The major issue is systemic instability and unnecessary poverty.
It is popular to presume that everything is not zero sum, but this is not the case.
I don’t see any good reason we should allow excessive potential energy to become the property of a class of people who want nothing more than excessive potential energy.
Sure, they didn't do it alone, they had employees and the whole rest of society, but all those workers and the rest of society was there before and yet the business was not. Successful business enterprises don't just instantaneously spontaneously assemble because the world is capable of supporting them, they have to be created and if they cease to exist the world is worse off even though all the workers and buildings and so on still exist. (Also, the parts of society that enable successful businesses - and even basics like food and energy - are much more heavily made up of other businesses than I think people appreciate.)
Personally I believe each of these can have advantages in various situations. Some critical shared infrastructure and services I think do belong with government. Defence, healthcare, emergency services, perhaps some utilities. Charitable trusts have a place. But I also believe private citizens that demonstrate the ability to build and run businesses also have a place, a big place in the system. Private capital investment is a massive and highly productive and efficient force for economic good. Typical billionaires don’t spend billions on themselves. Millions yes, but most of those billions exist as shares that represent control of productive businesses that provide goods, services and jobs. If they spent it all on themselves they wouldn’t be billionaires for very long.
I don’t think it’s generally in the public interest or beneficial to society to confiscate businesses from their owners, and what? Give it to who? There is a legitimate concern that such control can lead to negative effects like exercise consumption or political influence, but the way you deal with that is to address those problems directly.
Did you mean 'excessive'? Or is this a term I'm not finding on Google?
That depends on the degree of centralization of any given variety of socialism. The other option is that they are owned and managed directly by the workers.
The main reason I think we don’t see cooperative worker owned enterprises very often is that employees generally are not interested in assuming the level of financial commitment, responsibility and risk that goes with ownership.
Jon Stewart once put it in a different frame: he called better policy "revolution insurance". At least that frames it in a way as to what the rich have to gain instead of solely focusing it on what they have to lose.
"It is utterly impossible, as this country has demonstrated again and again, for the rich to save as much as they have been trying to save, and save anything that is worth saving. They can save idle factories and useless railroad coaches; they can save empty office buildings and closed banks; they can save paper evidences of foreign loans; but as a class they can not save anything that is worth saving, above and beyond the amount that is made profitable by the increase of consumer buying. It is for the interests of the well to do – to protect them from the results of their own folly – that we should take from them a sufficient amount of their surplus to enable consumers to consume and business to operate at a profit. This is not “soaking the rich”; it is saving the rich. Incidentally, it is the only way to assure them the serenity and security which they do not have at the present moment." [0]
[0] https://www.nakedcapitalism.com/2011/09/marriner-eccles-on-t...
This doesn't really reflect reality though. Did Bezos take on more risk than anyone working in a high risk job? What does $100 billion worth of personal risk look like, for a person who doesn't already have $100 billion in assets?
Plenty of investors exit early, and the benefits accruing to a monopoly could theoretically just as easily be distributed to a collective as opposed to an individual, circumventing the billionaire issue.
It’s SV’s whole game to construct a NPV of a future monopoly, cash in, and move on, before the regulators come in. This has nothing to do with wealth generation.
I don't understand what you're saying. It's undeniable that Amazon revolutionized e-commerce and cloud computing. Otherwise nobody would be giving them money.
>the benefits accruing to a monopoly could theoretically just as easily be distributed to a collective as opposed to an individual, circumventing the billionaire issue
It does get distributed amongst a collective, and it's called equity. Theoretically, Amazon's first warehouse workers could have agreed to be paid in equity instead of cash, and then Bezos wouldn't have to take as much outside investment. If they had held on to this stock, they would easily be worth tens, if not hundreds of millions today. Obviously, this isn't practical in real life, so instead, this wealth got went to the investors that took on the risk.
A mediocre salary of $40,000 is enough to buy so many goods from competitive markets (phones, cars, anything you can get off Amazon/AliExpress). This becomes very apparent when you go to lesser developed countries.
The major costs in people's lives do not come from the billionaire class. If you tax them into oblivion and give that money away, it will be soaked up by housing anyway (look how sharply housing costs have risen after the growth in real income the past 2 years).
The sharp rise in housing costs in the past two years in some areas is down to complex confluence of factors, real income being one, artificial scarcity being another, the entrance at scale of corporate interests into residential housing being a third. Add historically low interest rates and fears of flooding, lack of water, and fire, and I’m not sure the increase in prices is such a simple relationship as indicated.
I’m also not suggesting we take the money and rain it down as stimulus checks. That was a desperate response —- we can do better.
The solution has been repeatedly demonstrated and isn’t complicated. The benefits should accrue to the system that creates them in a balanced way. Limits on the return of capital, implemented as either voluntary donation or taxes and progressive income taxes.
People scoff at taxes vs representation but right now, today, they can avoid those taxes by donating that money.
In particular, there was: - Marcia Lucas, credited for "saving Star Wars in the editing" - John Williams
Not to mention all the people working on the special effects, the sound designer Ben Burtt, the list goes on.
The reality is that a "single person" doesn't create things like that. The "visionary/great man" ideal is just good PR.
I reject that proposition. It's how record labels (investors, etc.) gaslight their artists (founders, etc.) into signing bad deals.
The businessman ("anthropomorphized lawnmower"[1]) has excellent PR. What interests him is an ownership stake in your vision and execution.
> “From the beginning of [Dischord Records], people have said that the way we do things is unsustainable, unrealistic, idealistic, and we were just dreaming,” he said. “Well, the dream is now 35 years old, so they can go fuck themselves.”[2]
-- Ian MacKaye (2016)
[1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10040429 [2] https://www.avclub.com/buttholes-and-lawyers-how-a-lawsuit-t...
A credible relationship (such as an individual bringing value) can be (and has been) exploited by individuals who want more money for themselves.
Another credible relationship (that the network is the value) can be exploited by individuals who control the choke points.
Your examples are where individuals control the choke points, introducing artificial controls and preventing the healthy accrual of benefits to the whole structure.
I can stipulate; this is why running companies is hard.
Adversity exists. I don't think it diminishes my assertion that visionaries do, too.
They do? The Kennedys, Rockefellers, etc certainly haven't. Those families have been massively wealthy for several generations.
that's not an expense, but an investment, on which they (usually) get a return, increasing their net worth
> if billionaires squandered their wealth on short term self indulgence that would be one thing, but they don't
they do, just not enough to make a dent in their wealth because once it's grown so large, it's hard to spend it faster than its growth. If you have $1B growing at a modest 6% / year, that's $60M / year.
> They typically give it all away.
they don't (unless by "all" you mean "a small percentage"). Even the few who have pledged to give 50% away in their lifetime have not (since their fortune has continued to grow). There are exceptions of course (and MacKenzie Scott will probably be one of them).
All of this wealth they have accumulated gives them immense power and control over our society. Billionaires largely use their wealth to create even more wealth for themselves or to influence people, they don’t “give it all away”.
Your framing is extremely disingenuous.
To their children, perhaps? Or to a non-profit they control, for tax reasons? Sure.
But in general, I believe, actual philanthropy is a relatively small part of the typical billionaire’s portfolio.
Fair point. One thing noting is that overall asset value isn't always directly converted to product/services but rather it's used as leverage. Sometimes this leverage is intangible ("don't f with me, I'm going to sue you"), other times it's very REAL tangible leverage - see Peter Thiel and Gawker.
What universe do you live in???
Also the money they “give away” is given to their next generation typically not the public. Bill Gates would be the exception.
Opting out of fiat money (crypto is fiat in disguise) means living a rambo-like life of basic survival. Therefore a billion dollars sure means something. Not just paper.
If they give it away (many don't) they specifically choose where it goes, and often it's some legacy BS, like overpaying to get their name on a university library. Alternatively that money ends up going to their children and it stays in the family for generations.
Billionaires will not save us.
As others have commented on, the real issue is that, in order for someone to accrue that amount of money in the first place, there has to be such a systemic societal inequality in regards to access to resources that economic mobility is effectively a dream for a significant swath of the population.
People here talk about billionaires simply being rewarded for their effort/risk - a proposition that is simply laughable (so, unless you are promised riches beyond your wildest dreams, you won't invest in the economy and community? Seems to signify sociopathy more than anything).
And, yes, that is the implication: in order to have the propensity to accumulate that much money, far more than any one human would ever need to survive comfortably, you have to exhibit a significant amount of sociopathy and antipathy towards your fellow man; a willingness to usurp resources far beyond any natural need; if only because of some arbitrary internal itch.
Chouinard may be the exception that proves the rule -- a billionaire despite his intentions and efforts -- if only because the market happened to align with his convictions, rather than any intention to capitalize on any product for financial gain in and of itself. Even a broken market is right twice a day.
Until quite recently, the quip was "millionaire." What forced the change was American socialist icons embarrassed to find themselves on the wrong side of the barricade.
> in order to have the propensity to accumulate that much money, far more than any one human would ever need to survive comfortably, you have to exhibit a significant amount of sociopathy and antipathy towards your fellow man; a willingness to usurp resources far beyond any natural need
It isn't money; it's net worth. An old-fashioned market crash could vaporize most of the inequality in a week.
In any case: wealth isn't "usurped resources."
Chip Wilson for example recently kickstarted a right wing political group in Canada with some seed funding of 350,000. Complete and utter pocket change to him, but well beyond what a regular person could hope to ever spend on their political interests.
It only matters when billionaires convert that paper into food, housing, jets, etc, for themselves does it actually affect anyone.
But, by a huge margin, the largest expense billionaires have is investment in other people and companies.
If billionaires squandered their wealth on short term self indulgence that would be one thing, but they don't. They typically give it all away.
I don't see the big policy failure here, or why that is a currently a problem that needs solving.