Comment by do_not_redeem
7 hours ago
One of the downsides of people knowing you have money is everyone on earth will judge you for what you do with it. I say let them enjoy it. If you must pressure someone to donate, pressure one of the "usual billionaires" who's funding their torment nexus with it.
There is no human alive who can ethically enjoy a billion dollars. Give them each a hundred million and say, you've hit your cap, everything else goes towards the public good.
A hundred million dollars buys you a life of comfort and luxury. Anyone with a billion has too much influence, imo.
The South Park owners don't have a billion dollars in liquid wealth each. They have ownership of south park, which is worth billions.
If you make them cut their assets down to $100 million each then they don't own South Park. And someone else gets to tell them what to write. Or they retire.
Oh I thought that they had that much money in liquid wealth. My bad.
The capital gains tax could be 90%+ on any gains over $10m (and 99% over $100m), so they can still sell out, but it would cap liquid wealth at $100m dollars. However, they would still have a billion dollars of ownership, and the societal power that comes with being a billionaire, as they can leverage those assets to great effect without selling them. (As Elon Musk didn't actually pay $44b for Twitter.)
So I wonder if the government could levy a stock tax, in which every public stock was diluted by 1% per year, with non-voting stock going into a sovereign wealth fund. This would make for a gradual transition of companies from capitalist-owned to public-owned.
Yeah, the things is, ownership isn't a natural concept. It's just a social construct. Without that, you own what's in your stomach, what you can hold in your hands and what you can sit on, until the moment you walk away.
I believe that the best amount of processes for revoking ownership not zero. Revoking not as in "we take n money from you because...", but as in "we stop respecting any of your accumulated ownership rights, but you are free to accumulate new ones". A reset like the one called bankruptcy, just for positives.
Currently, in countries that do have the death sentence, ownership is even more untouchable than life. A (hypothetical..) rich person on death row you could still write their will and it would be respected. People will argue "don't punish the children!", but where's the difference really, between "don't gamble it all away, for the sake of your children" and "don't end up on death row, for the sake of your children"? Apparently, ownership is more sacred than life itself and I find that quite hard to stomach.
Note that I'm not advocating for a world where it's common for rich persons to get stripped whenever the masses get a little envious, or whenever redistribution seems convenient. Just for ac world where there is some last resort process defined and accepted that's less bloody than an all-out revolution. Ancient Rome had certain forms of exilation that went with complete property forfeitment as punishment (in reality: as the price for losing a power struggle I guess)
I can live a life of comfort and luxury with $10k. Can you please donate everything above $10k of your networth right now?
hardly, but there's a cut off point somewhere where additional earnings do so very little but would be life changing if fragmented into the hands of many.
One hundred million dollars? My yacht cost more than that...
Sure you can. I have no problem with billionaires as long as they are enjoying their money without hurting people in the process. Having the money doesn’t mean you actively abuse your influence.
But once you have that kind of fuck off money and insist on abusing your power, or kowtowing to other people to get more power, and other BS, then you are an evil asshole. There’s a good reason why Bezos, Zuckerberg, Musk etc rub people the wrong way. It’s not their wealth.