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Comment by sigi45 | Hacker News Reader

Whatever the reason was, that a family or people where able to accumulate that much wealth: I believe, there should be an upper limit.

It is not okay for people like Bill Gates (i do think he is a good person) or Mark Zuckerberg to have that much power on such a small planet.

It is awesome that someone like Bill Gates spends tons of money for research etc. but he should not be able to make such huge decisions in a modern democratic society.

There is a good reason to allow people to accumulate wealth. Why shouldn't someone be allowed to not spend all his/her money for alcohol, party and cars or whatever and instead put the money into real estate for there children. But something like 5-10 Million per Child is still super reasonable.

Perhaps that leads the way to a more fair feature where it is not necessary for anyone anymore to horde money for the familiy heritage.

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Is that a real problem?

Seems like 5 richest US citizens own less than 0,5% of all US assets.

I'd be lot more worried about organizations. JP Morgan chase and General Electric are not exactly democratic either. Both are way richer than Gates. And while church of latter day saints is not quite in the same league, it's incredibly wealthy and not at all democratic.

If you assume that Gates foundation gets 5% profits and distributes that, then it can share about 2,1 billion/year. American Red Cross gets to distribute 2,7 billion/year. Who does their homework better, Bill gates or the average guy who donates to Red Cross? And yet Red Cross is still not exactly democratic.

It doesn't seem very straight forward how you should count assets or income and deduct the monetary power from there.

I think at the end of the day it approaches dystopian levels of "what can we do?" against these people if they were to behave in ways that the majority of society deems irresponsible.

If Gate's wanted to he could cause immense harm in the country.

It can be argued that some like the Koch's and Mercer's are doing that harm: depending on your political views.

What could be done? These people are literally untouchable. I think the Mercer's would be untouchable even by the US government, if they played their hands in a smart way.

...Unless we'd want to send the army after them, they could just hide on their yachts :)

Anyway, there's no realistic revolution you can have against these people, is my point. If that fear doesn't exist, well, they can do what they want, yes?

I know that what keeps my worst urges "in check" is because it is not healthy for me to act on those actions.

I'm talking about stuff like "pissing off my prior employer" and "saying fuck you to my boss."

I do not know what kind of impulses the .01% have ... I am afraid what I may say or do to that old employer's company if I didn't have to worry about repercussions!

What should I fear from them?

Yeah, but what should you fear from organizations? It's easy to scrutinize an individual. It's lot more difficult to scrutinize an organization. It's actually difficult to even stay interested in them.

I'd claim that if Gates would have wanted to cause maximum harm, he would not have earned millions of dollars first. Just found an organization and go evil. It's more straight forward, less suspicious and more effective. Just look at Scientology.

I'm not worried about it, i think its a problem.

Also

i think the power of companies is a problem too.

I think I have to learn this attitude. That every problem is in fact real, but problems are not equal in relevance. That's respecting people and their issues, while staying sane.

You should pick your battles. And the society should pick their battles. That way you get to have the cake and eat it too.

>Whatever the reason was, that a family or people where able to accumulate that much wealth: I believe, there should be an upper limit.

And what should that upper limit be? Who decides what it is, and how do we ensure that people powerful enough to get close to that limit don't simply play financial games to skirt these rules?

If the source of my wealth is unrealized capital coming from ownership of a company I founded, what am I supposed to do if my wealth nears the cap? What is to prevent bad actors from inflating my stock price to force me to sell? If I hold my companies privately, who decides what they are worth and by proxy how much wealth I possess?

> I believe, there should be an upper limit.

What should be the upper limit and who defines it?

society

You must be a politician because you did not answer the question.

I don't know. Somebody needs to make those huge decisions, and it is not always clear if that should be by democratic means (here is to you, Trump and Brexit).

Trump and Brexit are the result of people with too much money making terrible decisions for the rest of us. They're not evidence that rich people should have more power.

But incidentally, someone's ability to make a lot of money (or worse: inherit it) doesn't imply that they have any preferential ability to spend it in a way that benefits society. And when someone has the unchecked power to spend massive sums of money on themselves in ridiculous and frivolous ways, it's pretty clear that they have too much power. Because whoever should be making those decisions should certainly not be doing that.

Bill Gates rented a yacht for $5M/week. How is this not a clear waste? How much suffering could have been avoided at that cost? At least put it in some kind of public trust where such behavior can be properly considered corruption.

> Bill Gates rented a yacht for $5M/week. How is this not a clear waste?

Those $5M don't just get lit on fire. They transfer to some other set of people who can then decide what to do with it, and then onto some other set of people. Maybe the yacht's owner donates all proceeds to feed starving children.

It is still a waste in the sense that productive people spent their time building and maintaining a boat for the benefit of a few rich guys. It would represent reduced waste if the money was instead spent to hire those productive people to build infrastructure for their own communities.

Not trying to argue that luxury goods are pure evil, but there is a degree of selfishness in having luxury goods for yourself when there are people who lack the basics.

So you advocate firing all the hard working folks who designed, built, maintain, repair, clean, and operate that boat, and take care of the passengers? They they too will lack the basics, and the money you just protected from "waste" will need to be used to provide for them.

Not advocating anything of the sort.

Only saying it would be /even better/ if the people currently spending fortunes on yachts spent the money building libraries and the like instead.

Somehow I don't think that's what she meant.

No, you pay them to do something else for someone else.

I think you get that wrong. Trump and Brexit are the direct result of democratic decisions in countries with a long history of democracy. Denying that isn't helping.

Yes, democratic decisions resulting from massive propaganda campaigns, funded by some extremely wealthy personalities. Obviously the problem here is democracy, not the very few overtly corrupt and overly powerful people undermining it.

And these overtly corrupt and overly powerful people exist within old democracies. You might have a nice and naive imagination of what democracy could be, but you shouldn't deny what it is RIGHT NOW.

What it is RIGHT NOW, is fixable. I don't know what you're trying suggest be done instead.

Whatever is a good idea, money should not be it.

In what way has a rich person in America spent their money in a way that infringes upon your rights?

You do not think that, through lobbying, a person having literally thousands-more-times a say in our democracy is infringing on my rights?

I do think that it is.

Bill Gates can buy a country. Bill Gates could buy tanks. Bill Gates could buy an arme.

Bill Gates house animal have probably more security than i have.

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