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If you want to reduce the influence of money on politics, you're not going to achieve that by punishing billionaires, or by destroying the incentive structure t

If you want to reduce the influence of money on politics, you're not going to achieve that by punishing billionaires, or by destroying the incentive structure that allows them to exist. If you want to reduce the influence of money in politics, you'll have to understand the specific mechanisms that create said influence, and address them by law. Wealth is good. People acquire wealth by adding value. We want to incentivize people to add value. Of course, the "billionaires shouldn't exist" crowd understand little and less, and would happily have us destroy this system of incentives without even achieving their stated goals, because they, much like the "defund police" crowd, are more interested in appearing virtuous than in actually solving problems.

kasey_junk 4y ago
> Wealth is good. People acquire wealth by adding value. Those are axioms presented without evidence. It’s trivial to find counter examples. I’m no radical redistributionist but the idea that wealth in and of itself shows added value is clearly wrong.
- prottog 4y ago
  I suppose it depends on how you define wealth, but I can't think of many people who became really fabulously wealthy without creating value for other people, except when government was involved in a monopolistic or rent-seeking way. It's trivial to steal somebody's lunch money. It's much harder to become a multi-billionaire without making something that a lot of other people wanted to spend money on. (If those other people were forced to spend money on it by the power of the government, it's a different matter.)
  - hackerlight 4y ago
    Regulatory capture is just the beginning. Just because two people agreed to trade doesn't mean value was created. First there's externalities. Global warming caused by oil companies. Stochastic terrorism and fragmentation of our polity caused by social media and news companies. Healthcare crisis caused by fast food companies. Second the notion of voluntary trade is a fairy tail that's ignorant of the underlying neuro and psychological processes that go into decision making. The dopamine system is stupidly easy to game. It's like if we got a bunch of moths to kill themselves by flying into a bright light somewhere and we call that voluntary, as if we weren't merely hacking ancient circuitry. That's what's happening now with opioids, fast food, social media and more.
    - Levitz 4y ago
      >Just because two people agreed to trade doesn't mean value was created. Reminds me of that adage: "Economics is the idea that if I pay you a dollar to step on shit and you in turn pay me the same dollar to step on shit, that makes for a better world"
orwin 4y ago
Money is just an arbitrary mean of distributing production. In a capitalist society (and at a lesser extent in a mercantile one too), having a lot of "things", in this case money and capital: we can call wealth, is power (this has implication for anarchist beliefs). Democracy and in a limited way, socialism (pensions for the elderly, healthcare, subsidized public transportation, i know this is not the original meaning, but for this its good enough) counterbalance the power gap between wealthy people and non-wealthy people, but clearly in the western world (at least in my country), the counterbalance is weaker and weaker. I don't think a random millionaire like Eric Finman should have more power than a random citizen, and yet he have. I don't think the "billionaire shouldn't exist" crowd actually exist. But i'm part of the "billionaires shouldn't have this much power" crowd, since it feels like in my country, they own the press, the executive and 40% of the legislative power. The judiciary power is the only one that might be a bit free from influence, but i'm not certain.
- sokoloff 4y ago
  There are commenters on this very page who count themselves among the “billionaires should not exist” crowd.
  - orwin 4y ago
    Let me rephrase this: i don't think people saying 'billionaires shouldn't exist' are against their existence, but against the disproportionate amount of power they have.
- int_19h 4y ago
  Billionaires existing is ipso facto evidence of extreme inequality in allocation of generated wealth - so extreme that there is no feasible justification for it. Therefore, billionaires should not exist. A more verbose way to say the same thing is that society should be structured in ways that make it impossible to collect so much wealth produced by other people as economic rent.
  - orwin 4y ago
hackerlight 4y ago
"People acquire wealth by adding value" This incorrect view comes from objectivist thought. Namely, the trader theory of value. But it's false ideology. Some wealth implies value add. SpaceX. Other wealth was partly figuratively stolen due to incomplete laws that prevent market failure. Purdue Pharma, slave trader, hitman, oil company (global warming), sex trafficker, social media company (societal fragmentation), fast food company (costs on public healthcare), landowners (regulatory capture), porn company (victims of revenge porn), car company (health effects of tire dust). I'd say it's more the norm nowadays that wealth is partly stolen, figuratively speaking. The distortions and market failures have become so large.
- marcusverus 4y ago
  You seem to be suggesting that the mere existence of externalities somehow negates the fact that value was added, which is silly. The existence of externalities doesn't negate the adding of value. Would we be better off without oil companies? Obviously not (just ask a European!) Hence it's impossible to say that they're not adding value, or that the people who create them aren't adding value.

kasey_junk 4y ago

> Wealth is good. People acquire wealth by adding value. Those are axioms presented without evidence. It’s trivial to find counter examples. I’m no radical redistributionist but the idea that wealth in and of itself shows added value is clearly wrong.

prottog 4y ago
I suppose it depends on how you define wealth, but I can't think of many people who became really fabulously wealthy without creating value for other people, except when government was involved in a monopolistic or rent-seeking way. It's trivial to steal somebody's lunch money. It's much harder to become a multi-billionaire without making something that a lot of other people wanted to spend money on. (If those other people were forced to spend money on it by the power of the government, it's a different matter.)
- hackerlight 4y ago
  Regulatory capture is just the beginning. Just because two people agreed to trade doesn't mean value was created. First there's externalities. Global warming caused by oil companies. Stochastic terrorism and fragmentation of our polity caused by social media and news companies. Healthcare crisis caused by fast food companies. Second the notion of voluntary trade is a fairy tail that's ignorant of the underlying neuro and psychological processes that go into decision making. The dopamine system is stupidly easy to game. It's like if we got a bunch of moths to kill themselves by flying into a bright light somewhere and we call that voluntary, as if we weren't merely hacking ancient circuitry. That's what's happening now with opioids, fast food, social media and more.
  - Levitz 4y ago
    >Just because two people agreed to trade doesn't mean value was created. Reminds me of that adage: "Economics is the idea that if I pay you a dollar to step on shit and you in turn pay me the same dollar to step on shit, that makes for a better world"

orwin 4y ago

Money is just an arbitrary mean of distributing production. In a capitalist society (and at a lesser extent in a mercantile one too), having a lot of "things", in this case money and capital: we can call wealth, is power (this has implication for anarchist beliefs). Democracy and in a limited way, socialism (pensions for the elderly, healthcare, subsidized public transportation, i know this is not the original meaning, but for this its good enough) counterbalance the power gap between wealthy people and non-wealthy people, but clearly in the western world (at least in my country), the counterbalance is weaker and weaker. I don't think a random millionaire like Eric Finman should have more power than a random citizen, and yet he have. I don't think the "billionaire shouldn't exist" crowd actually exist. But i'm part of the "billionaires shouldn't have this much power" crowd, since it feels like in my country, they own the press, the executive and 40% of the legislative power. The judiciary power is the only one that might be a bit free from influence, but i'm not certain.

sokoloff 4y ago
There are commenters on this very page who count themselves among the “billionaires should not exist” crowd.
- orwin 4y ago
  Let me rephrase this: i don't think people saying 'billionaires shouldn't exist' are against their existence, but against the disproportionate amount of power they have.
int_19h 4y ago
Billionaires existing is ipso facto evidence of extreme inequality in allocation of generated wealth - so extreme that there is no feasible justification for it. Therefore, billionaires should not exist. A more verbose way to say the same thing is that society should be structured in ways that make it impossible to collect so much wealth produced by other people as economic rent.
- orwin 4y ago

hackerlight 4y ago

"People acquire wealth by adding value" This incorrect view comes from objectivist thought. Namely, the trader theory of value. But it's false ideology. Some wealth implies value add. SpaceX. Other wealth was partly figuratively stolen due to incomplete laws that prevent market failure. Purdue Pharma, slave trader, hitman, oil company (global warming), sex trafficker, social media company (societal fragmentation), fast food company (costs on public healthcare), landowners (regulatory capture), porn company (victims of revenge porn), car company (health effects of tire dust). I'd say it's more the norm nowadays that wealth is partly stolen, figuratively speaking. The distortions and market failures have become so large.

marcusverus 4y ago
You seem to be suggesting that the mere existence of externalities somehow negates the fact that value was added, which is silly. The existence of externalities doesn't negate the adding of value. Would we be better off without oil companies? Obviously not (just ask a European!) Hence it's impossible to say that they're not adding value, or that the people who create them aren't adding value.