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Wealth is not bad, turning it into power is.

It's easy to see how 67% of people would agree with the sentence: "the rich have too much influence over where this country is headed". What's might not be as easy to see is why 2% disagreed with that sentence strongly. It might be related to http://paulgraham.com/inequality.html with its conclusion copied below.

If you try to attack wealth, you end up nailing risk as well, and with it growth. If we want a fairer world, I think we're better off attacking one step downstream, where wealth turns into power.

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There was a rich man who went up to a woman at a party and asked her, "If I gave you a million dollars, would you have sex with me?"

The woman laughed and said "Sure!"

The rich man asked her "Would you have sex with me for a hundred dollars?"

The woman gasped, offended, and exclaimed, "I'm no prostitute!"

The rich man said "Ma'am, we've already established that you're a prostitute; the only question is as to price."

Power is the ability to induce others to do what you want. Wealth can induce others to do what you want. Therefore, wealth is power.

Winston Churchill =) http://www.goodreads.com/quotes/300099-churchill-madam-would...

I think the kind of power being talked about would be more like raping a woman then using your money to make the allegations go away.

Your example is a free exchange.

I am really not sure how to make that distinction. It seems to me that to prevent "wealth turning into power" we would need essentially complete transparency on spending of the wealthy.

Also, I would probably much rather nail some risk (by limiting personal wealth to some reasonable amount) than risk "a leak" between wealth and power. Most founders, it seems to me, don't start overly wealthy; they would probably still risk starting their own business even if the "supergains" had zero probability (as opposed to really small probability).

Coupled with a good social and liability system (that will allow you reasonable life in case of business failure), financed from taxing of too much wealth, this can even increase the risk people are willing to take.

"we would need essentially complete transparency on spending of the wealthy."

Or complete transparency on the incomes of those with political power?

The problem is, how do you define them? What prevents the wealthy to produce a parallel structure which has the real power?

I think this goes back to what other people said about the wealth and power, that it's really hard to separate. I think it's possible, but at the cost of strong suspension of personal freedom (of what to do with money).

Still, even if we had what P.G. is proposing, it would be a step forward.

"those with political power"

Apologies - should have been clearer - I meant elected officials and employees of the state or quasi-governmental organizations.

Unfortunately, these are not all the people or institutions with power.

Also in a world with less wealth inequality, the wealth on the 'fail' side of risk taking would be less disparate. Risks would be less dangerous as there would be more to fall back on.

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