Absent massive redistribution that is usually a result of major political change (i.e. the New Deal), rich people tend to stay rich during their lifetimes and frequently their families remain so for generations after.
> That might indicate that money isn't a great proxy for power.
Due to the diminishing marginal utility of wealth for day to day existence, it's only value to an extremely wealthy person after endowing their heirs is power.
The rule of thumb is it lasts up to three generations, and only for very very few people. They are also, for everything they buy, and everyone they employ, paying tax. Redistribution isn't the goal; having funded services with extra to help people who can't is the goal. It's not a moral crusade.
> Due to the diminishing marginal utility of wealth for day to day existence, it's only value to an extremely wealthy person after endowing their heirs is power.
I think this is a non sequitur.
In, for example, the Netherlands the richest people pay less tax [0]. Do you think this is not the case in many other countries?
> They are also, for [..] they employ, paying tax
Is that a benefit of having rich people? If companies were employee-owned that tax would still be paid.
[0]: https://www.iamexpat.nl/expat-info/dutch-expat-news/wealthie...
E.g. [0]
> In, for example, the Netherlands the richest people pay less tax [0]. Do you think this is not the case in many other countries?
That's a non sequitur from the previous point. However, on the "who pays taxes?" point, that article is careful to only talk about income tax in absolute terms, and indirect taxes in relative terms. It doesn't appear to be trying to make an objective analysis.
> Is that a benefit of having rich people?
I don't share the assumption that people should only exist if they're a benefit.
> If companies were employee-owned that tax would still be paid.
Some companies are employee-owned, but you have to think how that works for every type of business. Assuming that it's easy to make a business, and the hard bit is the ownership structure is a mistake.
[0] https://www.thinkadvisor.com/2016/08/01/why-so-many-wealthy-...
Well it's not a matter of the people existing, it's whether they are rich or not. They can exist without the money.
Anyway, if you don't think it matters if they are of benefit, then why did you bring up the fact that they pay taxes?
I meant people with a certain amount of money. I don't think we should be assessing pros or cons of economic systems based on whether people get to keep their money.
> Anyway, if you don't think it matters if they are of benefit
I don't know what this means.
> then why did you bring up the fact that they pay taxes?
I bring it up because saying they pay less in income taxes doesn't matter if they're spending money on stuff that employs people (which creates lots of tax) and gets VAT added to it. Everything is constantly taxed, at many levels, all the time. Pretending we don't live in a society where not much tax is paid seems ludicrous. Lots of tax is paid. If it's paid as VAT instead of income tax - who cares?
>I don't think we should be assessing pros or cons of economic systems based on whether people get to keep their money.
but earlier you said:
>They are also, for everything they buy, and everyone they employ, paying tax.
So if we should not assess the economic system based on whether people keep their money, i.e. pay tax, then why mention that they pay tax? It doesn't seem relevant.
Not just pay tax. People lose money over generations for all sorts of reasons.
I brought up tax in the context of "redistribution", as there's a growing worldview that says tax is not as a thing to pay for central services, but more just to take money from people who have more of it than they do.
> I think this is a non sequitur.
I mean after someone can afford all the needs, wants, and luxuries of life, the utility of any money they spend is primarily power.
This is an overly simplistic look, and disregards a lot of history where, unsurprisingly, the reason there was wealth redistribution wasn't "innovation" but government policy
The point is that wealth and power aren't interchangeable. You're right that government bureaucrats have actual power, including that to take people's stuff. But you've not realised that that actual power means the rich people don't have power. There were rich people in the USSR that were killed. They had no power; the killers had the power in that situation.
>separating power into the state and economy into the market gets good results.
How do you think this would be done? How do you remove power from money? Money is literally the ability to convert numbers into labor, land, food,
You don't need money for those things.
Money (in a market) can buy you things, but only things people are willing to sell. You don't exert power; you exchange value.
The government itself uses money to do those things. Police don't work for free, prisons aren't built for free, guns aren't free. The government can be thought of as having unfathomable amounts of money. The assets of a country includes the entire country (less anyone with enough money to defend it).
If a sword is kinetic energy, money is potential energy. It is a battery that only needs to be connected to the right place to be devastating. And money can buy you someone who knows the right place.
Governments have power because they have resources (money) not the other way around.
Regulatory capture is using the state's power. The state is the one with the power. Rent seeking is the same. Hiring goons is illegal. If you're willing to include illegal things then all bets are off. But from your list of non-illegal things, 100% of them are the state using its power to wrong ends.
> The government itself uses money to do those things. Police don't work for free, prisons aren't built for free, guns aren't free.
Yes, but the point about power is the state has the right to lock you up. How it pays the guards is immaterial; they could be paid with potatoes and it'd still have the right. They could just be paid in "we won't lock you up if you lock them up". However, if Bill Gates wants to publicly set up a prison in the USA and lock people in it, he will go to jail. His money doesn't buy that power.
So, no. The state doesn't have power because it has enough money to pay for a prison and someone to throw you in it. People with money can't do what the state does.
The state only has the right to do something because it says it does. It can only say it does because it can enforce it in it's terrority. It can only enforce in its territory because it has people who will do said enforcement (or robots hypothetically). The people will only enforce because the government sacrifices some of its resources to them (or sacrifices resources to build bots). Even slaves need food, and people treated well enough to control them. Power doesn't exist with resources, the very measure of a state is the amount of resources it controls.
Money is for resources.
I am not arguing that anyone currently has the resources of a nation-state, it's hard to do when a state can pool a few thousand square miles of peoples money to it. I am arguing it money that makes a state powerful.
Precisely, they were not a capitalist society, where capital (and not simply "money" as you said) is source of power, like in capitalist societies.
This idea also ignores innovation. New rich people come along and some rich people get poor. That might indicate that money isn't a great proxy for power.