4 ms·

I wrote this in 2021: Billionaires: Our Single Point of Failure https://metastable.org/billionaires/ https://metastable.org/billionaires/

by pbw 2y ago

r7000 2y ago
Sincere question: what do you believe should happen when a company becomes successful? You make excellent criticisms and I've had similar thoughts. But I never really understood what people want to do other than confiscate companies once they become successful. Not saying that is what you want to do - you specifically say not that. You mention "let’s engineer a network of trust and monitoring and a culture of transparency". I'm not sure what that means.
- pbw 2y ago
  In the post, I say private individuals can own assets in two ways, as individuals (up to a cap) or through a personal corporation (no cap). So, if you start a company that becomes huge and your slice is worth $100 billion, or even $10 trillion, you can still own all of that via the personal corporation. And you can invest or spend all of it [almost] however you want. The difference is that the personal corporation has oversight; I only specify there will be a "board" I don't have anything concrete beyond that. But the idea is in extreme circumstances, the board can over-rule your money-related decisions. The intent is they will only step in if you are going nuts, but the devil is in the details of how exactly to do that. It might be impossible, but I'd rather see us at least try rather have brain-damaged trillionaires causing unchecked mayhem. When I make this argument, people assume I want to tax or seize the billionaire's wealth, but no, I'm saying they can keep every penny. Although to be fair, if you did cleave apart people's finances like this, taxing the "personal corporation" higher than the individual portion would be tempting.
  - r7000 2y ago
    > the devil is in the details Well yeah :) Any ideas on how the board is chosen? Does the majority(only) owner / CEO of the p-corp do it?
    - pbw 2y ago
      The board can and should be friendly with the p-corp owner. Almost all the time they are going to be green light everything. They are really just a "sanity check" (literally). Now you could say how do we "make sure" the board acts when the time comes? Stands up to the owner? Maybe we don't. We put the mechanism in place, and if the board fails to stop the owner, then it didn't work in that specific case. And the world will know that. But as long as it works "most" of the time maybe that's enough. Also I forgot, apart from a board a big thing might be reporting. Your p-corp activities would have much more stringent reporting requirements compared to a private individual. You can do anything you want with your $300M in private funds, including get it as small bills and roll around in it, but the p-corp funds need to be much more closely monitored. That alone, even without a board, would be big.
contingencies 2y ago
It sounds like you are also libertarian, but you argue that even libertarian societies should have some form of public interest limitation, license or oversight. This is in line with traditional Thomas Jefferson thinking: "A wise and frugal government, which shall restrain men from injuring one another, shall leave them otherwise free to regulate their own pursuits of industry and improvement, and shall not take from the mouth of labor the bread it has earned. This is the sum of good government." That's a nice thought but the problem, as we've now shown, is that any organization of humans will by definition become corrupted, the state will grow unless constrained, and any system is imperfect and can be gamed. What is the place of the state, traditionally empowered through a monopoly on violence, in a multinational world? Right now, it's just a tool to be abused by the wealthy, and by extension to confound and entrap the masses. Can you believe they still teach nationalism? Populism should have been excised from education after the 20th century's tragedies, but instead it seems to have redoubled. In future perhaps we'll have a dictatorship of AI to keep the humans in check, but the clear danger is that such a system would present too much value not to be usurped and abused. Democracy in the utopian theoretical sense was supposed to be based upon popular education and representation. We could work towards improving the former with AI and more effective (not child minding oriented) personalized education programs, and the latter with more frequent referendums. Right now we have the opposite: laziness, lack of education, active misinformation, and near zero viable means for meaningful representation even in self-labelled democractic societies. It is no wonder so many people self-medicate.

I wrote this in 2021: Billionaires: Our Single Point of Failure https://metastable.org/billionaires/ https://metastable.org/billionaires/

by pbw 2y ago

I wrote this in 2021: Billionaires: Our Single Point of Failure https://metastable.org/billionaires/ https://metastable.org/billionaires/

r7000 2y ago

Sincere question: what do you believe should happen when a company becomes successful? You make excellent criticisms and I've had similar thoughts. But I never really understood what people want to do other than confiscate companies once they become successful. Not saying that is what you want to do - you specifically say not that. You mention "let’s engineer a network of trust and monitoring and a culture of transparency". I'm not sure what that means.

pbw 2y ago
In the post, I say private individuals can own assets in two ways, as individuals (up to a cap) or through a personal corporation (no cap). So, if you start a company that becomes huge and your slice is worth $100 billion, or even $10 trillion, you can still own all of that via the personal corporation. And you can invest or spend all of it [almost] however you want. The difference is that the personal corporation has oversight; I only specify there will be a "board" I don't have anything concrete beyond that. But the idea is in extreme circumstances, the board can over-rule your money-related decisions. The intent is they will only step in if you are going nuts, but the devil is in the details of how exactly to do that. It might be impossible, but I'd rather see us at least try rather have brain-damaged trillionaires causing unchecked mayhem. When I make this argument, people assume I want to tax or seize the billionaire's wealth, but no, I'm saying they can keep every penny. Although to be fair, if you did cleave apart people's finances like this, taxing the "personal corporation" higher than the individual portion would be tempting.
- r7000 2y ago
  > the devil is in the details Well yeah :) Any ideas on how the board is chosen? Does the majority(only) owner / CEO of the p-corp do it?
  - pbw 2y ago
    The board can and should be friendly with the p-corp owner. Almost all the time they are going to be green light everything. They are really just a "sanity check" (literally). Now you could say how do we "make sure" the board acts when the time comes? Stands up to the owner? Maybe we don't. We put the mechanism in place, and if the board fails to stop the owner, then it didn't work in that specific case. And the world will know that. But as long as it works "most" of the time maybe that's enough. Also I forgot, apart from a board a big thing might be reporting. Your p-corp activities would have much more stringent reporting requirements compared to a private individual. You can do anything you want with your $300M in private funds, including get it as small bills and roll around in it, but the p-corp funds need to be much more closely monitored. That alone, even without a board, would be big.

contingencies 2y ago

It sounds like you are also libertarian, but you argue that even libertarian societies should have some form of public interest limitation, license or oversight. This is in line with traditional Thomas Jefferson thinking: "A wise and frugal government, which shall restrain men from injuring one another, shall leave them otherwise free to regulate their own pursuits of industry and improvement, and shall not take from the mouth of labor the bread it has earned. This is the sum of good government." That's a nice thought but the problem, as we've now shown, is that any organization of humans will by definition become corrupted, the state will grow unless constrained, and any system is imperfect and can be gamed. What is the place of the state, traditionally empowered through a monopoly on violence, in a multinational world? Right now, it's just a tool to be abused by the wealthy, and by extension to confound and entrap the masses. Can you believe they still teach nationalism? Populism should have been excised from education after the 20th century's tragedies, but instead it seems to have redoubled. In future perhaps we'll have a dictatorship of AI to keep the humans in check, but the clear danger is that such a system would present too much value not to be usurped and abused. Democracy in the utopian theoretical sense was supposed to be based upon popular education and representation. We could work towards improving the former with AI and more effective (not child minding oriented) personalized education programs, and the latter with more frequent referendums. Right now we have the opposite: laziness, lack of education, active misinformation, and near zero viable means for meaningful representation even in self-labelled democractic societies. It is no wonder so many people self-medicate.