Billionaires. No one needs this much money and it’s not helpful to have this much hoarded.
We get it, you won at capitalism, now actually contribute to the world around you
Nobody earns a billion dollars. It can only be stolen and exploited from other peoples’ labor.
Out of curiosity, let’s say I’m a video game developer and I make games by myself (no team). I have a hit success and sell 300 milion copies worldwide for an average of $20 a piece and am now a billionaire.
Was that money stolen or exploited? If so, how? If not, how does that jive with your stated position?
You’re right that the claim that “being a billionaire requires exploitation” is massively oversimplified. But the situation you’ve described is essentially winning the lottery. Yeah, you put the time into think of, and execute on an idea, but everything else, from having the time to work on a possible flop, to it being a hit with 300 million people is ultra luck-based. 1000 people could do the exact same thing, and 1 might hit it big. It’s gambling.
A more accurate phrasing of the original statement is: the only way to reliably amass billions of dollars in wealth is to exploit a supply/demand gap to the point of unsustainability.
A small business that operates with integrity, prioritizes the wellbeing of their society over their profits, doesn’t price gouge, and doesn’t discourage healthy competition will never become worth billions. They will always lose to competition that is willing and allowed to forego ethics for profits.
So 100 people could try your strategy of making a game that goes viral, and none of them are going to do it, most probably won’t even make a profit. But then 100 people could try the strategy of exploitation, and they’re going to reliably turn a profit. We allow a society where exploitation is a good investment.
Regardless of what people think of Peter Thiel he says out loud exactly what is wrong with late-stage capitalism: competition is for losers.
You are talking about Minecraft level success and even that took many years of success and being bought by one of the largest companies in the world to reach that many sells.
Not all of that money goes to the developer, but also to the seller places and other places. You’d also still have to pay income tax.
Ideally, there’d just be a 100% income and wealth tax after having say, 1/10,000,000th of the world’s total GDP. Without any loopholes.
With a world GDP of approx. $ 102 trillion, or 102 billion if you use the long scale, that is about $ 10.2 million you would have at max.
I think it fair up until then, exploited after that. With that money, you can practically buy anything to your heart’s content anyways.
How about more brackets?
– Practical scenario –
Suppose you had a wealth of 10 billion. The lowest bracket is a 3 billionth of the world’s income, so say 34k. That’s taxed 0%.
The lower middle is from there til 1.6 billionth of that income, around 64k. Taxed 35%.
Upper middle, around 1.6 billionth til 1 billionth (around 100k), taxed 65%.
Upper, around 1 billionth til 1 millionth (10 million) of world’s GDP, has about 99%.
Highest has 1 millionth and beyond. Let’s assume the world’s GDP is 100 trillion for ease of calculation.
So, you have 10 billion. 10 bil - 10 mil. 9.99 bil, all removed, used for public works.
10 mil - 100k, 9.9 mil. Taxing 99% of that 9.9 mil gets 99k.
And so on, until you have a smaller but respectable amount to play with.
Yeah we really need an upper limit for wealth. In video games you would eventually cap the score, and billionaires are far in excess of that. Reminds me of that episode of Ducktales where Scrooge celebrates that he has become so rich he no longer has to pay taxes because they cannot be calculated any more.
We would be ~1000 years in the future right now without Abrahamic faiths.
You’re probably right but I can’t help thinking there would just be a different version, equally harmful and controlling, stunting our growth.
I think it’s part of us that we have to outgrow as a species. For some reason I’m confident that will happen, given enough time.
Talked about this a ton with an LLM a couple months back. The thing is, there was never an alternative that captured a similar psychotic zealotry. All groups have their faiths throughout the same eras, but none match the exported hate, murder, and industrial scale slaughter of other humans like the Abrahamic faiths. Confusion Monks never invaded France. Buddhists never occupied Scandinavia. The hate, death, and constant conflict of the Abrahamic faiths are the absolute most toxic and harmful aspect of all of humanity. The most deadly conflict since WW2 has been in Africa over the last few years. Most of the west isn’t even talking about this. It is a Abrahamic in origin. Gaza is the same. It has all been like this for 2500 years of constant killing. Other places had minor issues, but they never exported and in the present, these others are mostly in decline. If you take away the Abrahamic faiths, I bet all are gone in half a millennia. The man was as schizophrenic as the nations and peoples he left in his wake. Taming the ghost of the worlds most psychotic killer changes everything for the better.
You’re getting religion mixed up with technology and opportunity.
There’s been plenty of violence, war, and extremism in the name of Buddha and Confucius. They absolutely can be used to justify genocide, just look at Myanmar. It’s very difficult to find a major religion that has never produced fanatical sociopaths.
I’m an atheist and think we’d be better off if we moved beyond religion. That said, I don’t think it’s true we’d be so much farther ahead without it.
Looking at early humans I think religion was a competitive advantage, because it organized groups of people who might not otherwise have worked together. It allowed us to move beyond tribal affiliation, to create a common “operating system” for societies and conceive of and pursue multigenerational goals.
I think we can do all that stuff now without religion, but also think we need more explicitly defined structures and institutions to fill the role religion has played.
Poverty. It’s honestly something I don’t wish upon my worst enemy and the fact I’ve seen so much shit due to it, it’s something I can never get back and now will have to endlessly live with the pain until the day I literally die.
Pocerty is crazy. When i grew up, i didn’t really know any poor people. The closest i got was a family that moved here from Sarajevo, because they had a war going. They weren’t poor, because we have a good safety net for things like that (for the most part.) when i got older, there was the occasional beggar in the city. When i was 20 ish, i went to canada for two weeks, and ithey had not only more beggars, they had different beggars. Like i have never seen someone going through a garbage bin to find food. I talked to a guy in a suit who was eating a donut that i threw away. He lost his job like 3 weeks ago and was on the street pretty much from one week to another. I’m not shitting on canada at all, it was just the first time that i left europe.
Religions, all of them
Religion
Well, I liked learning about the ethics some religions have like budhism and so on.
But I totally agree with that when I see various countries being controlled by religion.
That’s the thing though, most people don’t view a religion as an ethical lens, they view it as a dogma to be followed unconditionally under threat of eternal torture.
