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Comment by 317070 | Hacker News Reader

How is that relevant? I would give up 83% of my wealth if all other wealthy would and it would solve inequality. If it is only me that needs to give up 83%, then not only is it not fair, it also does not solve societal inequality.

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I'm not sure how confident wealthy individuals might be that giving up 83% of their wealth would solve inequality.

I'm not sure how many wealthy people care about inequality.

I used to work with a multi-millionaire who thought everybody that was poor just didn't work as hard as him / wasn't as smart as him. He thought everybody should work 2 jobs and go to school in order to better themselves.

Of course. Not that I agree with that idea, but no one should give up the wealth that they built up without sufficient guarantees (and the guarantees need to be enormous) that everyone else will and that it will be used for the greater good. For example, in Western Europe after WWII such taxes could be raised effectively. Right now, governments have more of a trust issue to effectively make policy like the above. But being impractical does not imply it is a bad idea as of itself.

I don't know how much wealth you have but you could probably find 2-3 people in your circle of friends who if you gave 83% of your wealth to it would seriously improve their lives.

Why not do it? Why does everyone else have to do something first?

You can't make widespread culturual, social change on an individual basis like that. It's like asking people why they don't just cut the government checks if they think taxes should be higher- even if I cut the government a check for everything I had it would increase their coffers by ~0.0000001%. It's not significant on that level.

I'm not asking everyone else to do it first. I'm asking everyone to do it together.

Why don't you solve the issues of 2-3 people around you, people you know and see, rather than trying to change the world?

You'd actually see the difference you're making, instead of feeling helpless about massive issues.

Because I am trying to make a statistically significant change, not a change just to make me feel good.

Wrong, you are making yourself feel good by telling yourself the problem is too great to handle. You feel like you're a good empathetic person except you don't do anything.

Actually doing something takes effort, and is hard, and is risky.

I'm not saying the problem is to great to handle, I've explained ways to handle it.

A useful analogy I once heard: suppose I want the government to build a dam somewhere. It would be totally pointless to go to the riverbank and start piling up rocks myself.

on the other hand, if the dam is really important and you go out start piling up rocks, you might be surprised who shows up to join you.

lol what? Literally like all of human development is because somebody didn't want to sit around and wait for the government to solve their problems. This is such a crazy sentiment. It's literally the silly conservative talking point that liberals want the government to solve their problems.

The infrastructure for this at scale is not feasible and also not efficient for helping those most in need of help.

Then what do you do when you realize you’re not the smartest, or best athlete, or good looking? There will always be inequality to some degree or another.

I am neither the smartest, best athlete or best looking by multiple degrees of magnitude. Why I should be the richest by multiple order magnitudes is a complete miracle to me.

Yes, there will always be inequality. Yes, that is a good thing. But that is no excuse to the current level of wealth disparity.

There isn’t “extreme” inequality, there is higher inequality though. Btw, if you were to lookup the root cause for this you’d find the government and the fed printing money that pushes up equities.

Usually advocates of progressive tax systems are more concerned with inequalities in the access to food, shelter, education, and health care.

Inequality in all its forms is not bad per se. Economic inequality is bad because (1) on a moral level, it is grotesque that some people have so much while others struggle immensely (and we can do something about it - money can be transferred, looks cannot), and (2) money amplifies the political voice of those who have it, undermining the concept of democracy - especially when they use that voice to direct benefits of the political system to themselves, at the further expense of the have-nots. Socialism for the rich and capitalism for everyone else, as the saying goes.

Plus, the sheer magnitude of inequality is immense in the area of wealth. It follows an exponential distribution; those other things you mentioned follow a normal distribution.

> money amplifies the political voice of those who have it

This is an underrated point; capitalism with billionaires is crony capitalism.

I never really understand this perspective. it's not like there's some magic cutoff where finally an organization has enough money to do something good. unless there's some significant economy of scale or transaction costs at play, the 83% of your wealth funds just as much "good" whether or not other people pay. why are you only willing to pay if it solves a huge problem in one fell swoop?

You mean economy of scale or transaction costs such as the government being able to negotiate drug prices when everyone is on Medicare (or some other version of nationalized healthcare) so that drug companies can't raise insulin and epipen prices 10,000% with no improvements to the drugs?

That’s plainly incorrect. 83% of my lifetime wealth might pay for 0.1% of a suspension bridge, but 0.1% of a bridge by itself does not carry 0.1% the cars that a completed bridge carries. The incomplete bridge carries no cars.

we don't only need large discrete items. 83% of a software engineers lifetime earnings could feed/house a lot of people for a short time or at least a few indefinitely. it could pay off many student loans. it could buy thousands of books for a library.

There are huge economies of scale for these things too, and more importantly, there needs to be structure and people who know how to implement social programs getting paid to do so.

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