Everytime I look at small problems or big global problems, if you follow the money trail, it all leads to some billionaire who is either working towards increasing their wealth or protecting their wealth from decreasing.
Everything from politics, climate change, workers rights, democratic government, technology, land rights, human rights can all be rendered down to people fighting another group of people who defend the rights of a billionaire to keep their wealth or to expand their control.
If humanity got rid of or outlawed the notion of any one individual owning far too much money than they could ever possibly spend in a lifetime, we could free up so much wealth and energy to do other things like save ourselves from climate change.
Somethin to remember, money is very important to how our current society functions, it gives a lot of power to those that have a lot of it, but it itself isnt something anyone needs. Say, you get rid of all the billionairess and redistribute all of those funds so that everyone is well above the poverty line now. All of these folks that have a lot more money now want to use that money. They’ve been putting off medical care so they try to setup an appointment. Getting rid of all the billionaires didnt create more doctors though. They can only tend to so many people regardless of ability to pay. Say, folks want to eat out and treat themselves. Certainly more people than before will be able to, but not everyone, kitchens and staff can only output so many meals, again regardless of ability to pay. And that’s overlooking how many people no longer work there, that hated it there and only tolerated for the funds to survive.
Basically money does not actually create any resources or services, redistributing the money doesnt mean you have enough resources to cover what that money could buy. That’s the main goal here, having resources for everyone. Capitalism sucks and getting rid of billionaires is important, but dont get complacent with that underlying mission. We need to be working on providing needs to people in a way that doesnt require money. It involves a lot of volunteer work and a lot of automation.
This is the circular argument I often have with my friends about wealth and it all boils down to just power.
When billionaires lay claim to enormous amounts of money, it gives them an equal amount of enormous power.
Have that wealth redistributed to millions of people and that wealth no longer matters and no one person has any great level of power.
It’s our own belief that we need or see that it is necessary to have individuals with enormous wealth that is the problem. The belief that our world can only exist of there is infinite wealth.
The other side of the argument is that the change of eliminating billionaires won’t happen overnight. I wish I could pull a switch right now that could drain the bank accounts of billionaires and instantly transfer that wealth to millions of people but it won’t with that way, ever.
I envision a gradual change … where billionaires are just steadily taxed into non existence, where their wealth is just slowly absorbed into public services everywhere and at the same time any individual that accumulates enormous wealth is discouraged. It would be a process that would last decades or lifetimes and eventually to a point where individual excessive wealth is eliminated.
yeah this is in line with the plan of not needing money, providing resources and services without need to pay. Things like public housing, free public transit, etc.
That’s the frustrating thing I see about this debate about billionaires. There is more than enough wealth and resources around the world to have enough food, water and shelter for every living human being on the planet. If we wanted to we could also provide each one of those individuals with an education for the first 20 years of their lives.
Instead we would rather bottle up all the wealth and resources in the world and keep them under the control of a few hundred people who do nothing but keep that wealth away from everyone else and allow the world to stagnant in place for no reason other than to maintain their positions of power.
If we freed up all the available wealth and energy we have for one another towards creating highly educated, highly mobile productive people … we would have engineers, doctors, scientists, inventors, technologists and mathematicians everywhere working on every known problem we have.
Instead, we use the majority of all our energy and capabilities in fighting one another for the right to eat, to find a home or just to live another day.
Wealth still isnt the same as resources. Just because you could afford to purchase an education for everyone doesnt mean we can provide one. It also doesnt mean everyone would want or be able to achieve these higher careers.
Correct and I agree … it’s about creating the opportunity for people.
In our current system, not everyone has the opportunity for an education. For those that have the opportunity, they often don’t or can’t take the chance because they can’t afford it. So instead, those that could have possibly become a professional at something do not because they couldn’t afford it.
The other half is also true … there are some people who have the opportunity and have the wealth but choose not to do much with that opportunity because it wasn’t their passion.
The same thing would happen if you handed out scholarships to everyone … some would take up the opportunity to fulfill their goals and do great things … others wouldn’t care and probably wouldn’t participate … and many others would take part without achieving much because they weren’t capable.
The difference is that everyone was given a free choice to decide if they wanted to or not … in our current system, no one has a choice because they have to fight an unfair fight in order to get what they want … and more often than not, they can not win.
Why not? “We” designed, built, and used such a switch before. It’s #7 in this diagram:
And what is France ruled by now?
Ah, but when was the last time they flipped that switch?
I mean immediately after the French revolution, power passed into the hands of a bunch of (and I’m just looking at them randomly on Wikipedia here) what appear to be noblemen and aristocrats.
They certainly didn’t hand it over to the likes of me and you.
Wrong, more people can afford to go to college. The extra tax base also allows for the creation of new schools.
I agree we should switch away from currency. Look at the stuff people do for fake internet points. We don’t need money to create.
We certainly have the tech and the numbers to ensure the starving artist meme is finally laid to rest. Imagine what creations or inventions we are missing out on because it’s not profitable right now.
I think a world without money is a fantasy.
Money is just a means of trading time, time that I put in, for time that you put in.
Some things like being a doctor are harder than being a fast food worker, it takes years of training, and hard work. It makes sense that their time is worth more.
There is a ceiling though where you’re not actively contributing “time” you’ve previously committed time that’s just appreciating because it’s “invested” in paying people for their time. That’s where the problems come in because you have effectively a years work of thousands of people in your pocket, which is a concentration of unchecked power.
Taxing billionaires out of existence ensures that money is invested (in a democracy) by the voters (through their representatives) and keeps the concentration of power from distorting the politics.
This issue isn’t billionaires, it isn’t capitalism, it’s and always has been throughout history, concentration of power. It’s past time we fixed this unforeseen loophole created by the modern world where a handful of individuals become as powerful as a country.
When you have bosses that aren’t “gods among men”, that can’t just buy up their competition to squash it, it’s much easier to negotiate with them to pay you a fair salary. You’re not just a number. Similarly, you can get more done in politics because nobody’s got so much money that they can significantly grease palms/run a campaign by themselves/etc.
You make more money that harder you are to replace. In the case of the billionaires, they are theoretically hard to replace so they make a ton.
Of course you don’t need to be a billionaire to to be wealthy. You can just be good at business and managing money.
“Taxing them out of existence” is the craziest and dumbest idea I’ve heard in a while. You can’t just do that as it is there money that they rightfully earned. There also would be the issue of the people who have 990 million dollars. Do you want to tax them to oblivion to?
Billionaires are not the problem
There is nobody that’s worth a billion dollars, that’s wealth hoarding. There is no reason our government should endorse that level of wealth hoarding. It hurts infrastructure, it hurts innovation, it hurts national security, it hurts the press, and it hurts our democracies.
It’s the same rational for why we shouldn’t have monopolies and why we have laws against them. Concentration of wealth/power is a very bad thing.
I genuinely do not believe you can be a good person and make a billion dollars. You have either scammed your customers, scammed your employees, or both. There should be a limit on individual wealth.
Do agree we should increase competition
The “loophole” is how capitalism works. Here’s my super simple definition of capitalism. Capitalism just distributes resources based on capital. The problem is that capital is a resource that needs to get distributed. Sure a doctor and fast food worker are both being paid for their time. But not the hospital owner, not the restaurant owner. They’re being paid for their capital, they had the capital to own this business, so they own the capital it generates.
I dont think Im really disagreeing with you though, taxing the owner class on a much more aggressive sliding scale of wealth definitely needs to happen, but we need more public sector workers for all that taxed income to be put to use for. The system is flawed and needs changing, just remember that the work still needs to be done regardless of the solution.
People thought the world without chattel slavery was a fantasy at one point.
Yes we simply added more steps to it, but progress is progress
The problem is you can’t just get rid of billionaires. They are just people who made a lot of money by getting really lucky.
It is also important to note that they do give back there money in many cases as a billion dollars is a huge amount of money. Honestly 10 million dollars is a lot. You can’t just make the wealthy successful people go away because you are jealous.
At the end of they day the richer you are the more unhappy you are. If you basic needs are met you can’t become more happy with more money.
It’s not luck, it’s how money works. Money buys you ownership. And there are many things that generate money for the owner. Businesses, stocks, real estate. It’s a feedback loop that concentrates wealth like we see today.
no they dont