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Comment by theptip | Hacker News Reader

> I don't think they would have done so as a public service after they capped out lifetime income.

That is definitely the big question. Given that Gates is busy donating most of his cash to charity, there are counterexamples.

But even biting the bullet and accepting the premise, it’s not immediately obvious that losing all of the work from current billionaires would be a bad trade in exchange for substantially reduced inequality.

My counterpoint is that most billionaires don’t seem to be continuing to work hard primarily to get another billion. It’s more for the fun/fulfillment and status. If they can still have fun and status even without controlling as much wealth they will probably still go for it.

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> Given that Gates is busy donating most of his cash to charity, there are counterexamples.

A charity of your choice vs being taxed more. If you had a few billion dollars to spare, which option would you choose?

Why should so few individuals have outsized social, political and economic power over the whole country? Why not tax them more and let elected officials representatives decide how best to spend the money?

Probably because most of us have first hand experience with how well our elected officials are with spending our money

Because they created an outsized amount of value and jobs for society. You can say those would have happened anyway but that's a pretend world we never saw working yet.

Pray tell what value has Sam Bankman Fried, who intends to spend a billion dollars [1] in 2024 elections, created for society? [1] https://www.google.com/amp/s/www.coindesk.com/policy/2022/05...

Let's rearrange that a bit.

>Why n̶o̶t̶ ̶t̶a̶x̶ ̶t̶h̶e̶m̶ ̶m̶o̶r̶e̶ ̶a̶n̶d̶ let elected officials representatives decide how best to spend the money?

>Why should so few individuals have outsized social, political and economic power over the whole country?

Regardless of which political party you root for I'd be shocked if your really thought elected representatives do a good job of spending money, especially to the point you think they should be given MUCH MORE money.

>Why should so few individuals have outsized social, political and economic power over the whole country?

You just answered the question. Because they are the elected representatives. If you didn't trust them, why did you elect them in the first place?

They're elected for their political platforms and ideology, not their ability to manage budgets, evidenced by alarming deficit spending. Overwhelmingly across the world, governments have a proven track record of wastefulness, inefficiency and bloat.

In the last few years, elected officials (in the USA) spent over $10 billion on a wall. The previous admin's COVID relief bill included billions towards missiles, warships and other military spending. The current admin's $1T+ infrastructure bill allocates less than half of that amount towards roads, highways, bridges, tunnels, etc.

It includes billions in corporate subsidies and items like over $500M to Alaska including $100M for an airport when no other airport in the country even received $10M (AL senator Shelby is the ranking member of the Appropriations Committee). Middleburg VA gets $2M for a new town hall, and Palo Alto CA gets $3M for their history museum. Giving these people _more_ money is madness.

The question remains open.

Because elected officials have a had a bad track record on how to spend money. And governments are notoriously inefficient

The power and budget of the government makes billionaires look poor.

Blaming billionaires is failure to see that the money is already available, it's just that the voters refuse to stand up. Why would more money in the government's hands change anything?

Because billionaires are already having undue influence over politics and are funding policies that don’t always have the support of the voters. Why not tax them more and let the representatives of the people make decisions independently for better or for worse.

Ask any competitive person how much fun they have competing when nothing is on the line (e.g. playing simulated poker or cash poker) and I think you have your answer.

You make a few errors here. First, your example is something most people don't find particularly fulfilling in the first place. Second, they could give away a portion of their wealth and then there would be money on the line. Third, the fact that there isn't money on the line doesn't mean there is nothing on the line.

The fun and, the status and the power come from controlling wealth to build or do things. As soon as you limit control, it stops being fun and they stop generating value.

If you think 100 million dollar houses are egregious, you could try to make building them illegal. But then they'll just buy one in another country, or a yacht, or something similar.

A lot of this is why capitalism works.

Isn’t Gates richer now than he was 10 years ago (including the Bill and Melinda Gates foundation)? If he’s going to give away his wealth, he should probably get started.

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