Thomas Piketty's latest "core proposal aims to gradually bring global per capita income to an average of 5,000 euros per person per month (adjusted for purchasing power) by the year 2100" with global Wealth taxes (at a rate of up to 20%) and global income tax (up to 90%) coming on top of existing per-country tax systems...

and "The consumption of intangible goods—such as healthcare and education—would be favored over material goods, and working hours would decrease significantly, which would also help to curb global warming."

These seem so absurd, makes it hard to want to look into his prior arguments seriously.

Translate https://www.leparisien.fr/economie/5-000-euros-par-habitant-... to read from the source...

Absurd to you here and now. Going to the Moon felt absurd to the contemporaries of Cyrano de Bergerac some 400 years ago. This did not stop him dreaming about it.

P.S. If anyone is interested, the Global Justice Report has been published today: https://globaljusticeproject.wid.world/

How about a summary of Piketty's argument?

We could start off with how are you worse off because of people wealthier than you?

Piketty argues that if r > g, wealth will accumulate into fewer and fewer hands over time. R is the rate of return of capital (rents, stocks, bonds, etc) and g is the growth of the economy over time.

If the economy grows at a higher rate than the rate of return, the pie gets bigger at a higher rate than wealth can concentrates. If the rate of return accumulates capital at a higher rate than the growth of the economy, wealth will inevitably concentrate over time.

He uses a lot of examples and economic history to argue that r > g, except for a few small periods. I think given the amount of wealth concentration we are seeing, and the political effects thereof, it is a compelling argument. Taxation (of wealth) is the proposed solution.

Since wealth does not "concentrate" in a market economy, I wonder what else Picketty got wrong. (Using the word "concentrate" implies a transfer of wealth. Wealth is created, not transferred.)

Picketty's analysis has been empirical. The assumption that is likely mistaken is there is such a thing as market economy.

Then you are using terms in a manner that is effective for semantic victory, but not the spirit of actual discussion the other users are engaging in.

Marxist viewpoints are a trap, as its basic tenets are simply wrong.

Which would matter if you were even arguing markets correctly and the others were arguing marxist points.

Well, we've seen the Labor Theory of Value here, and the idea that people get wealthy by stealing from others, and it is bad that some people have more money than others, and so on.

...You are using "wealth" in a way completely foreign to how I have ever seen it used linguistically. The abundance of resources available to an individual that we call "wealth" colloquially being transferable or tradable is basically the hallmark of a market economy. It can absolutely concentrate within one, because if it can be traded, it can absolutely be not traded decreasing the velocity of that value transfer to zero. So... Yes. If only one or a handful of people are buying, because everyone else is having to sell to stay alive, then wealth does, in fact, concentrate.

Again, wealth is created, not "concentrated". The term "wealth" means the dollars you would get if you sold everything.

> wealth does, in fact, concentrate

Nope, because the people trading with you thought the exchange was of equal value, or they wouldn't have engaged in it.

The term you're looking for is "surplus". The consumer sees a surplus of value because the price they paid is below the maximum they're willing to pay, and the producer sees a surplus because the price they charged was more than the cost to produce the good. In this economic system both parties benefit. Economic surplus is the thing that is "created" with every transaction. "Surplus accumulation" as a concept doesn't make any sense, and is isomorphic to what you think people are saying when they use the phrase "wealth accumulation." You should update your definition of "wealth".

What's your definition of wealth?

Why are you asking? My hope is that you are asking this genuinely from a place of curiosity to better advance this discussion, as there is apparent confusion from people working from different definitions of the same word.

> because the people trading with you thought the exchange was of equal value, or they wouldn't have engaged in it

If this was true I would have emphatically agreed with you on all counts. But it simply isn't true.

Many find themselves in a position where they have their arms twisted to accept a deal they don't like. Yet they accept for some existential reason or another.

I called out the other kind of transactions the 'no regret transactions' here. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48395058 (erm you were personally names ;)

If a billionaires become billionaire through them, cheers, I wish them well.

BTW, thank you for your service.

If the top 10% of people suddenly had their wealth double overnight, it would have absolutely disastrous effects for the lower 90% of people. Prices for scarce goods (e.g. housing) would increase dramatically. The price increase dampens the overall demand for housing since a large fraction of the 90% are now priced out. The wealthy homeowners have an incentive to maintain that scarcity, and freely use their resources to preserve the status quo by preventing desperately-needed housing from being built.

Those with wealth will tend to steer the economic system more towards their own interests in a runaway feedback loop, often in ways which create no overall net welfare for society.

> If the top 10% of people suddenly had their wealth double overnight

Since that doesn't happen, there's not much point in worrying about the consequences. Here's why it doesn't happen:

The value of something is determined by what someone else is willing to pay for it. There would be nothing to sustain a wealth doubling, because there wouldn't be anyone willing to pay for it.

Wealth inequality leads to lots and lots of power concentrated in a few people. That’s the problem.

It’s a money aristocratic system, and that’s really bad for anyone not belonging to the aristocracy.

And if they continue on this path, we might see heads roll.

1 man, 1 vote.

So your are saying money has no influence on politics? Really?

Rich man, PAC advertising

Political advertising has no effect on my vote. Does it affect yours?

Consider that Hillary outspent Trump 2:1 in the 2016 election, and lost. Same story in 2024, Trump was way outspent by Harris. Harris lost.

Advertising doesn't work if the message is bad.

Depends on your definition of a bad message. A lie can be very palatable.

> Political advertising has no effect on my vote. Does it affect yours?

Oddly, basically everyone says this about advertising in general, and yet it consumes approx 3% of world GDP.

But then according to the tenets of efficiency of a free market system no candidate would be spending so much on advertisement.

You can't have it both ways, (i) free market is ideal and efficient. Prices are correct and fair etc etc (ii) But doesn't apply to campaign spending.

Direct advertising is not the only factor you need to consider. Many powers had been doing political radicalization for years through many channels, including foreign sponsored ones.

You’re missing the forest for the trees. Yeah the item cost doesn’t double, but it goes up significantly because now your addressable market has 2x money.

Is anyone else having trouble parsing this comment or is it just me?

It happened over Covid.

All those checks to business owners and farmers. Huge slush funds.

Californians used it to buy houses in smaller cities across the country.

Not doubled but a windfall of cash into accounts for the wealthy none the less.

Let me address the second part.

If we define wealth as it's often used colloquially -- the amount of liquid cash one has -- then your potential share of the pie of goods and services shrinks. This is true unless the pie itself grows proportionately.

Without agreeing or disagreeing with parent comment, the rate of growth of the pie certainly does not feel like it is growing as fast as accumulation of nominal wealth of some.

Historically one usually amassed monetary wealth in exchange of providing goods and services. Stock markets, high frequency arbitrage markets have broken this. Yes there is liquidity insertion, but is that liquidity worth so much ? At microsecond scale ? I don't think so.

Stock market let's one encash a perception of promised future delivery of goods and services without the need to actually deliver it. Yes the market will eventually, hopefully, price it correctly, but by then some other retail sucker is holding that bag.

When people complain about others getting disproportionately wealthy they are talking about the shrinking share of the pie.

Creating wealth means the pie gets bigger by that amount.

And no, wealth is not the amount of liquid cash you have. If that were true, I'd be dead broke.

> the rate of growth of the pie certainly does not feel like it is growing as fast as accumulation of nominal wealth of some.

Wealth creators will be growing the pie at a higher rate than those who do not create wealth.

I agree that's the theory. It used to be mostly true in the past, but given current valuations it does not look true at all.

My worry is that we are not creating enough new wealth but just distributing it lopsidedly.

> just distributing it lopsidedly

Wealth is not being distributed. A laborer gets paid for the value he creates. There's no "distribution" going on (except by the government).

> laborer gets paid for the value he creates

Not true at all. Most labourers have nowhere close the pricing power necessary for this to be true. Information is obfuscated (legally of course) on purpose.

If you are creating 10x the value you are paid, then plenty of other employers will offer you a raise.

If you believe you are seriously underpaid, explain to your employer what value you are creating, and negotiate.

If you start your own business, you'll find out exactly what you're worth.

Come on, no way you can claim that.

Let's take a Principal Engineer. A bad choice to make my case with, because among others, they do pay rather well. For a Principal Engineer, it is sort of a job requirement at that level to save or generate of the order of ~100 million dollars per year. An outsourced engineer sees nowhere near 1/10th that amount in his/her salary.

For non software engineers it's much worse.

If engineers produce 10x what they cost, there'd be a huge gold rush hiring them.

I know, right ? But there isn't.

Is your worry based on vibes?

Because statistics clearly show median real wealth growing rapidly: https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/MEHOINUSA672N

That's money and not wealth and its a flow not stock and denominated in something that can depreciate, has it even been priced correctly ?

I grant you that it is very hard to measure ownership of (wealth generating) assets, hidden behind legal obfuscations.

Lorenz curve [0], GEI [1], Gini index of owned wealth generating assets would be the right thing to measure to see how understand one's share of the pie. But an enormous amount of records of such wealth is just hidden away, using laws that those very owners helped pass.

[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lorenz_curve

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Generalized_entropy_index

BTW I am willing to be convinced to adopt a different position if I see a well researched, credible Lorenz curve data that has tracked the shadow wealth to some degree of accurate approximation.

My bad, wrong chart (it's in real terms though)

Here is net wealth increasing for all, let's celebrate: https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:1962-_Net_personal_w...

My point is that the pie is growing and all are benefitting. Yes, rich may be getting more but not at the expense of poorer people as their wealth is increasing too. It's rather unfortunate but it seems that the pies grows fastest (and poor benefit from that growth too) when wealth is allowed to accumulate and yes that means more inequality but if all get better off, that's the price we have to pay for faster growth of total pie

> My point is that the pie is growing and all are benefitting.

This is the main point of contention though.

Earlier generation middle class seems to have been larger and more financially secure. That would be our parent's generation. Of course not all of our parents would qualify.

"seems" as based on vibes? Beware of nostalgia bias!

It is true that middle class has been shrinking. What is often overlooked though ks that the majority of that middle class moved on to the upper class, so not bad at all and aligns with "growing pie"

I accept the criticism in name but cannot invalidate a lived experience just because it has not been quantified accurately.

> majority of that middle class moved on to the upper class

Is this true in the US in inflation adjusted terms ? Can say that it is certainly reversed direction in my country.

Yes, people are getting wealthier in real terms, including the poor. Especially if you quantify it the right way: absolute consumption/expenditures, not relative % from median income (relative count will always show there are poor people even if they would appear insanely "rich" to a poor person from 100 years ago or from Afghanistan).

On lived experience: my lived experience tells me the Earth is flat.

> my lived experience tells me the Earth is flat.

That ship has sailed, beyond the horizon. Hope you catch the reference.

Can't see that far... All seems flat to me

Is that inflation adjusted? Also, even if it is, some consider the CPI to be a faulty measuring stick. I, for one, disagree with the weighing of certain categories factored into the CPI.

> share of the pie

Using words like that imprisons one into a certain perspective. Wealth creation is not "getting a share of the pie". Wealth is not an apple pie you slice up for your guests.

If Picketty uses words like pie, share, transfer, concentration, etc., then his book is about as valueless as Das Kapital.

For what it's worth they are my words not Picekty's.

It does not matter what it's called. The buck stops at the basket of goods and services I can buy. As long as this basket of goods and services is evaluated in inflation adjusted terms, it is pertinent to the discussion we are having.

your first question was better.

"how does creating wealth hurt others?"

most of this "wealth" is not "created" out of thin air. nor created at all.

more like, transferred.

Wealth is a positive not zero sum game. It is not transferred except in the most literal cases like lotteries and casinos.

Gambling is not a transference. The gambler is buying a chance to win money. It's an equal value for equal value.

Zero sum are things like taxes, where the government just takes it, or robberies.

In casinos you transfer your money to the eventual winner, a 1:1 transfer minus the house's cut.

If your logic is right, people back in the Stone Age were all like Jeff Bezos with mega yachts and stuff... It all went downhill from then - the population has increased so much and everyone has gotten so much poorer :(

looks like a lot of wealth was created out of thin air about 6 years ago https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/M1SL

A lot of money was printed, but that is not wealth creation.

if wealth is money in this context, and printing is creation in this context, what is the difference between printing money and creating wealth? the new money went somewhere. if i remember correctly it went indiscriminately to business owners, with no stipulations on how it was spent, and then blanket forgiven with no questions asked. to my mind that is wealth creation and the root cause of the inflation we've seen since (the printing not just the PPP)

> We could start off with how are you worse off because of people wealthier than you?

You are smart enough to come up with some answers of your own. It's rude to demand others to do your own thinking for you.

That depends how they got wealthy.

Did they steal everything outright? Someone is worse off in that transaction. (Or everyone a little bit worse off if it’s government grift).

Did they create all that value themselves? Might be fine - positive sum games do exist.

Did they create some system where a bunch of money flows just to them based on the labour of others? Maybe it depends on the details, like how much the labour is paid.

I think Piketty’s point was around capital and wealth tending to accumulate unless something forces it to disperse. This can get worse over time. The last couple hundred years were relatively “good” due to the way revolutions and WWI and WWII basically eliminated many of the wealthy families in the west, a couple times, and the post-war societies were “reset” with good equality that has slowly eroded since (due to insufficient “friction” to prevent accumulating extreme wealth over time, such as high loophole-free wealth and inheritance taxes). Or so the theory goes.

Building on that, when you get extreme wealth you get individuals with power to affect policy for their personal good. Some will choose to be selfish (it’s human nature). Policy shifts in their favour. We end up going in the opposite direction to that since the Great Depression - which really was a collectivist culture of everyone getting a share of the wealth of the nation, rather than being screwed over by rich and powerful folks. (McCarthyism somewhat put the brakes on that in the US in particular, though, which is why you can get e.g. free health care elsewhere in the west).

> Did they steal everything outright?

In a market economy, theft is illegal.

The Great Depression was not caused by rich people. It was caused by the Fed and its failure to understand the relationship with gold and dollars, and mismanagement of the bank reserves.

WW2 was not caused by rich people, nor by inequality.

> WW2 was not caused by rich people, nor by inequality.

Read the Three Comarades by Erich Maria Remarque. Inequality was rampant in-between wars as Germany suffered from industrial collapse and reparations.

Yet theft occurs.

Coercion occurs.

The market is held up by the enforcement of rules, and the US has spent several decades loosening the rules and defanging its watchdogs.

I have not read Piketty. But I could imagine a society where the poor are 10% better off and the rich are 1000% better off to be a less stable society that ends up falling apart.

The USSR made everyone equal and it fell apart.

Citation Needed (that they actually made everyone equal and it wasn't just a talking point). You may want to read a history book that talks about how Stalin denounced uravnilovka and about the existence of the nomenklatura.

Well, the Party members were more equal.

so... they made a society with a lot of inequality and it fell apart?

There were a multitude of reasons that USSR collapsed, and reasonable people can argue which were more or less important. I don't think it's reasonable to argue it was due to equality (which wasn't even a thing). Inequality certainly was a thing and one of the reasons, in addition to the Afghan War, Perestroika, Glasnost, the coup attempt, the independence movements of member states. I personally think inequality and structured economic collapse was the biggest culprit.

Walter, I believe the idea against wealth inequality is not purely that there are wealthier people but that their wealth should be redistributed such that the wealthier people are less wealthy (but still wealthier) and the poorer people are less poor (but still poorer).

There have been many attempts at taking from the rich and giving to the poor, and the result was always everybody was worse off except the people who ran the government.

No, that is not always the result, very far from it. You seem to believe that society is just the natural state of things, and "government" is almost just in the way. It's an incredible blindness to the privilege you enjoy.

The proper role of government is to protect people from thieves and murderers and externalities and provide national defense.

I am not an anarchist.

> privilege you enjoy

Privileges anyone enjoys living in the United States. That's why millions are always trying to come here.

> The proper role of government is to protect people from thieves and murderers and externalities and provide national defense.

This is a 19th century regalian viewpoint (which is fine). Taken to its logical conclusion, education and healthcare services should not be provided by the government. I think that this is a wildly unpopular viewpoint, and is really unlikely to lead to good outcomes in our kind of society.

Are you arguing against the concept of progress taxation entirely?

The French had a few thoughts about this, back in the day.

Norway seems to be doing swell.

Well, if Norway managed to pull it off, we can just ignore all the countless counter examples

Another way is to learn from what Norway is doing right and see what can be replicated. Norway is not a sole example though, just a prominent one.

Can we? Do we even know the counterfactual? Perhaps Norway would have been 2x richer (incl. their poorest people) if they implemented ultra aggressive libertarian policies.

The best we can do is learn from natural expriments like Finland and Estonia being about as rich before ww2, then by 90s the gap got massive since one was forced adopt more redistributive policies. Same with North / South Korea. Here we have at least some hope of extracting causality

Counterfactuals no, but one can make good-faith scientific attempts. We don't because we are locked by ideologies.

Exactly, and thankfully those have been made based on natural experiments like the ones I shared. And the consensus among serious modern economists (not those making money on selling popular books) is that redistribution negatively affects economic growth with all else being equal

I would agree with your statement regarding politics that rests solely on wealth distribution of the populist kind. Wealth needs to be created so that one has something to add to everyone's bag.

And I agree that _some_ redistribution is necessary for a healthy society. But the cost of slowing growth must be weighted agaist it. And populist calls for "no billionaires" etc are going to be bad for all, including the poor, in the end

Almost in violent agreement.

Disagree about the billionaire bit. Accumulates too much power too narrowly. Then one can subvert the market and rule of law. It seems the line lies somewhere between a hundred million and billion dollars at the current value of a dollar.

I am happy and eager to make exceptions on a case by case basis if that billion dollars have been made in exchange of tangible goods and services.

I just see political influence as separate issue. Make sure they cannot lobby/donate (prison if they do) and problem solved.

Why being tangiable so important? E.g. a billionare made it on physical music CD cs one made it on music streaming? As long as it's legal, why prioritize physical form?

That's too naive. Laws work differently once you have billions of dollars. They can and will be bent and politicians will be too happy to do that for you. It's win win for both.

Ignoring this aspect of the way the world works is living in a fantasy world, no less fantastic than a communist utopia.

Oh! I chose my word poorly. Streaming is very much "tangible" in the sense I had intended. "No regret transaction" is perhaps a better term than tangible, for the notion I am trying poorly to capture.

Let's take Walter Bright. I would love him to be a billionaire if he isn't one already. He made many delightful "goods", (to entertain oneself with and also to pay one's bills writing programs in a language so pleasant *). No party in the transaction would regret such a transaction, even in hindsight.

There are legal ways to accumulate wealth, however, without exchanging any goods and services. For example, HFT (ought to be called low latency rather than high frequency), speculation on the stock marketd. Derivative markets, for example, are zero sum, for one to win someone else has to lose. The wealth accumulated by such means has not been created, merely redistributed.

* Wish more companies used D though, so that it's actually feasible to earn your keep writing in D.

How much bending is actually happening vs just hypotheticals thought? Elon Musk donated a lot and then suddenly Big Beautiful Bill hit Tesla very hard. Doesn't sound like he got a favor paid back. Also, not that we should emulate Russia (not at all) but since 2000s there any oligarch trying to do anything political goes to jail or "falls out of their window". So possible in principle to remove the influence (I don't approve of the method though).

Sure, HTF is zero sum. I just think that focus on it is excessive. 99.9% of businesses are not. Regret would be nice to include in consideration but I doubt one can reliably measure it in practice

Not just HFT, options market, futures market are all zero sum. They are massive.

How massive relative to everything else in the economy that is not zero sum? 1%?

Also, disagree on options and futures market. They do provide important economoc function of price discovery and insurance against risk

Much bigger than non-derivative stock market for sure.

"The derivatives market is, in a word, gigantic—often estimated at over $1 quadrillion". The stock market would be puny in comparison. This is quite well known so was quite surprised by your objection.

https://www.investopedia.com/ask/answers/052715/how-big-deri...

The derivatives market is much larger than the stock market, both in sheer trading volume and total face value. While global stock markets represent a total value of roughly \(\$120\) trillion, the estimated notional value of the global derivatives market easily exceeds \(\$500\) trillion to \(\$1\) quadrillion.

https://share.google/aimode/EAEGnOouA5dvj9leC

Derivative markets are necessary for price discovery but when they tower over in volume over the market whose prices it was supposed to discover it is serving a purpose that towers over its justified/motivating purpose.

Elon Musk donated a lot of money and among many other things, his companies avoided investigations. The fact that neither Trump or Putin have any loyalty doesn't negate the fact that money buys you tremendous power.

It doesn't negate the influence gain, however the Putin and Trump examples show that this influence is often (very) limited and short lived, not "tremendous"

Elon Musk, by his own words, would be in prison if the Democrats had won. It seems to me that he got exactly what he wanted.

It's nice to live on top of an ocean of oil to cover the deficits.

Indeed.

It has rarely (if at all) worked out for any other country though. One or the other super power will make sure that does not happen.

US scuttling Iran's nationalisation of their oil being one example.

Even without geopolitical meddling, landfall discoveries of wealth at national scale has been frightfully difficult to manage well or to realize the value of. Your currency strengthens, your other industries lose out the on the price war, your economy gets skewed and sensitive to the health of one sector. In general it has been a curse than a boon.

Norway has so far pulled this of phenomenally well.

That’s incorrect.

In most western nations, the “people who run the government” get paid a salary similar to a good software engineer (or maybe a doctor), and progressive taxation lets the government fund social services including free healthcare and tertiary education.

Rather than use Stalin as a straw man, maybe try take your nation in direction that helps people, rather than away?

Although some people due want to literally take from the rich and give to the poor, the actual problem with wealth inequality is that game is rigged.

Capitalism not natural order; it has rules and winners and losers. It's actually more like sports. With sport, the goal is to create entertainment by rewarding physical excellence, mental excellence, and successful risk taking. Similarly, the goal of capitalism to create a better society by rewarding physical excellence, mental excellence, and successful risk taking.

What happens to a sport when players cheat or exploit the rules to win? It's no longer entertaining! When the best players can no longer win that's boring. And, in sport, when that happens the rules are changed or enforced better to bring it back in line.

Capitalism is the same. We are reaching the point where we are no longer properly rewarding excellence that is benefiting society. So the rules need to be enforced and rules need to be changed to bring that back in line. Inequality of this magnitude shows that rewards have outstripped the benefits to society and needs to be corrected.

The French had a few thoughts about this, back in the day.

FDR's New Deal raised taxes on the wealthy, and gave to the poor. Seems to have done America well. Post-war Japan, South Korea, and Taiwan land redistribution did well. And of course, there's the Nordic countries. Norway happens too have oil, but that doesn't explain Sweden and Denmark.

It’s a rather public example but DOGE did immense damage and was facilitated by the ability to leverage wealth into power. There is a dangerous feedback cycle.

Immense damage? Please elucidate.

Musk volunteered his services, took no pay, and voluntarily left after 90 days.

I've seen these figures all over the map.

The deaths of people in other countries are the result of their corrupt and evil governments, not Musk.

> 1,045,803 people

Amazing how specific it is! Come on, dude.

I'm not worse off, just because some chucklefuck has a yacht or a jet. I'm worse off when their wealth lets them out bid me for things that are scarce. Housing is currently in short supply in in-demand areas. Access to doctors is another one. The rich still only get one vote, but let's be real, being rich means buying tons of ads pushing a rich person's agenda in the run up to an election. Also tax codes. The rich get to put their kids in private schools, rather than having better public schools. That goes for other public goods too.

I already pointed out that housing shortages are caused by government policy.

See Palisades, for example.

To be asking these questions you lack fundamental economic knowledge and you should really educate yourself.

Read my responses here.

I did, which made me come to this conclusion. You seem to think value is created by extracting money from a product, while value actually is created by the work it takes to create said product. How much money one does extract has nothing to do with a products value. In your Tailor Swift example earlier, the value was created by her recording the music, not by her selling tours.

The value is absolutely in how much you can sell it. Otherwise every startup that subscribes to the "build it and they will come" philosophy would've been successful, which is obviously not the case and is a common problem that YC specifically tells founders to look out for. There is no value in building anything if you cannot convince others it is valuable. The labor theory of value is not valid.

Thats a beyond retarded way of looking at things, but it doesnt surprise me on HN/YC. Capitalist fucks everywhere.

An obviously flaggable comment will get flagged. If you can't say anything other than that then I'm not sure why you'd reply. And anyway, if you can't understand why digging ditches all day is not valuable (after all, look at all the hard work they're doing!) then I'm not sure what to tell you. It's a shame, 4 month old account but still succumbs to comments like this, not sure how HN moderation can fix that.

Cry me a river

Yikes, posting like this will get you banned here regardless of how right you are or feel you are. I'm not going ban you for this because the account doesn't seem to have a history of it, plus everyone goes on tilt sometimes. Please don't do it again though.

Also, please avoid generic ideological battle on HN - it's tedious, predictable, and leads to flamewars like this. (That goes for all the commenters on both sides of this argument, of course.)

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

> value is created by extracting money from a product

Nope. It is created by creating something valuable that other people want to pay for.

> value actually is created by the work it takes to create said product

That's the Labor Theory of Value, which is a Marxist tenet and has been thoroughly discredited. For example, a CEO can decide to take Bunker Hill, or take Sausage Hill. If he picks the more profitable hill, he created more money, with the same amount of labor.

> the value was created by her recording the music, not by her selling tours.

Nope. It was selling tickets to her concerts that made her a billionaire, not her music. That's why she did the concerts.

BTW, why do you think that some concerts charge more for tickets than other concerts? For the same amount of labor setting up the concert?

Indeed, I don't understand how anyone can seriously believe in the LTV anymore, as if someone digging holes should be as valuable in the economy, all else equal, as someone building something valuable. But that's what LTV proponents would have you believe apparently.

>He created more money

xd sure thing

Yeah I don't think this is the place for you here.

"Educate yourself" is almost always a shibboleth that the speaker of the phrase actually doesn't even know how to explain it to someone. It is a phrase of moral superiority and is not interested in whether the other person actually educates themselves or not. Or they might educate themselves and come to the opposite conclusion as you, in which case, maybe you should have educated (or indoctrinated) them first.

https://www.persuasion.community/p/why-i-refuse-to-educate-m...

The user in question, begins with assumptions on how wealth and markets work that do not match anything I know of in economics.

At one point they say that in a market economy there is no theft.

At another point they say that wealth concentration does not occur.

To begin to explain how they are working, I would have to invest in understanding the specific ideological framework they are using. Then figure out how to translate normal terms into their model.

This is a degree of care and effort I spend on people I love and care deeply about.

There is a threshold after which “educate yourself” is a genuine and reasonable statement, because the average person does not have the above average capability required to disentangle the motivated reasoning of a commenter.

> The user in question, begins with assumptions on how wealth and markets work that do not match anything I know of in economics.

I'm not surprised. My dad taught free market economics as a professor in his later years. Students would come up to him shocked that there was a case for free markets.

May I recommend any of Milton Friedman's books. Or "Capitalism" by Reisman. https://www.amazon.com/Capitalism-Treatise-Economics-Vol-1/d...

> in a market economy there is no theft

A free market economy is based on no force or fraud, and the government's job is to enforce that.

> wealth concentration does not occur.

Correct, in a free market.

I broadly agree with you, but do you believe the US has a free market? With regulatory capture and other ways to influence politics to favor one corporation over another, I don't think it fully does.

I was just thinking about it, rich people have money to spend in elections to get their representatives elected. When they do they make laws, or remove existing laws, to help rich get richer, so they have more money to spend in the next election. And so it goes.

Solution might be legislation that puts limits on how much money each person can spend on elections. But it may be too late, there are so many rich people in the congress that such laws can not pass.

The rich not only want to get richer they also want the lower classes to get poorer so they will work for less and will have to work longer hours so they will have less time and money to educate themselves, and thus will remain clueless about what is going on.

I'd prefer term limits.

Definitetly, except people to which the term-limits would apply really don't like term-limits. And they are in power.

But I don't want to souond too pessimistic, there are lots of good people and progress is inevitable. AI gets put down a lot but I think it will make people much smarter.

And also check "Escape from capitalism" by Mattei.

https://youtu.be/9M_dq_0ljsc?si=xkqtCs4YRor-NTyz