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would a 499 billion cap make you happy?Yeah. No single individual needs that much money. especially in this day and age where politicians are cheap as fuck to buy and the markets will reward any and all regulatory capture in the name of increasing short-term value of stock....while not giving a damn about the long-term ramifications of how it perverts our entire economic system.
>100 Billion?
That would too. Let me ask you - if you had $99 billion USD, would you whine that you don't have $100 billion, or would you, y'know, go out and use the money to enjoy your life and take care of people?
I know which I'd do. Hint: I'd be extremely fucking happy with what I'd have and I'd do all I could to spread the wealth around as far as I could. I wouldn't whine, I'd be overjoyed that I'd have more wealth than all but approximately 30 people on the planet.
The only "work" I'd do at that point is to figure out which diseases could likely be eradicated with enough money, and figure out how to give enough money to get it done. Gates, for all his faults, did pretty much just that. His money kicked malaria's ass.
>Also, it is not as simple as taxing profits. Almost all of this value is simply equity in controlled companies. What is the mechanism here? If you are too successful, the government seizes your company? Dont you think that would be disruptive to investment and growth?
It most certainly is quite easy.
If you have over a certain number in net worth (say, $100 billion), you can't take out loans against your stock portfolio - you have to sell stock or assets. The loans-against-portfolio system was designed to help middle class individuals buy homes, not to help centibillionaires buy $500mm yachts. If you are the sole founder of a multi-trillion dollar organization, your business expenses should cover quite literally anything you could ever need.
The mechanism isn't the government taking away a company, and it's certainly not disruptive to investment nor growth. In fact, as a founder myself, I'd take it as a badge of honor if the government came in and said "hey bro you are now worth a hundred billion dollars, you've won capitalism, go enjoy time with your friends and family". My investors, who invested small amounts of capital at a valuation in the low single digit millions, would be thrilled at a 100 billion dollar exit. That's nearly a 100,000x multiple ROI. If you, say, as an investor, dropped $10,000 on an investment. It gave you a return, after a decade, of 100,000x, or a billion dollars. Your reaction to that would be to complain that the government is discouraging and disrupting growth?