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Does that do something to the power relationships in the world? The fact that you're even asking that is a reason we shouldn't have billionaires -- world power

Does that do something to the power relationships in the world? The fact that you're even asking that is a reason we shouldn't have billionaires -- world power relationships shouldn't be based on the wealth of individual citizens. For example, what did Musk really talk about when he met with the president of Brazil? Did he represent American interests, Amazon Inc's interests, or Elon Musk's interests?

kordlessagain 4y ago
So then you are also OK with gutting capitalism and limiting company's abilities to make mad profits? Because, you can't have one without the other.
- Johnny555 4y ago
  I don't understand how a tax on personal wealth guts capitalism and limits a company's ability to make mad profits?
  - gammabetadelta 4y ago
- arrosenberg 4y ago
  Or distribute the profits more broadly? No need to be dramatic.
- yellowapple 4y ago
  If we can't have capitalism without neofeudalist exploitation of the working class for the sake of enriching a privileged ownership class, then yes, I would very much prefer to gut capitalism.
- X6S1x6Okd1st 4y ago
  Why do you think a wealth tax would limit a companies abilities to make "mad profits"?
  - themacguffinman 4y ago
    Because why would anyone, corporate or not, invest substantial time & resources into chasing mad profits if they won't get to keep almost any of it?
    - X6S1x6Okd1st 4y ago
      Because I don't believe that most people are really aiming to be multi-billionaires, I think most of the effort comes from people trying to reach financial independence at various levels of cost of living.
      - themacguffinman 4y ago
        A wealth tax doesn't just affect multi-billionaires, it guts all accumulations of wealth. If anything, billionaires are most able to shrug off a wealth tax. Your average Financial Independence strategy (pursue a high income to accumulate a sizeable warchest of assets quickly, then passively live off the illiquid assets slowly) is severely gutted by a substantial wealth tax that aggressively drains saved assets.
        X6S1x6Okd1st 4y ago
        Do you feel like a wealth tax starting at the 50,000,001th dollar of 2% until you get to a billion is "gutting all accumulations of wealth" or would harm the average financial independence strategy?
        themacguffinman 4y ago
        No, probably not, assuming you keep it accurately adjusted for inflation. This will likely impact the next tier of wealth: tech startup founders. Either startups will represent a tax loophole or the wealth tax will slowly drain the illiquid assets of founders and early employees during the startup phase which nowadays often have a notoriously long gestation period.
smsm42 4y ago
Why not btw? I mean, why is it worse for somebody to have power because he worked and invested for decades and made optimal decisions (and probably some luck) than for somebody to have power because he was born into the right family, knows all the right people in The Machine, has nice hair and is able to conceal his rampaging cocaine habit long enough to make himself too big to fail? I get that "wealth gets power" is not ideal, but the alternatives we can see around don't seem to be much better. Somebody will have the power, and we as a society would need some proxy to use so that it won't lead to a disaster. Being able to create and run successful businesses (yes, I know not all rich people are self-made, etc. - it's an imperfect proxy, but to a large measure a working one) doesn't look that bad, compared to "being born with right last name" or "being born with the correct facial features"...
- xapata 4y ago
  > (and probably some luck) I'd reverse the skill and luck relationship. Success at that magnitude is almost entirely luck (and probably a little skill).
  - smsm42 4y ago
    When one becomes rich because of one IPO that went right - ok, let's say it's luck. When one creates several successful businesses in a row - no, sorry, I can't say "it's just dumb luck" anymore, it's more realistic to assume there's something else involved.
    - nemothekid 4y ago
      Taleb has a more succint way of putting it[1], but no it can still be luck just like hitting black in roulette several times in a row can also be luck. [1] https://mobile.twitter.com/nntaleb/status/1534172773580513280 https://mobile.twitter.com/nntaleb/status/153417277358051328...
      - Domenic_S 4y ago
        Hitting black multiple times in roulette is always luck (barring cheating). What the tweet is saying, and it seems right, is that looking at a probability graph the only way to get the billionaire-like outcome/outlier is to dramatically increase volatility, i.e. bet on long odds. If everyone went to work, maxed out their 401k, bought blue-chip stocks, and called it a day, basically nobody would have outlier net worth. But some people choose to increase the volatility of their money (buying crypto, starting a company, options trading, whatever) and as you'd expect 99.9999% of them don't get rich and the rest of them get uber-rich.
nostrademons 4y ago
Are you advocating against billionaires & capitalism, or against power relationships? In theoretically egalitarian systems like communism, a committee makes decisions about how to allocate resources. Then whoever holds most sway over the committee holds sway over resource allocation. If you do it by direct democracy, then whoever owns the news media & ad platforms (or has money to do massive PR campaigns and ad buys) holds sway over resource allocation. You can't escape this: somebody is going to make the decisions, unless you just run the world by computers and have humans slot in for menial tasks.
- pessimizer 4y ago
  The question is who they're beholden to, i.e. who they derive that power from. The problem with the person with the most sway over a committee being able to make a decision is less because: 1) The fact that it's necessary to "hold sway" is a result of the power not actually being held by that person, but being loaned to that person by the rest of the committee in a way that can be withdrawn at any time. 2) The committee members are all subject to the process that chooses them. That's the power center, and the character of that process defines the legitimacy of what the committee does. If a billionaire chooses them, the committee is a mask. If the people being governed choose them, that's the basis of popular sovereignty, and the justification for post-Enlightenment government in general. > whoever owns the news media & ad platforms (or has money to do massive PR campaigns and ad buys) holds sway over resource allocation. You're talking about other billionaires. The conversation is about not having billionaire. So this boils down to if billionaires choose a committee, billionaires will run things, and if people vote for a committee and billionaires control all of the information that those people get, billionaires will run things. You can escape this if you don't have billionaires.
  - nostrademons 4y ago
    Power is always loaned, and always beholden to someone (or a large group of someones) else. That's what makes it power: the ability to get other people to do what you want them to. If they don't do that, you don't actually have power, while if they do, you've got the power regardless of what the formal power structures (which are often misdirections anyway) say. The rest of your post is largely true, but also applies to billionaires. They derive their power from people being willing to trade money for the goods and services produced by the assets they own. When people cease to make that trade, their money and their power evaporate. Just look what's happened to the shareholders of Kodak, Xerox, Pan-Am, GM, Sun Microsystems, Lehman Bros, etc. Note also that systems without billionaires have existed, and have often been worse in terms of distributing power to many people. See eg. Soviet Communism, where power rests in the Politburo, and the local party apparatchik holds outsize sway over everything regardless of competence. Or even post-WW2 U.S, when the top marginal tax rate was 90% and executive compensation was far lower because there was no point in paying a lot when the government got 90% of it. Corporations instead compensated their top execs in-kind: usage of private jets, corner offices, ability to influence what every American thought through advertising and mass culture, influence on policy makers. Orwell's 1984 and Chomsky's Manufacturing Consent were about the 1945-1980 period, not the post-Internet era. Power was significantly more centralized during that time period than it is now.
ObscureScience 4y ago
I somehow doubt he represented Amazon inc's interests.
- noncoml 4y ago
  He obviously meant Tesla’s
  - Johnny555 4y ago
    yeah,true, typo on my part, I was just reading about Bezos in another post and about the Amazon rainforest in an article about the meeting. Too late to edit it now.
dadoge 4y ago
Good luck getting competing countries to agree on banning billionaires in one fowl swoop. This is a very idealistic and impossible to ever implement take
throwawaylinux 4y ago
What do governments really talk about behind closed doors? Not the interests of the people whose sons they conspire to send to die in their wars.

kordlessagain 4y ago

So then you are also OK with gutting capitalism and limiting company's abilities to make mad profits? Because, you can't have one without the other.

Johnny555 4y ago
I don't understand how a tax on personal wealth guts capitalism and limits a company's ability to make mad profits?
- gammabetadelta 4y ago
arrosenberg 4y ago
Or distribute the profits more broadly? No need to be dramatic.
yellowapple 4y ago
If we can't have capitalism without neofeudalist exploitation of the working class for the sake of enriching a privileged ownership class, then yes, I would very much prefer to gut capitalism.
X6S1x6Okd1st 4y ago
Why do you think a wealth tax would limit a companies abilities to make "mad profits"?
- themacguffinman 4y ago
  Because why would anyone, corporate or not, invest substantial time & resources into chasing mad profits if they won't get to keep almost any of it?
  - X6S1x6Okd1st 4y ago
    Because I don't believe that most people are really aiming to be multi-billionaires, I think most of the effort comes from people trying to reach financial independence at various levels of cost of living.
    - themacguffinman 4y ago
      A wealth tax doesn't just affect multi-billionaires, it guts all accumulations of wealth. If anything, billionaires are most able to shrug off a wealth tax. Your average Financial Independence strategy (pursue a high income to accumulate a sizeable warchest of assets quickly, then passively live off the illiquid assets slowly) is severely gutted by a substantial wealth tax that aggressively drains saved assets.
      - X6S1x6Okd1st 4y ago
        Do you feel like a wealth tax starting at the 50,000,001th dollar of 2% until you get to a billion is "gutting all accumulations of wealth" or would harm the average financial independence strategy?
        themacguffinman 4y ago
        No, probably not, assuming you keep it accurately adjusted for inflation. This will likely impact the next tier of wealth: tech startup founders. Either startups will represent a tax loophole or the wealth tax will slowly drain the illiquid assets of founders and early employees during the startup phase which nowadays often have a notoriously long gestation period.

smsm42 4y ago

Why not btw? I mean, why is it worse for somebody to have power because he worked and invested for decades and made optimal decisions (and probably some luck) than for somebody to have power because he was born into the right family, knows all the right people in The Machine, has nice hair and is able to conceal his rampaging cocaine habit long enough to make himself too big to fail? I get that "wealth gets power" is not ideal, but the alternatives we can see around don't seem to be much better. Somebody will have the power, and we as a society would need some proxy to use so that it won't lead to a disaster. Being able to create and run successful businesses (yes, I know not all rich people are self-made, etc. - it's an imperfect proxy, but to a large measure a working one) doesn't look that bad, compared to "being born with right last name" or "being born with the correct facial features"...

xapata 4y ago
> (and probably some luck) I'd reverse the skill and luck relationship. Success at that magnitude is almost entirely luck (and probably a little skill).
- smsm42 4y ago
  When one becomes rich because of one IPO that went right - ok, let's say it's luck. When one creates several successful businesses in a row - no, sorry, I can't say "it's just dumb luck" anymore, it's more realistic to assume there's something else involved.
  - nemothekid 4y ago
    Taleb has a more succint way of putting it[1], but no it can still be luck just like hitting black in roulette several times in a row can also be luck. [1] https://mobile.twitter.com/nntaleb/status/1534172773580513280 https://mobile.twitter.com/nntaleb/status/153417277358051328...
    - Domenic_S 4y ago
      Hitting black multiple times in roulette is always luck (barring cheating). What the tweet is saying, and it seems right, is that looking at a probability graph the only way to get the billionaire-like outcome/outlier is to dramatically increase volatility, i.e. bet on long odds. If everyone went to work, maxed out their 401k, bought blue-chip stocks, and called it a day, basically nobody would have outlier net worth. But some people choose to increase the volatility of their money (buying crypto, starting a company, options trading, whatever) and as you'd expect 99.9999% of them don't get rich and the rest of them get uber-rich.

nostrademons 4y ago

Are you advocating against billionaires & capitalism, or against power relationships? In theoretically egalitarian systems like communism, a committee makes decisions about how to allocate resources. Then whoever holds most sway over the committee holds sway over resource allocation. If you do it by direct democracy, then whoever owns the news media & ad platforms (or has money to do massive PR campaigns and ad buys) holds sway over resource allocation. You can't escape this: somebody is going to make the decisions, unless you just run the world by computers and have humans slot in for menial tasks.

pessimizer 4y ago
The question is who they're beholden to, i.e. who they derive that power from. The problem with the person with the most sway over a committee being able to make a decision is less because: 1) The fact that it's necessary to "hold sway" is a result of the power not actually being held by that person, but being loaned to that person by the rest of the committee in a way that can be withdrawn at any time. 2) The committee members are all subject to the process that chooses them. That's the power center, and the character of that process defines the legitimacy of what the committee does. If a billionaire chooses them, the committee is a mask. If the people being governed choose them, that's the basis of popular sovereignty, and the justification for post-Enlightenment government in general. > whoever owns the news media & ad platforms (or has money to do massive PR campaigns and ad buys) holds sway over resource allocation. You're talking about other billionaires. The conversation is about not having billionaire. So this boils down to if billionaires choose a committee, billionaires will run things, and if people vote for a committee and billionaires control all of the information that those people get, billionaires will run things. You can escape this if you don't have billionaires.
- nostrademons 4y ago
  Power is always loaned, and always beholden to someone (or a large group of someones) else. That's what makes it power: the ability to get other people to do what you want them to. If they don't do that, you don't actually have power, while if they do, you've got the power regardless of what the formal power structures (which are often misdirections anyway) say. The rest of your post is largely true, but also applies to billionaires. They derive their power from people being willing to trade money for the goods and services produced by the assets they own. When people cease to make that trade, their money and their power evaporate. Just look what's happened to the shareholders of Kodak, Xerox, Pan-Am, GM, Sun Microsystems, Lehman Bros, etc. Note also that systems without billionaires have existed, and have often been worse in terms of distributing power to many people. See eg. Soviet Communism, where power rests in the Politburo, and the local party apparatchik holds outsize sway over everything regardless of competence. Or even post-WW2 U.S, when the top marginal tax rate was 90% and executive compensation was far lower because there was no point in paying a lot when the government got 90% of it. Corporations instead compensated their top execs in-kind: usage of private jets, corner offices, ability to influence what every American thought through advertising and mass culture, influence on policy makers. Orwell's 1984 and Chomsky's Manufacturing Consent were about the 1945-1980 period, not the post-Internet era. Power was significantly more centralized during that time period than it is now.

ObscureScience 4y ago

I somehow doubt he represented Amazon inc's interests.

noncoml 4y ago
He obviously meant Tesla’s
- Johnny555 4y ago
  yeah,true, typo on my part, I was just reading about Bezos in another post and about the Amazon rainforest in an article about the meeting. Too late to edit it now.

dadoge 4y ago

Good luck getting competing countries to agree on banning billionaires in one fowl swoop. This is a very idealistic and impossible to ever implement take

throwawaylinux 4y ago

What do governments really talk about behind closed doors? Not the interests of the people whose sons they conspire to send to die in their wars.