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You are overlooking the "extreme" part of "extreme inequality" Bezos and Musk would work just as hard if they only had 10% of the financial equity share in the

• kortilla 4y ago
  > Bezos and Musk would work just as hard if they only had 10% of the financial equity share in their companies that they have today. This is absolutely not a given. Not because the value changes, but because it implies they no longer own a controlling interest in the company and have to answer to a board. Musk explicitly does not want to take SpaceX public because shareholders are terrible bosses for long term visions (colonizing mars).
• Natsu 4y ago
  Musk would have more difficulty funding all those companies that have made all those advances. And there are already very few Musks out there.
  • tchaffee 4y ago
    One person deciding where all that money is invested is a sort of economic dictator. Trying to live on Mars is polluting our planet. If you don't agree with that use of resources, it's not a benevolent dictatorship.
    • Natsu 4y ago
      It's far more democratic than that, at least insofar as people voluntarily gave the person money vs. it being collected in non-voluntary ways. And yes, that may be non-binary in that some of Elon's money has likely come from the government where we have less choice about spending it, other money may come from voluntarily purchased Teslas and whatnot.
    • mola 4y ago
      This. The problem is a dstribution of power most of all. If power is concentrated in government, it's as bad if it's concentrated with an individual with his own private police force. Private espionage force etc. All this strawman about the failures of absolute equality are just slight of hand to ignore the very obvious problem with a world where a single person have the power of a state. The state legitimacy should come from the people participation in govering themselves. Not from some psuedo meritocracy. Concentrated power without checks and balances is the problem, not specifically "the state". I wish all libertarians would wake up and see that very obvious threat to freedom.
      • P5fRxh5kUvp2th 4y ago
        What if the people want slavery? Or is this vaunted flat democracy only allowed when the result aligns with your morals? It's called tyranny of the majority
        • mola 4y ago
          Huh? Never talked about "flat democracy" I consider a representative democracy to be a form of self governing. You really missed the whole point of my post
        • tchaffee 4y ago
          Can you quote where they suggested a flat democracy? Looks like you are putting words in their mouth, also known as creating a strawman.
          • P5fRxh5kUvp2th 4y ago
            implication and conclusions don't need to be explicitly stated. In this case if power isn't in the government it's in the hands of the people. That's a flat democracy.
            • tchaffee 4y ago
              > implication and conclusions don't need to be explicitly stated. But you would do well to ask, because you got it totally wrong. The commenter said that they are against this type of libertarian idealism. Because the result is that it isn't a flat democracy. Instead folks like Musk end up with huge amounts of power. Specifically you need to understand what they said here: "If power is concentrated in government, it's as bad if it's concentrated with an individual with his own private police force." The implication is that the commentator wants power evenly distributed. The opposite of your wrong accusation of the commenter wanting power concentrated in a majority. Nowhere was flat democracy mentioned. You invented that line of thinking.