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Comment by spurcell93 | Hacker News Reader

I'm not sure exactly what GP meant, but I took the spirit of the post as more "I wish there wasn't so much wealth inequality that ONE person could own a superyacht. I have no problem with yachts in and of themselves."

Edit: sibling since posted

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So, it's OK for a group of, say 20 people to have enough disposable wealth to pool together to fund the amortized annual expense of buying and maintaining a superyacht.

But it's not OK for one individual to invest that money for 20 years and then buy it.

You're still not getting it. It's not about how many X owners it takes to pool the money together to buy something obscenely expensive and wasteful. It's about the wealth disparity that makes it possible for just a few people to do something like that, especially given that the wealth disparity is based on rent-seeking (and frequently borderline-fraudulent) behaviors.

My preferred world is everybody doing better, even if some can afford things that are "obscenely expensive" (good for them!), because I think absolute well-being is more important than relative well-being.

How about a world where everyone has basic needs met, but a few can afford a large yacht?

Or a world where everyone can afford a yacht club membership, but a few people can afford TWO large yachts?

jonnycomputer wrote "In my preferred world, no single person would be able to afford a large yacht."

I'll say it again: "What an awful attitude." It just proposes taking away from people who have what he thinks is too much, without any benefit stated or implied for anyone else.

Inequality, rent-seeking, and now fraud are all topics that have been added later.

I didn't propose taking anything away. I said that in my preferred possible world no one would be rich enough that they can individually afford such extravagances. I made no claim about this world, not did I outline how that state of affairs would have come about.

Did I touch a nerve or something?

It's focusing on the harm to specific individuals rather than any benefit, thus implying you consider that change a benefit in itself, rather than a necessary harm that enables some other benefit.

It's like Hillary Clinton saying she'd put coal miners out of business - it sounds hateful, regardless of the intent.

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