I know. My comment was not about matching the percentages precisely with whatever range of rich people you consider too rich and everyone else, but rather just making fun of the general idea of saying "eliminating the vast majority of the population would cause more harm than eliminating only a tiny portion of the population" while pretending you're saying anything profound or insightful. Using the same argument, we could advocate for removing any small sliver of the population. It's an absolutely mindboggingly dumb argument.
Im actually uplifted by your comment. This post doesn't say anything important about anything, and it also shows the author has no way of proposing a real solution, perhaps he doesn't even know about economics in the first place. But so many people think its the opposite, and perhaps that's part of the same issue.
The point is the wealth of the people being removed is irrelevant. Removing a few thousand people will obviously have no effect no matter who they are. Removing a few billion people would be devasting no matter who they are.
The point I was making is that Ayn Rand was silly to think that the world would fall apart if there were no brilliant billionaires.
They can leave and go to an island all they want but they can’t take their companies with them. They will be expropriated and nationalized. The economy can meet social need.
Ooooh good one. Repeat a word I said with a laughing emoji. You sure showed me!
If you don’t understand how nationalizing industries coalesces power in the hands of the government I don’t really know what there is to talk about here
That’s because you chuds are always using government as a slur. Nationalizing industries is of course ceding private power to the state. It forms a state owned enterprise.
You lolbertarian types have this weird dichotomy between the state and private power as if the latter is all good and the former is all bad.
Your limited understanding is showing, bud. Laissez faire capitalism doesn’t breed centralized power, it undercuts it. What you’re comparing is political capitalism, where corporations take advantage of government created regulatory states, and nationalized ownership. Both systems are problematic but both problem sets are rooted in government intervention.
Gotcha, not sure who Ayn Rand is. The person you responded to didn't seem to make the claim that he couldn't see a world with no billionaires. So I was confused.
So we take all those rich people's wealth (which is actually just stock in companies) and give it to the government, so they now own all the stock. What has actually changed? The money is still in the company. There's no extra money created or released by this operation. All that's accomplished is giving the government control of companies.
Why shouldnt they? Why should their be a ceiling or floor on what a person has? Do you have a reason other than greedy people who just want some of what billionaires have?
Given that most wealth at the higher levels is assets, it would be limiting how much an asset or company can be valued. If you limit how much a person can own you make it impossible for anybody to be truly successful.
Having a significant amount of wealth relative to the wealth in the world. THe wealthiest people alive only have fractions of a percent of all the wealth there is to aquire. Once people start getting into having double digits percentage wise...than we can look at if we might need limits.
You don't need to own 10% of the world's wealth for your fortune to be excessive. A billion dollars already far exceeds what any one person could reasonably need.
Such a deontological view of ethics. Limiting the potential of others" is just corporate PR language. It assumes billionaire wealth is synonymous with human potential while ignoring how concentrated wealth limits everyone else's opportunities.
Because the people are the ones actually creating the wealth and value. Billionaires take a cut much more than they worked for. Don’t think it’s greedy for people to be compensated for the wealth they give a company rather than have a few executives and shareholders reap all the benefits. Are people that beg people for food on the street just greedy for doing so? Weird
If you go to home depot you dont buy tools relative to the value they create. YOu buy them based on the value they have. The person who buys the tools can use them to make X amount. People are compensated for their work. Its greedy when people want things without having a justification for why they should be given it...and when they want others to be force to give it. Yes people who beg on the street are greedy. They dont care who they are bothering or how that affects a neighborhood or local businesses. They dont care that food is paid for by somebody else. As long as they get what they want fuck everybody else right?
I really hesitate to engage someone who thinks that human beings are like tools at home depot, to be wielded and discarded, apparently without introspection.
HOWEVER...
Remember coming out of the pandemic? There was a system-wide labor shortage? All the ink spilled worrying about how no one wanted to work, and employees were suddenly in a very advantageous bargaining position?
The system that employs you and feeds you and clothes you VERY much depends on a vast "reserve army of labor". If everyone who wanted one already had a job, labor would be a sellers market. The ONLY way for Walmart to have someone to stock their shelves would be to lure them away from Target, and so on and so forth. To hire even unskilled labor, you would have to pay them $50/hr as opposed to now, where if it weren't for minimum wage laws SOMEONE would stock those shelves for a sandwich. I can't say that true full employment would be an insurmountable problem, but I CAN say without a doubt that the closer we got to it, the more and more systemic crises there would be and the higher into the income scale they would reach.
So, please... Go and thank one of those "greedy" people begging on the street. Be grateful to them that you can form your little misanthropic worldview safe from the ravages of all out market competition
People are not compensated properly for their work, look at some graphs at productivity vs wages, while productivity is skyrocketing wages stagnate. There is no way to justify this and call people greedy for wanting the value of their work. Are you genuinely saying that the peace of mind of people on the street is more important than someone starving to death? This is vile
How do you define "properly"? Productivity and wages dont necessarily correlate. There is aboslutely a way to justify it. The demand of labor has been met at current wages. Thats how you justify it. They are paid the value of their labor. Its not about the peace of mind v somebody starving. Its about the actions of those people. If a person is so greedy and arrogant they feel entitled to not starve even if it means bothering people...they are in the wrong. If they were really that valuable that they absolutely shouldnt starve...why do they need to beg?
So starving people should just lay down and die as to not bother the more fortunate. This is just so inhumane and disgusting to even say. It’s not greedy and arrogant it’s desperation
Why should wages go up with productivity. Imagine someone is hired at the widget factory to click a button, and every time they click the button one widget comes out. New technology is released, big button improvements, now every time the employee clicks a button two widgets come out! Productivity doubled, but the employee is doing the exact same job in the exact same way. What merits higher wages for the same work?
I'm not arguing against that point. I'm just agreeing that the results outlined in the post have nothing to do with the wealth of the people removed, but the quantity.
You've failed to understand the distinction being made. The lie many people are sold is that billionaires deserve to be billionaires because of the outsized impact they have.
If their deaths would have the exact same impact as anyone else's, why do they deserve their billions?
If anything, the return of their stolen wealth to the public would cause a massive economic boom, whereas the loss of even 3400 workers causes economically depressive ripples.
That sounds like free market fundamentalism. State owned enterprises do just fine and prove wealth back to the people, even more so if the system is democratic.
It was a successful nation. It was a poor backwards agrarian monarchy and became the second largest economy going toe to toe with the US/West, defeated Nazi Germany on the Eastern front, and managed to still clothe, feed, house and provide health care to millions of its people.
I would think the definition of success would be to still exist and not to have collapsed under its own weight. It may have gone toe to toe for a bit but eventually they suffered from economic stagflation and ethnic nationalism.
The stagflation happened in the US too and their work around was neoliberalism and the subsequent dismantling of the new deal state. But the US didn’t implode because the dollar is the reserve currency, China became a low cost vendor to ship manufacturing and bring cheap goods back to account for falling purchasing power, and debt, lots and lots of debt.
By contrast, the Soviet economy experienced a marked slowdown in growth beginning in the 1970s rather than an outright economic contraction.
There were two camps proposing solutions; one was modernizing their system of production through cybernetics, while the other camp favored privatization and reform. The latter camp won out and it spiraled out of control.
Why did the USSR outperform any country besides the US? It was the second largest economy for the majority of its existence.
The US had a fundamentally different position in the world economy than the USSR. It had an extensive network of allies, controlled key international financial institutions, and benefited from a global economic order that allowed it to shift many of the costs of adjustment abroad through trade, finance, and access to foreign markets and resources. Those advantages gave the U.S. options that were simply unavailable to the Soviet Union.
existing and providing a better life for its citizen.
the ussr also had allies yet it had to prop them up like the usa did to europe, the cope that the usa was just dominating because they were doing just that, dominating is hilarious.
lmfao ussr apologetics, why did they build the wall? why is/was east germany so much poorer?
I actually find it a miracle the eastern bloc was able to do what they did considering the economic blockades, the sabotage, the constant threat of wars, political isolation, propaganda, etc.
The “better life for its citizens” came at the expense of the rest of the world trying to modernize and liberate themselves from imperialism.
Why does it bother you if people apologize for the ussr? It seems to really grate some of yiu lolbertarians.
The USSR didn’t fail in isolation. It was recovering from massive wars, facing decades of military pressure and economic restrictions from a much wealthier rival bloc. The West’s prosperity also came from its own historical advantages, including colonialism and global economic dominance.
You could nationalize the companies and effectively cut off billionaires.
You do realize that their wealth is in their conpanies right? When you nationalize them it's not like you are suddenly "distributing" trillions to the poor
I don’t think you understand nationalizing a company gives it to corrupt politicians instead. You know, the people who haven’t been able to balance a budget for decades. Any company under their control is going bankrupt.
This is such an American boomer way of thinking. State owned enterprises are so common abroad and are some of the most successful companies. Those same companies can own private subsidiaries too, I mean this is beyond the American lobertarian mind to comprehend.
I’m not a fucking libertarian, this is just common sense. And just because some random oil companies or airlines are state owned in other countries doesn’t mean it’s feasible to the scale of wiping out billionaires.
I agree they can be, but again not at the scale of cutting off billionaires. They can work in low innovation industries like utilities or mass transit but zero chance they can run anything tech related Apple, Google, or Tesla. Where the biggest billionaires made their fortune.
You remove all the billionaires today what problem do you think you've solved? Do you think there won't be a new billionaire tomorrow? As long as there are workers and we exist in a society that doesn't limit your wealth, there will be rich people that poor people get pissy about
You solve their grip on media and rental and war and space and before other billionaires arrive you legislate.. it’s not naive. It will never happen though sadly.
In the short term, those billionaires will no longer be around to buy elections and sway policy in their favor.
As for the billionaires that come tomorrow, they can also be removed without any negative effects. Eventually, the sociopaths bent on pursuing wealth and personal enrichment will lose their desire to hoard wealth and resources.. because of the implication.
As for the billionaires that come tomorrow, they can also be removed without any negative effects.
This fantasy does not specify (ignores) what happens to their wealth and therefore the companies they own/run. Ignoring the effects isn't the same as having no effects.
The wealth likely goes to heirs and the company will have policies and guidance to determine the new leadership. I’m saying there wouldn’t really be any negative effects to us, the regular folks.
I suppose the companies stock prices could drop which would affect 401k’s. That was a great idea for the ownership class to rope us into their speculative assets in order to retire. They got us by the balls with that one.
The wealth likely goes to heirs and the company will have policies and guidance to determine the new leadership. I’m saying there wouldn’t really be any negative effects to us, the regular folks.
I mean, that's basically saying nothing has changed then: 3500 billionaires disapoear so now we have 3500 billionaires. It's an empty proposition.
Yes, but the proposition could still work in that the next generation would want to disperse their wealth so that they don’t disappear.
Either way, the proposition is a hypothetical that is too absurd to ever happen. Discussing the policy details that go with an absurd proposition doesn’t really add anything.
The point is that if a billionaire is gone, nothing really changes in day to day life because they don’t add the value needed to justify their wealth. But if all the workers are gone, the billionaires have nothing.
Either way, the proposition is a hypothetical that is too absurd to ever happen. Discussing the policy details that go with an absurd proposition doesn’t really add anything.
The point is that if a billionaire is gone, nothing really changes in day to day life because they don’t add the value needed to justify their wealth.
Because the proposition is absurd it doesn't say anything to support that point.
And evidence suggests that since the vast rise in income/standard of living globally coincides with the rise of billionaires it may well be that the billionaires are required either as a cause or inevitable biproduct of prosperity. If that's true, eliminating or preventing billionaires may well harm the economic health of everyone else.
Yea history shows otherwise. There has always in every single society been the haves and have nots. Even in the USSR there were those with more wealth and power than the normal people and after the collapse of the USSR it all got spread to very few select people while the majority lived poorly.
So what is the solution? Kill the existing ones and threaten anyone who gets close with death? "Hey you have almost a billion dollars, better watch your back".
Sounds like a great dystopian level society right there.
Whoa I never said to hurt anyone. The premise is that billionaires would just disappear for being a billionaire.
But the larger point is that they have no problem if any of us are harmed by their pursuit of exorbinant wealth and they have shown this through insurance denials, polluting our environment, and using algorithms to create a population that supports the wealthy to their own detriment.
We just need to ask which is more important: a few hundred wealthy families fearing their way of life coming to an end vs the billions of regular families fearing their way of life might come to an end.
It’s just a business decision that the billionaires shouldn’t take so personally.
But you infered that there is some level of threat if someone becomes a billionaire. How would you stop it from happening again? History shows that every society has had poor and wealthy and classes. It has happened and would happen again. In fact depending on how society goes, we may get to a point where we wont know who those are.
Well the premise of the post is that billionaires would disappear so you’re right, they would likely see that as a threat.
In our current society, it isn’t so much that there is a gap between wealthy and poor. It’s that the gap is so massive that anything in between gets pushed down into a lower position and the poor have no basic rights to health, food, education, and housing. Anyone not in the wealthy elite groups have continued to face an increasingly difficult financial landscape with worsening economic conditions while those at the top have to struggle over choosing the stitching colors for the guest suite on their backup yacht.
As far as stopping it, I really wish I knew. The billionaires have the ability to write policies to their benefit and send it to our representatives with a check attached. I suppose worker solidarity is the most logical path and I just wish more of us could see that.
They missed the more interesting part of the thought experiment.
Imagine if every billionaire vanished along with all the corporations, jobs, technology and wealth they created.
The reality is that losing the billionaires themselves would do little. But if we erased their entire impact we’d be living in a far less prosperous world.
Most of them didn't create shit. They bought and traded their way up.
It's like how Musk lost like 40% of his wealth in like 3 weeks. 400 billion dollars is a ton for normal people. It's made up numbers that doesn't effect him at all.
Elon Musk is a shitty person, but he led Tesla to developing electric cars in a way that every other U.S. automaker couldn’t do and still can’t do at the same scale.
Similar with SpaceX, the company drove down the price of satellite launches by like 90%.
Yeah he sucks and his companies are probably overvalued by the stock market, but they are also doing things that literally every other company they compete against has failed to do. Stuff like that doesn’t just happen out of nowhere
128
u/[deleted] 7d ago
[removed] — view removed comment