5 ms·

What resources are the rich hoarding? Does Elon Musk own 500 pairs of pants that could otherwise have clothed other poor men? Is he hoarding 500 tons of grain t

by rmk 4y ago

What resources are the rich hoarding? Does Elon Musk own 500 pairs of pants that could otherwise have clothed other poor men? Is he hoarding 500 tons of grain that should be released to starving country? He burns tons of jet fuel, literally, but so do an equivalent load of 300 vacationers on a jet to a holiday destination (and they do not produce the same GDP increase, to boot). Is Jeff Bezos monopolizing the I-5 freeway, SeaTac airport, or clean air in Seattle? What are these resources that are being 'hoarded' by the rich and denied to poor people exactly? And how is an average American living in a 2000 sq ft house 'hoarding' a resource a homeless person could be living in? Should the average American take in a homeless person so that his 'hoarding' of resources is lessened or alleviated?

radicaldreamer 4y ago
They’re hoarding capital instead of distributing it to their workers. Furthermore, they’re utilizing shared resources for their companies profit without paying proportionally.
- AussieWog93 4y ago
  >They’re hoarding capital This is GP's point, AFAICT. They're not hoarding grain or iron or silicon or network bandwidth - in fact the only reason they got rich in the first place is because they allocated these physical resources effectively to serve a wide group of people. (See AWS for example. The average computer runs at maybe 10% utilisation for 2 hours a day; whereas theirs are at a high utilisation 24/7.) As you rightly said, the things that Bezos, Musk and Gates are "hoarding" is capital in the literal sense. Their net worth isn't made of gold coins sitting in a swimming pool doing nothing, but car factories, server farms and massive logistics networks.
- rmk 4y ago
  Wrong on that score too. To 'hoard' capital is to take it and put it in the equivalent of a mattress. I assure you, the family offices of these billionaires are doing anything but hoarding capital: huge chunks of it are invested in various vehicles. And the idea that billionaires should simply give away their wealth to their workers is widespread, but wishful thinking. The average person who wins a lottery (the equivalent of the recipient of a billionaire's largesse that you envision) pisses it all away in a few years, rarely deploying it for his own benefit, let alone that of society.
  - thebigman433 4y ago
    > The average person who wins a lottery (the equivalent of the recipient of a billionaire's largesse that you envision) pisses it all away in a few years, rarely deploying it for his own benefit, let alone that of society. I want to point out that first of all, this isnt even a good comparison, because nobody is talking about just giving people a massive lump sum of cash. Its about putting the money back into the workers creating it, as well as public welfare systems to ensure future safety nets. And second of all, even if we just gave the money away and people "pissed it away", the money is still being circulated and put back into the economy.
    - rmk 4y ago
      That's called taxation, and the billionaires you are referring to pay all the taxes that are due. None are behind on any tax bills AFAIK. Of course it is easy to say 'put money back into workers creating it'. But the labor market is just that - a market, and no-one is being forced to give away their labor for free or less than it's worth. If the tax code is riddled with tens of thousands of exceptions that incentivise a gazillion different behaviours, again, that's the will of the people asserting itself via the tax code. It's much harder to unpick those, right? Thus the highly enlightened conversation about making billionaries illegal and such. > And second of all, even if we just gave the money away and people "pissed it away", the money is still being circulated and put back into the economy. Yeah, that worked out great and totally did not result in historically high inflation that will now cause a recession with massive job losses (thus hurting the cause of the workers it purports to support). Also, the inflation is totally not a tax that will be paid mostly by poor people or those on fixed incomes.
kuhewa 4y ago
Your defense of Elon not hoarding resources included his burning the jet fuel of 300 vacationers, routinely. Interesting choice of counter example.
- sveme 4y ago
  He‘s also flying every day, while vacationers do it once a year. So basically around 90000 vacationers.
Brybry 4y ago
There are ~500k homeless people[1] and 16 million vacant homes[2]. So the average American wouldn't need to take in a homeless person. The homeless people could fit in ~3% of the vacant homes. Obviously it's more complicated than that but sometimes capitalism does suck. [1] https://bfi.uchicago.edu/insight/finding/the-size-and-census-coverage-of-the-us-homeless-population/ https://bfi.uchicago.edu/insight/finding/the-size-and-census... [2] https://www.nytimes.com/2022/03/10/realestate/vacancy-rate-by-state.html https://www.nytimes.com/2022/03/10/realestate/vacancy-rate-b...
- parineum 4y ago
  Capitalism has made it so those homeless people are just homeless and not homeless and starving.
  - fragmede 4y ago
    In what ways are church run soup kitchens and WIC (aka "food stamps") capitalism?
    - zo1 4y ago
      In GP's example, capitalism has made food production cheaper and less labor intensive so that more people can get it, relatively. But for me, your example is capitalism in the sense that people do it of their own free will. They give up their time and resources to help others without coercion or compulsion. Capitalism is freedom to me, and a natural state that exists outside of the state where people can interact freely with one another. What they do with it is another question entirely. Others, however, equate capitalism with greed and evil though.
      - fragmede 4y ago
        Human nature to help one another doesn't exist because of capitalism though. In tight-knit Amish communities for example, communities come together and help each other out. Or under feudalism, for example, I'm sure people still helped out other people with no coercion from time to time.
forgetfreeman 4y ago
What? You're talking about a dude who's net worth is sufficient to purchase the entire state of Wyoming (land and structures) and you're, with a straight face, going to insinuate no hoarding is taking place? Fascinating.
rolenthedeep 4y ago
I'm not talking about middle class people, I'm talking about the 1%. 44 billion dollars could take most if not all homeless people in this country and see them in apartments for a year. A couple billion would feed every hungry child in the country. 3% of railroad company profits would give their workers 14 sick days instead of 0. Theres an infinite amount of good that billionaires could do without even noticing the cost, but they choose not to. Resource hoarding.
- rmk 4y ago
  The US Budget was $1.65 Trillion. If a couple billion fed every hungry child in the country (and yes, it would), childhood hunger would be a solved problem. And in the US, it mostly is a solved problem because of a combination of state and federal benefits that deploy money towards feeding and heating needs of poor families. There is also a child tax credit that outright put money in the hands of families with children (last year, I think?). All of that is already happening without your proposed (forced) transfer of the 1%'s wealth to their workers. It's very easy to demand accountability of billionaires and supremely difficult to collectively hold our political leaders responsible. The law doesn't require billionaires to be accountable to the general public beyond obeying laws and paying taxes that are due, but our public representatives have higher standards to live up to, and our focus should be on them, not billionaires. All the wealth of American billionaires would add up to a couple years' federal budgets (or perhaps less than a year of federal and the top 4 populous states' budgets). EDIT: The City of Los Angeles apparently spends ridiculous amounts of money on a per-person basis to 'solve' the homelessness problem (https://ktla.com/news/los-angeles-is-spending-up-to-837000-to-house-a-single-homeless-person/ https://ktla.com/news/los-angeles-is-spending-up-to-837000-t...). This is just one example of ridiculous rent-seeking government bureaucracy and nonprofit hucksters. Money is not the problem, lack of accountability is.
djrobstep 4y ago
What are you talking about? Are you claiming that redistributing wealth doesn't redistribute resources? If not, what is the actual claim you're making?
- rmk 4y ago
  It often doesn't (and I'm also questioning what these 'resources' are, as well). It simply dissipates them.
  - djrobstep 4y ago
    When money is redistributed, two things happen: - The recipients get a greater share of existing resources. - The changed demand changes supply accordingly. So there might be fewer private jets produced but more food produced, for instance. Thus future production changes too, and the economy is reshaped. Why do you imagine these things wouldn’t happen?

by rmk 4y ago

radicaldreamer 4y ago

They’re hoarding capital instead of distributing it to their workers. Furthermore, they’re utilizing shared resources for their companies profit without paying proportionally.

AussieWog93 4y ago
>They’re hoarding capital This is GP's point, AFAICT. They're not hoarding grain or iron or silicon or network bandwidth - in fact the only reason they got rich in the first place is because they allocated these physical resources effectively to serve a wide group of people. (See AWS for example. The average computer runs at maybe 10% utilisation for 2 hours a day; whereas theirs are at a high utilisation 24/7.) As you rightly said, the things that Bezos, Musk and Gates are "hoarding" is capital in the literal sense. Their net worth isn't made of gold coins sitting in a swimming pool doing nothing, but car factories, server farms and massive logistics networks.
rmk 4y ago
Wrong on that score too. To 'hoard' capital is to take it and put it in the equivalent of a mattress. I assure you, the family offices of these billionaires are doing anything but hoarding capital: huge chunks of it are invested in various vehicles. And the idea that billionaires should simply give away their wealth to their workers is widespread, but wishful thinking. The average person who wins a lottery (the equivalent of the recipient of a billionaire's largesse that you envision) pisses it all away in a few years, rarely deploying it for his own benefit, let alone that of society.
- thebigman433 4y ago
  > The average person who wins a lottery (the equivalent of the recipient of a billionaire's largesse that you envision) pisses it all away in a few years, rarely deploying it for his own benefit, let alone that of society. I want to point out that first of all, this isnt even a good comparison, because nobody is talking about just giving people a massive lump sum of cash. Its about putting the money back into the workers creating it, as well as public welfare systems to ensure future safety nets. And second of all, even if we just gave the money away and people "pissed it away", the money is still being circulated and put back into the economy.
  - rmk 4y ago
    That's called taxation, and the billionaires you are referring to pay all the taxes that are due. None are behind on any tax bills AFAIK. Of course it is easy to say 'put money back into workers creating it'. But the labor market is just that - a market, and no-one is being forced to give away their labor for free or less than it's worth. If the tax code is riddled with tens of thousands of exceptions that incentivise a gazillion different behaviours, again, that's the will of the people asserting itself via the tax code. It's much harder to unpick those, right? Thus the highly enlightened conversation about making billionaries illegal and such. > And second of all, even if we just gave the money away and people "pissed it away", the money is still being circulated and put back into the economy. Yeah, that worked out great and totally did not result in historically high inflation that will now cause a recession with massive job losses (thus hurting the cause of the workers it purports to support). Also, the inflation is totally not a tax that will be paid mostly by poor people or those on fixed incomes.

kuhewa 4y ago

Your defense of Elon not hoarding resources included his burning the jet fuel of 300 vacationers, routinely. Interesting choice of counter example.

sveme 4y ago
He‘s also flying every day, while vacationers do it once a year. So basically around 90000 vacationers.

Brybry 4y ago

There are ~500k homeless people[1] and 16 million vacant homes[2]. So the average American wouldn't need to take in a homeless person. The homeless people could fit in ~3% of the vacant homes. Obviously it's more complicated than that but sometimes capitalism does suck. [1] https://bfi.uchicago.edu/insight/finding/the-size-and-census-coverage-of-the-us-homeless-population/ https://bfi.uchicago.edu/insight/finding/the-size-and-census... [2] https://www.nytimes.com/2022/03/10/realestate/vacancy-rate-by-state.html https://www.nytimes.com/2022/03/10/realestate/vacancy-rate-b...

parineum 4y ago
Capitalism has made it so those homeless people are just homeless and not homeless and starving.
- fragmede 4y ago
  In what ways are church run soup kitchens and WIC (aka "food stamps") capitalism?
  - zo1 4y ago
    In GP's example, capitalism has made food production cheaper and less labor intensive so that more people can get it, relatively. But for me, your example is capitalism in the sense that people do it of their own free will. They give up their time and resources to help others without coercion or compulsion. Capitalism is freedom to me, and a natural state that exists outside of the state where people can interact freely with one another. What they do with it is another question entirely. Others, however, equate capitalism with greed and evil though.
    - fragmede 4y ago
      Human nature to help one another doesn't exist because of capitalism though. In tight-knit Amish communities for example, communities come together and help each other out. Or under feudalism, for example, I'm sure people still helped out other people with no coercion from time to time.

forgetfreeman 4y ago

What? You're talking about a dude who's net worth is sufficient to purchase the entire state of Wyoming (land and structures) and you're, with a straight face, going to insinuate no hoarding is taking place? Fascinating.

rolenthedeep 4y ago

I'm not talking about middle class people, I'm talking about the 1%. 44 billion dollars could take most if not all homeless people in this country and see them in apartments for a year. A couple billion would feed every hungry child in the country. 3% of railroad company profits would give their workers 14 sick days instead of 0. Theres an infinite amount of good that billionaires could do without even noticing the cost, but they choose not to. Resource hoarding.

rmk 4y ago
The US Budget was $1.65 Trillion. If a couple billion fed every hungry child in the country (and yes, it would), childhood hunger would be a solved problem. And in the US, it mostly is a solved problem because of a combination of state and federal benefits that deploy money towards feeding and heating needs of poor families. There is also a child tax credit that outright put money in the hands of families with children (last year, I think?). All of that is already happening without your proposed (forced) transfer of the 1%'s wealth to their workers. It's very easy to demand accountability of billionaires and supremely difficult to collectively hold our political leaders responsible. The law doesn't require billionaires to be accountable to the general public beyond obeying laws and paying taxes that are due, but our public representatives have higher standards to live up to, and our focus should be on them, not billionaires. All the wealth of American billionaires would add up to a couple years' federal budgets (or perhaps less than a year of federal and the top 4 populous states' budgets). EDIT: The City of Los Angeles apparently spends ridiculous amounts of money on a per-person basis to 'solve' the homelessness problem (https://ktla.com/news/los-angeles-is-spending-up-to-837000-to-house-a-single-homeless-person/ https://ktla.com/news/los-angeles-is-spending-up-to-837000-t...). This is just one example of ridiculous rent-seeking government bureaucracy and nonprofit hucksters. Money is not the problem, lack of accountability is.

djrobstep 4y ago

What are you talking about? Are you claiming that redistributing wealth doesn't redistribute resources? If not, what is the actual claim you're making?

rmk 4y ago
It often doesn't (and I'm also questioning what these 'resources' are, as well). It simply dissipates them.
- djrobstep 4y ago
  When money is redistributed, two things happen: - The recipients get a greater share of existing resources. - The changed demand changes supply accordingly. So there might be fewer private jets produced but more food produced, for instance. Thus future production changes too, and the economy is reshaped. Why do you imagine these things wouldn’t happen?