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Comment by jimbokun | Hacker News Reader

> I've thought for years that we should place at hard cap on wealth somewhere around $10 or $15 million.

Where's the empirical evidence that such a cutoff benefits society as a whole?

> I've argued we should combine this with a move towards a worker owned economy - in which businesses are democratic institutions governed by the people who do the work involved.

I like the German system of giving labor a board seat. We should try that first before burning our entire economic model to the ground and starting over, based on a gut feeling with no hard evidence to support it.

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There’s decent evidence (backing up clear intuition) that wellbeing scales with the log of income. There’s also decent evidence for losses being about twice as painful as gains are pleasurable. Moving money from richer to poorer people should therefore increase average wellbeing as long as the richer people are sufficiently richer, or as long you can make the loss feel like a foregone gain instead.

I also like the sound of the German system.

Not to be snarky, but how could there be empirical evidence for anything that hasn't been done before?

That's true. Although when embarking on a brand new frontier without any empirical evidence available, one would assume there's ample theoretical evidence to make up for it. In this case both appear to be lacking.

In an abstract context that all seems dandy.

However when the power is held by people who would potentially face significant financial loss from either theoretical or empirical evidence, it shouldn't be a surprise that such evidence is lacking, no?

> it shouldn't be a surprise that such evidence is lacking, no?

So there's no way for you to be wrong? But there is indeed all the ways for everyone else to be wrong?

I'm not the one with the power to stop that evidence from being gathered.

Right, so, no way for you to be wrong, ever.

Just your assertions that are always true, in every universe.

What assertion have I made?

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