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There is not some fixed amount of money in the world, though, and there hasn't been since at least the point the world abandoned the gold standard. We don't hav
by makomk 4y ago
There is not some fixed amount of money in the world, though, and there hasn't been since at least the point the world abandoned the gold standard. We don't have to worry about someone sitting on all the money and stopping the economic activity that it would enable by doing so - governments and banks can literally create money out of thin air as necessary to keep the economy supplied with cash. The big limiting factor in how well off ordinary workers can be is the capacity of the actual, real economy of factories and stores to supply them with goods and services. That's why it's not a bad thing that people found successful businesses which are worth a large amount of money: by doing so they are, in general, directly making everyone better off by coming up with better, more efficient or higher quality ways of satisfying their needs.
Sure, they didn't do it alone, they had employees and the whole rest of society, but all those workers and the rest of society was there before and yet the business was not. Successful business enterprises don't just instantaneously spontaneously assemble because the world is capable of supporting them, they have to be created and if they cease to exist the world is worse off even though all the workers and buildings and so on still exist. (Also, the parts of society that enable successful businesses - and even basics like food and energy - are much more heavily made up of other businesses than I think people appreciate.)
- simonh 4y agoThis is the point. What’s important is how ownership and management of economic production is allocated. Who runs businesses? In capitalism they are largely owned and managed by the people that built those businesses. In communism and nationalised industries they are owned and managed by a government bureaucracy. In this case the owner transferred that control to a charitable trust. Personally I believe each of these can have advantages in various situations. Some critical shared infrastructure and services I think do belong with government. Defence, healthcare, emergency services, perhaps some utilities. Charitable trusts have a place. But I also believe private citizens that demonstrate the ability to build and run businesses also have a place, a big place in the system. Private capital investment is a massive and highly productive and efficient force for economic good. Typical billionaires don’t spend billions on themselves. Millions yes, but most of those billions exist as shares that represent control of productive businesses that provide goods, services and jobs. If they spent it all on themselves they wouldn’t be billionaires for very long. I don’t think it’s generally in the public interest or beneficial to society to confiscate businesses from their owners, and what? Give it to who? There is a legitimate concern that such control can lead to negative effects like exercise consumption or political influence, but the way you deal with that is to address those problems directly.
- strbean 4y ago> exercise consumption Did you mean 'excessive'? Or is this a term I'm not finding on Google?
- simonh 4y agoI meant excessive. Sorry, typed it on my phone.
- int_19h 4y ago> In communism ... they are owned and managed by a government bureaucracy. That depends on the degree of centralization of any given variety of socialism. The other option is that they are owned and managed directly by the workers.
- simonh 4y agoTrue, and I have no problem with that. In fact such ownership structures are possible and do exist in many capitalist countries as well. There’s no law against it. Ultimately capitalism is founded on individual economic freedom, and that includes the freedom to enter into cooperative ownership structures and the sort of charitable trust structure Patagonia now enjoys. The main reason I think we don’t see cooperative worker owned enterprises very often is that employees generally are not interested in assuming the level of financial commitment, responsibility and risk that goes with ownership.