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At what point does wealth created through human labor become someone else's right? I'm not asking this as a rhetorical question. It is extremely practical. We
by btilly 3y ago
At what point does wealth created through human labor become someone else's right?
I'm not asking this as a rhetorical question. It is extremely practical. We want the poor to receive houses, food, healthcare treatments, broadband, access to computers, transportation, and so on. All of these are created through human labor. Many were invented fairly recently. Some within my lifetime.
At what point does it go from new invention to a human right? And how do we as a society make that happen, and incentivize the continued creation of new inventions? And how do we continue to incentivize the continued labor needed to provide these things?
We currently do an admittedly crappy job of it. For example we should be building a ton of housing, and we don't. But what we do have, we mostly do through money. We get people to invent things. To build things. And then we tax some of it, and give to those who have not, and provide some at the bottom.
But it seems you want to get rid of wealth at the top. Take away from billionaires, who are far more generous with their money than most of us. See https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Giving_Pledge https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Giving_Pledge for example.
And you want to provide far, far more to the bottom. Enough that I'd be happy not to work again. As well as countless others.
Many variations on your scheme were tried in the 20th century. They feature problems like mass famine, and totalitarian rule by the bureaucrats in charge.
What are your proposals to make sure we don't get those bad outcomes again?