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The fundamental problem is wealth having a high correlation or even causation with power. At any point in time, very little keeps a neutral or even benevolent

The fundamental problem is wealth having a high correlation or even causation with power. At any point in time, very little keeps a neutral or even benevolent elite from turning malevolent. At that point, you're stuck with the populace willing to shed sweat, tears and blood to fight back. We also tend to select on relative fitness, and both wealth and power contribute pretty strongly towards fitness. You can educate people to look past this, but it's pretty difficult to get individuals to look past their basic instincts even after training them to do so their entire childhood. You can change society to minimize the negative effects, but society can lose knowledge and trend the other way over time. If it was just "well more income for everyone means less people in poverty", yes, it would be useless. But that's not what is happening.

pclmulqdq 4y ago
Why don't we attempt to strip the power from wealth rather than attempting to take people's wealth away? The fact that wealth and power are correlated has a lot to do with the fact that we have these hugely complicated legal systems with a lot of gray areas. The wealthier you are, the more you can afford to look for loopholes. What if we took an axe to the codes of laws and closed the loopholes? What if we stripped certain offices of power so that there wasn't much benefit to corruption? Humanity has built systems that give the wealthy power, but we don't have to design them this way.
- arundi2 4y ago
- BlargMcLarg 4y ago
  I would agree this. That said, good luck trying to change this in the first place. Not only is it incredibly ingrained into our system, the status quo has a lot to lose and would not be willing to give it up, while it is incredibly difficult to unionize the masses and not have them defect for a pittance. Either way this will have to be answered by the time paradigm shifts and automation eventually question the worth of human labor as a whole.

pclmulqdq 4y ago

Why don't we attempt to strip the power from wealth rather than attempting to take people's wealth away? The fact that wealth and power are correlated has a lot to do with the fact that we have these hugely complicated legal systems with a lot of gray areas. The wealthier you are, the more you can afford to look for loopholes. What if we took an axe to the codes of laws and closed the loopholes? What if we stripped certain offices of power so that there wasn't much benefit to corruption? Humanity has built systems that give the wealthy power, but we don't have to design them this way.

arundi2 4y ago
BlargMcLarg 4y ago
I would agree this. That said, good luck trying to change this in the first place. Not only is it incredibly ingrained into our system, the status quo has a lot to lose and would not be willing to give it up, while it is incredibly difficult to unionize the masses and not have them defect for a pittance. Either way this will have to be answered by the time paradigm shifts and automation eventually question the worth of human labor as a whole.