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Comment by chx | Hacker News Reader

> by being the largest Home Mortgage provider in the US (by dollar value), with $126B in home loans

May I mention how absolutely insane is the richest person has more wealth than that?

Why do you consider that insane? It seems bizarre to view inequality as inherently bad, as opposed to a more moderate view that inequality due to government-sponsored monopolies or from influencing politicians to make absurdly favorable deals in exchange for personal kickbacks, etc is bad.

That extreme inequality is inherently bad is not a "bizarre" view. It's a very common one. You're living in a filter bubble if you think otherwise.

Why should "bizarre" views necessarily be uncommon? I think you're assuming a definition of the word based solely on frequency and the other person is not.

You're not approaching a discussion in an honest, open-minded way if your opener is that the opposing widely-held viewpoint is "bizarre". It's not worth engaging with people who argue like that, because they're demonstrating at the outset that they can't be reasoned with and are condescendingly dismissive of other people's viewpoints. It's not the frame to start a discussion with at all; it's just getting in a cheap shot. Saying a view is "bizarre" is not valid argumentation anyway; it makes no substantive counterclaims. It's just subjective name-calling.

Well, whether it's subjective name-calling depends on whether you substantiate it in some way. If it's a contradiction in terms, then name-calling is not the issue. And if it isn't, it might be possible to defend it.

I think there's some ambiguity in the idea that something people repeat is actually a "widely held viewpoint".

Saying it's bizarre seems to me to be standard shorthand for "if you really think about the implications, which people usually don't".

So-called "ideas" or "viewpoints" are more fit in an evolutionary sense the less people think about them while transmitting them.

> Saying it's bizarre seems to me to be standard shorthand for "if you really think about the implications, which people usually don't".

Catching up here (original commenter). Your take is spot on as to what I meant. (Probably my fault for being unclear)

Many studies have shown that inequality is bad for society irrespective of the overall absolute wealth of the society.

One saving grace of inequality, which I think doesn't get enough love, is that fractional trillionaires are spending lots of money right now to get humanity into space. The governments can't do it. Apollo was an off-by-one success, followed by decades of failure. Boeing used to do this contracting work, now they can't build jets, can't build tankers, can't build rockets, and can't build crewed orbital vehicles. Blue Origin and SpaceX are kicking the * of the US governmental space development effort, while taking the cash the US spends on access to space. Without those fractional trillionaires, we'd be stuck with leaky Boeing rockets sending crews to their deaths.

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