligarchs moved out of Putin's reach just to prevent being taken de facto hostage (or their families). Little man is usually invisible to the top hawks that rule empires.
  - BizarroLand 5y ago
    Yeah, I'm talking about the kind of problems where they have to decide between which is the best of their multiple investment strategies or what car they want to lease for the tax write-offs, picking out which school is prestigious enough for their kids but not so bougie that it could spoil them, that sort of thing. Trying to decide between Fiji or Tahiti for the Summer vacay, because we did the Swiss Alps last winter and now we want something warm and wet. What charity do I support, have I given enough back to the community, what is the best use of my time since I'm not stuck behind a desk 40+ hours a week, that kind of stuff. Throwing brain cancer and tyrants into the mix isn't quite what I meant, those aren't really rich people problems after all. Anyone can be kidnapped or blackmailed somehow, and disease is no respecter of persons.
    - inglor_cz 5y ago
      "Anyone can be kidnapped or blackmailed somehow" True, but doing some things as a high-profile person is more dangerous. I think that the tyranny aspect is not banal. A lot of people live in countries where your highest safety risk wears the crown. KGB won't waste polonium on Ivan Q. Random, but it may be willing to poison an unrepentant's oligarch daughter just to teach everyone a lesson.
      - 5y ago
pchristensen 5y ago
I've always enjoyed "Money doesn't buy happiness, but neither does poverty."
- TMWNN 5y ago
  My favorite, seen in an Archie comic, is "Money can't buy love, but it can rent a lot of affection".

reese_john 5y ago

> In a world where I am a trillionaire, those gains necessarily have come from exploitation and deep unequality Why?

addaon 5y ago
Because there's no indication that we have access to resources to allow the billions of people on the planet to live the life of an (inflation-adjusted) trillionaire. Our exponential-growth model of resource availability and the economy as a whole is limited by basic physics to be a brief window, followed by an unknown duration of quartic growth (at best), finally approaching an asymptote of quadratically-increasing access to resources.
beaconstudios 5y ago
In a true meritocracy, a fair system, people are rewarded for their contributions. Do you think Mark Zuckerberg is worth 70 billion because he works 2,000,000 times harder or more effectively than a caterer in facebook's cafeteria? Of course not. Exploitation is when everybody is allocated a fixed wage and incremental raises, and only a tiny subset of the people involved in the company get to reap the rewards of everybody's hard work.
- rosndo 5y ago
  You’re using the wrong measurements. “Working hard” is meaningless, it’s about your output.
  - beaconstudios 5y ago
    Yes, to be clear I don't mean working hard as in exerting effort - I mean getting results for the business.
  - klyrs 5y ago
    If the cafeteria worker saves 500 highly-paid employees 30 minutes a day, how do we measure their output in a way that supports a lower wage than the people they're providing meals for?

inglor_cz 5y ago

"In a world where I am a trillionaire, those gains necessarily have come from exploitation and deep unequality rather than just getting my share of recognition." Or from crippling inflation. See this banknote. https://www.ebay.com/itm/254366579376 https://www.ebay.com/itm/254366579376