4 ms·

billionaires existing is an indictment on our greed and failures of our systems. nobody needs 1000+ million dollars.

gwd 3y ago
You're confusing resources they have control over with resources for their own personal utilization. Money is power; not to force someone to do what they don't want to do, but to pay them to do what they're willing to do. When capitalism works well, it's because people who made "good" choices with their money-power were rewarded with more, and people who made "bad" choices were rewarded with less. Warren Buffet doesn't have an extravagant lifestyle. He's been entrusted to make decisions about how to spend our economy's resources in part because he's made good decisions in the past. Obviously it doesn't always happen this way; but the accumulation of wealth by itself isn't necessarily bad. It's bad when it can be accumulated by ways which destroy value for society rather than creating it; and it's bad when it can continue to be accumulated by doing nothing.
- mptest 3y ago
  >You're confusing resources they have control over with resources for their own personal utilization I don't know if they're as different as you portray in practice. I agree with the notion in theory, which is why I distinctly used "wealth" in my original comment and not "income". >He's been entrusted to make decisions about how to spend our economy's resources in part because he's made good decisions in the past. Sure, no one is saying don't aspire to a meritocracy when considering control of the state's purse strings. The key to your example and your "accumulation of wealth by itself isn't necessarily bad" notion is the reason I didn't say "no organization" should have more than 999m. I was strictly referring to excess personal accumulation of capital. Which harms us all. Like I said, no one's quality of life is going to get worse if personal wealth were capped at 999m, but I can think of infinite ways to make a lot of people's quality of life better with the money we'd have in such an organization of the economy. >and it's bad when it can continue to be accumulated by doing nothing I don't even know if I agree with this. A state fund that earns interest and spends that interest makes sense. I think the key is the first case you note where it's bad.
- scotty79 3y ago
  The problem is that people who have more aren't necessarily smarter. Musk is a posterboy for that. So they really don't deserve the power that money awards them and we can't just blindly believe money to be a proxy for someone's decision making prowess. It's still the same primate but now it's got a gun.
  - gwd 3y ago
    > So they really don't deserve the power that money awards them and we can't just blindly believe money to be a proxy for someone's decision making prowess. I think we basically agree on this. The question is whether a flat policy of "nobody can ever control more than a billion dollars" has any justification, either pragmatically or ethically. "Wow that's a lot" and "Maybe they aren't actually very smart" aren't really that well founded.
    - scotty79 3y ago
      Basically by splitting the money among many people you increase the odds that by sheer accident somebody does something smart with a part of it. When it's in a single hand it's devoted to single persons whims.
      - boxed 3y ago
        You confused money with control of companies again. If you just randomly split the control of companies into many people you don't get more decisions, you get LESS decisions as you get boards that are gridlocked and paralyzed by indecision due to having basically hundreds or thousands or even tens of thousands of "bosses" who are all screaming different things. This is how you end up the management class of people who do basically nothing and collect huge bonuses for it, running companies into the ground slowly by not making them taking any risks/not trying to do anything.
        scotty79 3y ago
        > you get boards that are gridlocked and paralyzed by indecision due to having basically hundreds or thousands or even tens of thousands of "bosses" who are all screaming different things Often that's exactly what prevents bad ideas and gives a chance for good ideas to flourish. The actual strength of democracy is not that it allows to make more decisions, but that it prevents making decisions unless they seem good to a lot of "bosses". At least that's how it works in multi-party democracies. Systems of governance that concentrate a lot of power in single hand may have a good run from time to time when the supreme leader accidentally has a good idea and can move fast with it, but they fail miserably over the long term because they have no safeguard against bad decisions which are way more frequent. There's nothing unique about capital and its derived power that suddenly makes concentrating it in one hand any less harmful then it is with armies, countries and nations. Doing nothing is the best course of action more often than any other sort of action. Economy loves stability so it can stably grow. Some amount of disruption is necessary for the development but it's really hard to tell if the billionaires capital reinforces or suppresses the right kind of disruption.

gwd 3y ago

You're confusing resources they have control over with resources for their own personal utilization. Money is power; not to force someone to do what they don't want to do, but to pay them to do what they're willing to do. When capitalism works well, it's because people who made "good" choices with their money-power were rewarded with more, and people who made "bad" choices were rewarded with less. Warren Buffet doesn't have an extravagant lifestyle. He's been entrusted to make decisions about how to spend our economy's resources in part because he's made good decisions in the past. Obviously it doesn't always happen this way; but the accumulation of wealth by itself isn't necessarily bad. It's bad when it can be accumulated by ways which destroy value for society rather than creating it; and it's bad when it can continue to be accumulated by doing nothing.

mptest 3y ago
>You're confusing resources they have control over with resources for their own personal utilization I don't know if they're as different as you portray in practice. I agree with the notion in theory, which is why I distinctly used "wealth" in my original comment and not "income". >He's been entrusted to make decisions about how to spend our economy's resources in part because he's made good decisions in the past. Sure, no one is saying don't aspire to a meritocracy when considering control of the state's purse strings. The key to your example and your "accumulation of wealth by itself isn't necessarily bad" notion is the reason I didn't say "no organization" should have more than 999m. I was strictly referring to excess personal accumulation of capital. Which harms us all. Like I said, no one's quality of life is going to get worse if personal wealth were capped at 999m, but I can think of infinite ways to make a lot of people's quality of life better with the money we'd have in such an organization of the economy. >and it's bad when it can continue to be accumulated by doing nothing I don't even know if I agree with this. A state fund that earns interest and spends that interest makes sense. I think the key is the first case you note where it's bad.
scotty79 3y ago
The problem is that people who have more aren't necessarily smarter. Musk is a posterboy for that. So they really don't deserve the power that money awards them and we can't just blindly believe money to be a proxy for someone's decision making prowess. It's still the same primate but now it's got a gun.
- gwd 3y ago
  > So they really don't deserve the power that money awards them and we can't just blindly believe money to be a proxy for someone's decision making prowess. I think we basically agree on this. The question is whether a flat policy of "nobody can ever control more than a billion dollars" has any justification, either pragmatically or ethically. "Wow that's a lot" and "Maybe they aren't actually very smart" aren't really that well founded.
  - scotty79 3y ago
    Basically by splitting the money among many people you increase the odds that by sheer accident somebody does something smart with a part of it. When it's in a single hand it's devoted to single persons whims.
    - boxed 3y ago
      You confused money with control of companies again. If you just randomly split the control of companies into many people you don't get more decisions, you get LESS decisions as you get boards that are gridlocked and paralyzed by indecision due to having basically hundreds or thousands or even tens of thousands of "bosses" who are all screaming different things. This is how you end up the management class of people who do basically nothing and collect huge bonuses for it, running companies into the ground slowly by not making them taking any risks/not trying to do anything.
      - scotty79 3y ago
        > you get boards that are gridlocked and paralyzed by indecision due to having basically hundreds or thousands or even tens of thousands of "bosses" who are all screaming different things Often that's exactly what prevents bad ideas and gives a chance for good ideas to flourish. The actual strength of democracy is not that it allows to make more decisions, but that it prevents making decisions unless they seem good to a lot of "bosses". At least that's how it works in multi-party democracies. Systems of governance that concentrate a lot of power in single hand may have a good run from time to time when the supreme leader accidentally has a good idea and can move fast with it, but they fail miserably over the long term because they have no safeguard against bad decisions which are way more frequent. There's nothing unique about capital and its derived power that suddenly makes concentrating it in one hand any less harmful then it is with armies, countries and nations. Doing nothing is the best course of action more often than any other sort of action. Economy loves stability so it can stably grow. Some amount of disruption is necessary for the development but it's really hard to tell if the billionaires capital reinforces or suppresses the right kind of disruption.