12 ms·

The impotence of the long-distance trillionaire

33 points by zdw 5y ago

I_DRINK_KOOLAID 5y ago
Tl;dr Even if you are #1 of 8,000,000,000 , you are still just 1 in 8,000,000,000 To be perfectly fair I think many of the leaders cited in this piece know perfectly well that they are easily replaced. Like, take the most traumatic instances such as JFK or Lincoln being shot. Yes there were a couple of days of sorrow (or better yet fake sorrow) but after a couple of days everybody moved on. Pyramids were supposed to be monuments to the Pharoahs, but after a while the fame of structure managed to surpass the fame of the person buried underneath. When there are so many humans the marginal value of any human plummets to record lows. Take Jesus, he's unrivaled at #1, but if we are being honest what's really the % of waking hours that humanity as a whole spends thinking about him during a fiscal year? It gets diluted into almost insignificant levels of attention.
beaconstudios 5y ago
I'm anti-capitalist too, but I think the capitalist argument is that wealth is the incentive to innovate in the marketplace - it doesn't matter whether it's actually useful, but that it motivates hard work. I think this argument is easily debunked by pointing to the comparative innovation of businesses versus state-funded research, or that wealth is created by the work of the employees moreso than the founders, but that's the argument.
- achenatx 5y ago
  it is incomprehensible to me that people can be "anti capitalists" when capitalism has reduced poverty and suffering to the lowest level in human history. Socialist countries routinely nationalize food production and immediately create shortages. This happens over and over. Capitalism isnt just the innovation of the kernel of a product, it is marketing, selling, manufacturing, distributing, and supporting a product. That takes capital and it requires risk. Capital is constantly being squandered on ideas that go nowhere, but some are successful and the overall system is more productive. The key point is that no one can predict in advance which ideas and teams will be successful. Capital backs them all and the market determines which ones succeed. It is human nature to try to acquire more, when that is rewarded, people respond (by working harder, more efficiently, or with innovation). Labor usually thinks management is useless or dumb. And most managers are bad. But you can look at world class leaders and see that they do matter and can make or break an organization. Look at the bulls under phil jackson, then when he left for the lakers. And then when he left the lakers.
  - Jochim 5y ago
    > Socialist countries routinely nationalize food production and immediately create shortages. This happens over and over. Socialist countries are routinely embargoed by capitalist countries, severely limiting their access to global markets. That's if they're lucky, if they're unlucky they're destabilised through targeted assassination of their leaders[0]. If you're even less lucky you'll be captured by the people the U.S. think are the good guys[1] instead of whatever socialist party was gaining traction. I sure hope the torture centre the U.S. military helped set up was built with private capital: > The United States backed Alfredo Stroessner's anti-communist military dictatorship and played a "critical supporting role" in the domestic affairs of Stroessner's Paraguay. For instance, U.S. Army officer Lieutenant Colonel Robert Thierry was sent to help local workmen build a detention and interrogation center named "La Technica" as part of Operation Condor. La Technica was also a well known torture centre. Stroessner's secret police, headed by Pastor Coronel, bathed their captives in tubs of human vomit and excrement and shocked them in the rectum with electric cattle prods. They dismembered the Communist party secretary, Miguel Ángel Soler , alive with a chainsaw while Stroessner listened on the phone. Stroessner demanded the tapes of detainees screaming in pain to be played to their family members. > That takes capital and it requires risk. Capital is constantly being squandered on ideas that go nowhere, but some are successful and the overall system is more productive. Government funded research through universities and the military do so much of the foundational work here that it seems crazy to attribute it to private capital. [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Assassination_attempts_on_Fidel_Castro https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Assassination_attempts_on_Fide... [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Operation_Condor https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Operation_Condor
  - cassepipe 5y ago
    It seems to me that except for a small group of crazy persons on the internet fascinated with the imagery of the Soviet Union and a "US bad justifies anything" hard line on the internet and some sectarian self-proclaimed marxist-[leninist] groups no modern anti-capitalist will seriously defend any of the self-proclaimed "socialist" state. (I very much hope that) the consensus in the Left seems to be that a state-owned economy + no democracy = Horror. One of the hard part is trying to understand what capitalism even is. In that endeavour, Marx has only laid out the basis for an analysis at the end of his life in The Capital. It's an unfinished work, hindered by a philosophical education he did his best to shake off. Most social sciences did not exist or weren't well established to help him then. You are only seeing the good sides of capitalism because you are on the good side of the stick if I may say. But without regulations, capitalism incentives are to brutally exploit all living workforce at hand, and this has been very from the beginning of capitalism. It is true that scientific advances in production (and especially the algricultural revolutions) have enabled to production of a incredibly well (in terms of calories available) and cheaply fed workforce which in the end also benefits the working class but this might well be a relatively recent development in the history of capitalism and may have with the fact that investing in mechanization may have seem the best of option in times of working people unrest. Plus you have to factor in the competition that took place with the USSR to be the most prosperous for all state/model. Maybe the solution is capitalism with regulations/better incentives, maybe it is democratic governance inside of corporations, maybe something else I don't know but history has shown times and times again that unregulated capitalism is awful for most of humankind. I am ready to acknowlegde that market mechanisms have their usefulness but that usefulness must be harnessed for greater good, it should not be turned into a religion. Whether there exists or not a "human nature", trying to derive social phenomenas directly from it seems a deeply unscientific approach to understanding social systems that does not seem fit for the 21st century.
avmich 5y ago
> I can't see any good reason to let any individual claim ownership over more than a billion dollars of assets—even $100M is pushing it. Can you? I'm in general disagreeing with major points in the article, but it's too large topic to have a full discussion here. The idea is that billionaires can better focus resources on things they seem important than governments.
- AftHurrahWinch 5y ago
  > The idea is that billionaires can better focus resources on things they seem important than governments. Stross anticipated your reply though, > They can fund lobbying groups and politicians, rant about colonizing Mars, and buy midlife crisis toys like Twitter or weekend getaways on a space station, but their scope for effecting real change is actually tiny on a global scale. Even Putin and Xi, who are at the state-level actor end of the scale (individually they're multi-billionaires: but they also control nuclear weapons, armies, and populations in 8-9 digits) have little global leverage. Putin's catastrophic adventure in Ukraine has revealed how threadbare the emperor's suit is.
  - avmich 5y ago
    Right, and these words are basically wrong. It doesn't matter how big GWP is comparing to a persons' resources, it's the application of these resources, which often can't be done on government level - they are largely for different things, can't risk that much, in practice aren't very efficient etc. Of course there are also arguments to the contrary - e.g. Apollo project was rather effective, large military operations like working during WW2 shows government can actually be quite efficient etc. That doesn't matter though, we only need to point to an example - let it be SpaceX - when a billionaire shows better results than the government.
    - AftHurrahWinch 5y ago
      > we only need to point to an example - let it be SpaceX - when a billionaire shows better results than the government. Stross anticipated this too: > Granting individuals enormous leverage can sometimes be socially useful. But before you point at Musk and Tesla or SpaceX, I need to remind you that he didn't found Tesla, he merely bought into it then took over: SpaceX's focus on reusability is good, but we had reusable space launchers before—the only really new angle is that it's a cost-reduction measure. Starlink isn't an original, it's merely a modern, bigger, faster version of 1990's Teledesic (which fell victim to over-ambitious technology goals and the dot-com bust). Meanwhile, billionaires can do immense damage: the Koch network has largely bankrolled climate change denial, Musk's Mars colony plan is fatally flawed, and so on. You say "better" results than the government... but it's not obvious that a government can't make these marginal improvements... you just assert that "these words are basically wrong".
CryptoPunk 5y ago
Utterly disingenuous characterization of the impact of Musk in his capacity as Tesla's first major investor, first chairman and 14 year long CEO, and of SpaceX on commercial space flight: But before you point at Musk and Tesla or SpaceX, I need to remind you that he didn't found Tesla, he merely bought into it then took over: SpaceX's focus on reusability is good, but we had reusable space launchers before—the only really new angle is that it's a cost-reduction measure. Starlink isn't an original, it's merely a modern, bigger, faster version of 1990's Teledesic (which fell victim to over-ambitious technology goals and the dot-com bust). I sometimes wonder what kind of psychopathology motivates this kind of mindset and ideology, that prioritizes the demonization of the most financially successful over even basic integrity and truth.
- strikelaserclaw 5y ago
  A lot of people look at everything in simple, reductionist way. Musk is either a god or he's a charlatan who stole companies and contributes nothing. Some people do this to influence a view point and others do this because they are simpletons echoing sentiments that feel good to them, this is how it has always been.
daenz 5y ago
I'm not seeing any new arguments here. Summarized: They don't need that much money. It's not even that much money, relative to the world. That much money doesn't make you live forever. They didn't even build the things that they're known for. Am I missing something new and interesting?
- splatcollision 5y ago
  Sometimes the old arguments are the best. Just because something has been said before doesn't make it any less valid.
  - Apocryphon 5y ago
    Those arguments don't even seem to have been debunked yet.
    - daenz 5y ago
      There's endless discussions on the internet about these tired topics. If you don't feel they have been debunked, I don't think you ever will. There are others that feel the opposite, also strongly. That's why these are tired points, because they go around in circles and make no progress.
- jdlshore 5y ago
  I don't think there's anything new (nor do I think "newness" is the best way to judge an essay), but I do think you've mis-paraphrased the first point. It's not so much "they don't need that much money" as "after a certain point, more money has vanishing small utility, so having that much money is wasting the money."
  - avmich 5y ago
    I guess if Musk will leave all except a billion dollars, he'll leave both Tesla and SpaceX decision making, which would likely significantly change companies, and I'm afraid for worse.
jeffreyrogers 5y ago
I'm not sure how he proposes to limit people to less than a billion dollars (or $100m as he also suggests) without completely overhauling the financial system. Seems like the harms of that are greater than the harms of having some extremely wealthy people (most of whose wealth is tied up in their businesses).
- snypher 5y ago
  Please expound on what you think the problem is with overhauling the financial system?
  - daenz 5y ago
    "Doing Y without X is harmful" doesn't mean "X is harmful"
- HWR_14 5y ago
  > how he proposes to limit people to less than a billion dollars (or $100m as he also suggests) without completely overhauling the financial system. I mean, "there is a wealth tax that kicks in at $1,000,000,000 at 100%" is a one-line change. I don't see much issue. I mean, Bezos and Musk would have to sell some stock. And? That certainly is a possibility.
  - jeffreyrogers 5y ago
    Sure that's one line. What about all the other changes you have to make as a consequence? - You've now changed corporate governance, since companies can only grow to $2bn before a majority shareholder can no longer exist. - You've created an opportunity for market manipulation since speculators can drive the price up to force a large shareholder to have to liquidate part of their position. - What do you do in the event of a takeover? The acquirer buys the company for stock, the previous owner now has to liquidate some of that stock to pay for his increase in net worth. Situations like these are going to create problems for the legal and regulatory system. Maybe some of those are unimportant or even desirable, my point is that it's not a simple change. It has large, far-reaching effects.
carapace 5y ago
This boils down to "eat the rich" at the end. > I can't see any good reason to let any individual claim ownership over more than a billion dollars of assets—even $100M is pushing it. Can you? If they got their wealth "fair and square" within the systems of rules that we all are subject to I feel it would be wrong to just take their assets by changing the rules and taxing it away (or whatever form it takes.) > And when one person holds the purse-strings, we lose [accountability]. It seems to me that that increases accountability. We know where the buck stops.
- turzmo 5y ago
  Problem with that argument is that when there are opportunities to change the rules "fair and square" through lobbying and creating loopholes that, really, only the rich can afford to take advantage of, the rich will do that.
  - carapace 5y ago
    I agree that that's a serious problem, but I don't think the best solution is to confiscate wealth just in case the wealthy misuse it.
- Jochim 5y ago
  Monarchies got their wealth "fair and square" within the systems of rules that we were all subject to at the time. We eventually decided that the system of rules themselves were not "fair and square" and changed them, often quite bloodily. In a system where money affords power if we accept that power should be distributed at least somewhat evenly then there must be an upper bound placed on wealth. Otherwise we end up in the situation we have right now, where policy is merely a commodity that is bought and sold by those who can afford it.
  - carapace 5y ago
    The comparison to monarchs doesn't move me much because most of the world's billionaires aren't also sovereign. (It seems like confiscating the wealth of sovereign billionaires with nations, armies, and maybe even nukes or WMDs would even more problematic.) Not to be crass but "we ate the rich before" isn't a reason IMO to eat them now. I figure the way to curb excessive power concentrations is the panopticon: ubiquitous surveillance. (I'm not advocating for it, but I think it's unavoidable, so we might as well get some use out of it.) People can have their wealth but have limited political power. It reminds me of a story I heard about the Chinese Communists tackling their unruly billionaires. How do you take them down when they can bribe any agent or official? A special unit was formed and this was their basic M.O.: they would locate one of these billionaires and pick them up and sweat them and then offer them a deal. "You can keep all of your money, go into retirement, and promise to be good, just give us everyone in your organization." The alternative is prison (or maybe even death, who really knows?) It's kind brilliant, eh? Think it through. Are you going to go to prison to protect your henchmen and underlings? Or retire to, say, Macau with all your money? You sell out your org, of course. What does that do to team morale for the other big boys' orgs when word gets around? They stop helping their bosses break laws.
rglullis 5y ago
It's interesting that he states right at the beginning that he uses money as a proxy for power and then leads us to the conclusion we should object the concentration of money. Why don't we just go straight to the source and eliminate the mechanisms that allow for the concentration of power? I'd like to propose two very simple rules: - no business entity can have more than 150 people. - no individual can take part in more than one business. You can have as many non-controlling/non-voting shares on any business entity, but you can only contribute directly to one. Put those in place, and you destroy corporatism and with it you destroy the concentration of power. Politically, it's much easier to sell "no one should have this much power" over "no one should be allowed to amass so much money". Left and Right could easily be united on this.
- thomasahle 5y ago
  Just make a hierarchy of businesses and control the business on top? I don't think you'll be able to find a couple of simple rules that can't easily be dodged.
  - rglullis 5y ago
    It's easy to verify if a subsidiary is only working for the interests of a parent company. You could quickly and promptly dissolve any company that was convicted of doing so.
    - thomasahle 5y ago
      What if it's only partially working for the parent company? More generally, there's a more simple way of converting money to power: Employment. As long as you have freedom of contract, you can pay somebody money to do stuff for you.
      - rglullis 5y ago
        > you can pay somebody money to do stuff for you. Yeah, but you can't tell them they can only get money from you, to do things that are in your interest. Your competitor is free to bid for their time/services/products as well. As long as the company is not working exclusively in the interest of any single customer (in this case, the "parent" company), it's fine by me.
encoderer 5y ago
> He didn’t found Tesla Oh not this crap again. Perfectly good article ruined by petty pedantry. You’ve only heard about Tesla because Elon became a co-founder.
- turzmo 5y ago
  I interpreted his saying this as trying to knock down Elon a bit from the god that people make him out to be rather than discrediting him.
  - daenz 5y ago
    And this justifies taking away his wealth? In other words, if Elon literally invented the Tesla car himself, would there be no arguments against him being extremely wealthy?
    - turzmo 5y ago
      His point wasn't that Elon didn't invent Tesla so take away his wealth, his point was that "billionaires do great things" is overrated.
      - daenz 5y ago
        In an article about taking away billionaire's wealth, this doesn't support that argument? It's just a non-sequitur that has no purpose in the context of the larger argument?
        turzmo 5y ago
        I think his point was that billionaires shouldn’t exist but I think the conclusion is somewhat unclear, do we move toward a system where it is much harder to amass that much wealth or do we chop their heads off and take it all? I think it’s left open
credit_guy 5y ago
> I can't see any good reason to let any individual claim ownership over more than a billion dollars of assets—even $100M is pushing it. > Can you? Yes I can. It’s called freedom. These guys are free to do whatever they want as long as they don’t break any laws. I value my freedoms a lot. I was born in a non-free country, and I don’t want to go back to living in a non-free country.
- avmich 5y ago
  > These guys are free to do whatever they want as long as they don’t break any laws. In other words, the author proposes to make laws such that it would be illegal - roughly speaking - to own a $bln. The point, of course, is, should we consider that good enough - or not - to support with laws?
- ASalazarMX 5y ago
  > These guys are free to do whatever they want as long as they don’t break any laws. The main issue is that they do things that are unlawful (monopolies/duopolies, dumping, violating consumer and privacy laws, insider trading, regulatory capture, bribing, and a long etc.) even when they have enough money to last them a lifetime. I think the only way to curtail that power concentration is forcing them to share a significant part of the profits with their employees, who did the lion's share of the work towards that goal. That way, to become a billionaire, you leave some millionaires among people who is helping you do so. I'm not talking about communism, but dividends. I'm aware this would result in a huge financial and economic shock, but any significant change does that. Modern capitalism, while probably headed in the right direction, is showing its deficiencies after a couple of centuries. I also don't worry about the consequences, because it's not going to happen on its own, and the crisis that would force it would be much bigger.
  - credit_guy 5y ago
    If they do unlawful things, they should be prosecuted for those things. I live in a country where people are presumed innocent until proven guilty. I like this principle. Just assuming that if someone is rich they must have broken the law somehow, that directly contradicts this principle. I stand against this, and lots of people in this country think like me. And I'm not rich; I will never be a billionaire. And I am not paid by billionaires to advocate for their cause. I simply want to live in a country where the presumption of innocence is one of the foundational principles. Along with life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness. Do I like wealth or income inequality? I don't really care. Inequality doesn't bother me. What bothers me is that the real estate market is crazy insane. The tuition for colleges promises to be absurdly unaffordable by the time my kids finish high school. The cost of healthcare is stupidly high, and it starts to feel quite high even after the insurance pays their part. All these things bother me, and they bother many tens of millions of other Americans. But in order to fix them, you have to try to fix them. Not to point the finger at the rich and say it's because of them.
maerF0x0 5y ago
My main gripe with this article is the equating of networth and marginal market value of assets with spendable currency. 1. Networth is not something you can easily spend in it's entirety 2. Instantaneous networth ignores the fact that liquidation would cause a sell pressure that would cause it's own decline in value. Just because 100 shares of XYZ stock most recently sold for $N , does not mean that the entire shares outstanding could be sold at that price. There is a curve of open interest, a normal daily volume, and it's unlikely you could divest of 100% of a mulitbillion dollar asset in any short order, especially not for the full market price at the start of the divestment. "Billionaires" rarely have close to that much cash available to them.
Bubble_Pop_22 5y ago
I always think that many people overthink things and tend to make them more complicated than they really are. If you live in NYC you get to see all leaders come around for the General Assembly, you'd see Presidents , Prime Ministers etc. Including people who have been in public office for 20 years. It's not like servers at NOBU get on their knees to worship them when they take their order. It's people like the author of this piece who make a big deal about it or even Lex Fridman who see such figures and would become a doormat for the privilege of an interview with Putin or Musk, interview during which they'd just repeat over and over again the same talking points they have been fed by their PR managers or lawyers. So I don't see the need for a numerical ceiling to wealth, at least in the US the ceiling is provided by the self-respect of the avg. citizen. Americans are very proud and don't allow anybody to buy them out easily. Like when Musk tried to bribe that kid tracking his jet with 5,000$ . The kid asked him 50,000$. Had Musk accepted 50,000$ , he'd have asked 500,000$. Had Musk accepted 500,000$ he'd asked 5,000,000$... There might be some crazy people who easily fall into cults, but by and large they are the minority and the halo effect vanishes very early.

33 points by zdw 5y ago

Tl;dr Even if you are #1 of 8,000,000,000 , you are still just 1 in 8,000,000,000 To be perfectly fair I think many of the leaders cited in this piece know perfectly well that they are easily replaced. Like, take the most traumatic instances such as JFK or Lincoln being shot. Yes there were a couple of days of sorrow (or better yet fake sorrow) but after a couple of days everybody moved on. Pyramids were supposed to be monuments to the Pharoahs, but after a while the fame of structure managed to surpass the fame of the person buried underneath. When there are so many humans the marginal value of any human plummets to record lows. Take Jesus, he's unrivaled at #1, but if we are being honest what's really the % of waking hours that humanity as a whole spends thinking about him during a fiscal year? It gets diluted into almost insignificant levels of attention.

beaconstudios 5y ago

I'm anti-capitalist too, but I think the capitalist argument is that wealth is the incentive to innovate in the marketplace - it doesn't matter whether it's actually useful, but that it motivates hard work. I think this argument is easily debunked by pointing to the comparative innovation of businesses versus state-funded research, or that wealth is created by the work of the employees moreso than the founders, but that's the argument.

achenatx 5y ago
it is incomprehensible to me that people can be "anti capitalists" when capitalism has reduced poverty and suffering to the lowest level in human history. Socialist countries routinely nationalize food production and immediately create shortages. This happens over and over. Capitalism isnt just the innovation of the kernel of a product, it is marketing, selling, manufacturing, distributing, and supporting a product. That takes capital and it requires risk. Capital is constantly being squandered on ideas that go nowhere, but some are successful and the overall system is more productive. The key point is that no one can predict in advance which ideas and teams will be successful. Capital backs them all and the market determines which ones succeed. It is human nature to try to acquire more, when that is rewarded, people respond (by working harder, more efficiently, or with innovation). Labor usually thinks management is useless or dumb. And most managers are bad. But you can look at world class leaders and see that they do matter and can make or break an organization. Look at the bulls under phil jackson, then when he left for the lakers. And then when he left the lakers.
- Jochim 5y ago
  > Socialist countries routinely nationalize food production and immediately create shortages. This happens over and over. Socialist countries are routinely embargoed by capitalist countries, severely limiting their access to global markets. That's if they're lucky, if they're unlucky they're destabilised through targeted assassination of their leaders[0]. If you're even less lucky you'll be captured by the people the U.S. think are the good guys[1] instead of whatever socialist party was gaining traction. I sure hope the torture centre the U.S. military helped set up was built with private capital: > The United States backed Alfredo Stroessner's anti-communist military dictatorship and played a "critical supporting role" in the domestic affairs of Stroessner's Paraguay. For instance, U.S. Army officer Lieutenant Colonel Robert Thierry was sent to help local workmen build a detention and interrogation center named "La Technica" as part of Operation Condor. La Technica was also a well known torture centre. Stroessner's secret police, headed by Pastor Coronel, bathed their captives in tubs of human vomit and excrement and shocked them in the rectum with electric cattle prods. They dismembered the Communist party secretary, Miguel Ángel Soler , alive with a chainsaw while Stroessner listened on the phone. Stroessner demanded the tapes of detainees screaming in pain to be played to their family members. > That takes capital and it requires risk. Capital is constantly being squandered on ideas that go nowhere, but some are successful and the overall system is more productive. Government funded research through universities and the military do so much of the foundational work here that it seems crazy to attribute it to private capital. [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Assassination_attempts_on_Fidel_Castro https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Assassination_attempts_on_Fide... [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Operation_Condor https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Operation_Condor
- cassepipe 5y ago
  It seems to me that except for a small group of crazy persons on the internet fascinated with the imagery of the Soviet Union and a "US bad justifies anything" hard line on the internet and some sectarian self-proclaimed marxist-[leninist] groups no modern anti-capitalist will seriously defend any of the self-proclaimed "socialist" state. (I very much hope that) the consensus in the Left seems to be that a state-owned economy + no democracy = Horror. One of the hard part is trying to understand what capitalism even is. In that endeavour, Marx has only laid out the basis for an analysis at the end of his life in The Capital. It's an unfinished work, hindered by a philosophical education he did his best to shake off. Most social sciences did not exist or weren't well established to help him then. You are only seeing the good sides of capitalism because you are on the good side of the stick if I may say. But without regulations, capitalism incentives are to brutally exploit all living workforce at hand, and this has been very from the beginning of capitalism. It is true that scientific advances in production (and especially the algricultural revolutions) have enabled to production of a incredibly well (in terms of calories available) and cheaply fed workforce which in the end also benefits the working class but this might well be a relatively recent development in the history of capitalism and may have with the fact that investing in mechanization may have seem the best of option in times of working people unrest. Plus you have to factor in the competition that took place with the USSR to be the most prosperous for all state/model. Maybe the solution is capitalism with regulations/better incentives, maybe it is democratic governance inside of corporations, maybe something else I don't know but history has shown times and times again that unregulated capitalism is awful for most of humankind. I am ready to acknowlegde that market mechanisms have their usefulness but that usefulness must be harnessed for greater good, it should not be turned into a religion. Whether there exists or not a "human nature", trying to derive social phenomenas directly from it seems a deeply unscientific approach to understanding social systems that does not seem fit for the 21st century.

avmich 5y ago

> I can't see any good reason to let any individual claim ownership over more than a billion dollars of assets—even $100M is pushing it. Can you? I'm in general disagreeing with major points in the article, but it's too large topic to have a full discussion here. The idea is that billionaires can better focus resources on things they seem important than governments.

AftHurrahWinch 5y ago
> The idea is that billionaires can better focus resources on things they seem important than governments. Stross anticipated your reply though, > They can fund lobbying groups and politicians, rant about colonizing Mars, and buy midlife crisis toys like Twitter or weekend getaways on a space station, but their scope for effecting real change is actually tiny on a global scale. Even Putin and Xi, who are at the state-level actor end of the scale (individually they're multi-billionaires: but they also control nuclear weapons, armies, and populations in 8-9 digits) have little global leverage. Putin's catastrophic adventure in Ukraine has revealed how threadbare the emperor's suit is.
- avmich 5y ago
  Right, and these words are basically wrong. It doesn't matter how big GWP is comparing to a persons' resources, it's the application of these resources, which often can't be done on government level - they are largely for different things, can't risk that much, in practice aren't very efficient etc. Of course there are also arguments to the contrary - e.g. Apollo project was rather effective, large military operations like working during WW2 shows government can actually be quite efficient etc. That doesn't matter though, we only need to point to an example - let it be SpaceX - when a billionaire shows better results than the government.
  - AftHurrahWinch 5y ago
    > we only need to point to an example - let it be SpaceX - when a billionaire shows better results than the government. Stross anticipated this too: > Granting individuals enormous leverage can sometimes be socially useful. But before you point at Musk and Tesla or SpaceX, I need to remind you that he didn't found Tesla, he merely bought into it then took over: SpaceX's focus on reusability is good, but we had reusable space launchers before—the only really new angle is that it's a cost-reduction measure. Starlink isn't an original, it's merely a modern, bigger, faster version of 1990's Teledesic (which fell victim to over-ambitious technology goals and the dot-com bust). Meanwhile, billionaires can do immense damage: the Koch network has largely bankrolled climate change denial, Musk's Mars colony plan is fatally flawed, and so on. You say "better" results than the government... but it's not obvious that a government can't make these marginal improvements... you just assert that "these words are basically wrong".

CryptoPunk 5y ago

Utterly disingenuous characterization of the impact of Musk in his capacity as Tesla's first major investor, first chairman and 14 year long CEO, and of SpaceX on commercial space flight: But before you point at Musk and Tesla or SpaceX, I need to remind you that he didn't found Tesla, he merely bought into it then took over: SpaceX's focus on reusability is good, but we had reusable space launchers before—the only really new angle is that it's a cost-reduction measure. Starlink isn't an original, it's merely a modern, bigger, faster version of 1990's Teledesic (which fell victim to over-ambitious technology goals and the dot-com bust). I sometimes wonder what kind of psychopathology motivates this kind of mindset and ideology, that prioritizes the demonization of the most financially successful over even basic integrity and truth.

strikelaserclaw 5y ago
A lot of people look at everything in simple, reductionist way. Musk is either a god or he's a charlatan who stole companies and contributes nothing. Some people do this to influence a view point and others do this because they are simpletons echoing sentiments that feel good to them, this is how it has always been.

daenz 5y ago

I'm not seeing any new arguments here. Summarized: They don't need that much money. It's not even that much money, relative to the world. That much money doesn't make you live forever. They didn't even build the things that they're known for. Am I missing something new and interesting?

splatcollision 5y ago
Sometimes the old arguments are the best. Just because something has been said before doesn't make it any less valid.
- Apocryphon 5y ago
  Those arguments don't even seem to have been debunked yet.
  - daenz 5y ago
    There's endless discussions on the internet about these tired topics. If you don't feel they have been debunked, I don't think you ever will. There are others that feel the opposite, also strongly. That's why these are tired points, because they go around in circles and make no progress.
jdlshore 5y ago
I don't think there's anything new (nor do I think "newness" is the best way to judge an essay), but I do think you've mis-paraphrased the first point. It's not so much "they don't need that much money" as "after a certain point, more money has vanishing small utility, so having that much money is wasting the money."
- avmich 5y ago
  I guess if Musk will leave all except a billion dollars, he'll leave both Tesla and SpaceX decision making, which would likely significantly change companies, and I'm afraid for worse.

jeffreyrogers 5y ago

I'm not sure how he proposes to limit people to less than a billion dollars (or $100m as he also suggests) without completely overhauling the financial system. Seems like the harms of that are greater than the harms of having some extremely wealthy people (most of whose wealth is tied up in their businesses).

snypher 5y ago
Please expound on what you think the problem is with overhauling the financial system?
- daenz 5y ago
  "Doing Y without X is harmful" doesn't mean "X is harmful"
HWR_14 5y ago
> how he proposes to limit people to less than a billion dollars (or $100m as he also suggests) without completely overhauling the financial system. I mean, "there is a wealth tax that kicks in at $1,000,000,000 at 100%" is a one-line change. I don't see much issue. I mean, Bezos and Musk would have to sell some stock. And? That certainly is a possibility.
- jeffreyrogers 5y ago
  Sure that's one line. What about all the other changes you have to make as a consequence? - You've now changed corporate governance, since companies can only grow to $2bn before a majority shareholder can no longer exist. - You've created an opportunity for market manipulation since speculators can drive the price up to force a large shareholder to have to liquidate part of their position. - What do you do in the event of a takeover? The acquirer buys the company for stock, the previous owner now has to liquidate some of that stock to pay for his increase in net worth. Situations like these are going to create problems for the legal and regulatory system. Maybe some of those are unimportant or even desirable, my point is that it's not a simple change. It has large, far-reaching effects.

carapace 5y ago

This boils down to "eat the rich" at the end. > I can't see any good reason to let any individual claim ownership over more than a billion dollars of assets—even $100M is pushing it. Can you? If they got their wealth "fair and square" within the systems of rules that we all are subject to I feel it would be wrong to just take their assets by changing the rules and taxing it away (or whatever form it takes.) > And when one person holds the purse-strings, we lose [accountability]. It seems to me that that increases accountability. We know where the buck stops.

turzmo 5y ago
Problem with that argument is that when there are opportunities to change the rules "fair and square" through lobbying and creating loopholes that, really, only the rich can afford to take advantage of, the rich will do that.
- carapace 5y ago
  I agree that that's a serious problem, but I don't think the best solution is to confiscate wealth just in case the wealthy misuse it.
Jochim 5y ago
Monarchies got their wealth "fair and square" within the systems of rules that we were all subject to at the time. We eventually decided that the system of rules themselves were not "fair and square" and changed them, often quite bloodily. In a system where money affords power if we accept that power should be distributed at least somewhat evenly then there must be an upper bound placed on wealth. Otherwise we end up in the situation we have right now, where policy is merely a commodity that is bought and sold by those who can afford it.
- carapace 5y ago
  The comparison to monarchs doesn't move me much because most of the world's billionaires aren't also sovereign. (It seems like confiscating the wealth of sovereign billionaires with nations, armies, and maybe even nukes or WMDs would even more problematic.) Not to be crass but "we ate the rich before" isn't a reason IMO to eat them now. I figure the way to curb excessive power concentrations is the panopticon: ubiquitous surveillance. (I'm not advocating for it, but I think it's unavoidable, so we might as well get some use out of it.) People can have their wealth but have limited political power. It reminds me of a story I heard about the Chinese Communists tackling their unruly billionaires. How do you take them down when they can bribe any agent or official? A special unit was formed and this was their basic M.O.: they would locate one of these billionaires and pick them up and sweat them and then offer them a deal. "You can keep all of your money, go into retirement, and promise to be good, just give us everyone in your organization." The alternative is prison (or maybe even death, who really knows?) It's kind brilliant, eh? Think it through. Are you going to go to prison to protect your henchmen and underlings? Or retire to, say, Macau with all your money? You sell out your org, of course. What does that do to team morale for the other big boys' orgs when word gets around? They stop helping their bosses break laws.

rglullis 5y ago

It's interesting that he states right at the beginning that he uses money as a proxy for power and then leads us to the conclusion we should object the concentration of money. Why don't we just go straight to the source and eliminate the mechanisms that allow for the concentration of power? I'd like to propose two very simple rules: - no business entity can have more than 150 people. - no individual can take part in more than one business. You can have as many non-controlling/non-voting shares on any business entity, but you can only contribute directly to one. Put those in place, and you destroy corporatism and with it you destroy the concentration of power. Politically, it's much easier to sell "no one should have this much power" over "no one should be allowed to amass so much money". Left and Right could easily be united on this.

thomasahle 5y ago
Just make a hierarchy of businesses and control the business on top? I don't think you'll be able to find a couple of simple rules that can't easily be dodged.
- rglullis 5y ago
  It's easy to verify if a subsidiary is only working for the interests of a parent company. You could quickly and promptly dissolve any company that was convicted of doing so.
  - thomasahle 5y ago
    What if it's only partially working for the parent company? More generally, there's a more simple way of converting money to power: Employment. As long as you have freedom of contract, you can pay somebody money to do stuff for you.
    - rglullis 5y ago
      > you can pay somebody money to do stuff for you. Yeah, but you can't tell them they can only get money from you, to do things that are in your interest. Your competitor is free to bid for their time/services/products as well. As long as the company is not working exclusively in the interest of any single customer (in this case, the "parent" company), it's fine by me.

encoderer 5y ago

> He didn’t found Tesla Oh not this crap again. Perfectly good article ruined by petty pedantry. You’ve only heard about Tesla because Elon became a co-founder.

turzmo 5y ago
I interpreted his saying this as trying to knock down Elon a bit from the god that people make him out to be rather than discrediting him.
- daenz 5y ago
  And this justifies taking away his wealth? In other words, if Elon literally invented the Tesla car himself, would there be no arguments against him being extremely wealthy?
  - turzmo 5y ago
    His point wasn't that Elon didn't invent Tesla so take away his wealth, his point was that "billionaires do great things" is overrated.
    - daenz 5y ago
      In an article about taking away billionaire's wealth, this doesn't support that argument? It's just a non-sequitur that has no purpose in the context of the larger argument?
      - turzmo 5y ago
        I think his point was that billionaires shouldn’t exist but I think the conclusion is somewhat unclear, do we move toward a system where it is much harder to amass that much wealth or do we chop their heads off and take it all? I think it’s left open

credit_guy 5y ago

> I can't see any good reason to let any individual claim ownership over more than a billion dollars of assets—even $100M is pushing it. > Can you? Yes I can. It’s called freedom. These guys are free to do whatever they want as long as they don’t break any laws. I value my freedoms a lot. I was born in a non-free country, and I don’t want to go back to living in a non-free country.

avmich 5y ago
> These guys are free to do whatever they want as long as they don’t break any laws. In other words, the author proposes to make laws such that it would be illegal - roughly speaking - to own a $bln. The point, of course, is, should we consider that good enough - or not - to support with laws?
ASalazarMX 5y ago
> These guys are free to do whatever they want as long as they don’t break any laws. The main issue is that they do things that are unlawful (monopolies/duopolies, dumping, violating consumer and privacy laws, insider trading, regulatory capture, bribing, and a long etc.) even when they have enough money to last them a lifetime. I think the only way to curtail that power concentration is forcing them to share a significant part of the profits with their employees, who did the lion's share of the work towards that goal. That way, to become a billionaire, you leave some millionaires among people who is helping you do so. I'm not talking about communism, but dividends. I'm aware this would result in a huge financial and economic shock, but any significant change does that. Modern capitalism, while probably headed in the right direction, is showing its deficiencies after a couple of centuries. I also don't worry about the consequences, because it's not going to happen on its own, and the crisis that would force it would be much bigger.
- credit_guy 5y ago
  If they do unlawful things, they should be prosecuted for those things. I live in a country where people are presumed innocent until proven guilty. I like this principle. Just assuming that if someone is rich they must have broken the law somehow, that directly contradicts this principle. I stand against this, and lots of people in this country think like me. And I'm not rich; I will never be a billionaire. And I am not paid by billionaires to advocate for their cause. I simply want to live in a country where the presumption of innocence is one of the foundational principles. Along with life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness. Do I like wealth or income inequality? I don't really care. Inequality doesn't bother me. What bothers me is that the real estate market is crazy insane. The tuition for colleges promises to be absurdly unaffordable by the time my kids finish high school. The cost of healthcare is stupidly high, and it starts to feel quite high even after the insurance pays their part. All these things bother me, and they bother many tens of millions of other Americans. But in order to fix them, you have to try to fix them. Not to point the finger at the rich and say it's because of them.

maerF0x0 5y ago

My main gripe with this article is the equating of networth and marginal market value of assets with spendable currency. 1. Networth is not something you can easily spend in it's entirety 2. Instantaneous networth ignores the fact that liquidation would cause a sell pressure that would cause it's own decline in value. Just because 100 shares of XYZ stock most recently sold for $N , does not mean that the entire shares outstanding could be sold at that price. There is a curve of open interest, a normal daily volume, and it's unlikely you could divest of 100% of a mulitbillion dollar asset in any short order, especially not for the full market price at the start of the divestment. "Billionaires" rarely have close to that much cash available to them.

Bubble_Pop_22 5y ago

I always think that many people overthink things and tend to make them more complicated than they really are. If you live in NYC you get to see all leaders come around for the General Assembly, you'd see Presidents , Prime Ministers etc. Including people who have been in public office for 20 years. It's not like servers at NOBU get on their knees to worship them when they take their order. It's people like the author of this piece who make a big deal about it or even Lex Fridman who see such figures and would become a doormat for the privilege of an interview with Putin or Musk, interview during which they'd just repeat over and over again the same talking points they have been fed by their PR managers or lawyers. So I don't see the need for a numerical ceiling to wealth, at least in the US the ceiling is provided by the self-respect of the avg. citizen. Americans are very proud and don't allow anybody to buy them out easily. Like when Musk tried to bribe that kid tracking his jet with 5,000$ . The kid asked him 50,000$. Had Musk accepted 50,000$ , he'd have asked 500,000$. Had Musk accepted 500,000$ he'd asked 5,000,000$... There might be some crazy people who easily fall into cults, but by and large they are the minority and the halo effect vanishes very early.