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Comment by b112 | Hacker News Reader

That wealth is not sitting in a bank account somewhere. It is in the form of corporate ownership, stocks, it is part of the economy. Some of it is never raw cash.

Are you purposing the governement take 99% of ownership of endless corporations? That's pretty much what would happen, if you taxed 99% of billionaire's wealth.

And if you did that, who would the governement sell the shares to? Remember, you just taxes those nasty billionaires, taking 99% of their wealth, so there is no one to sell those shares to.

And next year, there are no billionaires left. And likely the economy has crashed, because yeah, the government knows how to run large corporations well.

All that "billionaire" means, is that the person directs private enterprise. Get over it. We need leaders, and they're it.

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Hello me from 2003. I would have written almost this exact comment twenty years ago.

In the meantime what I've learned is that:

1. Billionaires have 10 fingers and 24 hours just like the rest of us. They are not superhuman, superintelligent, or even particularly good at anything. Many are on top of their organization simply by inheritance or successfully navigating internal organizational politics.

2. Greed is a real disease. It's a mental illness. We don't call it that anymore. But what would you call an obsession with acquiring thousands of times more wealth than is necessary to have a full and complete life? Many lifetimes!? There's some kind of serious pathology there.

3. Billionaires either inherit huge amounts of money or they create organizations that funnel money up to them. The day-to-day earnings of the organization are the operation of a huge pyramid of people who do real work. They're taxing the produced wealth of their org they sit atop of.

4. Most organizations can coast for months or years without any real leadership, but would sputter and stop instantly if the people at the bottom stop working. Our age's conceit is to think the guy with the rudder in the fog is the leader when there are dozens of slaves doing the rowing and fish are jumping in the boat.

5. Billionaires never get screwed. Ever. They have bad ideas all the time. They can literally fuck up until the cows come home and still get mega payouts and people still lionize them.

You completely misunderstand where billionaire wealth comes from. They are billionaires on paper, not from funneling money from workers to their bank accounts.

I love how this line is used.

so if they’re billionaires on paper, can someone explain their lifestyle?

How does Gates own so much farm land?

Yall are actively fooling yourselves.

I get your point, that the wealth is based on the value of stocks and so on, but keep in mind that not all billionaires are founders whose billions originated from incepting a company. Some get hundreds of millions in stock grants each year, which is indeed revenue not paid to workers or shareholders.

Simply because I speak truths about billionaire assets, does not mean I idolize them. I also do not idolize politicians, thought leaders, or really anyone.

But billionaires, as I said, are a focal point in a capitalistic society. They direct the wealth they control.

There are indeed good and bad billionaires, just as there are good and bad dentists, janitors, and violinists. I wonder, in your world, how readily you realise this, in categories you villianize?

It seems more to me, that once you realised billionaires are human, you became angry with the the wealth they manage.

Did you become mad with other levers in our society, when you realised the same?

There’s many things we can do to address the problem without resorting to seizing all of their wealth in a single year.

1. A wealth tax of 1% (we pay property taxes today this is no different) over a wealth of $10 million 2. End share buybacks (this is just stock price manipulation to enrich shareholders) 3. Tax corporations on the profits they report to shareholders, not the IRS. If corporations want to dodge taxes with nonsense ownership structures but want to brag about their profits to shareholders then fine, we’ll use that number instead

At the end of the day we don’t need billionaires to run corporations. Amazon would be fine without Bezos, as would Tesla, etc. There’s millions of competent people that exist that can run a business without privatizing all the wealth for themselves.

France tried the wealth tax. It resulted in lower tax revenues, not higher.

> There’s millions of competent people that exist that can run a business without privatizing all the wealth for themselves.

So why aren't they billionaires?

Because becoming a billionaire requires stealing labor that you didn’t do, which goes against the whole comment they made?

Making a deal to exchange money for labor is not stealing.

If you still think your labor is being stolen, start your own business, where you get to keep all the profits.

It does when all the land in a country is privatized and people can’t sustain themselves without being coerced into an employer-employee agreement where the employer has all the leverage.

You don't need land to sustain yourself. Japan has very little land, and is very wealthy.

> the employer has all the leverage.

You don't need land to start your own business. Besides, if the employer had all the leverage, all the employees in the country would be working at minimum wage.

Your definition it isn’t. My definition it is.

Affirmative consent can not be given in worker/employer relationships. Which makes the entire contract predatory.

You can make up definitions to mean whatever you want to, I see that rhetorical trick all the time.

It doesn't work with me, though.

> Affirmative consent can not be given in worker/employer relationships. Which makes the entire contract predatory.

Another rhetorical trick: A is not equal to B, therefore A is not equal to B.

You think it's possible to have a fair deal where the literal life of one party (the worker) depends on the outcome, but not the other party (the employer)? Because that seems to be what you are saying here.

Isn’t that the case every time one buys any life essentials like food, drinkable water, clothing, shelter and heating/cooling? Are all of those unfair deals? Because that seems to be what you are saying here.

I think you're getting it. Please continue. :)

They are also all more affordable and more readily available than they ever been in the history of this mankind. I couldn’t be happier with these deals… I don’t think you are making the argument you think you are.

I think I am, but thank you for your concern.

Did you see the part in the history books where capitalism increased work hours and decreased real wages for workers for hundreds of years? Happy to provide sources if you're going to actually read and engage with them, and not going to just dismiss them.

> It doesn't work with me, though.

That’s fine. A lot of our culture is based upon force and preserving vestiges of slavery.

This happens subconsciously. It takes a lot of reflection to understand a lot of what we’ve basically accepted as the way to go in the western economic model is beyond unfair and fucked.

I hear that fatalism and defeatism all the time on HN. It's sad. In the US, you are not a slave, and you have choices, and you can negotiate.

> is beyond unfair and fucked.

Oh baloney. The US has the highest standard of living in the world. US poor live better than medieval kings. That's why literally millions of poor people from other countries try desperately to get in to the US.

A note about fairness. Life isn't fair. It cannot be made fair. Everybody's circumstance is different. Some are taller, some shorter, some smarter, some dumber, some healthier, some sickly, it goes on and on. Just look at sports teams. They're all about exaggerating how unfair it is.

But what the US does try to do is:

1. have everyone equal under the law

2. guarantee certain fundamental rights

The rest is up to you to make the most of your opportunities. Note that (1) and (2) are under relentless assault in this country, often in the name of producing equal results.

Since when does running a business mean you have to be a billionaire?

Do you think only businesses worth billions of dollars should exist? And all small and medium sized businesses shouldn’t?

None of your questions follow what I wrote.

If "millions" of people are as competent as billionaire managers, why aren't those millions also billionaires?

You are almost getting it :)

EDIT: Sorry for the snark. The answer is: unequal access to capital, opportunities, connections, not to mention "intangibles" like education, safety, free time, comfort, lack of caring responsibilities, etc. Was 86-DOS superior to its competitors (or was Bill Gates a uniquely talented/hardworking individual)? Probably not, but he did have every advantage possible: most importantly lots of money and his mum putting in a word for him with IBM's CEO (and the rest, they say, is history ;))

> Was 86-DOS superior to its competitors

Having used it contemporaneous with MS-DOS, no, it was not. It wasn't as good, and several times more expensive. I assume you meant Gary's OS.

Bill Gates actually initially declined the offer from IBM and SENT IBM TO GARY! To say Gary had no chance is just inaccurate. Gary muffed the deal, and IBM went back to Bill, and this time, Bill wasn't going to miss the opportunity.

Microsoft was started for something like $5000. An advantage nearly every businessman in the US had.

Mind you, when taxes were the highest ever in the US, we produced billionaires, such as Howard Hughes[0]. On the highest end during this period, income tax was 70% and capital gains tax was a high as 25% (compared to 15% today).

It doesn't stop people at a certain point, because at a certain point the money just isn't "real". If you could earn 60% of a billion dollars, would you take that deal? Of course you would. anyone would. 400 million dollars is a staggering amount of money for anyone.

[0]: https://www.aerotime.aero/articles/25483-howard-hughes-aviat...

Damn, TIL that it's either "billionaires pay the least amount of tax in any income bracket" or "the gobnmint seizes 99% of all enterprise stock in 1 year".

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