Comment by goodlinks | Hacker News Reader

Comment by goodlinks | Hacker News Reader

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if there was a lottery defined 99% of your life outcomes at birth would that be a bad thing?

if it was possible for an accumulation of wealth within one group to essentially divide humanity in different groups that could never be changed despite skill level compitance or morals of the individuals in each group would that be bad? so someone whose great great granddaddy did something now has power for no reason. and their line of decendands wont be able to spend money as fast as they accumulate it - without even understanding how or why.

wealth accumulation and private serveices (like education and healthcare) kind of make this an inevitability imho.

AFAIK its not one person being paid more than another thats the issue.. its those that are paid because they were born with money and add nothing to society that i think bothers people.

EDIT: a good book -The Ragged Trousered Philanthropists- for considering capitlism and the accumulation of wealth (also shock how relevant it is still 120 years later): https://freeclassicebooks.com/Robert%20Tressell/The%20Ragged...

The level of competition is such that you have to complete across multiple lifetimes. You happen to be in a large bucket with a lot of competition you have to be top 1% in that case to even go up to the next level, which includes successfully having children and putting them on a good path to be top 1% as well. Take risks and succeed.

The game is incredibly competitive and challenging and just understanding that is difficult.

It's an impossible feat if the competition has a 10 generations head start and is not playing by any rules.

>AFAIK its not one person being paid more than another thats the issue.. its those that are paid because they were born with money and add nothing to society that i think bothers people.

Sure, but how many wealthy people inherited their wealth and contribute nothing? It's actually a tiny fraction. It is quite common for people from better off backgrounds to be more successful, but arguably that's result of the previous generation investing in their kids and benefiting society as a result. Most doctors come from above average wealth families for example, but we want good doctors, right? The solution to that problem is better public education, not taxing the rich into the ground.

I can't imagine anyone here thinks idle trust fund babies are a wonderful benefit to society, there's a good argument for steep inheritance taxes, but equally it's not actually a significant problem in our economy. It's just a hot button topic that upsets people, but it's really a distraction.

Sure, sorry, they question was wide open so i gave the most generic and introductory of answers..

I trust fund babies are the extreme on the spectrum but any time your parents wealth is the biggest factor in whether or not you are a success the system is broken.

imho i see many people who had support or investment from their parents doing very well when they are average or below average abilty.

Education is ulimately the absolute most important thing.. a nation (or humanity as a whole) has a limited number of assest: land, infrastructure and people. the people being the most dynamic with the largest value multipliers possible. IMHO its a no brainer that you want to invest in people via education as a top priority as it will in turn multiply up all other investment (and anything that means money has a bigger sway than ability i think is a bit broken).

To be clear i am not looking for the systems to be perfect, thats silly.. but i do prefer for example the idea of private education being illegal to ensure that grades actually mean something (not just how much money was spent on you).

Also as a side note i belive that people who think they are worth many times more than others within their oragnisation dont understand how their value is derived and where it came from.. so while i dont seek for all salaries to be equal, i do think within an org they should all be within a certain range (e.g. highest paid no more than 5 or 10 times lowest paid).

I have made / saved millions of dollars with a few hours work - but it was the existance of the org, the customers and the history that gave me the chance to do such good work more than it was my skill. people who can deliver solutions are actually more common than you think - good requirements and problems ripe for solving are thin on the ground.

The issue isn’t the number of people who are inheriting massive sums of wealth or what not - the issue is what people with lots of wealth end up doing (solely improving their own lives) and how that wealth could be used otherwise. (improving the lives of all)

I’m actually struggling to think of how someone could use wealth to solely improve their own life. If they invest it in a company, that investment creates jobs and pays wages, buys equipment and services that people were employed to provide. Even if they spend it on luxuries and entertainment, somebody had to make the luxuries, or provide the entertainment and they benefit.

Clearly productive investment is better, that last point is a bit tongue in cheek, but there’s at least some truth to it. The least productive use I could think of would be buying bitcoin, which is basically just funding turning electricity into heat.

A lot of the time they just don’t spend it and create dynasties. A lot of the wealth goes around and stays within the wealthy circle. Very little of it trickles down.

I mean, honestly, your narrative is very much in line with trickle down economics - which we know doesn’t work…

>If they invest it in a company, that investment creates jobs and pays wages

Someone gives up most of their life to make the investor even richer. In exchange they get barely enough to eat and put a roof over their head (in some cases not even that). What a fair deal, praise the investor!

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