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Comment by terminalshort | Hacker News Reader

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Nah billionaires need to be punished, they have raped the Earth for profit and caused mass misery/death upon her people. In fact a good way for the US to rebuild credibility is to probably send a few billionaires to the Hague and have them tried for crimes against humanity in the ICJ.

Lots of billionaires should probably be at the hague. But we should be glad if people can become billionaires because they are generating that much value of both parties being better off, without imposing externalities on others. Yvonne Chouinard came close to this ideal, I think.

If someone can genuinely generate billions in value, not just by imposing externalities on others that they then reallocate to themselves, I will be damn glad that they exist and be damn glad that the hope of getting richer keeps them at it.

No we shouldn't be "glad that people can become billionaire".

We should be glad that people can get reasonable wealthy, say, $100M net worth would be more than plenty, and would ensure that: people who worked hard got a lot ($100M!!), but nobody alone or in very small numbers can try to destroy the fabric of society

Is that hard for you to understand?

The fact that at your age you're still mistaking "generating billions in value" (this doesn't mean anything) with "extracting money from the system and selfishly refusing to give some of it back in a meaningful way" means that you still have to learn about how the world really works

I'm not glad they can become billionaires for their sake. I'm glad they can become billionaires for your and my sake, under the ideal I proposed, which is that billionaires can become that way only by entering into transactions where all sides are better off for doing so.

Because you fail to understand how economy and the world works. No, they don't "only do so by entering into transactions where all sides are better off", that's just a convenient fiction for people like you who never thought about the economic realities

The truth is they are abusing a system and rigging the laws, in order to keep extracting as much as they can. If it was really a "better for everyone", why don't you think all Starbuck's barista would be "overjoyed" of going to work every day? Think for yourself one minute instead of repeating talking points from FoxNews that you never even considered for one minute

Oh I understand how it works. That's why I agreed many of them deserve to be at the Hague.

Remember, I said, ideal I proposed -- the ideal of the free market, where they can only become billionaires by entering voluntary transactions without externality to others. Under such ideal, if someone is a billionaire, it's because everyone is better off.

There have been varying shades of gray for how these play out in reality, the least shaded ones I'm generally grateful for and the most shaded ones are outright criminals that should have their fortune seized and put behind bars.

No, this is truly a pathetic mindset. There is more to the world than making "value." No one dies thinking "I wish I made more value." Absolutely pathetic, much like them.

Exactly. Also it's not the "billionaires" who are "making value". They are lousy at making anything. It's the workers (engineers, farmers, factory workers) that "make".

The billionaires are just good at "capturing" value, and not giving back the rightfully owned share by the people.

They are leeches

"engineers, farmers, factory workers" can just enter a co-op and sell the goods cheaper while still enjoying a slightly higher wage if the billionaires really aren't contributing anything. Seems like if what you say is true, in a free market billionaires would be forced out of business because they could not compete.

You cannot have a functioning economy or political system when there are billionaires because they no longer are accountable to the market or the people

> Taxes exist to fund the government which exists to solve collective action problems.

Wealth inequality, billionaires trying to skew politics… kind of a problem that needs collective action.

Billionaires are a parasitic class, in the sense that they can wield enough power to sway elections, and do very concrete damage to society.

Taxing away billionaires is not "to punish them", it's to PROTECT society.

Wait, are you suggesting we _shouldn't_ treat billionaires as a collective action problem to be dealt with via policy? So you're suggesting what, individual violence?

You do not appear to have a solid grasp on how the world functions.

Billionaires don't reach this extreme amount of wealth by "work" (unless you believe in magic tales and "tooth fairy", but probably you're old enough to figure out that those "tales" of self-made man they give you on the TV are completely made-up?)

Billionaires reach those obscene amount of wealth by tricking the system. Putting themselves in a place where they're able to "capture" the money, and refuse to pay (through normal taxation) their fair share of what they owe the society

No billionaire does his business "on his own". They rely on an existing infrastructure (roads, schools, hospitals for the workers), and the very work of their employees.

So it's perfectly normal at some point to say: you might have done a very interesting business and got rich, but beyond a certain "inequality threshold" (let's say $100M) we tax away all the rest to give it back to society. When you think about it, it's the ONLY thing that makes sense

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