Comment by vrganj | Hacker News Reader

Comment by vrganj | Hacker News Reader

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> No this isn't correct. It's not true that Sam Altman specifically owns most of the US and it's not true of any particular famous rich person either. What it would mean to "own most of the US" is pretty ill-defined, but I think there's no reasonable definition of "owns most of the US" such that any individual or "handful of people" would qualify.

I think you're falling for the STEM-oriented trap of seeing everything through an overly literal reductive lens. Yes, of course Altman and his ilk don't literally have a deed saying "50.0001% of the US" on it framed up on their wall.

But they control the ruling institutions - see the way they act in unison with the American regime, see them sitting alongside leaders of state at the G7 summit [0], see his colleague Musk being invited to purge the government with DOGE.

Power and ownership isn't always quite so clear, especially in increasingly authoritarian systems. As another example, think of Putin - officially he's just a simple government employee drawing a modest salary. But you might agree with me that there's a bit more than that under the surface.

However, even in a literalist reading, the trends are obvious and alarming: Twelve people own more of the world's wealth than the bottom 50% of the population (!). [1]

> I agree that the political question around immigration to the US or other western countries isn't directly related to how people should think about Sam Altman

And yet, the conversation almost immediately got deflected to immigration, because staying on topic - Altman's impunity - would've been an ideologically difficult fact to examine.

That is my point and the mechanism I think is worthy of further investigation.

[0] https://www.cnbc.com/2026/06/17/anthropic-amodei-google-hass...

[1] https://www.oxfamamerica.org/explore/issues/economic-justice...

> However, even in a literalist reading, the trends are obvious and alarming: Twelve people own more of the world's wealth than the bottom 50% of the population (!). [1]

That is indeed alarmist, at least. If you define wealth in a really stupid way you can get to that statement, but it has to be a really stupid way.

Twelve people have the same negotiation leverage as half of humanity and you cannot see how that could possibly be conceived as alarming?

You mean they can give away ownership of companies in exchange for things? I suppose so, but can you give me a for instance? Elon Musk swaps half of his SpaceX stake for something?

Even if they had no power at all, they'd still be forced to suck up to the authoritarian Trump regime. They have to, because he's petty and vindictive and they rationally don't want to be wrecked by a narcissistic authoritarian.

>However, even in a literalist reading, the trends are obvious and alarming: Twelve people own more of the world's wealth than the bottom 50% of the population (!).

This alone implies nothing. What matters is the floor. A world where there was almost no wealth disparity but everyone was poor would be awful, and a world where 5 people had 10 billion times more wealth than everyone else combined would be good if all those other people lived in amazing prosperity. And if you check the correlations on standard of living and wealth inequality, you'll see it not only implies it but to some degree implies the opposite. (Obviously, it is more complicated than that alone, and increasing the floor would at this time require raising taxes in a way that evens things out more.)

> Even if they had no power at all, they'd still be forced to suck up to the authoritarian Trump regime. They have to, because he's petty and vindictive and they rationally don't want to be wrecked by a narcissistic authoritarian.

Sure, but it goes both ways. Musk didn't need to take the chance to wreck government mechanisms that are supposed to be a check on his companies. Altman et al don't need to lecture world leaders at the G7, etc etc. All of those are active choices.

> This alone implies nothing. What matters is the floor. A world where there was almost no wealth disparity but everyone was poor would be awful, and a world where 5 people had 10 billion times more wealth than everyone else combined would be good if all those other people lived in amazing prosperity

This is where we disagree. Wealth isn't some objective number in isolation. Sure, getting everyone out of poverty is amazing and one has to commend societies that achieve that - most notable example here would be China over the past few decades.

But the key thing to understand here is that wealth is a social relation, not some sort of pure material thing. If you were the only person on the planet, technically I guess you would own it all, but I'm sure you understand that statement would be meaningless. What makes wealth interesting is that it is formalized power over.

It's what makes the cleaner clean the well-off persons toilet because they wouldn't be able to afford food otherwise. It's how the middle aged white guy gets to sleep with the young Thai girl because she's worried about her mother's medical bills.

I would posit that that social relation is the injustice that requires solving once a base of material comfort is met. Raising the floor isn't enough. Removing the twisted power games is the only way to have a society that isn't deeply extractive and counter to human dignity.

Similarly, think about the example you've given with the 5 billionaires and everyone else pretty well off. What could those five make the rest do? Can they use their own resources to make somebody else not-well-off? If so, what does that say about the power structures of the society they live in? What does that mean for freedom, for self-actualization?

The discussion was originally about Altman. If we're going to discuss Musk: sure, he is an absolutely horrible person and political figure in myriad ways. Arguably one of the worst people alive, in some ways. (Despite his laudable business achievements and some public goods like Starlink.)

One can't lump together Altman and Musk. (Plus they despise one another.) Or lump together all tech CEOs or all billionaires.

The rest of your post is incorrect, zero-sum thinking. There is not a fixed pie which people take proportional slices out of. That's not how wealth or the economy work. Nor are relative wealth differences the most important thing people care about. People somewhat care about making more or less money than their neighbor, but they care even more about their absolute standard of living and material conditions.

Some thoughts on this topic that I agree with, by the creator of this website:

https://www.paulgraham.com/wealth.html

https://www.paulgraham.com/sim.html

https://www.paulgraham.com/ineq.html

https://x.com/paulg/status/2089044855158956533

https://x.com/paulg/status/2052510098035998846

As for concentration of power in societies: so long as there is still democracy and some laws preventing ultra-wealthy people from influencing politics through completely corrupt means (directly bribing politicians), it's not necessarily a big deal, if everyone already has great lives. The issue with people like Peter Thiel is they publicly say they dislike democracy, whereas someone like Sam Altman publicly (and I suspect privately) supports democracy.

> The rest of your post is incorrect, zero-sum thinking. There is not a fixed pie which people take proportional slices out of. That's not how wealth or the economy work. Nor are relative wealth differences the most important thing people care about. People somewhat care about making more or less money than their neighbor, but they care even more about their absolute standard of living and material conditions.

Yes, but we are talking about a potential scenario where the material conditions are "abundance". That factor is just... met at some point. Then only the other factor remains.

With that in mind, I would invite you to revisit your prior hypothetical and ask yourself the questions I mentioned earlier:

> What could those five make the rest do? Can they use their own resources to make somebody else not-well-off? If so, what does that say about the power structures of the society they live in? What does that mean for freedom, for self-actualization?

Once the material floor is met, these are the kinds of questions and concerns that are left. What do you make of them?

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