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>Also billionaires are a symptom of a broken society. They are the symptom of any society which allows unlimited private ownership of cooperations. Just by pro

>Also billionaires are a symptom of a broken society. They are the symptom of any society which allows unlimited private ownership of cooperations. Just by probability alone some companies will grow by billions and any major owner will become a billionaire. >we should probably just tax net worth over a billion at 100%. Which, in this case, is totally equivalent to the government seizing Tesla or SpaceX. Billionaires do not have billions in cash, they are billionaires because they own assets, likely not very liquid, worth billions. I really hate to be shilling for rich people, but "disown them" is not the solution. The real problem with billionaires is that they are both extremely powerful and unaccountable. Both of which is the fault of the political class, which both shields the rich from accountability and gives them power. The informal power is the problem here. There is also a qualitative difference here. The billionaire who became a billionaire, because he built up a long term productive company and the billionaire who won in the positive EV Casino (the stock market) are not the same. The former might even be deserving (although I do not really like that word in this context) of some influence, as a legitimate representative of corporate interests.

techdragon 4y ago
Yes, but it’s nigh impossible to strip them of the informal power without stripping them of the actual power they hold by virtue of stocks and corporate control, assets and cash… all of which are readily fungible into political into political donations and all the other forms of legal bribery like funding opposition environmental studies to block competition or funding lawsuits to change laws they don’t like or anything else they can legally leverage that financial wealth for. As ideally we could separate these two forms of power and achieve the removal of the unaccountable informal power… but the sort of large scale socioeconomic and sociopolitical reforms needed to do this honestly seem harder to achieve than just taxing the billionaires till they aren’t billionaires anymore. Maybe then we’ll be in a position to try and start the reforms and could have the sort of world where money doesn’t buy you unaccountable power… but I think that’s not something that would be achievable in my lifetime.
- constantcrying 4y ago
  >Yes, but it’s nigh impossible to strip them of the informal power without stripping them of the actual power they hold by virtue of stocks and corporate control, assets and cash… Why? >legal bribery like funding opposition environmental studies to block competition or funding lawsuits to change laws they don’t like or anything else they can legally leverage that financial wealth for. Make it illegal, you are literally listing the specific things which shouldn't happen. Where is the problem? >but the sort of large scale socioeconomic and sociopolitical reforms needed to do this You just gave a list of issues. Ban every billionaire from contributing to lawsuits. Ban them from "donating" to anything and actuslly punish them for violating the law. >just taxing the billionaires till they aren’t billionaires anymore. This is just seizing corporations by the government. And the problem is that you expect politicans to move against their benefactors.
  - bheadmaster 4y ago
    > Make it illegal, you are literally listing the specific things which shouldn't happen. Where is the problem? The problem is that people who have the power to make it illegal are the same people who profit from it not being illegal. EDIT: your username is so emo, lol. I love it.
    - constantcrying 4y ago
      Sure, but the problem gets significantly worse as the threat gets larger. "Disown the billionaires" obviously results in a far stronger reaction than "let's stop some of your influence". If you can't even do the later the former is obviously impossible.

techdragon 4y ago

Yes, but it’s nigh impossible to strip them of the informal power without stripping them of the actual power they hold by virtue of stocks and corporate control, assets and cash… all of which are readily fungible into political into political donations and all the other forms of legal bribery like funding opposition environmental studies to block competition or funding lawsuits to change laws they don’t like or anything else they can legally leverage that financial wealth for. As ideally we could separate these two forms of power and achieve the removal of the unaccountable informal power… but the sort of large scale socioeconomic and sociopolitical reforms needed to do this honestly seem harder to achieve than just taxing the billionaires till they aren’t billionaires anymore. Maybe then we’ll be in a position to try and start the reforms and could have the sort of world where money doesn’t buy you unaccountable power… but I think that’s not something that would be achievable in my lifetime.

constantcrying 4y ago
>Yes, but it’s nigh impossible to strip them of the informal power without stripping them of the actual power they hold by virtue of stocks and corporate control, assets and cash… Why? >legal bribery like funding opposition environmental studies to block competition or funding lawsuits to change laws they don’t like or anything else they can legally leverage that financial wealth for. Make it illegal, you are literally listing the specific things which shouldn't happen. Where is the problem? >but the sort of large scale socioeconomic and sociopolitical reforms needed to do this You just gave a list of issues. Ban every billionaire from contributing to lawsuits. Ban them from "donating" to anything and actuslly punish them for violating the law. >just taxing the billionaires till they aren’t billionaires anymore. This is just seizing corporations by the government. And the problem is that you expect politicans to move against their benefactors.
- bheadmaster 4y ago
  > Make it illegal, you are literally listing the specific things which shouldn't happen. Where is the problem? The problem is that people who have the power to make it illegal are the same people who profit from it not being illegal. EDIT: your username is so emo, lol. I love it.
  - constantcrying 4y ago
    Sure, but the problem gets significantly worse as the threat gets larger. "Disown the billionaires" obviously results in a far stronger reaction than "let's stop some of your influence". If you can't even do the later the former is obviously impossible.