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Comment by justonepost | Hacker News Reader

What I want to see is figures on consumption. Fundamentally, who really cares about wealth? They are just numbers in a bank account somewhere. Whoever is good at growing those numbers without causing inflation - more power to them.

What we need is to redistribute consumption, not wealth.

Punish the rich for wasting resources on buying super cars and yachts and mansions, don't punish them for innovating and working hard.

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>Punish the rich for wasting resources on buying super cars and yachts and mansions, don't punish them for innovating and working hard.

Harder than 82% of the other population? Lol.

This is Marxism at it finest: boil the complex reality of the wealth generation and the economic productivity of the super rich into a seductive narrative about oppression using a ratio that you actually wrote incorrectly:

  Harder than 99% of the other population? Lol.

If you punish the most productive members of a society and redistribute wealth in any way that adheres to the oppression narrative, there will be absolutely disastrous consequences. This is because your perception how wealth is distributed is flawed - It is not the tyranny of the 1% that creates their wealth, it is their sacrifice. Remember, they only get rich if they sell something that is cheap to huge numbers of desiring consumers (a very difficult endeavor), or if they provide a useful service to large-scale businesses (a similarly difficult exercise). Both of those are good activities to have performed by intelligent, hard working individuals, because they provide a unique and often impossible-to-duplicate value to their customers that truly enrich their lives.

To be more precise, 82/18=4.5 times as hard as the combined remaining 99% of the population.

>It is not the tyranny of the 1% that creates their wealth, it is their sacrifice.

http://digg.com/2017/wyatt-ingraham-koch-shirts

You need to refute the central point of my argument, not provide a counterexample as you have done.

We are all grown adults here and there is no need to point out that those earnings are not justified by a relatively higher 'sacrifice' or work. Being poor is a high sacrifice enough.

Being poor is not a sacrifice. Being poor is a condition in the terms of your life. A sacrifice is being frugal, being diligent, and working hard at self-improvement - Do all poor people do that consistently, as a quality of being poor?

Of course not; being poor is a condition, it is not a sacrifice. It holds no merit as a condition. You cannot use your lack of capital as a bargaining chip at the table. It is not a sign of your deserving more money. If you work hard and do something good for me, that I am willing to pay for, then you deserve money.

Capitalism is altruistic. It functions when people do good, valuable things for each other and establish trust that payment will be provided for that value. It has nothing to do with your status as poor.

>Capitalism is altruistic. It functions when people do good, valuable things for each other and establish trust that payment will be provided for that value. It has nothing to do with your status as poor.

Like selling addictive opioids, scam affiliate marketing subscriptions, atmosphere-ruining fossil fuels, attention-destroying social media sites (often targeted at children!), society-destroying social media bots, arcane financial products whose only purpose is to shield immense wealth from taxes or regulation, etc. etc.

Yeah, capitalism sure is great, ain't it.

Yes, tragedy of the commons is a perfect example of how capitalism can fail.

Well, let's stop the internet too then. It has all of these things in it! It can't be any good then.

You're absolutely insane if you think we should abandon capitalism. It is about the only social system that does not result in the state killing hundreds of millions of it's own. The ideologies that you profess here are incredibly dangerous.

I didn't say we should abandon capitalism, I just think characterizing it as altruistic is extremely naïve. Capitalism might naturally tend towards the greater good better than other social systems, but it has no built-in guideposts that prevent destructive behaviour (see above).

Moreover, with the amount of ecological damage (mass, irreversible extinctions, global warming), indigenous genocide, slavery, etc. I'm not sure if being anti-capitalist is as "insane" as you put it. Global capitalism has given us advances in medicine, culture, reduced warfare, material wealth—but these advances haven't come without significant costs. Depending on what you value, capitalism could end up being a net-negative system.

I know plenty of people getting very, very rich doing very, very (legal) unethical things. Many of them are users of this site.

Absolutely... 82% of the rest of the population really has no idea on how to properly do capital allocation. The Warren Buffets of the world are pretty rare.

But seriously, who cares if some guy is controlling how 10 billion dollars get invested? He certainly knows better on how to do it than I do.

What upsets me is when that guy siphons money off of that 10 billion and buys some stupidly large house which is utterly useless to society at large.

What size house do you recommend?

> But seriously, who cares if some guy is controlling how 10 billion dollars get invested? He certainly knows better on how to do it than I do.

I wouldn't be entirely sure about that given how poorly most funds seem to do against the bare stock market.

If no one cares about wealth I'm sure the wealthy won't mind a 100% wealth tax then.

After all it's only numbers in a bank account.

There are jobs and companies that build & maintain the super cars, yachts, and mansions. If you punish that consumption, you'll also punish everyone that's benefiting.

Sure, but those are STUPID jobs. They only innovate for the 1%. It's a redirection of global resources into something that only serves the rich.

If we had a consumption tax that redirected all spending into things that help everyone, than all of these things we fret about will go away.

The great capital allocators of the world will still be able to be the great, rich capital allocators of the world, but minus all the wasteful toys.

They'll serve mankind doing what they do best without siphoning off important innovation and resources.

I doubt you'll have many capital allocators in that world.

Warren Buffet seems to like that world and he's pretty good at it.

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