Almost every problem in the world would be dealt with meaningfully if we outlawed billionaires.
Almost every problem in the world would be dealt with meaningfully if we outlawed billionaires.
Everytime I look at small problems or big global problems, if you follow the money trail, it all leads to some billionaire who is either working towards increasing their wealth or protecting their wealth from decreasing.
Everything from politics, climate change, workers rights, democratic government, technology, land rights, human rights can all be rendered down to people fighting another group of people who defend the rights of a billionaire to keep their wealth or to expand their control.
If humanity got rid of or outlawed the notion of any one individual owning far too much money than they could ever possibly spend in a lifetime, we could free up so much wealth and energy to do other things like save ourselves from climate change.
I'm not sure that I agree. While I would support something like outlawing billionaires or at the very least, a tax bracket that claws back significant chunks of what they are draining from society, there are vast nuances to these issues beyond "the billionaires want it that way." When you say "everything from ... can all be rendered down", I think it's pretty important to recognize how much detail and nuance is lost in that rendering down.
Billionaires and the accumulation of wealth are just stand ins for the accumulation of power in a capitalistic society. When power is removed, it creates a vacuum. Who fills it? In the ideal, I know most of us would say "the people" but this is an insanely complex balancing beam to maintain without some group of assholes finding a new, non-capital way to extract and centralize that power.
None of this is to say that eliminating the notion of a billionaire is a bad idea. I'm with you all that the very idea of a billionaire is heinous and impossible without vast exploitation. I just do not think that issue being solved would be even close to some panacea for all of the world's problems. There would just be twists in the existing problems and fun new ones.
Exactly. Don't hate the players, hate the game. We are too focused on finding a scape goat to see the inherit system is the problem.
Hate both, where it's appropriate. Some of these players perpetuate the game that we all hate. Elon Musk is a player who has become part of the structure of the game, fighting regulations and damaging democracy for the sake of his own capitalistic endeavors. Someone mentioned below that Dolly Parton could be a billionaire. Not gonna hate on Dolly Parton who I assume did not come by her wealth through being an asshole, but more just being successful and our current "game" rewarding her with more than she would have in a better society. I would tax the absolute fuck out of her though.
The player are the ones writing the rules of the game. They're the ones bribing the refs.
I think theres enough bitterness and hate in my heart for both. I've got too many fucking scars I never needed to have, watched too many people die for no Fucking reason.
I don't agree with that argument.
You're right from the point of view that removing those with immense power from their billionaire wealth will be replaced by someone or another group. It's our natural human condition to always want to be in control and there will always be those among us that will want more power and more control than others.
Removing the ability of any one person accumulating enormous amounts of wealth just levels the playing field. If those with a higher need to want more power don't have the ability to control an entire sector, an entire region, an entire community or even an entire nation than others will have the ability to challenge them and regulate their power and control.
As it is now, when we allow individuals to gain enormous amounts of power, no one has the ability to challenge them. When those with enormous power decide to affect governments, industries, society or finance, there is very little any one can do to challenge them. Sure we can band together and take billionaires to court ... but it comes down to how much money you have ... the ability to challenge power means you need money and whoever has the most money has the most power. It isn't a justice system that treats everyone fairly, it's a legal system that favors those with the most money.
Outlawing billionaires won't create a utopia, it won't remove our conflicts we have with each other. What it would do is level the playing field and distribute power among many other people who would all challenge one another as to what they can or can't do. It would create a more democratic system where power would be spread to more people.
Once we create that distribution of power, we could then spend our energies solving the problems we have with each other and our world, rather than in spending all our time trying to defend finances.
As it is now, democratic power is impossible because power is only centered on those who have the most money.
My argument would be that by eliminating the means of wealth being an avenue to power, it will merely shift to the government that is enforcing those rules. Those same shitty people will infiltrate that government and use it to inflate themselves while oppressing others. There was no utopian society prior to capitalism and fiat currency, and there won't be one after.
To be clear, I'm not arguing that this is an impossible problem to solve. I just do not think eliminating the notion of a billionaire is the cure for all of your listed ills. I agree with you that it would absolutely have impacts on all of them, but we would still wake up to world hunger, climate change, etc.
Each of your listed issues is a complex, multi-faceted problem. We cannot boil down that nuance just so we can point to our favorite enemy, deserving as they might be. Fight them too, but don't lose sight of the bigger picture.
I think you two are speaking about different steps in this hypothetical transition. You are talking about the long term goal, the other person was talking about the transition from now to the long term scenario. There is very real danger that the power vacuum left by the x-billionaires could be gobbled up by a small group of people. This cannot be dismissed even if we all agree on the end goal.
Secondary critique, set the wealth cap in relation to some other moving metric. I think a multiple of minimum wage would be great, give incentive for the wealthy to increase minimum wage to achieve a higher cap.
I love this take, but sorry it goes against the hate billionaire circlejerk.
The billionaire class really flourished after Reagan eased taxes on the rich in the 80s. We need to go back to a time before him, but idk if that's possible. Genie might be out of the bottle
Somethin to remember, money is very important to how our current society functions, it gives a lot of power to those that have a lot of it, but it itself isnt something anyone needs. Say, you get rid of all the billionairess and redistribute all of those funds so that everyone is well above the poverty line now. All of these folks that have a lot more money now want to use that money. They've been putting off medical care so they try to setup an appointment. Getting rid of all the billionaires didnt create more doctors though. They can only tend to so many people regardless of ability to pay. Say, folks want to eat out and treat themselves. Certainly more people than before will be able to, but not everyone, kitchens and staff can only output so many meals, again regardless of ability to pay. And that's overlooking how many people no longer work there, that hated it there and only tolerated for the funds to survive.
Basically money does not actually create any resources or services, redistributing the money doesnt mean you have enough resources to cover what that money could buy. That's the main goal here, having resources for everyone. Capitalism sucks and getting rid of billionaires is important, but dont get complacent with that underlying mission. We need to be working on providing needs to people in a way that doesnt require money. It involves a lot of volunteer work and a lot of automation.
Counterpoint - if people don’t need to take crappy jobs just to afford food and shelter, those jobs will have to provide better pay and conditions to get employees.
Also, if more people can afford to get further education, you’ll get more doctors and engineers and high skilled workers, because they’ll be able to do the training instead of getting several minimum wage jobs just to support their families.
I’ve said it before - any society that can afford billionaires can afford to feed, clothe, shelter and provide basic medical care to all is members, it’s just choosing not to.
I'd freaking love to work as a waitress. It was my dream job as a kid and when I tried it here and there I enjoyed it a lot. But the pay is shit and the social status, being looked down on, as someone stupid or lower... Man, I'd love to be a part time waitress. But until socialism hits and a part time waiting job would be sufficient to feed half a family I'll stick with the biomedical industry and PhD program.
It always makes me so sad to think about how children talk about those "shit jobs". You won't find a kid who wants to become a financial advisor or a tax attorney. Most kids want to build homes, cook, wait, clean, work with animals, drive trains, drive trucks, ... Jesus how many kids I see who are freaking fascinated by garbage trucks and want nothing more than to work as garbage men. And then they grow up and society indoctrinates them into thinking these are bad jobs for lower people, and reality shows you that you can't make a living off these jobs, so better do something you cannot even pronounce.
Counterpoint - if people don’t need to take crappy jobs just to afford food and shelter, those jobs will have to provide better pay and conditions to get employees.
Most of those jobs will just no longer exist. Why would they? If i can afford what i need without having to deal with another dumb customer, i aint goin back into food service.
Also, if more people can afford to get further education, you’ll get more doctors and engineers and high skilled workers
Schools have limited resources too. One teacher can only reasonably teach so many students. Youre also contending with people not needing to get an education anymore. They can afford what they need already, if their goal before was to get a good paying job then that motivation is gone.
any society that can afford billionaires can afford to feed, clothe, shelter and provide basic medical care to all is members, it’s just choosing not to.
Zimbabwe had 100 trillion dollar bills, they sure couldnt afford all those things with it.
This is the circular argument I often have with my friends about wealth and it all boils down to just power.
When billionaires lay claim to enormous amounts of money, it gives them an equal amount of enormous power.
Have that wealth redistributed to millions of people and that wealth no longer matters and no one person has any great level of power.
It's our own belief that we need or see that it is necessary to have individuals with enormous wealth that is the problem. The belief that our world can only exist if there is infinite wealth.
The other side of the argument is that the change of eliminating billionaires won't happen overnight. I wish I could pull a switch right now that could drain the bank accounts of billionaires and instantly transfer that wealth to millions of people but it won't work that way, ever.
I envision a gradual change ... where billionaires are just steadily taxed into non existence, where their wealth is just slowly absorbed into public services everywhere and at the same time any individual that accumulates enormous wealth is discouraged. It would be a process that would last decades or lifetimes and eventually to a point where individual excessive wealth is eliminated.
The other side of the argument is that the change of eliminating billionaires won't happen overnight. I wish I could pull a switch right now that could drain the bank accounts of billionaires and instantly transfer that wealth to millions of people but it won't work that way, ever.
Why not? "We" designed, built, and used such a switch before. It's #7 in this diagram:
The other side of the argument is that the change of eliminating billionaires won’t happen overnight. I wish I could pull a switch right now that could drain the bank accounts of billionaires and instantly transfer that wealth to millions of people but it won’t work that way, ever.
I believe switching away from the currency they hold would achieve your desired result. As for the means of production that generates that wealth, just Eminent domain it and give it to a worker co-op as a loam. Probably could be revenue positive given interest and increased taxation from rising working class salaries
While that's correct in the short term we know it's possible in terms of resources to feed everyone as we produce more food than we need. Likewise plenty of states have socialised medicine and aren't running out of doctors. All of these problems can be solved in time, especially after eliminating useless jobs created by capitalism.
it's definitely possible, but dont accept it as a given, like I said dont get complacent. You eliminate wealth inequality, you have to think about how that food is getting grown or prepared now and how it's getting distributed. No one has to handle those tasks in order to make enough money to survive anymore. People will have to volunteer to do it, or you'll have to automate it in some way.
You're talking (partly) about two different things.
The simple truth is that our planet only has a certain amount of replenishable resources which leads to only a certain standard of living being possible for a certain amount of people.
Thus, the problem you're talking about only gets solved by reducing the amount of people or the standard of living, globally.
The problem OP is talking about is inequality in the standard of living between people.
Outlawing billionaires alleviates both problems, but the general resources problem only temporarily until the people with lower standard of living now raise theirs by having more resources available, which is what you talk about.
Inequality gets improved permanently by this, so it's a good change for that problem.
The limited resource problem you're talking about, though, doesn't get solved by this at all, there might be a short dip in less resources used while resources are being reallocated, but then it'll likely go back to before, because most people use as much resources as they can to make their lives as nice as they can.
To solve our problems, both population as well as standard of living need to be limited. Because if either one is allowed to grow infinitely, resources will never suffice long-term.
Outlawing billionaires alleviates both problems, but the general resources problem only temporarily until the people with lower standard of living now raise theirs by having more resources available, which is what you talk about.
no that's the thing, eliminating wealth inequality doesnt make more resources available for anyone, money doesnt create resources. Millions more people suddenly being able to buy a new car or something doesnt mean millions more cars are going to appear.
Getting rid of all the billionaires didnt create more doctors though
Wrong, more people can afford to go to college. The extra tax base also allows for the creation of new schools.
I agree we should switch away from currency. Look at the stuff people do for fake internet points. We don't need money to create.
We certainly have the tech and the numbers to ensure the starving artist meme is finally laid to rest. Imagine what creations or inventions we are missing out on because it's not profitable right now.
more people can afford college, and we can afford to build more schools. But that doesnt mean we have the resources to. You don't throw money on the ground and a school pops out. You pay contractors to build it. Contractors are already pretty busy folks, doing very hard work that's difficult to attract a large workforce. And it takes a lot of time to build large projects. Construction is a huge bottleneck. We can get around this a bit with online education instead, but that's still not limitless, especially if you're teaching such a complex and demanding career as medicine. you need people who are already experts to train doctors, there's only so many and they can only teach so many.
I think a world without money is a fantasy.
Money is just a means of trading time, time that I put in, for time that you put in.
Some things like being a doctor are harder than being a fast food worker, it takes years of training, and hard work. It makes sense that their time is worth more.
There is a ceiling though where you're not actively contributing "time" you've previously committed time that's just appreciating because it's "invested" in paying people for their time. That's where the problems come in because you have effectively a years work of thousands of people in your pocket, which is a concentration of unchecked power.
Taxing billionaires out of existence ensures that money is invested (in a democracy) by the voters (through their representatives) and keeps the concentration of power from distorting the politics.
This issue isn't billionaires, it isn't capitalism, it's and always has been throughout history, concentration of power. It's past time we fixed this unforeseen loophole created by the modern world where a handful of individuals become as powerful as a country.
When you have bosses that aren't "gods among men", that can't just buy up their competition to squash it, it's much easier to negotiate with them to pay you a fair salary. You're not just a number. Similarly, you can get more done in politics because nobody's got so much money that they can significantly grease palms/run a campaign by themselves/etc.
The "loophole" is how capitalism works. Here's my super simple definition of capitalism. Capitalism just distributes resources based on capital. The problem is that capital is a resource that needs to get distributed. Sure a doctor and fast food worker are both being paid for their time. But not the hospital owner, not the restaurant owner. They're being paid for their capital, they had the capital to own this business, so they own the capital it generates.
I dont think Im really disagreeing with you though, taxing the owner class on a much more aggressive sliding scale of wealth definitely needs to happen, but we need more public sector workers for all that taxed income to be put to use for. The system is flawed and needs changing, just remember that the work still needs to be done regardless of the solution.
People thought the world without chattel slavery was a fantasy at one point.
Yes we simply added more steps to it, but progress is progress
You make more money that harder you are to replace. In the case of the billionaires, they are theoretically hard to replace so they make a ton.
Of course you don't need to be a billionaire to to be wealthy. You can just be good at business and managing money.
"Taxing them out of existence" is the craziest and dumbest idea I've heard in a while. You can't just do that as it is there money that they rightfully earned. There also would be the issue of the people who have 990 million dollars. Do you want to tax them to oblivion to?
Billionaires are not the problem
The problem is you can't just get rid of billionaires. They are just people who made a lot of money by getting really lucky.
It is also important to note that they do give back there money in many cases as a billion dollars is a huge amount of money. Honestly 10 million dollars is a lot. You can't just make the wealthy successful people go away because you are jealous.
At the end of they day the richer you are the more unhappy you are. If you basic needs are met you can't become more happy with more money.
It's not luck, it's how money works. Money buys you ownership. And there are many things that generate money for the owner. Businesses, stocks, real estate. It's a feedback loop that concentrates wealth like we see today.
It is also important to note that they do give back there money in many cases
no they dont
In the US we used to have a very high tax rate for those who were extremely wealthy, Distributing the excess back to the government/citizenry. We need the return back to that.
The citizenry need to ask for that, as well as for ranked-choice voting.
but the post is right, billionaires got the law changed to benefit themselves...
As far as voting is concerned everyone who is eligible to vote should get one vote. It is a terrible idea to do anything other than that.
As far as taxes go, we should simply encourage people who are wealthy to fund charities. Also the tax rate is already pretty high. Maybe we just need to increase the number of rungs on the scale. I don't think millionaires or billionaires have anything against taxes or at least nothing compared to the rest of us.
One party system?
"Oh wow so undemocratic holy shit you psycho how dare you even suggest a thing?"
Two party system?
"Oh woooow so much democracy everyone gets to choose between two options. Perfection achieved. Aliens cross the galaxy to study our high advanced flaeless two party system in a desperate hope to emulate it"
More then two parties?
"No way there should be more options, that's just crazy you psycho how dare you suggest this to me just shut the fuck up and vote for the blue conservatives."
I hope some day you think outside the box. More like a prison then a box really...
The thing keeping us from eliminating the billionaires isn’t the billionaires. It’s the ~40% of society that are convinced we have to have billionaires to survive. Those people always come up with unending lists of reasons why we just can’t survive without people of unimaginable wealth and power.
It’s not the billionaires. It’s the enablers.
The thing keeping us from eliminating the billionaires isn’t the billionaires. It’s the ~40% of society that are convinced we have to have billionaires to survive.
I call this set the "idiot army", the activated dunces. It's propaganda, this 40% is not inherently bad people, it's guillible, low-education, low-information people that have been activated by malicious propaganda to promote the interests of the billionaire class.
The solution lies not in eliminating or dominating this group, it lies in de-activating them. The typical person in this group, if not being actively directed is too busy in their own world to destroy society.
The first step towards any sort of revolution (violent or not) or real change our world needs has to start by destroying all for-profit news. As long as for-profit news controlled by the billionaires exists, the idiot army cannot be deactivated, and any acts of heroism will be called acts of terrorism.
Edit: But how to destroy the news? Law, as long as we exist in a state, use the available tools. Focus on ranked choice voting, increasing voter turnout, and running for office to collaborate with others to make laws that prevent the news from being so toxic and so profitable. What kinds of laws? Just throwing out ideas
-
Change the First amendment (bill of rights) so that it applies only to individuals. A news business or organization does not have the right to free speech or press.
- Make the news unprofitable and risky for a business
- This would probably have a ton of other beneficial effects as businesses could then lose the right to lie
-
Any company that produces news content may not operate in another other industries, and may have no executives or board members currently in any other company or married or have children in other companies.
- Make it difficult for the bad people to be in charge of the news
-
Great point and one I often circle back eventually when I have these discussions with my friends.
I'm starting to think that it is another one of ingrained human traits .... we always want a world with protectors, leaders, figure heads ... it's like being children and wanting to be comforted by a parent, a mother or father.
Except it's a twisted kind of need that we outgrew a long time ago because we are all becoming very capable, knowledgable and intelligent enough to exist on our own. Modern technology, the internet and mass communication is making us more aware of the world and each other and we are realizing that we don't need figureheads any more.
We're all made to think that we don't, won't or can't possibly think like this. We're made to believe that the world and humanity is one big dumb mob that would crumble without a leader.
I believe the opposite is true .... it's our supposed leaders, figureheads, strong men and billionaires that have all the incentive to keep the world as it is because it would mean they would lose most of their power and wealth .... and with it their positions as leaders and figureheads.
The Emperors are strutting about the world completely naked ... and we have to keep up the pretense that they are wearing the most beautiful fashions imaginable.
I’m starting to think that it is another one of ingrained human traits … we always want a world with protectors, leaders, figure heads … it’s like being children and wanting to be comforted by a parent, a mother or father.
A subset of humanity does, check out https://theauthoritarians.org/
If the billionaires can activate this subset in their interests, they can protect their positions.
That is one of many aspects, absolutely. The most liberal person I know has said and done many things to show me the way. But when asked about putting Trump on trial (He despises Trump) he says we should not because (basically) it would “look bad to children when they read about a US president being tried for crimes” in the history books.
I’m like, dude, if we don’t punish this MoFo, the next one is going to be writing the history books for us.
So what we need is to get rid of Americans?
It's like every group of people in the world regardless if they are American or not ..... this only applies to the billionaires who are only a very small minority of the global population.
Just look around you and anyone you have remotely interacted with in your life .... are they a billionaire? If yes then they are affected ... if not, nothing changes.
All this talk about billionaires would only affect a few hundred people across the eight billion people on the planet.
Either we shift our thinking to getting rid of billionaires ... or we continue to stand aside and let them rule the world to our collective detriment.
Wealth is just one means of power. Destroying all billionaires, while a good step, would not even come close to solving almost every problem in the world.
Right now billionaires are a huge bottleneck to global development and those people who actually want to do something about our worlds problems. Getting rid of them won't solve our world's problems ... it will just make our problems easier to solve. Leaving them alone means our problems persist while they actively block everyone else from dealing with the world's problems.
Throughout history power has been used to obtain wealth and comfort. So if you remove the ability to leverage power for wealth, you remove the primary motivator for obtaining power for most people. There are certainly people who want power for the sake of power, but most people want power to obtain comfort.
Here's a good visualization of the wealth the richest people on earth command vs pretty much everyone else: https://mkorostoff.github.io/1-pixel-wealth/
Hey thanks. That is IMPRESSIVE and deserves a post of its own, please do it
Good idea, will do tomorrow.
I stopped when it got to the trillion comparison. Surely I can find a better use out of the next two weeks of my life.
Well, you do you, but the trillion comparison has many, many other comparisons, further info, and interesting possible real-world uses for that money in the scroll. It really is recommended.
Though admittedly it does take some time, like a long interactive video.
Also... That's should say something for the issue of inequality, itself, lol
Nuh-uh. Even if billionaires are banned I still wouldn't have a girlfriend.
You know what, if they ban billionaires, Imma be your girlfriend
It sounds like you want less Billionaires in the world! Be the change you want to see!
This is exactly why I'm not a billionaire
It sounds like you want less Billionaires in the world! Be the change you want to see!
Enough with advocating for violence already, it gets so old, and it's ruining Lemmy.
It also diminishes how other people see you, and the opinions you express, making them less likely to listen to your opinions.
The poster did not advocate for violence. You can zero out the billionaires class peacefully. We literally have the power. We just need to stop getting distracted.
I know a guy, who knows a guy, who knows a guy, who knows a guy, who knows a guy, who knows a guy who knows someone with a pistol that is both willing and able to bring about the change you seek.
Poverty and starvation still exist because of billionaires
“Poverty exists not because we cannot feed the poor, but because we cannot satisfy the rich.”
More is never enough for those people.
When we see an older woman collecting 50 cats in her home and she still wants more .... we call her crazy.
When a billionaire successfully argues against being taxed so that they accumulate more wealth ... we put them on the cover of Forbes magazine.
Almost every billionaire in the world would immediately target any country that tried this for absolute and total destruction.
Sanctions on day one, exposure of phoney corruption scandal on day two, false flag invasion of another country on day three, deposed leader on day four, and splitting up of territorial sovereignty on day five.
Okay, perhaps not that quickly, but you get my drift. I mean, people like Peter Thiel have used people like Jordan Peterson, along with his own connections to white supremacists, and million dollar contributions to Donald Trump to ruin America in the span of a decade... And that's just one billionaire applying some loose change because he's a weird self-hating gay racist monarchist. Imagine what a bunch of billionaires really trying to destroy a country could do.
There’s the “joke” about the king/billionaire being asked, “Aren’t you worried about people rising up against you?” He replied, “No, I’ll just pay other people to kill them.”
That worked in ancient Rome for a long while ... until there was no one significant left to kill or fight against ... then the hired hands started looking at their king/billionaire and realized that they could just kill their leader and take all his wealth.
There's two answers to that ....
This is a primary reason to get rid of billionaires because they are capable of becoming the next Hitler or at the very least, funding and supporting the next Hitler
The second answer to that is ..... by your own words, it is an admission that billionaires exert way too much control and influence in our world. If one individual has that much control and power where they are capable of influencing or even changing a government, then that is not a democracy ... that's an oligarchy ... or at least a plutocracy (a system run by money). Allowing any one individual to have so much money and influence defeats the purpose of wanting to organize or even conduct a democracy.
It reminds me of the ancient Greek idea of 'Ostracism' .... where we get our modern word ostracize
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ostracism
A system where citizens identified a possible tyrant or upcoming tyrant in their government and then everyone just voted them out of everything for ten years. It wasn't a perfect system but even back then, everyone knew that if you allowed someone to gain too much power over everyone, then eventually you end up with a tyrannical leader who would want to take control of everything and everyone.
They already donate to both sides in order to insure their influence. So Ostracism of one or two politicians isn't really going to be an effective preventative measure.
As a German, I sincerely apologize for allowing our next mini-Hitler to emigrate to Silicon Valley.
While I don't disagree with the sentiment, I do think a ban on resource hoarding would also require an overhaul of the capitalist system. Hoarding resources is exactly the point of our current system and banning it would most likely have hard to predict consequences.
Release the diamonds!!!
Release the movie Dogma on streaming services again!
Arguing that an alternative may be dangerous when the status quo is destroying our world is not a very good argument.
My point is that society should just simply create an upper ceiling of wealth for everyone. Everything still stays the same. We still have our capitalistic system, everyone is still capable and free to try to become as wealthy as they want to be, everyone is still allowed to manipulate the system and those around them to acquire as much wealth as they want in whatever way they please. The only thing that changes is that any one person's wealth is just limited to ... $100 million for example. Does any person require more than this in order to live a happy full and comfortable life? Any one that wants more than that is a pathological individual that is perfectly comfortable in taking away the wealth of those who have little to give.
It's basically a system where we reward the worst individuals in our society to flourish and become even more powerful.
The alternative I present doesn't look as dangerous as allowing a handful of questionable individuals to own everything and everyone on the planet.
I am not saying it is dangerous. My point is that taking a decision that is polar opposite of our financial system will come with consequences, many of them will not be simple to predict.
What happens after you accumulate 100 million? Are you allowed to work? Will you have to give up the interest your existing assets earn you? Do we tax everything the limit at 100%? How will we deal with the fact the some countries will attract people with lots to lose by not following the system?
These are of course just random thoughts, but I think most of us can come up with plenty of things that can jeopardize such a plan.
I don't dismiss the idea, but I think a lot of safeguards need to be in place before such a plan could work.
Fuckin, extremely doubt it, this strikes me as an extreme oversimplification. You'd get tons of abuse from governments still, just as we did pre-huge amounts of disproportionate wealth, you'd still get tons of slightly poorer but still pretty rich people banding together in interest groups to get their shit passed which would probably also include like, suburban moms in SUVs that were created from white flight.
More than any of that, you wouldn't be solving the core human behavior, of picking short term gains as a strategy to scale up quicker and with more force, to crush or more easily control your opposition, than any strategy which remains morally better, mutually beneficial, and promises better long term gains. It's not just like, stupidity and dumb luck, that causes/has caused the structure of society to turn out like this. Outlawing billionaires just means that they'd take the financial system and cause hyperdeflation, or that they'd pivot to exercising more forms of soft power. More than that I kind of disagree with this extremely common messaging around this issue because I think it oversimplifies things to the point of basically being wrong, even though it's highly agreeable at first and second glance.
True and I agree with most of what you said ... but I would prefer a world where power was distributed to more people than concentrated to a small group of people.
It wouldn't solve the world's problems because we all seem to have a hard time existing with one another. But at the very least, it would make it far easier for us to solve our problems everywhere.
It's actually quite difficult to cause hyper-flation in either direction. You generally need an external destination for the money that's outside the economy being targeted. Japan had a deflationary economy for 30 years, which was produced by falling population numbers and negative interest rates. Their quality of life didn't drastically decline, just the international purchasing power of the yen (and even that wasn't too bad).
The problem with your idea is that it's not just about the amount of money, but the fact that some people will find ways to have more money, more power. As soon as you draw this line, you'll have an new level of the richest people.
So in order to really make a difference you would need to spread wealth evenly and no one would be able to earn more than that. And the same goes for losing money of course. This way people will not have the incentives anymore, but i think this will eventually move to a new commodity , because it is just in our nature.
While I largely agree, I also note there will always be greedy outliers who will seek and find ways to skirt the system. We can minimize the ways, but humans are innovative AF, especially when told "you can't." I think it's almost more motivating than "you can."
I think billionaries are a symptom, not a cause, of the disease.
Some people are born in positions where they already have massive wealth and they grow up with connections to make it larger and larger. So that's what they do.
But the real issue is the system that keeps everyone in debt for life. Many would like to stop working and enjoy their lives instead. They don't need much. Just don't want to work and get by with decent living standard.
Yeah OP needs to spend more time with poor people. People are no better than billionaires on average, billionaires just get all the media attention.
That would be one of the ways to deal with excessive wealth .... get rid of excessive inheritance. If you are billionaire .. you get to leave two million dollars per child but nothing more.
Two million dollars to start any life would be more than enough for anyone.
But to inherit multi millions or even billions is a completely unfair advantage to everyone else. Imagine if you were a natural born psychopath or you just have an unnatural shortage of empathy for others and you inherit half a billion dollars ... do you think that person would go on to do good things in the world?
I think the real problem is enforcement. Their children would see it as theft, and so if they said no, we're not giving it up. Then in the end, you would have to send somebody with a gun or violence to "persuade" them to do so. And unless you're some sort of psychopath, which is what most governments are, you are not willing to hurt people, so you can't take it away from them.
I've worked for a few small business tyrants that did horrible things as well. It's more of a system issue. Billionaires do the most damage of any individuals, but I think it would be pretty similar if CEOs made small amounts of money (the corporations themselves often lobby for their interests), or if there were only small businesses (they'd probably just form national organizations to lobby for their shared interests).
I agree with the idea of compensating someone who worked at managing an organization ... it takes work, talent, education and experience to do that and do it successfully.
What I don't believe is in rewarding leaders who led their organization, business or corporation into ruin while punishing those who worked under them.
The current system rewards and encourages bad immoral behaviour and we wonder why the system is bad and immoral.
Agreed.
Let’s say you get to pass a law in the USA that would make it illegal to have more than a billion dollars. How would you formulate this law and what would you expect to happen when it’s passed?
You'd probably format it as a percentage of GDP per capita, as it's about limiting wealth disparity (and thus protecting social mobility), distributing wealth growth nationally, and limiting the concentration of financial interest as it's a threat to national and democratic security.
You'd probably want it accompanies by various studies that show that that large wealth disparities are detrimental to social mobility (aka the ability to "work your way up" in classes), and probably some political science papers on the ills of concentrations of wealth.
You'd probably want it to come into force along with laws that limit campaign contributions and big money donors in politics... get rid of that whole "political donations are protected as political speech" crap.... and you'd probably want it as a wealth tax that pays into a sovereign wealth fund with rules on what it can be used for.
The better answer would be to just improve antitrust laws
All of the big name billionaires came from the tech industry
There wouldn't be an immediate law to just have a roving gang of enforcers knock down a billionaire's door and send them to jail .... that is just wishful thinking.
Billionaire's would still continue to exist except that anything beyond a certain level of wealth is just taxed either completely or near fully. It would remove the incentive for anyone to own or gain billions of dollars. And it wouldn't occur immediately, it would take years, decades or even lifetimes to make a difference.
There is a truism. Will have to come back and give the original quotation author, but it's
"Only poor people pay taxes."
Rich people have the resources to evade and skirt around any tax legislation which they are supposed to be captured within. Most of them use the corporation as holders of wealth of which they have control.
Corporate taxes are almost always lower than personal taxes for that reason.
Banning billionaires is as likely to succeed as veganism.
Its not the billionaires its that they are not paying back 50% to society.
Yup. This is why the world had no problems before billionaires existed.
The problems were always the same since we left the cave our ancestors emerged from ... modern billionaires only exacerbate the existing problems we always had a billion times more.
They are also the ones stonewalling everyone's incentive to want to do anything significant about our world's problems. Instead of doing anything to fight about climate change which will severely affect our world .... we are fighting regional wars that shouldn't even be conflicts in the first place. And yes, much of the global problems we are facing today stem from a global corporate system which is controlled by a handful of billionaires ... they are the root of why we fight and they are also the solution to how these conflicts will end.
No problems at all (WW sounds in background)
Where's the line? Is it one billion? Aren't we all trying to make more money and lose less money? Who decides what number equals 'enough'? Does it depend on where you live? Size of your family? How/where you spend, save, donate? They say Dolly Parton could have been a billionaire but she's donated so much that she only has $650 million. Should that be the goal - earn a billion and donate half? Is that better or worse than earning 100 million and donating half?
A billion dollars is so incomprehensibly more than anybody needs, no matter the size of their family, that there really is no reason to take these things into account. As for who decides what is enough, it's the people allowed to vote.
As for the donation example, yes, that is worse, since for every billionaire that miraculously donates some of their wealth, there are loads who don't. So better tax them all than hope that maybe a couple of them decide to be nice for once.
And if they refuse to pay their "taxes" Then you, as the psychopath you are, are going to send men with guns to abduct them and throw them in a cage for an amount of time You determine and steal their life. Oh, and even if you don't do that, you'll just kill them right away with a gun. And their life will be over anyway.
1.000.000.000€ is if you get 1000€ every day for 3000 years.
Think about it.
Take out a calculator.
And than see, that I lied and its just 913.24€ every day for 3000 years.
Than think about WHO DA FUK needs money like this?
Mark has around 150 bio € so 150x3000= 450.000 years of 913.24€ EVERY FUKKING DAY.
A billion is so far past the line it's not even a question. You cannot earn a billion. You cannot even earn a fraction of 1b.
https://youtu.be/8YUWDrLazCg - watch this, just the first few minutes then scrub along to the end.
Here is an alternative Piped link(s):
https://piped.video/8YUWDrLazCg
Piped is a privacy-respecting open-source alternative frontend to YouTube.
I'm open-source; check me out at GitHub.
Let me know when you grow up
Why are you do concerned just about billionaires? Why don't add millionaires to the pool too?
A million dollars today doesn't go as far as it used to.
A million is money but not "controlling the means of production and lobbying politics" kind of money.
As it turns you to can't blame billionaires for everything. Also what would that even mean? Are just going to take away there money as soon as the hit the billion dollar mark? What does that mean for millionaires?
Also the billionaires would just make it look like they have 990 million dollars.
Are just going to take away there money as soon as the hit the billion dollar mark?
You want us to take something else from them?
Taxation .... after a certain level of wealth, all excess wealth is either taxed completely or near completely and it would discourage anyone from wanting to gain too much excessive wealth.
It wouldn't turn our world into a utopia ... there will always be aholes that will want to run and control the world. The difference would be that they would have less power and less ability to actually be able to control the world.
And yes billionaires are not the only problem to our world's problems but they are a big part of it ... they are also actively the ones who make it harder for everyone else to solve the world's problems. So getting rid of them may not solve the world's problems ... but it would make it a whole lot easier to deal with the problems we already have.
Wealth disparity and concentration of power into a corrupt ruling class of plutocrats gets pretty toxic to human rights and democracy pretty quickly.
Listen to some behind the bastards episodes, look into people like the koch brothers, or Amazon's union busting, or any of the large political scandals in the past 100 years (eg. Like the business plot) - and you'll usually hear of some wealthy ahole involved funding some shitty attack on where ever.
And even deeper dive into that world is to look up the Dulles brothers and what they did for big business throughout most of the early 1900s on their own, with American government and with the CIA .... they basically transformed the world and world government for the sake of big business (not for America as most people would like to believe)