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Comment by giacomoforte | Hacker News Reader

I do not think you can call it a social movement because it does not have any significant mass of people behind it and by its nature, never will.

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Maybe if you consider the wealth of the in group vs out group. It makes more sense to me that way. Scary how few people it might need to keep the world from moving forward.

Social movements come in all sizes. Its a bunch of people who all agree on something. That is a social movement.

You can call it a subculture or philosophy or movement, but social movement to me implies something with broad appeal.

Agreed. If society is unmoved, it wasn't a social movement.

It sounds like you're saying social movements by definition can't fail, which doesn't seem like the most sensible definition to me

Man who refers to Heaven's Gate as a social movement

It is a social movement of note and importance because of the power wielded by its adherents.

You might call it a capital movement

> It is a social movement of note and importance because of the power wielded by its adherents.

We should tax the shit out of them, if only to reduce the unelected power their wealth buys.

Just like we should tax the shit out of the non-EA ultra wealthy.

We can have a democratic society or we can have the concentration of great wealth in the hands of a few. We cannot have both.

EA people tend to be in favour of raising taxation. The "giving what we can" pledge is essentially a pledge to voluntarily increase your own taxes in lieu of government taxes.

Giving away your wealth in ways you think are the best for society is not the same as letting society decide for itself through democracy.

And they support raising taxes because it's a good way to signal that you're "for the people" and cheap if you care about power more than money. A billionaire CEO will stay a billionaire if their income tax is 90% and unrealized gains tax same as their portfolios growth, and stay a CEO even if they go broke.

The important part for them is power over other peoples lives because that's exactly what you need if you believe you're a special "rational agent" who is responsible for pushing humanity in the right direction. That power can come from shady think tanks, government jobs or controlling a trillion dollar company.

I strongly agree, but I don't think the USA is capable of doing that. That sort of socialist communitarianism is at odds with the objectivist individualism that they commonly valorize, and underpins most of their heroic stories.

A better term would be an 'order'

How about "conspiracy" then?

you have to measure it like they do, a weighted net-worth average

the more you have, the more you matter

It’s another bubble that a handful of people invented for themselves to insulate them from the reality of the effect on the world. It’s one of the most genuinely pathetic “movements” I’ve ever seen.

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