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I'm wondering if people understand that almost all the pleasures/comforts in modern life were created by people who wouldn't exist in this system.

pxmpxm 3y ago
Can't wait to replace starlink with a new take on back yard furnaces. This is just a re-marketing of the same socialist ideas that have empirically failed every time. People with positive inability to create wealth self-appoint to control the people that have demonstrable ability to create wealth. Doing so is the only way for the former to end up in control of wealth, again because they are incapable of generating it themselves. It's a bit amusing that no one about the commie paradox - the group of people that profess the greatest ability to central plan and redistribute wealth is entirely devoid of individuals with a track record of creating wealth. A reasonable person would expect a strong correlation there.
jdiff 3y ago
This system doesn't eliminate people. It eliminates the pointless and harmful hoarding of wealth.
- eej71 3y ago
  Your usage of the word "hoarding" implies a Scrooge McDuck view of wealth where its just stashed away in some vault - never put to use. Yet nothing could be further from the truth.
  - jdiff 3y ago
    My mental image is one of unelected, untouchable oligarchs taking actions that they're accountable to nobody for. That's far worse than Scrooge McDuck.
    - dingnuts 3y ago
      So you're imagining President Xi and the House of Saud, I take it? As long as you aren't imagining someone like Elon Musk who is certainly accountable to his debtors and shareholders and Boards, then this can be viewed as a realistic take. If you're talking about people like Elon Musk and Bill Gates who have giant wealth because of their investments in businesses, then arguing that they should have that wealth taken away would literally take money out of the coffers of businesses that are currently using that money for things like payroll. The GP is correct -- these people are not sitting around on a vault of gold like McDuck. Their money is in the economy, doing stuff. That's what investments are. That's why investors exist, and why they get a cut of the profit for taking a risk and lending their money to industry.
    - missedthecue 3y ago
      That's not the same thing as hoarding. It's always the case that the wealth of even unelected untouchable oligarchs is comprised of productive assets, not hoarded in a secret pile.
  - imtringued 3y ago
    It's put to use by making the other person go in debt. Happy?
- Tokkemon 3y ago
  This is the same mistake Lawrence Van Dough makes in Richie Rich. He assumes the massive vault must be full of gold bars and diamonds, the wealth of the family. But it's not. It's invested in banks and stocks etc. The money is not just sitting there, it's producing other activity in the economy.
- anon291 3y ago
  The good news is banks continuously print money to make sure that there's more than enough cash to go around.
avgcorrection 3y ago
Those things were created by working people, most of whom are not wealthy.
- thinkski 3y ago
  Organized by an employer, capital, and management. The orchestration, decision making, done well, is the difference between a highly valuable well functioning company, and dysfunctional paralysis. There are now multiple examples in history (pre-1989 Poland, Soviet Union, DPRK, etc.) that show the communal ownership of industry by labor does not create a high standard of living, enabled by plentiful goods, services, and innovation.
  - avgcorrection 3y ago
    I mean the value leeches are also present.
  - FredPret 3y ago
    East Germany, North Korea, and the USSR are wonderful examples of how this idiotic idea fares in real life. Unless people there somehow have much lower IQs than their neighbours, who do vastly better, the difference in outcome must lie in the system that co-ordinates their work.
  - tsimionescu 3y ago
    At what point was labor communally owning industry in the Soviet Union or DPRK? Did Stalin or Kim ever ask a laborer for their opinion on how a factory should be run? Or give them a penny of the work they were doing? The Soviet block and DPRK was exactly as close to socialism as it was to democracy: 100% in their propaganda, 0% in reality. Or would you say democracy doesn't work because the Democratic People's Republic of Korea is a shit show country despite being "democratic"?
    - AndrewKemendo 3y ago
      Exactly this This concept that there is a well defined polar opposite to western “freedom” capitalism is so far from reality in literally any economic history understanding Not only that but the USSR was in no sense Marxist Communist. It was well known that the Lenin-Trotskyist Bolshevism was the core, specifically the command economy part. That regime coopted the philosophy of Marxism well after his death. That’s what happens when both sides are spinning the same propaganda. BTW I’m equally not a fan of Marxist material dialectic as I am the trotsy-lenin unholiness or the American oligopolies. We need a true state-free attempt at anarcho socialism but that’s nearly impossible as such a concept fundamentally threatens the basic structure of the modern state.
FredPret 3y ago
No, people don't know this. The degree of economic and historical naiveté has really skyrocketed in recent decades. "Let's just try a planned society one more time, THIS time will be different, look how nice and kind we are!" is a perfectly reasonable statement to many educated people today. It's really an indictment of the education system.
- satellite2 3y ago
  You are mocking people using a false dichotomy. Complaining that some individuals shouldn't be able to control trillion in wealth don't imply a push for centrally planned economies.
  - FredPret 3y ago
    … yes it does? It implies a central authority that has opinions on the wealth of private citizens (inappropriate) that also has the ability to act on it (dangerous) and that goes ahead and implements its utopian visions (has never not ended in utter catastrophe).
    - vacuity 3y ago
      First of all, there's already much to be said on how encouraging private citizens to amass wealth at all costs is highly dangerous to society. Clearly, there are massive problems that our current model has. Second, we don't need to go for a utopia right now. Personally, I'm not a "communist" or whatever fan. I think that we can remove the negative impacts of capitalism without a crusade, through borrowing elements of those political theories. That doesn't sound half bad to me: likely feasible (if only the political will could be scrounged up), not hugely radical, and already a big boon.
      - FredPret 3y ago
        No there isn't. What practical difference is there in your life now that Musk is worth 200B versus when he had 100B or 0B? Probably your life is actually better because there is now Starlink and Tesla and you have more options. Let's say we can push a button and grow the economy 10% in real terms, but some rich guy like Bill Gates gets his wealth not increased 10%, but 10x. Do we press it? Next time we press it, some other billionaire gets 10x-ed. The rational thing to do is to smash that button an infinite number of times. That button exists and is called economic growth.
jayd16 3y ago
How do you figure? Its not like Edison was born hyper rich.
- smeeth 3y ago
  Are you suggesting Edison would have invented everything he did if he wasn't allowed to get rich? You chose an extremely funny example if that's what you're trying to say. Edison was famous for caring about money more than other inventors. One of his most famous quotes was “Anything that won't sell, I don't want to invent. Its sale is proof of utility, and utility is success.” The guy helped found some of the largest companies of his era and died as one of the richest men in the world.
  - tsimionescu 3y ago
    > Are you suggesting Edison would have invented everything he did if he wasn't allowed to get rich? Who said anything about not being allowed to get rich? 10s of millions of dollars is rich by any measure.
    - kuratkull 3y ago
      So he would have stopped after 10% (random ratio) of his inventions. Or probably not started at all if there was a cap he knows he would reach very quickly.
  - jayd16 3y ago
    And even so his net worth was not near billions in today's dollars. Seems like being uber rich isn't necessary to achieve those things.
alkonaut 3y ago
As I understand it, very few entrepreneurs ever said “this is interesting but if I can’t be a billionaire what’s the point?”. Which are the examples driven by extreme wealth (note: not just regular 1%er wealth and not people who became extremely wealthy - I mean people who expressed that the reason they created something was because they knew it would make them extremely top-0.01% wealthy)?
- infinitecost 3y ago
  I had a lucky exit and no longer need to work. I now only consider working on something if it could increase my net worth by an order of magnitude or so — because if it won’t make me a billionaire why bother working? I’d rather do art or open source or go fishing. (That’s not quite what you asked but I don’t know how many actual billionaires will read your comment so figured I’d chime in — to me it doesn’t seem unreasonable that calling wealth would change what people work on and how much they produce.)
- kuratkull 3y ago
  People start out to create something awesome. People continue when they have the motivation. When you hard cap them in any measurable way, they stop.
  - alkonaut 3y ago
    This sounds like guesswork around peoples motivation. Not saying you are wrong, but I'm making the argument that this is a pretty big claim (people being motivated not by wealth or status or curiosity but by extreme wealth). I just don't buy this claim. I don't think it's been a motivation of anyone who has made (say) a billion dollars, to only make another billion. Perhaps be the biggest company or invent the greatest product or have more money than the other billionaire who is an asshat, but just the money itself. Never heard of that. Every billionaire since the dawn of time has written memoirs. They might be lying, but I doubt any of them said "After 150M I just felt I had to make another 500M". They all say "after making successful product A and being set for life, I really wanted to make thing B". I have not read all the billionaire memoirs, and I'm sure memoirs usually claim you were in it for the thrill or the curiosity. But still.
deleted 3y ago
[deleted]
manithree 3y ago
Of course they don't know it. They actually believe that the state is better at managing money than the people creating products and jobs.
- yellowapple 3y ago
  They're actively destroying jobs at this very moment, not creating them. If I had a nickel for every "we're making record profits, oh and we're also laying off 10% of our employees" announcement, I'd be a billionaire.
  - MacsHeadroom 3y ago
    Unemployment has never been lower, with jobs growing every month of the past year. January 2024 saw the most growth followed closely by December 2023. https://www.axios.com/2024/02/02/us-jobs-report-january-2024 https://www.axios.com/2024/02/02/us-jobs-report-january-2024
    - yellowapple 3y ago
      > Unemployment has never been lower That doesn't measure underemployment, nor does it measure people who've given up on finding work. That's why it needs to be considered alongside things like the labor force participation rate - which has been on a downward trend since 2000 - and alongside wage growth, which has lagged below inflation since the 70's. > January 2024 saw the most growth followed closely by December 2023. Which jobs, specifically? At what pay? Destroying a $50k/year job to create two $25k/year jobs ain't progress.
      - MacsHeadroom 3y ago
        Labor force participation rate has been rising since COVID. The long term trend is down but not so bad. A decade ago the rate among adult men was 72% while last month it was 70.2% and continuing to rise. https://www.bls.gov/charts/employment-situation/civilian-labor-force-participation-rate.htm https://www.bls.gov/charts/employment-situation/civilian-lab... Wage growth beat inflation by almost double most months last year, rising around 5-6% YoY each month vs ~3-4% inflation. https://www.statista.com/statistics/1351276/wage-growth-vs-inflation-us/ https://www.statista.com/statistics/1351276/wage-growth-vs-i...

pxmpxm 3y ago

Can't wait to replace starlink with a new take on back yard furnaces. This is just a re-marketing of the same socialist ideas that have empirically failed every time. People with positive inability to create wealth self-appoint to control the people that have demonstrable ability to create wealth. Doing so is the only way for the former to end up in control of wealth, again because they are incapable of generating it themselves. It's a bit amusing that no one about the commie paradox - the group of people that profess the greatest ability to central plan and redistribute wealth is entirely devoid of individuals with a track record of creating wealth. A reasonable person would expect a strong correlation there.

jdiff 3y ago

This system doesn't eliminate people. It eliminates the pointless and harmful hoarding of wealth.

eej71 3y ago
Your usage of the word "hoarding" implies a Scrooge McDuck view of wealth where its just stashed away in some vault - never put to use. Yet nothing could be further from the truth.
- jdiff 3y ago
  My mental image is one of unelected, untouchable oligarchs taking actions that they're accountable to nobody for. That's far worse than Scrooge McDuck.
  - dingnuts 3y ago
    So you're imagining President Xi and the House of Saud, I take it? As long as you aren't imagining someone like Elon Musk who is certainly accountable to his debtors and shareholders and Boards, then this can be viewed as a realistic take. If you're talking about people like Elon Musk and Bill Gates who have giant wealth because of their investments in businesses, then arguing that they should have that wealth taken away would literally take money out of the coffers of businesses that are currently using that money for things like payroll. The GP is correct -- these people are not sitting around on a vault of gold like McDuck. Their money is in the economy, doing stuff. That's what investments are. That's why investors exist, and why they get a cut of the profit for taking a risk and lending their money to industry.
  - missedthecue 3y ago
    That's not the same thing as hoarding. It's always the case that the wealth of even unelected untouchable oligarchs is comprised of productive assets, not hoarded in a secret pile.
- imtringued 3y ago
  It's put to use by making the other person go in debt. Happy?
Tokkemon 3y ago
This is the same mistake Lawrence Van Dough makes in Richie Rich. He assumes the massive vault must be full of gold bars and diamonds, the wealth of the family. But it's not. It's invested in banks and stocks etc. The money is not just sitting there, it's producing other activity in the economy.
anon291 3y ago
The good news is banks continuously print money to make sure that there's more than enough cash to go around.

avgcorrection 3y ago

Those things were created by working people, most of whom are not wealthy.

thinkski 3y ago
Organized by an employer, capital, and management. The orchestration, decision making, done well, is the difference between a highly valuable well functioning company, and dysfunctional paralysis. There are now multiple examples in history (pre-1989 Poland, Soviet Union, DPRK, etc.) that show the communal ownership of industry by labor does not create a high standard of living, enabled by plentiful goods, services, and innovation.
- avgcorrection 3y ago
  I mean the value leeches are also present.
- FredPret 3y ago
  East Germany, North Korea, and the USSR are wonderful examples of how this idiotic idea fares in real life. Unless people there somehow have much lower IQs than their neighbours, who do vastly better, the difference in outcome must lie in the system that co-ordinates their work.
- tsimionescu 3y ago
  At what point was labor communally owning industry in the Soviet Union or DPRK? Did Stalin or Kim ever ask a laborer for their opinion on how a factory should be run? Or give them a penny of the work they were doing? The Soviet block and DPRK was exactly as close to socialism as it was to democracy: 100% in their propaganda, 0% in reality. Or would you say democracy doesn't work because the Democratic People's Republic of Korea is a shit show country despite being "democratic"?
  - AndrewKemendo 3y ago
    Exactly this This concept that there is a well defined polar opposite to western “freedom” capitalism is so far from reality in literally any economic history understanding Not only that but the USSR was in no sense Marxist Communist. It was well known that the Lenin-Trotskyist Bolshevism was the core, specifically the command economy part. That regime coopted the philosophy of Marxism well after his death. That’s what happens when both sides are spinning the same propaganda. BTW I’m equally not a fan of Marxist material dialectic as I am the trotsy-lenin unholiness or the American oligopolies. We need a true state-free attempt at anarcho socialism but that’s nearly impossible as such a concept fundamentally threatens the basic structure of the modern state.

FredPret 3y ago

No, people don't know this. The degree of economic and historical naiveté has really skyrocketed in recent decades. "Let's just try a planned society one more time, THIS time will be different, look how nice and kind we are!" is a perfectly reasonable statement to many educated people today. It's really an indictment of the education system.

satellite2 3y ago
You are mocking people using a false dichotomy. Complaining that some individuals shouldn't be able to control trillion in wealth don't imply a push for centrally planned economies.
- FredPret 3y ago
  … yes it does? It implies a central authority that has opinions on the wealth of private citizens (inappropriate) that also has the ability to act on it (dangerous) and that goes ahead and implements its utopian visions (has never not ended in utter catastrophe).
  - vacuity 3y ago
    First of all, there's already much to be said on how encouraging private citizens to amass wealth at all costs is highly dangerous to society. Clearly, there are massive problems that our current model has. Second, we don't need to go for a utopia right now. Personally, I'm not a "communist" or whatever fan. I think that we can remove the negative impacts of capitalism without a crusade, through borrowing elements of those political theories. That doesn't sound half bad to me: likely feasible (if only the political will could be scrounged up), not hugely radical, and already a big boon.
    - FredPret 3y ago
      No there isn't. What practical difference is there in your life now that Musk is worth 200B versus when he had 100B or 0B? Probably your life is actually better because there is now Starlink and Tesla and you have more options. Let's say we can push a button and grow the economy 10% in real terms, but some rich guy like Bill Gates gets his wealth not increased 10%, but 10x. Do we press it? Next time we press it, some other billionaire gets 10x-ed. The rational thing to do is to smash that button an infinite number of times. That button exists and is called economic growth.

jayd16 3y ago

How do you figure? Its not like Edison was born hyper rich.

smeeth 3y ago
Are you suggesting Edison would have invented everything he did if he wasn't allowed to get rich? You chose an extremely funny example if that's what you're trying to say. Edison was famous for caring about money more than other inventors. One of his most famous quotes was “Anything that won't sell, I don't want to invent. Its sale is proof of utility, and utility is success.” The guy helped found some of the largest companies of his era and died as one of the richest men in the world.
- tsimionescu 3y ago
  > Are you suggesting Edison would have invented everything he did if he wasn't allowed to get rich? Who said anything about not being allowed to get rich? 10s of millions of dollars is rich by any measure.
  - kuratkull 3y ago
    So he would have stopped after 10% (random ratio) of his inventions. Or probably not started at all if there was a cap he knows he would reach very quickly.
- jayd16 3y ago
  And even so his net worth was not near billions in today's dollars. Seems like being uber rich isn't necessary to achieve those things.

alkonaut 3y ago

As I understand it, very few entrepreneurs ever said “this is interesting but if I can’t be a billionaire what’s the point?”. Which are the examples driven by extreme wealth (note: not just regular 1%er wealth and not people who became extremely wealthy - I mean people who expressed that the reason they created something was because they knew it would make them extremely top-0.01% wealthy)?

infinitecost 3y ago
I had a lucky exit and no longer need to work. I now only consider working on something if it could increase my net worth by an order of magnitude or so — because if it won’t make me a billionaire why bother working? I’d rather do art or open source or go fishing. (That’s not quite what you asked but I don’t know how many actual billionaires will read your comment so figured I’d chime in — to me it doesn’t seem unreasonable that calling wealth would change what people work on and how much they produce.)
kuratkull 3y ago
People start out to create something awesome. People continue when they have the motivation. When you hard cap them in any measurable way, they stop.
- alkonaut 3y ago
  This sounds like guesswork around peoples motivation. Not saying you are wrong, but I'm making the argument that this is a pretty big claim (people being motivated not by wealth or status or curiosity but by extreme wealth). I just don't buy this claim. I don't think it's been a motivation of anyone who has made (say) a billion dollars, to only make another billion. Perhaps be the biggest company or invent the greatest product or have more money than the other billionaire who is an asshat, but just the money itself. Never heard of that. Every billionaire since the dawn of time has written memoirs. They might be lying, but I doubt any of them said "After 150M I just felt I had to make another 500M". They all say "after making successful product A and being set for life, I really wanted to make thing B". I have not read all the billionaire memoirs, and I'm sure memoirs usually claim you were in it for the thrill or the curiosity. But still.

deleted 3y ago

[deleted]

manithree 3y ago

Of course they don't know it. They actually believe that the state is better at managing money than the people creating products and jobs.

yellowapple 3y ago
They're actively destroying jobs at this very moment, not creating them. If I had a nickel for every "we're making record profits, oh and we're also laying off 10% of our employees" announcement, I'd be a billionaire.
- MacsHeadroom 3y ago
  Unemployment has never been lower, with jobs growing every month of the past year. January 2024 saw the most growth followed closely by December 2023. https://www.axios.com/2024/02/02/us-jobs-report-january-2024 https://www.axios.com/2024/02/02/us-jobs-report-january-2024
  - yellowapple 3y ago
    > Unemployment has never been lower That doesn't measure underemployment, nor does it measure people who've given up on finding work. That's why it needs to be considered alongside things like the labor force participation rate - which has been on a downward trend since 2000 - and alongside wage growth, which has lagged below inflation since the 70's. > January 2024 saw the most growth followed closely by December 2023. Which jobs, specifically? At what pay? Destroying a $50k/year job to create two $25k/year jobs ain't progress.
    - MacsHeadroom 3y ago
      Labor force participation rate has been rising since COVID. The long term trend is down but not so bad. A decade ago the rate among adult men was 72% while last month it was 70.2% and continuing to rise. https://www.bls.gov/charts/employment-situation/civilian-labor-force-participation-rate.htm https://www.bls.gov/charts/employment-situation/civilian-lab... Wage growth beat inflation by almost double most months last year, rising around 5-6% YoY each month vs ~3-4% inflation. https://www.statista.com/statistics/1351276/wage-growth-vs-inflation-us/ https://www.statista.com/statistics/1351276/wage-growth-vs-i...