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Our heavily capitalist society couldn't work without a certain amount of financial nihilism. How could you be a billionaire without being a financial nihilist ?

Our heavily capitalist society couldn't work without a certain amount of financial nihilism. How could you be a billionaire without being a financial nihilist ? What are the reasons for wanting to accumulate so much wealth, and keeping it for yourself while so many people suffer from poverty ? On the other hand, if billionaire's stopped wanting to earn more and more money, the economy would likely crash...

guerrilla 4y ago
> On the other hand, if billionaire's stopped wanting to earn more and more money, the economy would likely crash... No, this is incorrect. It doesn't matter who owns the stock as long as someone does. It's irrelevant if one person owns the stock or it's distributed equally among workers (or something in between.) The incentives are the same. In fact, distributing stock more widely could lead to better decision making by crowdsourcing wisdom.
- eole666 4y ago
  Well I do agree and hope that this will happen some day. And it will be nice that once the stock is distributed more equally, we get other goals than economic growth, like preserving the planet, eradicating poverty, stop producing useless things and creating bullshit jobs to lower the unemployment rate. But for now the stocks are mostly owned by rich people who want to get richer not matter what and it seems to me that the whole market is so used to that, that it would take a radical system change to make it happen without the economy as we know it crashing hard.
  - guerrilla 4y ago
    > But for now the stocks are mostly owned by rich people who want to get richer not matter what and it seems to me that the whole market is so used to that, that it would take a radical system change to make it happen without the economy as we know it crashing hard. I don't know that it needs to be an instantaneous change. Something gradual could work, at least in theory. On the other hand, I think we need to do something not just for reasons of justice but rather we need to internalize a lot of these externalities just for survival, which wider ownership would naturally do.
  - AnimalMuppet 4y ago
    I'm not sure that I can reconcile "rich people who own stock just want to get rich" and "creating bullshit jobs to lower the unemployment rate". Those seem contradictory to me.

guerrilla 4y ago

> On the other hand, if billionaire's stopped wanting to earn more and more money, the economy would likely crash... No, this is incorrect. It doesn't matter who owns the stock as long as someone does. It's irrelevant if one person owns the stock or it's distributed equally among workers (or something in between.) The incentives are the same. In fact, distributing stock more widely could lead to better decision making by crowdsourcing wisdom.

eole666 4y ago
Well I do agree and hope that this will happen some day. And it will be nice that once the stock is distributed more equally, we get other goals than economic growth, like preserving the planet, eradicating poverty, stop producing useless things and creating bullshit jobs to lower the unemployment rate. But for now the stocks are mostly owned by rich people who want to get richer not matter what and it seems to me that the whole market is so used to that, that it would take a radical system change to make it happen without the economy as we know it crashing hard.
- guerrilla 4y ago
  > But for now the stocks are mostly owned by rich people who want to get richer not matter what and it seems to me that the whole market is so used to that, that it would take a radical system change to make it happen without the economy as we know it crashing hard. I don't know that it needs to be an instantaneous change. Something gradual could work, at least in theory. On the other hand, I think we need to do something not just for reasons of justice but rather we need to internalize a lot of these externalities just for survival, which wider ownership would naturally do.
- AnimalMuppet 4y ago
  I'm not sure that I can reconcile "rich people who own stock just want to get rich" and "creating bullshit jobs to lower the unemployment rate". Those seem contradictory to me.