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Comment by DuskStar | Hacker News Reader

This is a horrible idea, because it removes any reason for a billionaire to keep working, or to work harder. Spend nights and weekends at work for an extra million, or spend it with your family because you won't spend the money anyways?

People, in general, do not work for free.

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I'd rather have a thousand competent people working toward their first million than a competent billionaire working toward his second billion.

Also I have a huge doubt that billionaires keep working for the money incentive. Once you get that rich, it is not about money anymore.

Why is it so bad for billionaires to stop working? Presumably, with the wealth cap or very progressive tax, the resources they would currently use to make the next million dollars would be spread out over a million people and those million people might make that next million dollars. If not, then you are saying that the billionaire would make the next million dollars more efficiently, right? Given that concentration of wealth is bad, isn't it better for the million people to make the next million dollars than the billionaire?

Why do you assume that all work done by a billionaire can be substituted with work done by someone else? This isn't always true further down the spectrum - for instance, if you take away enough surgeons, some surgeries just won't be performed.

You are saying that society needs certain people to have enormous sums of money to be better (however you define it, apparently you are saying that only these people can do certain things because they have individual control of large amounts of money; but I don't see how it's better than organizations, governmental or otherwise, having control of large sums of money) than a society where certain people are not enormously wealthy?

Surgeons are not billionaires. Surgeons are trained.

Billionaires are not magical unicorns, and in fact are byproducts of nothing more than birthright, chance, and a culture that cultivates them.

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