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Americans have allowed the rich to become too wealthy. The kind of power that comes with billions of dollars just doesnt work with justice or democracy.

jmward01 1y ago
I have nothing against rich. I have everything against a single person having a megaphone for themselves and a gag for everyone else and still calling it a democracy. We need strong laws that reduce the voice of money and increase the voice of individuals. Having said that, the practical implication is that money needs to loose power and there are very few ways to truly do that other than just take it away. So, I agree that our only known practical path to a healthier democracy is to make it harder to be pathologically rich.
- orwin 1y ago
  Yes, ideologically, i had no issue with people being rich, it's people having undue power over other people that i found morally wrong. I was a libertatian almost in the american meaning of the word, a liberal libertarian. Then, i tried to put my ideas real conditions, and came to the realisation that as long as money could buy you power, you can never be free. I don't realistically see how we can limit money influence on power, when you can offshore your company in two days, so in a practical manner, the only way to limit how rich one can get, until we figure out the rest.
- saulpw 1y ago
  There's rich, and then there's 10x rich, and 100x rich, and 1000x rich, and 10000x rich, and now even 100000x rich. Millionaires are fine, billionaires are bad, and hectobillionaires are supremely terrible. I think once someone gets to a billion dollars net worth, they should get an AmEx black card, and 99% of their assets moved into a sovereign public wealth fund. They can have anything they want, they lose the power of extreme asset allocation, and if they just like competing, they can start over and try to ring the bell again (and can give the second AmEx black card to a person of their choosing).
  - lotsofpulp 1y ago
    So if your business is extremely successful, your reward is losing control if it? To who, politicians? Leaving the large business intact and just changing the leader doesn’t seem like it changes anything.
    - JKCalhoun 1y ago
      Society?
    - mxkopy 1y ago
      You should be forced to invest into all aspects of the social fabric that makes your success possible. Your reward is being able to be a successful philanthropist
      - Workaccount2 1y ago
        Your 401k is their social fabric contribution.
        p_j_w 1y ago
        How does a 5 year old use their 401k to increase the quality of their education?
        Workaccount2 1y ago
        Probably should allow parents to open college investment accounts for kids at birth. Even $5k invested at birth would be $50k at 25, enough to mostly pay off a state school degree. So yeah, generally I think that would be a good idea.
        naniwaduni 1y ago
        We do have, like, four versions of that in the US alone, yes, starting with 529 plans.
- idle_zealot 1y ago
  I'm not sure I understand what distinction you're drawing between ideological opposition to rich people existing and opposition to disproportionately powerful people existing. In what hypothetical world are these not the exact same thing? Money is a unit of exchange that exists to compel action. That's the point of it, and is just another way of saying "power over others". A world where being rich doesn't grant power over others is one where money isn't money.
  - pdonis 1y ago
    > Money is a unit of exchange that exists to compel action Not in a free market. In a free market, people have the option to refuse to accept your money if they don't want to give you what you want to buy from them with it.
    - teachrdan 1y ago
      > people have the option to refuse to accept your money... This is the contradiction, isn't it? A free market that you or I might define requires safeguards like a social welfare net to make sure individuals are truly free to decline an offer that is harmful to them. Without such a welfare net one is compelled to accept an offer that is harmful (to one's health, morality, etc.) because the alternative is to lose your dignity and all of your belongings, or worse. But then the owning class has every incentive to reduce or remove the safety net. Not least because they will be paying a lot for it! But even more so because that safety net is what gives people some small amount of power to say no to them.
      - nielsbot 1y ago
        People like to talk about politically tyranny, but forgot about the tyranny of capitalism. We've financialized servitude is all.
        Supermancho 1y ago
        Many people decry the tyranny of capitalism, but this site tends to lean into it and defend it at every turn because capitalism is painted as the tide that lifts all boats, despite the bodies on the ocean floor. Some believe, wholeheartedly that a few regulations is all that is needed to establish a fair free market, despite evidence to the contrary. ANY niche market where a world-spanning monopoly can be established, makes a mockery of regulation time and time again.
- JKCalhoun 1y ago
  > We need strong laws that reduce the voice of money and increase the voice of individuals. Seeing the how flaccid "strong" laws have become, I prefer we go back to reducing the voice of money by taxing it away. Maybe our country could then finally have nice things.
  - nielsbot 1y ago
    Agreed. (I'm all in on confiscatory taxation.) No one person should be allowed to accumulate so much power and wealth.
  - culopatin 1y ago
    What do you do when all the money goes away to countries that don’t tax them that hard?
    - spongebobstoes 1y ago
      why do you think that will happen? how could that scenario be prevented, while still taxing money? if you put more effort into making your point, I'm sure you could get better engagement
      - Workaccount2 1y ago
        Look at what Texas has been doing to California. People who assign billionaires as being the living manifestation of greed are somehow quick to hand wave away "billionaires will move to protect their wealth".
        thoroughburro 1y ago
        We should be so lucky. They are leeches.
        p_j_w 1y ago
        > Look at what Texas has been doing to California. What might that be? California is still at the forefront of every technological innovation this country is seeing while Texas is at the forefront of theocracy. California may be seeing a smaller share of the world’s innovation in the past, but that hasn’t moved to Texas, it’s moved to China.
NoMoreNicksLeft 1y ago
> The kind of power that comes with billions of dollars just doesnt work with justice or democracy. The government has billions of dollars. Thankfully government officials are immune to the corrupting influence of billions of dollars.
- johannes1234321 1y ago
  Budget (in theory) is controlled by Congress, this is a bunch of people with their agendas who aim for being reelected. The true billionaire doesn't have anybody else to ask and can finance the campaign to get somebody (not) elected.
- BizarroLand 1y ago
  If you ever need to see what a false equivalence is, look at this comment
- nielsbot 1y ago
  The bad part is that congress is bought so cheaply. Not with billions. Under our current system you have to be daft to not invest in buying the government--it's a great return on your investment!
- 1718627440 1y ago
  The government hands out the money. It has as much money wealth as the economy it governs is able to provide.
thegreatpeter 1y ago
Plenty of billionaires all over Europe. Relative to salaries the spread is quite worse. Democracy there is perfect
- bbreier 1y ago
  As far as I am aware, wealth inequality is significantly better in Europe than it is in the United States (https://worldpopulationreview.com/country-rankings/wealth-inequality-by-country https://worldpopulationreview.com/country-rankings/wealth-in... as an example) and I still wouldn't characterize democracy in Europe as "perfect" even if we narrowly define the rubrick to be only concerned with money tipping the scales of power
  - aetherson 1y ago
    That site is weird. As far as I can tell, it's measuring income inequality, not wealth inequality, and it doesn't... appear to know the difference? Quoting it: > The Gini index, or Gini coefficient, is a statistical measure of wealth distribution developed by the Italian statistician Corrado Gini. The Gini index is used to gauge economic inequality by measuring income distribution, also called wealth distribution. It's a kinda big red flag if they say that income and wealth are the same thing! There are a few notable cases of European countries having very high wealth inequality despite lower income inequality (my take which may not be shared by many: having low income inequality makes it hard for people who aren't generationally wealthy to overcome old money). Notably, Sweden has a higher wealth inequality than the United States. However, I don't think it's true that Europe in general has higher wealth inequality than the United States. Here's the wikipedia list: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_sovereign_states_by_wealth_inequality https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_sovereign_states_by_we...
    - lotsofpulp 1y ago
      > It's a kinda big red flag if they say that income and wealth are the same thing! Wealthy and old people love when income is used as a stand in for wealth. It deflects political action onto the young and hard/smart working, and helps keep their dynasties and rent seeking assets intact.
tart-lemonade 1y ago
It also doesn't work when the media is either striving to uphold the status quo that got us here or actively going out of its way to try and make things worse.
- cut3 1y ago
  you mean the megaphones owned by the rich?
- bilbo0s 1y ago
  Isn't "the media" really just, the rich? From WSJ and The Economist, to CNN, BBC and FOX, right on through to Youtube podcasts.
AnthonyMouse 1y ago
> Americans have allowed the rich to become too wealthy. This consistently happens in a very specific way. A corporation that dominates a concentrated market becomes excessively large, which makes its early shareholders billionaires. In other words, if you want to change this, you need to enforce antitrust laws and break up large corporations.
- sieabahlpark 1y ago
  [dead]
- nielsbot 1y ago
  As well as tax like we used to in the 50s. (Ok, we can argue about the specifics, but you get the idea)
  - actionfromafar 1y ago
    Yeah, the regressives (can't call them conservatives anymore with a straight face) never want to go back to that part of the 50s, for some odd reason.
    - account42 1y ago
      This othersideism helps no one. Your beloved democrats haven't squat to reign in big tech either.
      - actionfromafar 1y ago
        What should we do? Where do we go from here?
        AnthonyMouse 1y ago
        Stop trying to pretend that higher taxes on Larry Page or the estate of Steve Jobs would change the size of Google or Apple and instead break them up.
worik 1y ago
There is no sin in being rich It is a sin to be poor There being poor, is the sin of the rich

jmward01 1y ago

I have nothing against rich. I have everything against a single person having a megaphone for themselves and a gag for everyone else and still calling it a democracy. We need strong laws that reduce the voice of money and increase the voice of individuals. Having said that, the practical implication is that money needs to loose power and there are very few ways to truly do that other than just take it away. So, I agree that our only known practical path to a healthier democracy is to make it harder to be pathologically rich.

orwin 1y ago
Yes, ideologically, i had no issue with people being rich, it's people having undue power over other people that i found morally wrong. I was a libertatian almost in the american meaning of the word, a liberal libertarian. Then, i tried to put my ideas real conditions, and came to the realisation that as long as money could buy you power, you can never be free. I don't realistically see how we can limit money influence on power, when you can offshore your company in two days, so in a practical manner, the only way to limit how rich one can get, until we figure out the rest.
saulpw 1y ago
There's rich, and then there's 10x rich, and 100x rich, and 1000x rich, and 10000x rich, and now even 100000x rich. Millionaires are fine, billionaires are bad, and hectobillionaires are supremely terrible. I think once someone gets to a billion dollars net worth, they should get an AmEx black card, and 99% of their assets moved into a sovereign public wealth fund. They can have anything they want, they lose the power of extreme asset allocation, and if they just like competing, they can start over and try to ring the bell again (and can give the second AmEx black card to a person of their choosing).
- lotsofpulp 1y ago
  So if your business is extremely successful, your reward is losing control if it? To who, politicians? Leaving the large business intact and just changing the leader doesn’t seem like it changes anything.
  - JKCalhoun 1y ago
    Society?
  - mxkopy 1y ago
    You should be forced to invest into all aspects of the social fabric that makes your success possible. Your reward is being able to be a successful philanthropist
    - Workaccount2 1y ago
      Your 401k is their social fabric contribution.
      - p_j_w 1y ago
        How does a 5 year old use their 401k to increase the quality of their education?
        Workaccount2 1y ago
        Probably should allow parents to open college investment accounts for kids at birth. Even $5k invested at birth would be $50k at 25, enough to mostly pay off a state school degree. So yeah, generally I think that would be a good idea.
        naniwaduni 1y ago
        We do have, like, four versions of that in the US alone, yes, starting with 529 plans.
idle_zealot 1y ago
I'm not sure I understand what distinction you're drawing between ideological opposition to rich people existing and opposition to disproportionately powerful people existing. In what hypothetical world are these not the exact same thing? Money is a unit of exchange that exists to compel action. That's the point of it, and is just another way of saying "power over others". A world where being rich doesn't grant power over others is one where money isn't money.
- pdonis 1y ago
  > Money is a unit of exchange that exists to compel action Not in a free market. In a free market, people have the option to refuse to accept your money if they don't want to give you what you want to buy from them with it.
  - teachrdan 1y ago
    > people have the option to refuse to accept your money... This is the contradiction, isn't it? A free market that you or I might define requires safeguards like a social welfare net to make sure individuals are truly free to decline an offer that is harmful to them. Without such a welfare net one is compelled to accept an offer that is harmful (to one's health, morality, etc.) because the alternative is to lose your dignity and all of your belongings, or worse. But then the owning class has every incentive to reduce or remove the safety net. Not least because they will be paying a lot for it! But even more so because that safety net is what gives people some small amount of power to say no to them.
    - nielsbot 1y ago
      People like to talk about politically tyranny, but forgot about the tyranny of capitalism. We've financialized servitude is all.
      - Supermancho 1y ago
        Many people decry the tyranny of capitalism, but this site tends to lean into it and defend it at every turn because capitalism is painted as the tide that lifts all boats, despite the bodies on the ocean floor. Some believe, wholeheartedly that a few regulations is all that is needed to establish a fair free market, despite evidence to the contrary. ANY niche market where a world-spanning monopoly can be established, makes a mockery of regulation time and time again.
JKCalhoun 1y ago
> We need strong laws that reduce the voice of money and increase the voice of individuals. Seeing the how flaccid "strong" laws have become, I prefer we go back to reducing the voice of money by taxing it away. Maybe our country could then finally have nice things.
- nielsbot 1y ago
  Agreed. (I'm all in on confiscatory taxation.) No one person should be allowed to accumulate so much power and wealth.
- culopatin 1y ago
  What do you do when all the money goes away to countries that don’t tax them that hard?
  - spongebobstoes 1y ago
    why do you think that will happen? how could that scenario be prevented, while still taxing money? if you put more effort into making your point, I'm sure you could get better engagement
    - Workaccount2 1y ago
      Look at what Texas has been doing to California. People who assign billionaires as being the living manifestation of greed are somehow quick to hand wave away "billionaires will move to protect their wealth".
      - thoroughburro 1y ago
        We should be so lucky. They are leeches.
      - p_j_w 1y ago
        > Look at what Texas has been doing to California. What might that be? California is still at the forefront of every technological innovation this country is seeing while Texas is at the forefront of theocracy. California may be seeing a smaller share of the world’s innovation in the past, but that hasn’t moved to Texas, it’s moved to China.

NoMoreNicksLeft 1y ago

> The kind of power that comes with billions of dollars just doesnt work with justice or democracy. The government has billions of dollars. Thankfully government officials are immune to the corrupting influence of billions of dollars.

johannes1234321 1y ago
Budget (in theory) is controlled by Congress, this is a bunch of people with their agendas who aim for being reelected. The true billionaire doesn't have anybody else to ask and can finance the campaign to get somebody (not) elected.
BizarroLand 1y ago
If you ever need to see what a false equivalence is, look at this comment
nielsbot 1y ago
The bad part is that congress is bought so cheaply. Not with billions. Under our current system you have to be daft to not invest in buying the government--it's a great return on your investment!
1718627440 1y ago
The government hands out the money. It has as much money wealth as the economy it governs is able to provide.

thegreatpeter 1y ago

Plenty of billionaires all over Europe. Relative to salaries the spread is quite worse. Democracy there is perfect

bbreier 1y ago
As far as I am aware, wealth inequality is significantly better in Europe than it is in the United States (https://worldpopulationreview.com/country-rankings/wealth-inequality-by-country https://worldpopulationreview.com/country-rankings/wealth-in... as an example) and I still wouldn't characterize democracy in Europe as "perfect" even if we narrowly define the rubrick to be only concerned with money tipping the scales of power
- aetherson 1y ago
  That site is weird. As far as I can tell, it's measuring income inequality, not wealth inequality, and it doesn't... appear to know the difference? Quoting it: > The Gini index, or Gini coefficient, is a statistical measure of wealth distribution developed by the Italian statistician Corrado Gini. The Gini index is used to gauge economic inequality by measuring income distribution, also called wealth distribution. It's a kinda big red flag if they say that income and wealth are the same thing! There are a few notable cases of European countries having very high wealth inequality despite lower income inequality (my take which may not be shared by many: having low income inequality makes it hard for people who aren't generationally wealthy to overcome old money). Notably, Sweden has a higher wealth inequality than the United States. However, I don't think it's true that Europe in general has higher wealth inequality than the United States. Here's the wikipedia list: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_sovereign_states_by_wealth_inequality https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_sovereign_states_by_we...
  - lotsofpulp 1y ago
    > It's a kinda big red flag if they say that income and wealth are the same thing! Wealthy and old people love when income is used as a stand in for wealth. It deflects political action onto the young and hard/smart working, and helps keep their dynasties and rent seeking assets intact.

tart-lemonade 1y ago

It also doesn't work when the media is either striving to uphold the status quo that got us here or actively going out of its way to try and make things worse.

cut3 1y ago
you mean the megaphones owned by the rich?
bilbo0s 1y ago
Isn't "the media" really just, the rich? From WSJ and The Economist, to CNN, BBC and FOX, right on through to Youtube podcasts.

AnthonyMouse 1y ago

> Americans have allowed the rich to become too wealthy. This consistently happens in a very specific way. A corporation that dominates a concentrated market becomes excessively large, which makes its early shareholders billionaires. In other words, if you want to change this, you need to enforce antitrust laws and break up large corporations.

sieabahlpark 1y ago
[dead]
nielsbot 1y ago
As well as tax like we used to in the 50s. (Ok, we can argue about the specifics, but you get the idea)
- actionfromafar 1y ago
  Yeah, the regressives (can't call them conservatives anymore with a straight face) never want to go back to that part of the 50s, for some odd reason.
  - account42 1y ago
    This othersideism helps no one. Your beloved democrats haven't squat to reign in big tech either.
    - actionfromafar 1y ago
      What should we do? Where do we go from here?
      - AnthonyMouse 1y ago
        Stop trying to pretend that higher taxes on Larry Page or the estate of Steve Jobs would change the size of Google or Apple and instead break them up.

worik 1y ago

There is no sin in being rich It is a sin to be poor There being poor, is the sin of the rich