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> In our current capitalist society once you're into the billions you're "too big to fail" and you have unlocked the infinite money glitch. That's not how any

by gruez 8mo ago

> In our current capitalist society once you're into the billions you're "too big to fail" and you have unlocked the infinite money glitch. That's not how any of this works. "Too big to fail" can be applied to companies, but I don't know of any examples of it being applied to people.

bayarearefugee 8mo ago
Please provide a list of all multi-billionaires who have somehow managed to lose any significant portion of their wealth outside of a divorce combined with bad marriage planning. And even in those rare cases, they don't approach bankruptcy. It isn't that they get bailed out by the government (like the banks in 2008), it is that at the scale of their wealth there is no realistic way to lose it fast enough to make any significant negative difference when the neutral state of wealth at that scale is to snowball ever larger (mostly because we refuse to tax it appropriately).
- ojbyrne 8mo ago
  In the ballpark ($2-4 billion in the 1970s): https://priceonomics.com/how-the-hunt-brothers-cornered-the-silver-market/ https://priceonomics.com/how-the-hunt-brothers-cornered-the-...
- gruez 8mo ago
  Your original comment involved claims of "infinite money glitch". Now you're walking it back to "rich people are rich"?
- linkregister 8mo ago
  Ten Billionaires Who Went Broke https://finance.yahoo.com/news/10-billionaires-went-broke-154453290.html https://finance.yahoo.com/news/10-billionaires-went-broke-15...
deleted 8mo ago
[deleted]
perfmode 8mo ago
Thomas Piketty would love to have a word. Piketty’s central argument is that when the rate of return on capital (r) exceeds the rate of economic growth (g), wealth concentrates over time into fewer and fewer hands. This is his now-famous r > g inequality. The implication is that capitalism, left to its own devices, doesn’t naturally spread wealth around. It does the opposite. The relatively egalitarian period of the mid-20th century (roughly 1930s-1970s) was the historical exception, driven by two world wars, the Great Depression, and deliberate policy choices like progressive taxation. The longer historical pattern, which Piketty traces with extensive data going back to the 18th century, is one of increasing concentration. His practical prescription is a global progressive tax on wealth (not just income) to counteract this tendency. He acknowledges this is politically difficult but argues it’s the most straightforward mechanism to prevent a return to the kind of patrimonial capitalism that defined the Gilded Age and the Belle Époque, where inherited wealth dominated and social mobility was minimal. The book’s real contribution was less the theoretical claim (which economists had gestured at before) and more the empirical work. Piketty and his collaborators assembled an unprecedented dataset on wealth and income distribution across multiple countries and centuries, which gave the argument a weight that prior discussions lacked.
- gruez 8mo ago
  >The book’s real contribution was less the theoretical claim (which economists had gestured at before) and more the empirical work. Empirical work... like conveniently ignoring the fact that there's far less old money billionaires than we'd expect? >For these lucky people, the experience of the Vanderbilts and their contemporaries offers a cautionary tale. At the turn of the 20th century, America’s census recorded about 4,000 millionaires, note Victor Haghani and James White, two wealth managers, in their book, “The Missing Billionaires”. Suppose a quarter of them had at least $5m (the richest had hundreds) and had invested it in America’s stockmarket. Had they then procreated at the average rate, paid their taxes and spent 2% of their capital each year, their descendants today would include nearly 16,000 old-money billionaires. In reality, it is a struggle to find a single one who traces their fortune back to the first Gilded Age. https://www.economist.com/finance-and-economics/2025/06/12/how-to-invest-your-enormous-inheritance https://www.economist.com/finance-and-economics/2025/06/12/h...
cogman10 8mo ago
There's 100+ people the FBI had tabs on for sex trafficking related to Epstein. So far the only individual that has been meaningfully punished has been Ghislaine Maxwell. This seems like a prime example of being too big to fail. The FBI puts on kid gloves whenever a rich person is accused of wrong doing.
- gruez 8mo ago
  >There's 100+ people the FBI had tabs on for sex trafficking related to Epstein. >So far the only individual that has been meaningfully punished has been Ghislaine Maxwell. That factoid is meaningless without the rate of prosecutions/convictions for people that FBI "had tabs on".
  - cogman10 8mo ago
    What rate are you looking for? With J6, in the matter of 2 or so years the FBI has secured over 1000 convictions. When it wants to, the FBI can move very quickly.
    - ternaryoperator 8mo ago
      J6 is not a strong counterexample, IMHO. Part of the problem with Epstein is "proof beyond a reasonable doubt," for which evidence is needed--and, it appears, hard to come by. Whereas with J6, there were thousands of hours of footage showing the crimes being committed (and in many cases bragged about), which made prosecutions much easier.
    - gruez 8mo ago
      >With J6, in the matter of 2 or so years the FBI has secured over 1000 convictions. Again, large numbers, but no context. How many people did you think were at the riots? 10k? 50k? Moreover, Jan 6th was an event that definitely happened. The same can't be said for whatever happened at Epstein's island. The island exists, Epstein's a convicted sex offender, and people flew there, but associating with sex offenders isn't a crime, no matter how despicable it might seem.
    - 8mo ago
blitzar 8mo ago
The "all in podcast"

by gruez 8mo ago

bayarearefugee 8mo ago

Please provide a list of all multi-billionaires who have somehow managed to lose any significant portion of their wealth outside of a divorce combined with bad marriage planning. And even in those rare cases, they don't approach bankruptcy. It isn't that they get bailed out by the government (like the banks in 2008), it is that at the scale of their wealth there is no realistic way to lose it fast enough to make any significant negative difference when the neutral state of wealth at that scale is to snowball ever larger (mostly because we refuse to tax it appropriately).

ojbyrne 8mo ago
In the ballpark ($2-4 billion in the 1970s): https://priceonomics.com/how-the-hunt-brothers-cornered-the-silver-market/ https://priceonomics.com/how-the-hunt-brothers-cornered-the-...
gruez 8mo ago
Your original comment involved claims of "infinite money glitch". Now you're walking it back to "rich people are rich"?
linkregister 8mo ago
Ten Billionaires Who Went Broke https://finance.yahoo.com/news/10-billionaires-went-broke-154453290.html https://finance.yahoo.com/news/10-billionaires-went-broke-15...

deleted 8mo ago

[deleted]

perfmode 8mo ago

Thomas Piketty would love to have a word. Piketty’s central argument is that when the rate of return on capital (r) exceeds the rate of economic growth (g), wealth concentrates over time into fewer and fewer hands. This is his now-famous r > g inequality. The implication is that capitalism, left to its own devices, doesn’t naturally spread wealth around. It does the opposite. The relatively egalitarian period of the mid-20th century (roughly 1930s-1970s) was the historical exception, driven by two world wars, the Great Depression, and deliberate policy choices like progressive taxation. The longer historical pattern, which Piketty traces with extensive data going back to the 18th century, is one of increasing concentration. His practical prescription is a global progressive tax on wealth (not just income) to counteract this tendency. He acknowledges this is politically difficult but argues it’s the most straightforward mechanism to prevent a return to the kind of patrimonial capitalism that defined the Gilded Age and the Belle Époque, where inherited wealth dominated and social mobility was minimal. The book’s real contribution was less the theoretical claim (which economists had gestured at before) and more the empirical work. Piketty and his collaborators assembled an unprecedented dataset on wealth and income distribution across multiple countries and centuries, which gave the argument a weight that prior discussions lacked.

gruez 8mo ago
>The book’s real contribution was less the theoretical claim (which economists had gestured at before) and more the empirical work. Empirical work... like conveniently ignoring the fact that there's far less old money billionaires than we'd expect? >For these lucky people, the experience of the Vanderbilts and their contemporaries offers a cautionary tale. At the turn of the 20th century, America’s census recorded about 4,000 millionaires, note Victor Haghani and James White, two wealth managers, in their book, “The Missing Billionaires”. Suppose a quarter of them had at least $5m (the richest had hundreds) and had invested it in America’s stockmarket. Had they then procreated at the average rate, paid their taxes and spent 2% of their capital each year, their descendants today would include nearly 16,000 old-money billionaires. In reality, it is a struggle to find a single one who traces their fortune back to the first Gilded Age. https://www.economist.com/finance-and-economics/2025/06/12/how-to-invest-your-enormous-inheritance https://www.economist.com/finance-and-economics/2025/06/12/h...

cogman10 8mo ago

There's 100+ people the FBI had tabs on for sex trafficking related to Epstein. So far the only individual that has been meaningfully punished has been Ghislaine Maxwell. This seems like a prime example of being too big to fail. The FBI puts on kid gloves whenever a rich person is accused of wrong doing.

gruez 8mo ago
>There's 100+ people the FBI had tabs on for sex trafficking related to Epstein. >So far the only individual that has been meaningfully punished has been Ghislaine Maxwell. That factoid is meaningless without the rate of prosecutions/convictions for people that FBI "had tabs on".
- cogman10 8mo ago
  What rate are you looking for? With J6, in the matter of 2 or so years the FBI has secured over 1000 convictions. When it wants to, the FBI can move very quickly.
  - ternaryoperator 8mo ago
    J6 is not a strong counterexample, IMHO. Part of the problem with Epstein is "proof beyond a reasonable doubt," for which evidence is needed--and, it appears, hard to come by. Whereas with J6, there were thousands of hours of footage showing the crimes being committed (and in many cases bragged about), which made prosecutions much easier.
  - gruez 8mo ago
    >With J6, in the matter of 2 or so years the FBI has secured over 1000 convictions. Again, large numbers, but no context. How many people did you think were at the riots? 10k? 50k? Moreover, Jan 6th was an event that definitely happened. The same can't be said for whatever happened at Epstein's island. The island exists, Epstein's a convicted sex offender, and people flew there, but associating with sex offenders isn't a crime, no matter how despicable it might seem.
  - 8mo ago

blitzar 8mo ago

The "all in podcast"