> a million different people each having a $1000 stake or 1 family having a $1B stake
Money is power. Do you see no difference in a million people have a little power vs one family having enormous power?
Money is power. Do you see no difference in a million people have a little power vs one family having enormous power?
Wealth is good. People acquire wealth by adding value. We want to incentivize people to add value. Of course, the "billionaires shouldn't exist" crowd understand little and less, and would happily have us destroy this system of incentives without even achieving their stated goals, because they, much like the "defund police" crowd, are more interested in appearing virtuous than in actually solving problems.
Those are axioms presented without evidence. It’s trivial to find counter examples.
I’m no radical redistributionist but the idea that wealth in and of itself shows added value is clearly wrong.
It's trivial to steal somebody's lunch money. It's much harder to become a multi-billionaire without making something that a lot of other people wanted to spend money on. (If those other people were forced to spend money on it by the power of the government, it's a different matter.)
Just because two people agreed to trade doesn't mean value was created.
First there's externalities. Global warming caused by oil companies. Stochastic terrorism and fragmentation of our polity caused by social media and news companies. Healthcare crisis caused by fast food companies.
Second the notion of voluntary trade is a fairy tail that's ignorant of the underlying neuro and psychological processes that go into decision making. The dopamine system is stupidly easy to game. It's like if we got a bunch of moths to kill themselves by flying into a bright light somewhere and we call that voluntary, as if we weren't merely hacking ancient circuitry. That's what's happening now with opioids, fast food, social media and more.
Reminds me of that adage: "Economics is the idea that if I pay you a dollar to step on shit and you in turn pay me the same dollar to step on shit, that makes for a better world"
Democracy and in a limited way, socialism (pensions for the elderly, healthcare, subsidized public transportation, i know this is not the original meaning, but for this its good enough) counterbalance the power gap between wealthy people and non-wealthy people, but clearly in the western world (at least in my country), the counterbalance is weaker and weaker.
I don't think a random millionaire like Eric Finman should have more power than a random citizen, and yet he have.
I don't think the "billionaire shouldn't exist" crowd actually exist. But i'm part of the "billionaires shouldn't have this much power" crowd, since it feels like in my country, they own the press, the executive and 40% of the legislative power. The judiciary power is the only one that might be a bit free from influence, but i'm not certain.
"People acquire wealth by adding value"
Some wealth implies value add. SpaceX.
Other wealth was partly figuratively stolen due to incomplete laws that prevent market failure. Purdue Pharma, slave trader, hitman, oil company (global warming), sex trafficker, social media company (societal fragmentation), fast food company (costs on public healthcare), landowners (regulatory capture), porn company (victims of revenge porn), car company (health effects of tire dust).
I'd say it's more the norm nowadays that wealth is partly stolen, figuratively speaking. The distortions and market failures have become so large.
The existence of externalities doesn't negate the adding of value. Would we be better off without oil companies? Obviously not (just ask a European!) Hence it's impossible to say that they're not adding value, or that the people who create them aren't adding value.
Patagonia here is the exception, that's why we're all here talking about it!
I didn't want to give my bit of power to my health insurer, but guess what, I have to have healthcare to live and there's effectively one local hospital I can choose.
I didn't want to give my ~~~bit~~~ hefty chunk of power to the company that gatekeeps the patent on insulin, but I really didn't have much choice on that one.
I didn't want to give my bit of power to the telecom conglomerate, but did I have a choice? I need to be online to participate in today's society.
I didn't want to give my bit of power to Google, but... uhh actually I didn't give it to them, they stole it by spying on me.
The reality is that concentrations of power that are inherent to our system of free exchange inevitably congeal into something that looks a lot less free. All of these examples (and there are so many, most of our economy is like this!) don't really represent individual value functions, because when power gets concentrated enough, it becomes possible to take choice away.
Forms of insulin for which the patent has expired are affordable. The stuff under patent is expensive but objectively better at its job. One could argue that the forms in between (patent recently expired but not widely available as generics in the market) are again due to the result of onerous regulations keeping competition out of that market.
Telecommunications, at least the hardwired kind, is a natural monopoly and I wish some smarter incentive-structuring would take place in that market; maybe public ownership of the infrastructure with competitive private service providers operating on top of it. Wireless is generally more competitive and you can actually be online for less money than you think.
I'm not sure what your point was about Google? You certainly don't have to use their services.
For example:
Food, agriculture, energy, media (print/radio/movies/home video), most commodities, productive inputs... there is little that you can buy that is not part of what I would loosely call a "conglomerate" -- that is, a concentration of capital so large and intense that it tends to influence the markets in which it operates. In fact, markets are today less competitive than they have ever been.
Those things that are (I would argue, seem) "competitive" here, like fashion, consumer products, and the like, are frequently as or more exploitative and influence markets (specifically, labor markets) abroad, up to and including slavery. Just because we don't feel that pain doesn't mean others are free of it.
This is because we have done nearly nothing, culturally, politically, economically, or psychologically, to stop the movement of power -- just as you described -- out of the hands of the many people and into the hands of the few entities that control such markets.
The free market, where each individual has the power of their dollar, is delicate indeed. Much more delicate than we have appreciated in the last several decades.