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> You have a lot of faith, it seems, in the ability of the already rich to somehow make better decisions (by some metric) than an arbitrary political process A

> You have a lot of faith, it seems, in the ability of the already rich to somehow make better decisions (by some metric) than an arbitrary political process A key advantage of leaving it to the rich is that when rich people fail, they tend to end up losing their wealth and power, hurting mostly themselves — while even a political process that isn’t being corrupted or gamed by someone powerful is badly incentivized to throw buckets and buckets of good money after bad, hurting lots of people. Elon ruining Twitter is at least his own money. The California bullet train will be an unprofitable multibillion drain on the state for decades to come …

PaulDavisThe1st 3y ago
This (conveniently) ignores (as do so many similar analyses) the opportunity costs of entering into a labor contract. When an enterprise fails, it is not just the stockholders and corporate officers who suffer. The employees do too. Worse, only the foolhardy investor puts more than they can afford to lose into a risky investment, meaning that while they have undoubtedly lost money from the failure, they are almost certainly still "whole" in terms of their ability to meet their basic needs. By contrast, the employees, who may have lost no capital, often face much more dire circumstances in the aftermath of a venture failing. >even a political process that isn’t being corrupted or gamed by someone powerful is badly incentivized to throw good money after bad It isn't clear to me what you mean by this.
Draiken 3y ago
What? You're ignoring all the lives he ruined to play with that company. Sure, he lost money, but he has plenty to lose. He wrecked a company and thousands of lives. They pay the price, not him. It's always the workers that pay the price.
- cosmojg 3y ago
  If getting laid off from a six-figure salaried job is what people are calling "life-ruining" in this day and age, then we're clearly doing something right as a society! Sadly, I've had the misfortune of living through far deeper traumas, and I can't help but laugh at the suggestion that getting laid off from my current tech job would somehow "ruin my life" by any stretch of the imagination. Sure, it might cause some temporary distress, but my rainy day fund would be able to tide me over until something else came along.
PaulDavisThe1st 3y ago
(I see you edited your post to add the last line). Elon is not "ruining his own money". He gained control over large quantities of economic and financial resources, and because of the way our society works, he gets to "ruin" those resources by choosing to direct them to the purchase of an asset followed by its degradation. But there's an opportunity cost to all that: what might have happened in Elon was not in a position to command the utilization of the wealth that purchased Twitter? What else might that wealth have been used for? What might it have been accomplished?
- jryan49 3y ago
  You could make the opposite argument about all the innovations, are and science, rich people have funded throughout history. Like what if Boeing didn't have all that money to dump into airplanes.
  - kagakuninja 3y ago
    To start with, Boeing benefitted from massive amounts of government contracts during their history, which provided much of the money they "dumped into airplanes". Secondly, we now see a company whose products have severe safety defects due to the influence of cost-cutting managers, more concerned with profits than quality.
  - PaulDavisThe1st 3y ago
    You are presupposing that such things would not have happened if the resource allocation decisions made by the wealthy had been made via some other (more democratic) means. There's not really much evidence to support that claim (though to be fair, not much evidence to refute it either).
    - jryan49 3y ago
      That's my point, I don't think it seems to matter very much... Sometimes an individual has a good idea, sometimes we all come up with good ideas...

PaulDavisThe1st 3y ago

This (conveniently) ignores (as do so many similar analyses) the opportunity costs of entering into a labor contract. When an enterprise fails, it is not just the stockholders and corporate officers who suffer. The employees do too. Worse, only the foolhardy investor puts more than they can afford to lose into a risky investment, meaning that while they have undoubtedly lost money from the failure, they are almost certainly still "whole" in terms of their ability to meet their basic needs. By contrast, the employees, who may have lost no capital, often face much more dire circumstances in the aftermath of a venture failing. >even a political process that isn’t being corrupted or gamed by someone powerful is badly incentivized to throw good money after bad It isn't clear to me what you mean by this.

Draiken 3y ago

What? You're ignoring all the lives he ruined to play with that company. Sure, he lost money, but he has plenty to lose. He wrecked a company and thousands of lives. They pay the price, not him. It's always the workers that pay the price.

cosmojg 3y ago
If getting laid off from a six-figure salaried job is what people are calling "life-ruining" in this day and age, then we're clearly doing something right as a society! Sadly, I've had the misfortune of living through far deeper traumas, and I can't help but laugh at the suggestion that getting laid off from my current tech job would somehow "ruin my life" by any stretch of the imagination. Sure, it might cause some temporary distress, but my rainy day fund would be able to tide me over until something else came along.

PaulDavisThe1st 3y ago

(I see you edited your post to add the last line). Elon is not "ruining his own money". He gained control over large quantities of economic and financial resources, and because of the way our society works, he gets to "ruin" those resources by choosing to direct them to the purchase of an asset followed by its degradation. But there's an opportunity cost to all that: what might have happened in Elon was not in a position to command the utilization of the wealth that purchased Twitter? What else might that wealth have been used for? What might it have been accomplished?

jryan49 3y ago
You could make the opposite argument about all the innovations, are and science, rich people have funded throughout history. Like what if Boeing didn't have all that money to dump into airplanes.
- kagakuninja 3y ago
  To start with, Boeing benefitted from massive amounts of government contracts during their history, which provided much of the money they "dumped into airplanes". Secondly, we now see a company whose products have severe safety defects due to the influence of cost-cutting managers, more concerned with profits than quality.
- PaulDavisThe1st 3y ago
  You are presupposing that such things would not have happened if the resource allocation decisions made by the wealthy had been made via some other (more democratic) means. There's not really much evidence to support that claim (though to be fair, not much evidence to refute it either).
  - jryan49 3y ago
    That's my point, I don't think it seems to matter very much... Sometimes an individual has a good idea, sometimes we all come up with good ideas...