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Re:Economists who defend disaster profiteers are wrong by dsfyu404ed on Tuesday April 14, 2020 @09:12AM (#22865449)
>On aggregate people tend to behave a lot more rationally than individuals do.

Just delegating responsibility for resource allocation to groups of people is not a silver bullet.

"Aggregate people" tasked with distributing wealth (or taking wealth and converting it to some resource and distributing that) seems to be highly succeptable to holding onto more and more of that wealth over time for trickle down distribution within it's own organization.

Large nonprofits regularly come under fire for using too much of their income on their leadership and luxury fluff for themselves. Governments routinely spend their income paying themselves and paying for pork for their friends and paying for fluff instead of making people's lives good. Religions tend to amass more and more wealth until some sub-group tells them to shove it and historically this results in violence. You could fill libraries with the volume of work written about all the ways organizations become corrupted and self serving and fail to achieve their goal.

Re:Economists who defend disaster profiteers are wrong by nicoburns on Tuesday April 14, 2020 @10:38AM (#22866526)
I don't think you're quite grasping what "distributing the wealth" would look like. I have in mind something like a Universal Basic Income. Reducing the involvement of large organisations (including governments, non-profits and corporations), as well at high-net worth individuals is entirely the point.

It's basically democracy for economic power. And you're right, it's not a silver bullet. But I believe it could be a significant improvement on the status quo.

Re:Economists who defend disaster profiteers are wrong by nec4b on Tuesday April 14, 2020 @01:16PM (#22868602)
Why would you redistribute wealth into the hands of irrational people?
Re:Economists who defend disaster profiteers are wrong by nicoburns on Tuesday April 14, 2020 @07:28PM (#22872703)
Because there are no other kinds of people, so that's the only option. Time and time again it has been shown that distributing power leads to better outcomes, and money is nothing but economic power.