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Comment by margalabargala | Hacker News Reader

I think you and the person you replied to are talking about two different things here.

OP is saying "in terms of goals, the end goal should be reduction of poverty, not reduction of rich people".

You're saying "in reality, data says that reduction of rich people tends to correlate with reduction of poverty", thus opening up reduction of rich people as one potential path towards the reduction of poverty.

I don't think it's been definitively demonstrated that the existence of rich people necessitates the existence of poverty. I would agree that, in reality, the creation of rich people tends to also lead to the creation of poverty.

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> You're saying "in reality, data says that reduction of rich people tends to correlate with reduction of poverty", thus opening up reduction of rich people as one potential path towards the reduction of poverty.

That may be true, but I personally also think curbing the wealth of the extremely wealthy is a worthwhile goal in its own right. It's dangerous to give individuals so much power, which is one of the most common lessons in the last 10,000 years of media and also blatantly obvious from the ways many billionaires (and non-billionaires, frankly) use that money to manipulate, harm, disenfranchise, and silence the public.

What society reduced it's rich people and increased the average richness? When I think of the concept my mind jumps to stalin eliminating the kulaks, or mao and the cultural revolution, or pol pot, which ended up helping destroy their society, not make everyone wealthier.

There were obviously other factors at play, but the US was at its most equal just after WW2, which was also a very prosperous time.

Source: Capital by Piketty

When the rich get rich via redistribution of value rather than generation of value, average richness rises after those rich are deposed.

What examples are there of that?

As crazy as it sounds, the cuban revolution up until the late 80s. While their communist economic system was far from ideal, it saw significant rising GDP/cap vs the days when farm labor were like slaves and their output redistributed to petty farm masters under Batistas favored rich men.

Do you have a source for that? Most accounts I've read regarding that period talk about massive decreases in food production after the government took over those industries.

tiny.cc/c0jsvz

They had a rough first 10 years breaking even vs GDP/c under Batista but there was rapid advancement after that until collapse of the Soviet Union.

There's rich people, and then there's the ultra rich people. It just doesn't seem possible to become a billionaire through ethical means.

Why can't you be a millionaire who becomes a billionare through compound interest? If university endowments can do it so can individuals.

Several reasons firstly Universities arent mortal individuals that live a 80 to at most 110 years, these are institutions that many of which predate the countries they are in.

Secondly they are receiving endowments from many individuals and organizations on top of tuitions and cuts off the top of grants researcher working there receive.

Thirdly they arent just getting simple compound intrest from money setting in a savings account instead they run private equity funds and hedge funds, which are themselves morally suspect

James Patterson just wrote books people like and he’s a billionaire. Are murder stories unethical or something?

Does he write his own books, though? [0] [1] [2]

It's his name on the front of the book, but he is not necessarily the primary author. That sounds a little unethical to me.

[0] https://www.express.co.uk/entertainment/books/380231/James-P...

[1] https://theconversation.com/why-you-dont-need-to-write-much-...

[2] https://www.independent.co.uk/arts-entertainment/books/featu...

Stephen King then? Or J K Rowling? They became billionaires off their work and wrote all their own work if image rights are unethical to you.

Taylor Swift, perhaps? Paul McCartney. You only need one example to disprove the case.

It doesn’t seem ridiculous that if you make something and charge $10 and 100 million people pay you that you’re necessarily doing something unethical.

I don’t think any of them have done something unethical to earn their billion, but artist billionaires are certainly outliers.

They’re such outliers that it’s still a safe assumption someone has done something exploitative if they’re a billionaire.

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