Comment by robertlagrant | Hacker News Reader

Comment by robertlagrant | Hacker News Reader

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> Wealth inequality is currently a huge problem in the world

This is a problematic statement. Wealth inequality is not a huge problem. If we removed all the billionaires, people who are currently starving or unable to get clean water would still be in the same situation. Getting the base level of human condition up is the important thing, and it generally occurs much more in systems that are not trying to crush people who create vast amounts of value.

> as far as I can see any kind of arguments against tackling it such as 'we'll miss out on innovation' are capitalist propaganda. This is why it would be good to have accurate historical data to respond to these kind of arguments.

I don't see why this is the case. If you let people take more risks and try more things, with commensurate value exchange to the value they provide, then more things will appear. That's just normal.

You can see it in the small even - if teams are allowed to fail and succeed by taking risks, then they will take some risks. If they are never rewarded for succeeding, or even punished for succeeding, then they will never try.

The capitalist promise is something like, 'you don't need to enforce social responsibility on us because when we get rich enough there'll be enough wealth and we will just share it anyway of our own accord'. Maybe in the 1800s or earlier then it could have been reasonable to believe this, but in the current world climate it hasn't happened. Wealth inequality is at the highest it has ever been. The purpose of the existence of government historically was to combat this problem.

If you don't see why wealth inequality is a problem then look at biodiversity for example. It's generally accepted that wider biodiversity is better for everyone, and efforts to conserve a wider range of diverse species rather than a smaller number of better adapted species are encouraged. Now apply this reasoning to businesses. If wealth were redistributed better that would mean more chances for people of the lower end of the spectrum to innovate and produce small businesses which would lead to wider diversity and resilience in the economy. Which ties in with your small team example.

As for 'capitalist propaganda'; for example, considering higher wealth tax rates for the top end as 'crushing those who generate wealth' is pretty clearly capitalist doctrine to me. It's the kind of narrative that wealthy people in positions of power sell so that they don't have to redistribute that wealth. I agree with you that people at the high end should have incentives to innovate and I am not advocating communism. However as far as I can see, with properly globally enforced taxes at a higher rate for top end wealth there would still be plenty of incentive for these people to innovate.

> The capitalist promise is something like, 'you don't need to enforce social responsibility on us because when we get rich enough there'll be enough wealth and we will just share it anyway of our own accord'.

No it's not. It's "people should make free agreements with each other as much as possible, as this will motivate far better resource allocation than a centralised monarchy or bureacracy ever could."

> The purpose of the existence of government historically was to combat this problem.

Blimey, no. The purpose of government was to do what the monarch said, collect taxes, etc, and later, for a few countries, to do what the elected leader said. Governments predate capitalism.

> If wealth were redistributed better that would mean more chances for people of the lower end of the spectrum to innovate and produce small businesses

This doesn't have to be true. There are lots of chances already to create small businesses. The main blockers are bureacratic processes that make it hard to establish and compete, not billionares.

Redistribution itself is a slippery concept, but let's say that Elon Musk gave a load of his wealth (not money, wealth) in the form of Tesla shares to people so they can start small businesses. What would that actually mean? Who would buy those shares if a bureacrat can choose to steal - I mean ,redistribute, them at any point?

> with properly globally enforced taxes at a higher rate for top end wealth there would still be plenty of incentive for these people to innovate

This is a very leaky statement in practice. Bureacrats are not good at designing overbearing tax systems that retain innovation. We're more likely to stop needing good resource allocation (e.g. somehow we crack cold fusion) before bureacrats get good at not starving their populations to death from bad central policies.

What you're telling me is a more explicit part of the capitalist promise. My statement is absolutely part of it too.

Governments predate capitalism. They don't predate wealth inequality. Part of the purpose of the original formation of governments was to tackle wealth inequality in a feudal system.

One of the things that stops people at the lower end from innovating and forming for example small businesses is lack of resources. Redistributing wealth would allow mean more resources available to wider range of people. I'm sure improving bureaucratic processes for small business startups is also great thing to do.

I have a PhD in particle physics and I think that cold fusion is basically completely unviable in any situation. I may be proven wrong. I agree that taxation is a complex problem to solve, which is why I was advocating allocating more resources to this earlier on. 'Rich people who have far more resources than they have any need for and live wildly extravagant lifestyles don't need to redistribute any of their wealth because one day we'll crack a high yield problem and everyone will be able to be wealthy' is a very dangerous viewpoint as far as I'm concerned. It's clear that the current stable climatic state that our planet sits in is becoming strained by human economic activity, and the capitalist promise of 'there will always be more' is becoming more complex to fulfill. There is a clear solution which exists now, and it is to redistribute wealth.

I don't think we'll likely to come to any kind of agreement about these topics so I'm going to leave this conversation here.

> I think that cold fusion is basically completely unviable in any situation

So do I.

> Rich people who have far more resources than they have any need for and live wildly extravagant lifestyles don't need to redistribute any of their wealth because one day we'll crack a high yield problem and everyone will be able to be wealthy' is a very dangerous viewpoint as far as I'm concerned.

It's a bad idea to base your emotional conception of capitalism on so few people they don't matter to the system. In fact, it's a bad idea to have an emotional view of an economic system in general. But I think this is also false.

(If you just want to say "steal" but use the word "redistribute", you'd be in plentiful company, but I'm assuming by "redistribute" you mean "tax".)

Whenever anyone spends money, it's repeatedly taxed. It's taxed with VAT (UK-specific, but this adds 20% to the purchase price already). It's taxed because of all the fuel tax paid to get the good/service going. It's taxed with all the income tax paid to the people who made/supplied the thing. It's taxed with the employee tax (National Insurance in the UK) for those employees. It's taxed via the corporation tax paid by the company that supplied it. So much tax is paid on every good.

Additionally, governments inflate currencies, so governments can tax savings by devaluing them.

Talking as though none of this is present, and we're somehow in a world where barely any tax is paid seems beyond ludicrous. So much tax is paid, at every level, all the time.

> It's clear that the current stable climatic state that our planet sits in is becoming strained by human economic activity, and the capitalist promise of 'there will always be more' is becoming more complex to fulfill. There is a clear solution which exists now, and it is to redistribute wealth.

We already tax people. If you think this is a clear soluton to the climate, you might need to elaborate as to why that is.

When I talk about the richest people living extravagant lifestyles I need to tone down my emotions, but when you talk about them being crushed by the weight of taxation you don't appear to have made an effort to do so yourself.

Thank you for this discussion. Goodbye.

I think people who are emotionally biased against people with this much money often do want to crush them. That's why the phrase "eat the rich" exists.

Maybe. Let me know if they're tasty. Best wishes.

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