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.