I'd rather have a thousand competent people working toward their first million than a competent billionaire working toward his second billion.

Also I have a huge doubt that billionaires keep working for the money incentive. Once you get that rich, it is not about money anymore.

Why is it so bad for billionaires to stop working? Presumably, with the wealth cap or very progressive tax, the resources they would currently use to make the next million dollars would be spread out over a million people and those million people might make that next million dollars. If not, then you are saying that the billionaire would make the next million dollars more efficiently, right? Given that concentration of wealth is bad, isn't it better for the million people to make the next million dollars than the billionaire?

Why do you assume that all work done by a billionaire can be substituted with work done by someone else? This isn't always true further down the spectrum - for instance, if you take away enough surgeons, some surgeries just won't be performed.

You are saying that society needs certain people to have enormous sums of money to be better (however you define it, apparently you are saying that only these people can do certain things because they have individual control of large amounts of money; but I don't see how it's better than organizations, governmental or otherwise, having control of large sums of money) than a society where certain people are not enormously wealthy?

Surgeons are not billionaires. Surgeons are trained.

Billionaires are not magical unicorns, and in fact are byproducts of nothing more than birthright, chance, and a culture that cultivates them.

Please don't take HN threads further into ideological flamewar. Those discussions are repetitive and therefore tedious and therefore off topic here. They also tend to get nasty.

https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html

No, I will never be a billionaire. But I am an incredibly rich man in other ways on account of my labors. Family, career, etc. And I shudder to think that someone might take away all the non-monetary wealth that I have accumulated by convincing others that they can never be as happy as I am.

Socialism left millions dead, with those remaining knowing freedom only as an abstract concept.

Please don't take HN threads further into generic ideological flamewar. It's boring, other than to the most zealous of the long tails on either side.

https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html

The same applies to religion if you consider our history.

Every concept can be applied in a harmful way which profits the few and oppresses society.

Socialism cannot not do that due to the abolition of the pricing mechanism in favour of political power

> > Every concept can be applied in a harmful way which profits the few and oppresses society.

> Socialism cannot not do that due to the abolition of the pricing mechanism in favour of political power

I hope you're not serious, but in case you are... How can socialism not be used to oppress the many while enriching the few? You even included the mechanism - political power!

You could argue that it doesn't have to, and I'd say that history does not give great odds on oppression not happening... But to say it can't do such a thing? That's insulting.

Capitalism is working really hard to leave all of us -- and everything else on the planet -- dead, all in the pursuit of making the richest 10% richer.

Market liberalisation has caused poverty to collapse around the world over the last 30 years

HN is not for ideological flamewar, so please don't do that here.

Personal attacks will get your account banned, so please especially don't do that here.

https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html

Edit: it looks like you've been breaking the site guidelines rather badly and quite repeatedly. Continuing in that vein will get your account banned. I don't want to ban you, so would you please stop doing that? Reviewing the guidelines and taking the spirit of this site to heart would be much appreciated.

> Socialized health care works //better// than what is in the USA.

> Socialized news production works //better// than what is in the USA.

> Socialized education works //better// than what is in the USA.

Citations and definitions very fucking needed for all of these. In order:

> Socialized health care works //better// than what is in the USA.

The best health care in the world is in the US, if you're wealthy enough. For some, that's working better. Even going by total population access, the US isn't exactly bad, though it may not be perfect. And we have socialized health care for large fractions of the population - does that not count? (the old, the poor, the military)

> Socialized news production works //better// than what is in the USA.

Are you sure about that? Are you really sure that handing production of the news over to the government can ever really be '//better//'? I'd say that such actions enable mass propaganda, among other things. Even if you get a better experience in the short term, IMO what you're doing is taking on some massive risks or offloading your news media to foreign countries.

What country even has a socialized news system that you'd like to hold up as an example of working '//better//' than that of the US?

> Socialized education works //better// than what is in the USA.

Because the USA certainly doesn't ALREADY have socialized education? Pretty sure that we do, for K-12 at least. Which means you're talking about college, and the USA has a pretty damn good university system. The top schools are affordable for essentially everyone (look at the financial aid packages the Ivies advertise, for example) and generally regarded as some of the best schools in the world. So what are you looking for there? Mid tier and lower schools? That means mid tier and lower STUDENTS, and in a lot of the socialized education systems you'd probably hold up as examples they wouldn't be getting free college either.

Please don't post tedious ideological flamewar comments to HN. It's not what we want here.

https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html