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> We've got a highly reliable and effective system for working that out (aka the free market economy) and no alternative in 2nd place that doesn't typically le

by IanCal 3mo ago

> We've got a highly reliable and effective system for working that out (aka the free market economy) and no alternative in 2nd place that doesn't typically lead to mass starvation because someone underestimated how much food was needed. This is an absolutely wild comparison. The choice is not "everything is purely market forces" vs "everything is centrally planned". We have all kinds of implementations across the world that have different systems. > The people behind wealth taxes generally handwave explaining how their system will be better at allocating than the people who make a living of allocating wealth effectively They have different targets though surely? The effective part here is that for one group it's getting more into the hands of the less well off, or funding (say) schools, healthcare, etc. The effective part for someone else is making a single person or family richer. > So far no compelling cases where they've turned out to be right. If they could do a better job, why even allow private wealth at all? Because utility is not linear. It is entirely reasonable to assume that the very extreme ends of a scale are not likely the most beneficial under almost any measure. If wealth getting concentrated is so good, why not only allow one person to have everything? See how odd that seems? It is not surprising to me that it's a good idea overall to let people benefit from figuring out how to do things that people want. It is also not surprising to me that it can be a good idea to take some of that benefit, and use it to do some of the following * Alleviate suffering * Long term planning/research to benefit all and speed up progress * Core infrastructure that everybody benefits from but is hard to structure with pure market forces For example, companies benefit from an educated workforce - are they individually going to fund schooling for young kids? The goal is to try and hit some of those other things while not discouraging people too much from doing the things we want. > taxes always make someone better off. So does wealth. A decision has to be made. Sure. So we could ask, say, can we compare educating 500 children for 12 years vs Taylor Swifts net worth going from $2.1B to $2B? How much would she be hurt and how much would other benefit? What would be the impact if she was slightly less wealthy?

inigyou 3mo ago
Besides, modern market forces are central planning. Bezos central plans. So does Musk. So does whoever is in charge of Microsoft right now. To avoid this you need a wide variety of small to medium sized businesses instead of a few large ones. A wealth tax may help this happen.
- AnthonyMouse 3mo ago
  What budget incentive does a wealth tax create for Congress when considering a non-tax policy that would reduce the wealth of billionaires by allowing more small and medium businesses to compete with them in their industries?
  - inigyou 3mo ago
    What is that non-tax policy?
roenxi 3mo ago
> If wealth getting concentrated is so good, why not only allow one person to have everything? See how odd that seems? Isn't that fairly close to what we have now? I don't see any theoretical issues. Obviously if we literally mean one person I don't think the market would pick that as an optimum outcome, but there isn't an issue with the idea in principle. Besides, the alternative is to have a relative small committee that, in practice, decides when to give and when to take away. That is the most practical aspect of wealth control and there is still a small number of people controlling it. > Sure. So we could ask, say, can we compare educating 500 children for 12 years vs Taylor Swifts net worth going from $2.1B to $2B? How much would she be hurt and how much would other benefit? What would be the impact if she was slightly less wealthy? Worst case is she gets angry and a bunch of people go hungry and uneducated, she donates quite a lot of money. $26m going out some time soonish according to a recent heaadline. https://www.theguardian.com/music/2026/jul/02/taylor-swift-travis-kelce-wedding-charity-donation https://www.theguardian.com/music/2026/jul/02/taylor-swift-t.... She's more effective with that donation than getting outcomes like educating 500 kids. It turns out to be nontrivial coming up with good examples in practice.
- IanCal 3mo ago
  > Isn't that fairly close to what we have now? I don't see any theoretical issues. Massive concentration of wealth has a few outcomes you may find disagreeable or sub-optimal * Huge concentration of power in smaller numbers of people, chosen for unrelated skills, heavily tied to luck * People with huge amounts of power being able to make extremely sub-optimal decisions and still be entirely fine. Elon can buy and run a business into the ground on a whim and be entirely fine. * Concentration of direction of human labour - it is more worthwhile to spend many lifetimes of humans to very slightly increase the comfort of one multi-billionaire. For the last example, Americans earn more typically than anyone else in the world and data is easy to find. Assume lifetime earnings of $3M. Bezos' yacht cost more than enough for 100 full lifetimes of US median worker labour, and requires ten lifetimes every year to maintain. For one ship, for one person. You can look at that and say "this is optimal" but I am very unsure as to what you're then measuring. > Obviously if we literally mean one person I don't think the market would pick that as an optimum outcome Well it being a daft choice is rather the point, taking the absolute extremes is rarely a sensible approach. Total abolition of private wealth is not the point anyone is making. The argument people are making is to take money from those that have so much that the impact to their lives would be negligible, and use it to improve the lives of many others. It may even make them wealthier! You said optimum there, but optimal for what? Even if it's just efficient allocation of capital, doesn't that rely on pressure to invest well? The reward for doing so is more wealth, but what if you don't need more, or don't need to constantly try and get more? The wealthiest could sit with vast sums as cash and be fine, which is sensible for them but surely a terrible use of capital. > the alternative is to have a relative small committee that, in practice, decides when to give and when to take away. That's a government. > Worst case is she gets angry and a bunch of people go hungry and uneducated, Why would anyone go hungry and uneducated if Taylor Swift is angry? What is the process by which you see that happening? > She's more effective with that donation than getting outcomes like educating 500 kids. How do you figure that? And you can simply swap over fully educating those kids for something else if you want, unless the argument is that Taylor Swift specifically is better at allocating resources for whatever outcomes the population wants. Let's take TS as an example. What is it she is being rewarded for, is it efficient allocation of capital? Is that why people buy her songs? Is that what's made her so incredibly wealthy? Do you think that if she was rewarded somewhat less, that she'd stop making music? Stop touring? In fact, imagine she never got more money. Do you think she's making music because she's saving up for something she cannot currently afford? Does she have a lifestyle that's unsustainable without earning even more money? edit - To be clear, I think the market is an incredible way of constructing a ludicrously large graph of how to use the worlds resources and human labour, tied to what people want as an outcome, allowing fractional voting through the network in a way that's extremely simple for end users (I buy things for prices I'm happy with, the "market" of millions of other people optimise the back end of that) and is self-optimising. The problem comes when some people have enormously more votes than others, distorting it all, or are able to manipulate the graph, or where hill climbing optimisation cannot reach the more optimal states (infrastructure classically, legal systems are another good example).

by IanCal 3mo ago

inigyou 3mo ago

Besides, modern market forces are central planning. Bezos central plans. So does Musk. So does whoever is in charge of Microsoft right now. To avoid this you need a wide variety of small to medium sized businesses instead of a few large ones. A wealth tax may help this happen.

AnthonyMouse 3mo ago
What budget incentive does a wealth tax create for Congress when considering a non-tax policy that would reduce the wealth of billionaires by allowing more small and medium businesses to compete with them in their industries?
- inigyou 3mo ago
  What is that non-tax policy?

roenxi 3mo ago

> If wealth getting concentrated is so good, why not only allow one person to have everything? See how odd that seems? Isn't that fairly close to what we have now? I don't see any theoretical issues. Obviously if we literally mean one person I don't think the market would pick that as an optimum outcome, but there isn't an issue with the idea in principle. Besides, the alternative is to have a relative small committee that, in practice, decides when to give and when to take away. That is the most practical aspect of wealth control and there is still a small number of people controlling it. > Sure. So we could ask, say, can we compare educating 500 children for 12 years vs Taylor Swifts net worth going from $2.1B to $2B? How much would she be hurt and how much would other benefit? What would be the impact if she was slightly less wealthy? Worst case is she gets angry and a bunch of people go hungry and uneducated, she donates quite a lot of money. $26m going out some time soonish according to a recent heaadline. https://www.theguardian.com/music/2026/jul/02/taylor-swift-travis-kelce-wedding-charity-donation https://www.theguardian.com/music/2026/jul/02/taylor-swift-t.... She's more effective with that donation than getting outcomes like educating 500 kids. It turns out to be nontrivial coming up with good examples in practice.

IanCal 3mo ago
> Isn't that fairly close to what we have now? I don't see any theoretical issues. Massive concentration of wealth has a few outcomes you may find disagreeable or sub-optimal * Huge concentration of power in smaller numbers of people, chosen for unrelated skills, heavily tied to luck * People with huge amounts of power being able to make extremely sub-optimal decisions and still be entirely fine. Elon can buy and run a business into the ground on a whim and be entirely fine. * Concentration of direction of human labour - it is more worthwhile to spend many lifetimes of humans to very slightly increase the comfort of one multi-billionaire. For the last example, Americans earn more typically than anyone else in the world and data is easy to find. Assume lifetime earnings of $3M. Bezos' yacht cost more than enough for 100 full lifetimes of US median worker labour, and requires ten lifetimes every year to maintain. For one ship, for one person. You can look at that and say "this is optimal" but I am very unsure as to what you're then measuring. > Obviously if we literally mean one person I don't think the market would pick that as an optimum outcome Well it being a daft choice is rather the point, taking the absolute extremes is rarely a sensible approach. Total abolition of private wealth is not the point anyone is making. The argument people are making is to take money from those that have so much that the impact to their lives would be negligible, and use it to improve the lives of many others. It may even make them wealthier! You said optimum there, but optimal for what? Even if it's just efficient allocation of capital, doesn't that rely on pressure to invest well? The reward for doing so is more wealth, but what if you don't need more, or don't need to constantly try and get more? The wealthiest could sit with vast sums as cash and be fine, which is sensible for them but surely a terrible use of capital. > the alternative is to have a relative small committee that, in practice, decides when to give and when to take away. That's a government. > Worst case is she gets angry and a bunch of people go hungry and uneducated, Why would anyone go hungry and uneducated if Taylor Swift is angry? What is the process by which you see that happening? > She's more effective with that donation than getting outcomes like educating 500 kids. How do you figure that? And you can simply swap over fully educating those kids for something else if you want, unless the argument is that Taylor Swift specifically is better at allocating resources for whatever outcomes the population wants. Let's take TS as an example. What is it she is being rewarded for, is it efficient allocation of capital? Is that why people buy her songs? Is that what's made her so incredibly wealthy? Do you think that if she was rewarded somewhat less, that she'd stop making music? Stop touring? In fact, imagine she never got more money. Do you think she's making music because she's saving up for something she cannot currently afford? Does she have a lifestyle that's unsustainable without earning even more money? edit - To be clear, I think the market is an incredible way of constructing a ludicrously large graph of how to use the worlds resources and human labour, tied to what people want as an outcome, allowing fractional voting through the network in a way that's extremely simple for end users (I buy things for prices I'm happy with, the "market" of millions of other people optimise the back end of that) and is self-optimising. The problem comes when some people have enormously more votes than others, distorting it all, or are able to manipulate the graph, or where hill climbing optimisation cannot reach the more optimal states (infrastructure classically, legal systems are another good example).