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Comment by techdragon | Hacker News Reader

Hey Elon… What was that about freedom of speech … I can’t quite hear you over the hypocrisy alert airhorn.

Edit: Note for readers. I’m a political centrist not living in the USA and big Space fan and thus a big SpaceX fan. Elon is responsible for some cool shit happening that I really like… but it’s also incredibly hard to avoid seeing obvious negative behaviour he’s engaged in related to twitter and with everyone more angry at him than ever his attempts to be liked in public (the Chappell show thing etc) … I’d like the Elon of a few years ago back, he seemed more focused on just getting stuff done and less interested in reacting to the public perception of him personally…

Also billionaires are a symptom of a broken society. No one needs more than 999 million even with current inflation rates eating up its real world worth it’s still more than anyone could ever use and we should probably just tax net worth over a billion at 100%.

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>Also billionaires are a symptom of a broken society.

They are the symptom of any society which allows unlimited private ownership of cooperations. Just by probability alone some companies will grow by billions and any major owner will become a billionaire.

>we should probably just tax net worth over a billion at 100%.

Which, in this case, is totally equivalent to the government seizing Tesla or SpaceX. Billionaires do not have billions in cash, they are billionaires because they own assets, likely not very liquid, worth billions.

I really hate to be shilling for rich people, but "disown them" is not the solution. The real problem with billionaires is that they are both extremely powerful and unaccountable. Both of which is the fault of the political class, which both shields the rich from accountability and gives them power. The informal power is the problem here.

There is also a qualitative difference here. The billionaire who became a billionaire, because he built up a long term productive company and the billionaire who won in the positive EV Casino (the stock market) are not the same. The former might even be deserving (although I do not really like that word in this context) of some influence, as a legitimate representative of corporate interests.

Yes, but it’s nigh impossible to strip them of the informal power without stripping them of the actual power they hold by virtue of stocks and corporate control, assets and cash… all of which are readily fungible into political into political donations and all the other forms of legal bribery like funding opposition environmental studies to block competition or funding lawsuits to change laws they don’t like or anything else they can legally leverage that financial wealth for.

As ideally we could separate these two forms of power and achieve the removal of the unaccountable informal power… but the sort of large scale socioeconomic and sociopolitical reforms needed to do this honestly seem harder to achieve than just taxing the billionaires till they aren’t billionaires anymore. Maybe then we’ll be in a position to try and start the reforms and could have the sort of world where money doesn’t buy you unaccountable power… but I think that’s not something that would be achievable in my lifetime.

>Yes, but it’s nigh impossible to strip them of the informal power without stripping them of the actual power they hold by virtue of stocks and corporate control, assets and cash…

Why?

>legal bribery like funding opposition environmental studies to block competition or funding lawsuits to change laws they don’t like or anything else they can legally leverage that financial wealth for.

Make it illegal, you are literally listing the specific things which shouldn't happen. Where is the problem?

>but the sort of large scale socioeconomic and sociopolitical reforms needed to do this

You just gave a list of issues. Ban every billionaire from contributing to lawsuits. Ban them from "donating" to anything and actuslly punish them for violating the law.

>just taxing the billionaires till they aren’t billionaires anymore.

This is just seizing corporations by the government. And the problem is that you expect politicans to move against their benefactors.

> Make it illegal, you are literally listing the specific things which shouldn't happen. Where is the problem?

The problem is that people who have the power to make it illegal are the same people who profit from it not being illegal.

EDIT: your username is so emo, lol. I love it.

Sure, but the problem gets significantly worse as the threat gets larger. "Disown the billionaires" obviously results in a far stronger reaction than "let's stop some of your influence".

If you can't even do the later the former is obviously impossible.

> with everyone more angry at him than ever his attempts to be liked in public (the Chappell show thing etc)

what continues to stun me is how tone-deaf his efforts are. Is he trying to be genuinely liked or is he trying to prove that he's funny" and "cool"? Popping up on stage unannounced at a comedy show of all places, to deliver a catchphrase from 2 decades ago was not going to end well.

Elon just craves attention, and he’s rich enough that he can get it wherever he wants. One day he wants to be a character on Rick and Morty, so they accommodate him. He wanted to be on SNL so he inexplicably gets to host and star in an episode despite being unfunny and untalented. He wanted to be on the Twitter board, they didn’t accomodate him, so he staged a hostile takeover of the company. Not to mention the cave incident where he tried to insert himself, was rebuffed, and then tried to ruin someone’s life.

There’s a clear pattern of Musk forcing himself into places he doesn’t belong and no one wants him, and it never ends well for anyone involved.

There's some truth in this comment, and his reaction to the diver in Thailand was obviously not great, but at least on that topic there's a less scathing interpretation:

In a desperate scenario in which it was considered highly likely that all those kids would be unable to be rescued alive from the cave by any means at all, Musk said something to the effect of I have engineering and production resources, we can try and come up with something in case it may be useful, and quickly built and delivered a device after close consultation with members of the rescue team on the ground, and also supplied various other forms of equipment and expertise.

Luckily the kids were rescued and the capsule wasn't needed.

That diver then said in a TV interview that Musk should 'stick his submarine where it hurts' - for absolutely no good reason.

As I said, Musk's reaction was inappropriate and he's paid a big price for it, but it was hardly without provocation.

Why do any of you care what Elon says? People here spend an inordinate amount of time loving or hating him - when he has near-zero impact on their lives.

The peril of free speech is that it's a 2-way street. Every minute of Musk freezing up on stage is a minute that a paying audience is not seeing Chappelle perform.

> Hey Elon… What was that about freedom of speech … I can’t quite hear you over the hypocrisy alert airhorn.

Here's what Musk said about ElonJet six weeks ago (https://twitter.com/elonmusk/status/1589414958508691456): "My commitment to free speech extends even to not banning the account following my plane, even though that is a direct personal safety risk"

> even though that is a direct personal safety risk

Is he worried about his haters getting a hold of anti-air weaponry or something?

Laser pointer is more than enough to endanger an aircraft.

For some fairly absurd definitions of "endanger", yeah.

It's enough to force an emergency landing, yeah. And that endangers the whole air traffic around by putting it into non-standard situation, yeah. You have some fairly absurd definition of "absurd".

It's really not enough, no. There are literally videos of pilots blocking the light with a piece of paper.

As long as we're talking about regular laser pointers, at worst this mildly inconveniences the pilot.

There have been tens of recorded cases of this every day for decades in the US alone, but not a single recorded accident.

The idea that someone could meaningfully endanger Elon by pointing a laser pointer at his private jet is pants-on-head crazy. What next? Oil slicks on his driveway? Perhaps slowly poison him by idling a car in front of his house? Second hand smoking?

True, by the way do you have some sort of alert or just happened upon this thread? (Re: the topicality of your username)

He created it for the thread.

I am not sure, but the people he points the finger at are getting death threats for doing their jobs:

https://www.thewrap.com/yoel-roth-twitter-elon-musk-death-th...

I legitimately wonder if there's a limiting principal the modern Supreme Court would accept to ban private ownership of a MANPAD.

I'll tale one of those Gepard AA tanks, once Ukraine doesn't need them anymore. You can drive one those to Walmart for weekly groccery shopping! And you propably din't need a concealed carry liscence.

Edit: I once saw people live firing WW2 anti-tank artillery somewhere in Nevada or some similar, desert-ish place. So, if a modern Gepard is out of the question, maybe a WW2 8.8 flak cannon would qualify as a historical collection piece?

Tangentially related, the Washington department of transportation has M60 tanks used for avalanche control: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FZLfboCceGA

A MANPAD would already be classified as a destructive device and I doubt you could even find licensed dealer who has one. Since it needs a stamp from the ATF and a licensed dealer needs to handle the transfer, they are effectively already banned.

> they are effectively already banned

And do you think that is consistent with an originalist view of the 2nd amendment?

Depends on how you interpret the 2nd amendment. Different originalist justices will interpret it differently. The current court in their most recent 2nd amendment ruling indicates that their new test will allow many current gun regulations to stand.

If the current conservative justices believe any weapons at all should can be banned (which they said they do—of course they could always be lying) then you have to think they believe a MANPAD can.

> Different originalist justices will interpret it differently.

I detect some irony.

But I will say I'm not trying to be clever here and ask some sort of leading questions - I really just wonder what limits there actually are now. I doubt any of the federal weapons laws of the 20th century could be passed and deemed constitutional here in the 21st. But if they make full-auto small arms as easy to buy as semi-auto, I'd definitely pick something up.

Suppose you manufactured/assembled one yourself.

I know you can’t manufacture an automatic weapon without a license from the ATF. I don’t know specifically about destructive devices. It is illegal to manufacture explosives, and you can’t transfer explosives to an unlicensed person.

So my guess is no, not without a license that you aren’t going to get unless you have a legitimate business interest, e.g., manufacturing them to sell the the military.

No, Musk only said that in an effort to make himself look like a tough guy with principles. But in the end he's merely a hypocrite.

Musk made clear his personal commitment to free speech when he said Alex Jones would remain banned. Musk specifically cited his own personal experience and opinions as the reason Jones would remain banned.

And lied about the experience, too, stealing the story from his first wife: https://www.marieclaire.com/sex-love/a5380/millionaire-start...

> He spent three days on life support in a hospital in Orange County before we made the decision to take him off it. I held him in my arms when he died.

> I’d like the Elon of a few years ago back

Were you one of those defending him when he was calling random people on Twitter pedos to his 50 million followers?

I was not, I was one of the one’s hoping he would just shut up and get back to making electric cars and cool rockets to put people and robots and anything else we want into space.

He's not gonna send "cool rockets" anywhere. His business is hyping his stock.

Were you also one of those who believed his cars were gonna drive themselves?

He needs to be cruel to liberals to sell electric cars to conservatives. It has worked brilliantly up to now. I am also a SpaceX fan, and a fan of electric vehicles, but my distaste for the 'cruelty is the point' culture is starting to outweigh that.

Given that the biggest grumbles coming out of conservatives is that they think Biden raised gas prices to make them buy electric vehicles, I don't see them lining up to buy Teslas anytime soon no matter how many Twitter liberals Musk puts in harms way.

You are explaining exactly why Musk has to do what he does to sell cars to conservatives. There is a huge amount of culture-wars baggage like what you describe that he must drill through to get them to even consider an EV. Being unabashedly cruel to liberals is the way. Liberals already buy his cars, because they are at this point in time the best EVs on the market - once that changes you will see a change in tone from Musk.

By freedom of speech, musk means the freedom to post misinformation and antisemitic conspiracies, not the atrocity of publishing curated public information.

> not the atrocity of publishing curated public information.

I'd extend that with:

- Anything that makes fun of Elon.

- Anything that calls out Elon or rebukes Elon's statements.

Much like you then I love what Elon Musk is the leader of but I despise him and hate him with every fiber of my body.

Kid is not expressing any idea.

He's just promoting geo-stalking/gps tracking Elon.

But he can still do it on Mastodon so his rights are not curtailed.

> his rights are not curtailed

Nobody is saying that they are. They are saying, however, that this is a serious about-face from what Elon has claimed in the past. He rode into twitter on a high horse and has walked back pretty much everything he's said since.

How is this different then doxing?

Because airports have a giant security ring around airplanes, so you can’t physically get close to him with this information. And it’s transient, so you can’t lurk and wait to strike. It’s like a comedian doing a planned show.

Plus, the tracking is on Elon's jet, not Elon as a person. So nothing is preventing Elon from sending his jet to NY, while flying, charter or first class, to Miami.

A stalker could easily watch the exit for the suites (where private jets go from) at the airport.

not different from a celebrity doing a planned appearance

People's personal movements are not promotional activities.

this is not tracking Elon Musk personal movements, this is tracking 3 corporate airplanes owned by Space X. There is some overlap, but it's the same as loitering in front of one of his companies HQ might help you find him.

It’s literally called Muskjet. The purpose is to track an individual. Loitering in front of his company’s HQ would also be stalkerish.

I wonder what changed for him since last month when he explicitly said he wasn't going to ban @elonjet.

A stalker doesn't need @elonjet. They can just go to https://globe.adsbexchange.com/.

> How is this different then doxing?

Because it's public information that's literally broadcast to anyone listening by every aircraft above a certain size/speed. This isn't information that is considered secret or even that one needs to dig to expose, the aircraft is actively transmitting regular messages containing its location, heading, and speed to anyone within radio range which can be tens or hundreds of miles depending on altitude.

Many types of doxing are free speech

> He rode into twitter on a high horse and has walked back pretty much everything he's said since.

Rather like Keir Starmer and the UK Labour Party.

Sorry, I'm a dumb American and don't understand this joke.

It's not a joke, just an irrelevant (though accurate) comparison that doesn't belong in this thread.

Starmer is leader of the opposition party in the UK, he was elected leader by Labour party members after making ten pledges, all quite socialist / left wing, but since becoming leader he's basically reversed every previous position he's claimed to have and is now taking centrist and even right of centre positions - upsetting many who voted for him (while others, though not me, say it's needed to attract more center/right votes in the next election).

It was sort of a joke - a wry aside that's true, and was meant to make the right kind of people smile. And you're quite right, it doesn't belong in this thread. Sorry.

Not a joke sadly. The Labour membership is quite left wing (understandably) so Starmer's leadership campaign was structured around 10 left wing pledges, promises about nationalisation, the EU, unity and continuation of the 2017 Corbyn era manifesto. He has since abandoned the majority of pledges, waged an illicit war against left-wing candidates, kicked the previous leader out of parlimentary party, appointed a centre-right front bench and frequently says appalling anti-union, anti-migrant and authoritarian crap. He is one the most dishonest politicians in the UK but given a free pass by the press because punching left is celebrated by our media class and never considered a fault.

I can still bookmark Elon’s plane on FlightRadar or ADSBExchange… this doesn’t stop anyone “geo-stalking” … it just stopped one guy tweeting it. Oh and also hurt Elon’s free speech debate credibility.

Wanting to limit people’s potential sounds like a hellish idea of a society.

> and we should probably just tax net worth over a billion at 100%

The reason people put these high limits is they think it will never concern them. But the reality is we should just tax net worth over a million at 100%; or maybe forbid wealth altogether. Or at least we should discuss that, instead of billion limits that may only affect a few people -- people who will never be part of the discussion in the first place.

„If being rich is outlawed, only outlaws will be rich.“

– roughly after Phil Zimmerman

Thanks, I don‘t like that future.

Don‘t get me wrong, I‘m all for progressive and _way_ higher taxes, but this extreme would do the opposite of what you want.

Maybe. But my point is that it's that we should discuss this, and not super high limits of over 1 billion that 1/ only affects very few people, 2/ none of which are likely to be part of the conversation and 3/ would still leave them extremely rich by any reasonable standard.

I don't even understand your point. 1. A billion is 1000x more than a million. It is many times higher wealth and far beyond what could be considered required for a family to survive on for generations. 2. A million is not even enough to come close to retirement, it is way too low of a number, so it is not even enough for one person in one lifetime in the US (which we are presumably discussing since the billionaire in question is taxed here). 3. The affect on publicly available funds from taxing the 1% of the 1% would be equal to or more than taxing the 99% of the 1%.

So regardless of what you consider the right answer to the question (it's pretty tough to support without major caveats in my opinion), they are not at all the same and it actually comes across as an subtle attempt to reduce any potential support by muddying the waters, regardless of what you were actually trying to do.

How exactly? You can still be rich - but there will be a cap on power. That's like saying "if amazing dictatorial power is made illegal, only outlaws will amass dictatorial power". No, in fact, sometimes systems do what they are supposed to achieve, especially when it comes to things like power where we can have a conversation that the ultra-rich are usually already engaged in morally and legally questionable behaviour (Bill Gates anti-trust skirting and various anti-competetive antics, facebooks whole business mode centered around tracking users against their will,so much of Elon Musks skirting and flat out ignoring of labour and safety regulations and other recent antics...).

I'm not saying a hard cap on wealth is the best way to achieve this or that achieving any form of control of private power that doesn't turn authoritarian is possible, but in general, I'm against using these types of "you can't make the thing we do regulated, because then only criminals will do it" argument. Beer, recreational weed and medical services tightly regulated and we don't see massive crime rings build on top of them. If we regulate wealth to such a degree that most people feel like it's fair, it'll be difficult to establish proper crime syndicates around it - the question of how to keep a state that can do this effectively from being authoritarian is a much better question to raise

Well, now they pay 0% so I don't think you need to worry about the other extreme yet....

Do you think if Elon Musk was able to own as much wealth as he wants (which I assume is all the wealth of the world), he would use it to increase the freedom of the average person, or do you think he would use it to work his will on them?

Is that even a question? He's on the record as wanting to run a whole planet. Sorry guys, we have to make this work somehow, oxygen is now $8 Elon Dollars / month...

How would that work? It's not like most millionaires have $1e6 sitting on a bank account.

For example, many (most? all?) farms are worth more than a million, who should own these?

If one wants to start a new venture that requires more than $1e6 to start (say a new factory), how would funding work?

How would that work? It's not like most millionaires have

Don't expect a cogent, sensible answer to that question.

Just like any other tax enforcement works.

It’s leg work, forensic accountants and laws that demand accountability. If the government thinks your cheating your taxes people are tasked to investigate… if the government suspects your cheating the 100% billionaire tax they would assign people to the task and investigate.

I don’t know why people pretend this has to be special… like billionaires are supervillains with unbelievable power to conceal their globe spanning networks and operations.

I didn't mean how would the tax work.

I meant how would ownership of companies work? If a company is worth 100 billion ($1e11), does that mean you need 100 000 people who together own that company (and nothing else)? If it has a good month and becomes worth more, you need to find more people?

Capping wealth at a billion has a couple of icky practicalities, but I can definitely understand why you would want to do this. There are less than a thousand billionaires in the USA right now, if we can radically improve wealth equality by affecting that many people it seems like a good trade, and those people are still filthy rich at the end of the process.

But if you cap it at a million, I start to see things that require millionaires. Starting large companies and family owned farms are two of them. I'm genuinely curious what alternatives to millionaires we have there.

Are you (or bambax) arguing for straight up communism, where everything is owned "communally" or by the state?

The day to day value is probably not even a remotely practical metric for this sort of taxation. Average yearly value or quarterly value or something like that seems much more sensible. You can’t expect anything to work if people are worried about daily price fluctuations causing them significant impact. This isn’t meant to be some sort of punishment after all, just the logical extension of steadily increasing high income tax brackets to a point where we as a society agree you don’t need any more money and the tax rate becomes 100%.

If it worked with strait income it wouldn’t be too hard but at the level of wealth we’re talking about most of the money isn’t income it’s just capital… a big pile of capital assets of value they have control over which they can leverage small portions off to take loans against for cash to do whatever they want at an interest rate lower than the rate of growth in the value of their capital assets… because they’re never a risky loan applicant and the whole system tilts towards them almost as if money had some weird form of financial gravity.

So while I’m no super genius economist and political wizard with all the answers to how it can be done, I just think it’s important we recognise that there’s a point where these people have so much money the system is broken for them and if we believe in the equality of all people, that all people are born equal, we should be trying to change the system in a way to rectify the problems their wealth causes.

There would be years of arguing all the details about trusts and percentages and inheritance and family control and super PACs and even if it’s constitutionally allowed since there’s precedent that money is speech and this could be argued to be an unreasonable restriction on the sort of speech (money) a person can have (not more than a billion dollars worth)… it’s a massively complicated question I’m just saying I think we can agree it’s well and truly kicked in by the time you have a billion dollars and maybe we can all get together and work out a way we agree on that stops people getting more power and money for free due to capital interest rate returns each day than many of us will ever have in a lifetime.

all people are born equal

All people should have equal opportunity, free from prejudice, sexism, etc. But all people are not born equal.

Equality in rights, does not mean people are identical.

Where I live, taxes become crazy high if single, and with imcome over 100k. So I just work less.

And I get paid well, for I am exceptionally good at what I do. This means that by taking more of my money, simply because I choose to excel, the government has taken part of my labour, right off the market.

The skills they so very much desire, are diminished.

People blather on about billionaires, and how the wealth should be redistributed. I've done the math. Take all that wealth, and in 1 year it is gone, forever, never to return, and it barely makes a dent in anything.

Communism just doesn't work, because it removes that drive, that zen to compete, that desire to build from people.

It just smacks of jealousy to me.

> But the reality is we should just tax net worth over a million at 100%

I suspect that the answer does not lie in an absolute number but more in a 99th or even 95th percentile sort of way.

It’s about a high enough number to get agreement.

Day to day citizens won’t care and would probably get behind it because its easy to point at bad billionaires who only did bad stuff because they had billions to do those things with. And tax revenue would help their lives so great … tax the rich … easy sell.

The millionaires are basically just upper middle class these days, they might think differently but it’s not hard to construct arguments based on their real life and use things they care about to get them to agree.

The multimillionaires are the toughest sell, but i think it’s probably doable. They aren’t yet detached from reality, they have causes they care about they can’t single handily bankroll. they haven’t gotten rich enough the tenth generation of their families may never need to work, they can be reasoned with.

The hundred million plus will probably on average hate the idea as they are probably in general looking at the continuation of their net worth growth and considering themselves as likely be eventually billionaires themselves… on average. Some will be on board, maybe even a significant percentage but I think the majority wont. The thing is about critical mass. With even a modest percentage of these people and all the rest…

With that aggregate group you can use democracy to make things happen even with the billionaires trying to buy the system. There are rich people on board to pay for counter media propaganda and the voting class do matter to their elected representatives as those people worry about getting votes next time.

A wealth tax at say a hundred million is so much harder to sell than at a billion.

And that’s all before you’d get into how it was structured. It would be almost impossible for the world to stop billionaires hoarding wealth in some foxhole full of gold and diamonds and valuable art and so on… but even just capping personal wealth at a billion and forcing the rest of their wealth into trusts and companies would likely be a net good as the army of money managers and businessmen would spread that money further around the economy than a single billionaire ever could.

> Day to day citizens won’t care and would probably get behind it

In coastal cities, sure. Beyond that, most people understand the cost of a Prohibition-style war on private wealth.

I did not realize the 18th amendment only banned the possession and consumption of alcohol for the top 0.1% of drinkers, which is what a hard cap at about a billion would introduce. 99% of private wealth is closer to 0 than to a billion. Calling policy aimed at ensuring billionaires don't exist a war on private wealth is ridiculous and like calling the state monopoly on violence a "war on justice"

> It’s about a high enough number to get agreement.

But don't you think it's a little too easy to select the number so that there are so few people impacted that their opinion on the matter won't count either way? And so that you personal won't be impacted either?

Thats sort of the point of democracy. When most of us agree something a small number of us are doing… is undesirable in the view of the majority. We are empowered by democracy to change things so the minority are no longer allowed to do the thing we consider undesirable.

This isn’t about who’s allowed to marry or what religious beliefs you can have… it’s should you be entitled to make more money in interest than the average citizen can earn in their entire lifetime. At some point surely you think there’s enough money and they don’t need more? Perhaps you think it should be ten or a hundred billion?

For me I think it’s a billion in today’s money (roughly, since money is obviously fluctuating) and I say that even though I grew up with the hustle and grind startup mentality as my ideal and dreaming of striking it rich with a startup and becoming a billionaire based on some crazy smart idea and tons of hard work… I’ve wizened with age and I think a billion is more than enough. 20 year old me might not have but 20 year old me was also burning out my mind overworking myself trying to find a way to make myself rich… to be honest 20 year old me was an idiot for not seeing how the system of global finance works and thinking a tech startup was the path to riches. Should have gone for fame and smart financial management of the short term fame related income followed by careful fostering of a lifestyle brand focused on licensing out the perceived reputation.

> But the reality is we should just tax net worth over a million at 100%

As a reference point, a retirement account funded with $1,000,000, designed to support a $50,000 annual spend (inflation-adjusted), only has a 75% chance of lasting 30 years before the money runs out. (per default parameters on https://cfiresim.com)

The original commenter spoke of "over a billion". A million is a modest middle-class retirement account. A billlion is a thousand of those.

That's a strawman because it assumes a 100% wealth tax could exist in a vaccum and would have no effect on the economic system whatsoever.

A more realistic concern would be that if you set a 100% wealth tax for all wealth exceeding a million dollars, rich people would just structure their wealth so they don't exceed that cap. In most cases that wealth is primarily in companies (i.e. profiting off other people's labor). So if want to place a ceiling cap on "how much money you can have" (figuratively, let's not pretend this is ever about cash on hand) we'd also need better transparency for corporate ownership.

Personally I think a 100% wealth tax as a "maximum amount of money an individual can have" is a red herring and while wealth taxes are certainly a way to skim some of that surplus value siphoned off by people who own companies (speaking as a company owner myself to be clear), it's just a band aid for the underlying problem.

In my opinion the only logical solution is to abolish individual ownership of companies, effectively requiring all corporations to operate as cooperatives. This isn't an "easy answer" as there are clearly a lot of nuances to what the laws would need to specify in order to make this happen, and it's clearly in stark opposition to how company ownership works in most places today, but it's the only way to fix the problem of excessive wealth accumulation, if we view it as a real problem.

> No one needs more than 999 million

It's not like anyone has the money in cash you know.

You should rephrase your statement to "nobody needs more than a billion dollar stake in one or more companies". That is more realistic, and maybe a better discussion can come out of that one.

Oh I'm pretty sure the IRS could figure out a cash equivalent.

DON'T

NEED

BILLIONAIRES

To late for an edit now. And while just throwing the number out like it’s a bank balance is a bit of a hot take… I’m fully aware of the fact that any realistically useful proposal for this kind of wealth tax would require a lot of careful structural work to make useful and effective.

It’s important to note that the USA is one of the only countries that expects overseas citizens to file tax reporting paperwork. Normally this is perfunctory stuff. But the key is that it’s law that living full time outside the USA doesn’t mean you have any loopholes for skipping the paperwork… The IRS is uniquely positioned under current law to enforce a global jurisdiction wealth tax on US Citizens … and since the USA already requires a payment for processing the renouncing of citizenship, you could just as easily place a punitive sized fee or fine for obviously renouncing citizenship to avoid paying billionaire taxes.

But once one country moves toward this sort of law I think others would follow. We have international law organisations that are used for tracking financial criminals and if more countries had similar laws these international organisations would gradually be more and more useful in ensuring billionaires can’t just stash money in overseas banks markets trusts and assets.

My take is that billionaires are mostly made because they own a very successful company. So when you talk about wealth tax of these billionaires, you automatically talk about diminishing their stake in said company(-ies).

And I think that is the main point that needs to be discussed.

Another view of this is just that they've very effectively captured the value created by the workers of those companies. Rather than wait for them to accumulate that value personally then tax it, we could limit how and how much value accrues to individuals who run companies.

How would that work in practice? Like give shares to workers as the company becomes more valuable?

Elon could easily raise that amount in cash.

You can't say that after the same Elon bought Twitter for 55 billion. If he can get that money using his stock as collateral then he does have it in cash.

In practice, Twitter is partially owned by the bank right now. Although he did sell Tesla stock to get a large part of that money.

>If he can get that money using his stock as collateral then he does have it in cash.

The literal opposite is true. If he has to sell his stocks it means he does not have it in cash. If you are using your house as collataral, you do it precisely because you lack the money in cash.

The only way to reduce his networth bellow a billion is seizing stock in his companies grom him. Him paying money is the exact same thing, just with an additional (likely devastating, for him and the company) step.

The real question is whether you want the government seizing corporations from individuals.

Freedom of speech does not mean freedom of consequences. Plus, twitter is a private company and can change its terms whenever it wants.

We can freely point out the hypocrisy and ignorance of the “free speech absolutists” like Musk. That would be a consequence of us exercising our free speech.

> Freedom of speech does not mean freedom of consequences.

Actually, the freedom is freedom from consequences (other than speech in return or being listened to or not).

That would require others losing their freedoms.

If you're a dick, I need the freedom to say so, to encourage a boycott of your restaurant, to not invite you to parties, to protest your public appearances. All of those are consequences and important freedoms.

That's the "speech in return" part.

Then we need to discuss what definition of "consequences" you're using.

I gave the definition but I'll write it slightly differently if it wasn't clear before. Speech is free when the consequences are:

- it is not listened to

- it is listened to

- there is speech in return to the speaker

If you consider boycotts and being shunned by your social circle "speech in return", I suppose we agree. I'd tend to consider those to be consequences of free speech, though.

You can use your free speech to tell others not to do business with X. When enough people are convinced by that, it's a boycott.

The part of free speech that is always in question is the free part. Hence, consequences, in this context, are linked to what affects that freedom, otherwise they're just part of being in a reality where everything is caused and hence has consequences. Thus, calling my dog back and it runs to me is not a consequence of free speech in the way we're discussing it.

Boycotts are based on the freedom to buy what one wants, but when they are mandated then they're not. They can be used to try and stop someone speaking, then they're against free speech. If they're not used in that way then fine.

Being shunned is not being spoken to or listened to which is freedom of speech.

Were you forced to invite them before their speech? No, your freedom of association is not affected by someone else's free speech. Burn those RSVPs all you like.

If you want to go down the everything has consequences route then there is no distinction between free speech and anything else in the universe so it's not really worth bothering with.

Of course they can, no one is arguing against that. The point here is the hypocrisy of Elon Musk positioning himself as a defender of free speech, saying that they would not ban this account and then doing exactly what he said that wouldn't happen

If you put it like that there's freedom of speech everywhere, it just so happens that in some places talking gets you killed...

Nobody is saying that Elon and Twitter “can’t” change their terms. Just that it’s funny the guy who literally used this specific example to illustrate his commitment to free speech has changed his principles.

Everyone knew he was a thin skinned hypocrite who only ever meant free speech for things he agrees with. The news here is the proof.

No offense intended with this

Do you ever wonder how the people with your mentality cope with moving the goal posts? RE: "billionaires are a symptom of a broken society. No one needs more than 999 million"

Do you think that in the 1920s people said the same thing but changed it to millionaire and 999 thousand? How far back do you think we need to go in time before the same was said about a thousandaire? I would guess the 1200s.

Sure, this is why you account for inflation, like Social Security benefits do. 10% inflation? 10% increase in the benefit/limit.

This is exactly how I think of it. It’s not complicated at all. No feats of mental gymnastics required just good old fashioned common sense.

The current system enables the power law. Bring back predator-prey to keep the resources balanced.

What do you mean by this?

just joking - had some extra karma I wanted to purge

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