Socialism(or at least, a version thereof) Vs Capitalism

[k9bfriender]

We were asked to move this discussion to a new thread. I had already put a fair amount of work into my responses, so I’ll go ahead and start it here.

@Boudicca90

They shouldn’t need you to give them a job in the first place

Right, they could just self actualize. The training, the tools, the property they work in, they could just do themselves.

@Boudicca90

like you are some kind of benevolent benefactor

I never said that, but now that you mention it, I have taken people who were working in dead end jobs, and they now make a very good wage and have skills that otherwise they would not have.

They are not beholden to me. They have signed no contracts. If they so desire, they are welcome to take the skills that I have given them, purchase their own tools, find their own space, and attract their own clients.

They do not do this, as they prefer to have a workspace provided, their tools provided and maintained, and clients brought to them.

@Boudicca90

You chose to take on that risk in a capitalist system where failure has real and disastrous consequences, and as such you feel entitled to more than the workers under your employ. And that’s what it is, entitlement.

As I pointed out, many of my employees make more than I do. Per hour, they all make substantially more.

So, what you want to do with these unfounded assumptions, and the accusations that you want to level based on them is your business, just know that they do not relate to reality at all.

If I end up in a position where I am actually able to make substantially more than they do, I do not begrudge paying heavy taxes on that, to ensure that others are taken care of, those who are unable or unwilling to work.

@Red_Wiggler

I think a fair tradeoff is to tax the living crap out of the highest earning businesses in return for relieving them of the burden of providing health care to their employees (which could also be seen as exploitative).

Yes, I would love for there to be healthcare and a substantial safety net.

@Red_Wiggler

We might see some real growth in entrepreneurism with that deal. Not everyone thinks they’re gonna be Bill Gates but plenty of people might start businesses and make jobs if they didn’t have to fuck around with a benefit that their bigger competitors can afford far easier.

Exactly, if you don’t want someone to be “exploiting” your labor, then go out and open your own business. That’s what I did. That the field is pretty well stacked against me sucks, yet I have succeeded in spite of that. If my larger competitors were not able to provide benefits that I have to struggle to attain, that would make it much easier for others to do so.

@Sherrerd

The far left and the far right have one crucial trait in common: they’ve constructed worldviews that depend on ignoring human psychology .

Right, both live in a fantasy world. Maybe a nice fantasy world, but neither in any sort of state that is actually achievable as long as humans are the ones participating in it.

I do think that we have a lot more room to move to the left than to the right in this country, but the extremes on either side should be avoided.

@DeadTreasSecretaries

I realize capitalism and hyperpowerful central governments have completely dropped the ball on this too, but in a model with some kind of libertarian socialism I don’t even know how to start thinking about this type of massive coordinated action that we need if thousands or millions of autonomous communities all need to agree.

Right, to accomplish large tasks, you need people to agree and coordinate together. You can either do this through economic incentives, or through government central control and planning. While I will agree that the former has its flaws, the latter is simply a recipe for corruption and disaster.

If you* think that it is bad to centralize the control over McDonald’s, and give the power and wealth to those at the top, you haven’t seen anything compared to centralizing all industries, and giving that power to those at the top of the political structure.

*not you.

@Boudicca90

nothing like that WILL be done while the profit motive is still part of the equation. We need the Green New Deal.

The green new deal is all based on profit motives. It provides taxes for polluters, and incentives for green technologies.

It does require government intervention, pure unfettered capitalism will not address these issues, but without some sort of reward to those who address and solve the problem, nothing will be done. Nothing at all.

@Boudicca90

My model of libertarian socialism (that term actually refers to anarcho-socialists, I prefer libertarian Marxist personally) would still have economic activity directed through workers councils and through the state.

So, someone wants to open a business to meet a need that they see is not being addressed. Currently, they need to acquire the recourses to open that business and then work hard to make it succeed. There are barriers to entry here, but they are not insurmountable, and they are pretty straightforward. With dedication, pretty much anyone could do it.

In your world, they would have to convince the worker’s council that the need is there, and that they can address it, and to be given the resources to accomplish that. If they don’t work hard, if they just squander those resources, there is no downside to them. This is just a recipe for favoritism and corruption, where those who have connections to those who direct the resources are rewarded, not for hard work or innovation, but for simply knowing the right people.

@Boudicca90

t’s not like I’m talking communism or anarchism here, the state would still exist.

In communism, the state certainly exists. (As well as in certain flavors of anarchy, but that’s a different discussion.)

@Boudicca90

Just it would be in conjunction with the councils so that the workers have equal power in the decision making, and not a centralized state where the workers are just slaves of the state (like how people usually think of socialism/communism).

So the worker’s council has chosen to build a factory to make widgets. How do you get people to go work in that factory?

@Kimstu

Well, plenty of people actually do put in that kind of voluntary creative or caring labor when they don’t expect a financial benefit from it.

Enough to keep society running?

@Kimstu

I just think you’re unnecessarily painting yourself into a corner if you try to claim that only financial benefits constitute an adequate motive for anybody to throw themselves into long periods of all-consuming devotion to work.

I did not mean for my statement to be all inclusive. There are some people that find non-financial rewards to be an incentive to work hard. But not enough to keep the lights on. Not enough to have your trash picked up, potable water delivered to your tap, your grocery stores stocked with food and provisions. Not nearly enough to take your order at a table and deliver to you food, and then clean up afterwards. Not enough to care for you when you are sick or injured, or when we are too old or disabled to care for ourselves. And for those few who do, if they ever decide that they no longer feel like doing so, then that work is no longer done. Society will not and cannot function if we rely entirely upon voluntarily contributions of skill and labor.

@GreenWyvern

However, we can create societies that channel human nature in a better direction or a worse direction. This happens mainly by trial and error, hard experience, and small steps.

And is best done on small scales, where a failure means only a localized problem with a small group of people, not the fall of civilization.

@GreenWyvern

This is the problem with the Chicago school of economics, another failed ideology that ignores human nature, and is still mostly dominant today, unfortunately.

They imagine that people are only motivated by profit, and always act rationally in making financial decisions.

All people are motivated by personal desires and a wish to fulfill them. Many times, those desires can be fulfilled with the resources that can be obtained with money, and so money is a rather prevalently acceptable reward.

People are motivated to do many things for no profit. As I said, I’ve written novels, I’ve written music, with no expectation of profit off of the time I’ve invested. I cook fabulous meals, sometimes just for myself (especially in this time of social distancing), but usually for others, for no monetary gain (and in fact, it costs me money to do so.) There are many things that I enjoy doing, that I do not do for profit, or that even cost me.

When it comes to getting me to do something that I’d rather not do, or that I’d rather spend my time doing something that I find more enjoyable, then that’s where profit becomes necessary. How many people do you think you could find that enjoy coming to your house in the morning to pick up your trash and take it to the dump? How many people do you think enjoy working in grocery stores, stocking the shelves and ringing up your purchase, or those who deliver to the stores, or who produce the goods that are delivered? How many people enjoy working on delivery trucks and garbage trucks to keep them in working order? How many people enjoy working on refrigeration units to keep the goods in your grocery store fresh and edible?

There are a whole lot of things that need to be done to keep society functional, and not nearly enough people who would do them just because they enjoy doing them.

@Boudicca90

The reason you think capitalism is the only way is because you were raised in a capitalist society and therefore feel you personally need wealth to drive your motivations, I don’t. “Human nature” tends to be whatever the person saying it wants it to be.

So, re-education is necessary then, got it.

Tell me, in your ideal society, how is it decided who should pick up the trash? Or are people taught that they like picking up trash, and so should do it for free?

@Boudicca90

Re-education camps? Really?

You are asking people to completely change the way that they think.

@Boudicca90

I know it’s a hard sell

Yeah, it’s a hard sell, and there is a reason that no one is buying it.

@Boudicca90

We point out that no matter how equitable capitalism becomes in a country due to liberal or social democratic policies, the capitalists in charge are still exploiting the workers and the planet.

Instead you want to put “worker’s councils” in charge. What will prevent them from exploiting the workers and the planet?

If there is a task that needs to be done, if there are not enough people who enjoy doing it to get it done, how will you deal with this? In a capitalistic society, I can keep raising the financial reward until I find enough people who are willing to do it. In your society, what will be the incentive?

@Boudicca90

But I see socialism as ultimately inevitable, since capitalism as it exists today is unsustainable.

Socialism, as in the government ensuring that everyone’s needs and basic wants are met, sure. Socialism, as in no longer having any reward for work to incentivize it, no, that’s not inevitable, that’s the downfall of civilization.

[QuickSilver]

It’s been my personal life experience that people who argue for the type of Socialist (or Communist) type society that your OP quotes and responds to, have never lived in either, and would find themselves deeply disappointed if they ever found their dreams realized.

[ASL_v2.0]

@k9bfriender

Socialism, as in the government ensuring that everyone’s needs and basic wants are met, sure. Socialism, as in no longer having any reward for work to incentivize it, no, that’s not inevitable, that’s the downfall of civilization.

There is a wide chasm between that and “capitalism as it exists today.” When I think of “socialism” or advocate for “socialism,” what you have described is not in my conception. One starting point I have is “no one earns a billion dollars.” If people are able to accumulate a billion dollars, that points to a flaw in the system. Call that socialism if you want, but I prefer to think of it as a more restrained, equitable, and just form of capitalism.

[Dinsdale]

Boy - I imagine this could be a thread I would be interested in participating in, but the OP isn’t written in any way that I see as setting forth any parameters for the discussion.

@ASL_v2.0

One starting point I have is “no one earns a billion dollars.”

I thought the idea of
doughnut economics had a lot of valid concepts. Why the emphasis on growth?

[Hellestal]

@k9bfriender

I had already put a fair amount of work into my responses, so I’ll go ahead and start it here.

The effort you put into writing all this was worth the new thread to put it in.

@ASL_v2.0

One starting point I have is “no one earns a billion dollars.” If people are able to accumulate a billion dollars, that points to a flaw in the system.

What if they’d a founded a company that creates five billion dollars of value for the general public?

What if they’d a founded a company that creates five billion dollars of value for the general public every single year?

I’ve never once in my life seen an arbitrary rule like “no billionaires” stem from any actual evidence or analysis. It’s just status anxiety, as far as I can see, along with the fact that “billion” is a pretty big number.

@Dinsdale

I thought the idea of
doughnut economics had a lot of valid concepts. Why the emphasis on growth?

Because there’s no other stable equilibrium path.

The line goes up when the myriad forces below it are stronger than those above. The line goes down when the opposite happens. But these forces are chaotic. They are not under full human control. There is no way to balance the down compared to the up, when you’re riding a series of tornadoes within a hurricane.

[ASL_v2.0]

@Hellestal

What if they’d a founded a company that creates five billion dollars of value for the general public?

What if they’d a founded a company that creates five billion dollars of value for the general public every single year ?

They had workers a labor force who aided them in creating and continuing to generate that value. But more to the point, even if they didn’t have workers–like even if they fully automated everything according to their own designs and labor–I don’t see the social value in them accumulating such wealth to their own ends. Again: nobody earns a billion dollars.

@Hellestal

I’ve never once in my life seen an arbitrary rule like “no billionaires” stem from any actual evidence or analysis. It’s just status anxiety, as far as I can see, along with the fact that “billion” is a pretty big number.

It wouldn’t be just “no billionaires,” but as I said that’s a starting point. Where to put the limit (by, for instance, establishing a tax on wealth from which ownership interest in a corporation is not immune) is up for debate. But somewhere well below a billion dollars seems reasonable as a starting point. It’s not about status or anxiety, it’s about what they could conceivably do with a billion dollars. If they want control of the corporation still? Fine. Let Zuckerberg run Facebook and get all the applause that comes with it. But he doesn’t need to be a multi-billionaire to do it.

[k9bfriender]

@ASL_v2.0

There is a wide chasm between that and “capitalism as it exists today.” When I think of “socialism” or advocate for “socialism,” what you have described is not in my conception.

I was describing it as conceived by @Boudicca90. My conception of socialism is a bit different.

@ASL_v2.0

One starting point I have is “no one earns a billion dollars.” If people are able to accumulate a billion dollars, that points to a flaw in the system.

I don’t know that I agree with this. If someone does some great work, or contributes greatly to society, then the value that they have contributed may be worth rewarding them substantially.

There are some billionaires out there who have contributed more than that to the value of our civilization.

OTOH, If someone earns a billion dollars, then they should be taxed pretty heavily.

@ASL_v2.0

Call that socialism if you want, but I prefer to think of it as a more restrained, equitable, and just form of capitalism.

Between the great works that they have contributed that have netted them such pay, and the taxes that they pay on that reward, their wealth can make us all wealthier.

@Dinsdale

Boy - I imagine this could be a thread I would be interested in participating in, but the OP isn’t written in any way that I see as setting forth any parameters for the discussion.

Sorry, it was more of a continued discussion.

Parameters are essentially, “What are the benefits of Capitalism vs those of Socialism, and what is the best balance (or alternative economic model) to achieve for the optimal results?”

@Dinsdale

Why the emphasis on growth?

People like to see their lives improve over time. We have quite a bit of things that our parents didn’t have, and they had things their parents didn’t have.

The vast majority of human history was one of bare survival and suffering, it is only in the last couple of centuries, and mainly in the last one, that that has started to change for the masses. We had feudalism, where those at the very top lived somewhat comfortable lifestyles, while everyone else lived in squalor and poverty. Now anyone in the top 95% of those living in the US live a better life than the wealthiest could have imagined a few hundred years ago.

I don’t think that Capitalism itself is to thank for the betterment of our lifestyles, I think that that was mainly industrialization. However, I am not sure that industrialization would be possible without Capitalism. They certainly have gone hand in hand in our history, and any attempts at moving industry away from Capitalism have seemed to end in stagnation at best, complete failure and collapse most of the time.

There are still billions of people on this planet who live desperate lives, who do not have access to the things that we take for granted, the things that we would literally not know how to live without. In order to bring these people up to a more dignified life, we need to grow.

Doughnut economics seems to follow a Malthusian mindset and model. That there are limits to the productivity of the resources at our disposal. Malthus was proven wrong, as we found more efficient ways of using resources, to give more people more goods and services, while using less arable land. I do not see why technology and growth will not continue in this trend.

I also do not think that we need to limit the available resources to those that are found here on Earth. There’s a whole lot of stuff out there ready to be exploited in our solar system, and it will be Capitalism that learns to take advantage of them.

I mean, just look at our space program. It stagnated for years, with launch costs not moving, and even going up. Then a capitalist came and turned it all on its head, providing competition, and lowering the cost of access to space substantially. I don’t think that that would be possible without capitalism, both in the ability to accumulate enough wealth to afford to spend it on such a risky venture, nor without the ability to be rewarded for taking that risk.

But, to get back to your question, if you are against growth, then you are for condemning billions to continue to live in poverty.

@ASL_v2.0

I don’t see the social value in them accumulating such wealth to their own ends. Again: nobody earns a billion dollars.

No one earns a billion dollars in a vacuum. Which is why those who have contributed billions of dollars in value to our society should still give back the lion’s share of their gains.

There are a number of philanthropic efforts that only exist because of billionaires. Governments are too slow and unwieldly, and they have a hard time meeting some of these needs. Especially as it comes to growth and innovation. I believe that Gates stepped on a few heads to get where he is now, but he seems to be using his wealth for the betterment of mankind in a way that it would be hard to get govt run committees to agree to use tax dollars for. The same with some other ultra wealthy I could name. There are those who use their wealth in more selfish or even detrimental ways, but that is a matter for regulation and law, not a matter of putting a cap on the wealth that one can acquire through their work and innovations.

@ASL_v2.0

It wouldn’t be just “no billionaires,” but as I said that’s a starting point. Where to put the limit (by, for instance, establishing a tax on wealth from which ownership interest in a corporation is not immune) is up for debate.

So, put some hefty taxes on it. If someone has a billion in their bank account, that means that they paid 99 billion in taxes.

@ASL_v2.0

Let Zuckerberg run Facebook and get all the applause that comes with it. But he doesn’t need to be a multi-billionaire to do it.

But that doesn’t actually work. Zuckerberg doesn’t have a hundred billion dollars in his bank account, he is worth a hundred billion dollars because he controls Facebook and other corporations. The value of what he controls is what determines his worth.

If someone starts a company, and that company becomes worth billions of dollars, how exactly do you prevent that person from being worth billions of dollars without taking the company that they founded away from them?

[Boudicca90]

@Dinsdale

Boy - I imagine this could be a thread I would be interested in participating in, but the OP isn’t written in any way that I see as setting forth any parameters for the discussion.

Yep, I agreed with @What_Exit closing that other thread because it got way off topic from what I wanted to talk about, which were progressive issues in general that we are actually working towards today. Not some hypothetical socialist society. The OP seems to have a personal beef with me now that he has created an entire new thread to call me out.

I’m not taking the bait. He can discuss this if he wants, but I’m not playing his game.

[Hellestal]

@ASL_v2.0

They had workers a labor force who aided them in creating and continuing to generate that value.

And then the relevant question is whether those workers were paid the marginal productivity of their labor, compared to the marginal productivity of allocating capital into a risky industry.

That is something that could actually be discussed.

But that would require analysis. Effort. As opposed to mere assertion.

@ASL_v2.0

I don’t see the social value in them accumulating such wealth to their own ends.

If they created social value far in excess of their own fortune, then the value still exists, regardless of the your personal ability to “see” it.

@ASL_v2.0

Again: nobody earns a billion dollars.

Again: you don’t know this.

@ASL_v2.0

It’s not about status or anxiety

It’s not about analysis, because you have done none.

@ASL_v2.0

it’s about what they could conceivably do with a billion dollars.

They could, quite conceivably, use it to create yet another business that creates tens of billions of dollars of social value annually.

The existence of such fortunes could also, quite conceivably, attract others to venture their capital in extremely risky ventures, very likely to fail, but which if successful could create tens of billions of dollars of social value annually.

If the question is: “Do we want to tax the living hell out of the conspicuous consumption of spendthrift billionaires?” then the answer to that – in my own opinion – should be “yes”.

If the question is: “Do we want to restrict the ability to allocate capital of those very people who have previously been most successful in allocating capital?”, or a variation on that, “Do we want to restrict the incentive to invest capital in extremely high risk, high reward industries which have the potential to create billions, if not trillions, of future social value?” then the answers to those questions – and this strikes me as relatively obvious, as these kinds of questions go – should be “no”.

[k9bfriender]

I have no beef with you, I just figured we could continue the discussion in a more appropriate location.

I do find your ideas to be unworkable, but I am willing to be convinced otherwise.

Only one question. How do I convince someone to come pick my trash up off my curb once a week?

[k9bfriender]

@Hellestal

If the question is: “Do we want to tax the living hell out of the conspicuous consumption of spendthrift billionaires?” then the answer to that – in my own opinion – should be “yes”.

100% agreed.

@Hellestal

“Do we want to restrict the incentive to invest capital in extremely high risk, high reward industries which have the potential to create billions, if not trillions, of future social value?”

Or even, “Do we want to reduce the incentive to invest time, skill, and resources of individuals which have the potential to create mere hundreds of thousands of future social value?”

[Hellestal]

Here is a point about taxation that is both

(1) Unambiguously true
(2) Less than 1% of the public understands

Imagine an economy of output valued at 20 trillion dollars.

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Each one of these T’s represents actual stuff, real output. Not “money”, not paper. The output is measured in money, but the output is real stuff.

Every trillion of output can be divided into 1000 billion of output.

Billions

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Each and every one of those B’s represents 1000 million of real output in the economy.

Millions

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And each and every one of those millions is a thousand thousands, again of real output in the economy.

Thousands

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And I could, of course, divide each one of those thousands into a thousand individual units, each one representing one dollar worth of output.

One particular difference of these thousands is that I’ve highlighted the first hundred of them (representing 100,000 dollars worth of annual output) in bold. A very wealthy person can easily afford 100k of consumption every year. This is arbitrary, because a sufficiently wealthy person can easily afford much more than a mere 100,000 worth of consumption annually.

This is just to make a point about scale.

Someone like Jeff Bezos has a highly varying networth, but we can stick it at 200 billion for convenience. The vast majority of this is paper. It is paper that represents ownership of corporate infrastructure: warehouses, proprietary code, offices, trucks, other buildings. He does not consume 200 billion worth of resources every year.

Let’s suppose, just for the sake of this example, that a very wealthy person consumes a mere 100k of the annual production of the nation, while possessing a networth of 200 billion. Let us further assume that 199 billion of wealth is “seized”, and this (still very) wealthy person is left with only 1 billion. And after the seizure, this person continues to easily afford 100k of consumption annually.

The question we can ask then is: Who was actually taxed?

The wealthy man lost 199 billion of paper, but continued to claim 100k of the annual output for his own consumption.

From the perspective of the consumption of real resources in the economy, he was not taxed at all. Not by one dollar. If the government used that 199 billion of paper in order to claim some of the resources of our economy with it, the actual resources that were allocated came from entirely different people. None of the resources came from what the rich man would have otherwise consumed, because he did not change his consumption.

Ownership of stock is ownership of a company, and so represents indirect ownership of capital equipment: the aforementioned warehouses and trucks and computer code and all that.

Seizing stock above some arbitrary number is very likely to be stupid, from the simple matter of incentive alignment in society. But it’s even worse than that.

Paper wealth is, ultimately, just paper. The only way you can specifically re-allocate the conspicuous consumption of the rich is by taxing that consumption directly. Getting in a huff about paper is not about the real resources in society.

It’s about status anxiety.

Such-and-such a person has racked up a “score” of 10 digits or more, and that makes people uncomfortable. That’s all that this is about. If the discussion were about the allocation of real resources, then we’d be talking about real resources rather than how many digits are listed on pieces of paper. It’s not the paper that ultimately matters. It’s the resources, and their allocation, that we actually care about. If those resources are already being allocated toward production, then seizing them doesn’t make sense.

You don’t eat the seed corn. You save it in order to plant it for the next season.

[DeadTreasSecretaries]

@Hellestal

The question we can ask then is: Who was actually taxed?

Well it sort of depends. If we “taxed” Bezos by seizing his shares of Amazon, we would have partial public ownership of Amazon. If we instituted a wealth tax where wealth (including stock someone is just holding) over a certain amount was taxed at a high enough rate, the incentive would be created for Bezos to sell his shares to multiple smaller investors to come up with the money to pay Uncle Sam. Either way Amazon would still exist and all of the value it generates for consumers/workers/other stockholders would still be there. Unless we actually created an incentive structure that left Bezos with no choice but to sabotage or destroy his own company, whatever economic value it has wouldn’t be lost.

At the end of the day, a policy like this would either result in Bezos’s partial ownership being transferred to the government or to a larger group of individually smaller investors. Bezos would be losing his control over amazon and either the public or multiple smaller people would be gaining.

There is the whole stifling innovation aspect, but that’s a different issue.

[QuickSilver]

You’re an active member of the DSA but you refuse to “take the bait” to discuss the platform which you have repeatedly put forward? Why?

[MrMrmrmr]

Found this gem on the DSA website “Today, corporate executives who answer only to themselves and a few wealthy stockholders make basic economic decisions affecting millions of people.”
Who could believe such nonsense? A google search on stock ownership would prove that wrong.

[k9bfriender]

Personally, I prefer to tax the wealth that is extracted from a company. Tax dividends, capital gains and income.

If a wealth tax is desired, a national property tax seems to be a better idea than trying to tax someone’s paper wealth.

[wolfpup]

The two concepts – socialism and capitalism – should not be viewed as being at odds with each other, as one versus the other. Either one in its extreme is disastrous, but the most successful systems in my view, in terms of social stability and harmony and quality of life, is social democracy as practiced in the Scandinavian countries, and in Canada and the UK and other commonwealth countries. It implies a system whose economic foundation is capitalism, but whose social foundation consists of strong social supports, egalitarian access to education, and universal health care as a fundamental right. It uses capitalism as the economic engine to support a peaceful, compassionate, and just society.

[Hellestal]

@DeadTreasSecretaries

Well it sort of depends.

It does.

But my own post was explicitly from the perspective of the annual output of new production. You’re talking about ownership of already existing resources. That is not a wrong perspective to take, but it is subtlety different from what I was talking about.

@DeadTreasSecretaries

Either way Amazon would still exist and all of the value it generates for consumers/workers/other stockholders would still be there. Unless we actually created an incentive structure that left Bezos with no choice but to sabotage or destroy his own company, whatever economic value it has wouldn’t be lost.

Not entirely lost.

But the person who made a valuable thing is – most likely, most of the time – going to know how to run it most efficiently.

@DeadTreasSecretaries

There is the whole stifling innovation aspect, but that’s a different issue.

I’d just want to point out that the dynamic problem – what happens tomorrow, and the day after tomorrow, and the day after the day after, on and on – will ultimately be much more important than the static issue of how ownership shares of corporation X are divided today.

[DeadTreasSecretaries]

@Hellestal

But my own post was explicitly from the perspective of the annual output of new production. You’re talking about ownership of already existing resources. That is not a wrong perspective to take, but it is subtlety different from what I was talking about.

Maybe I was misreading, but I was interpreting this discussion as what if we taxed the crap out of Jeff Bezos’s wealth right now, would it actually amount to a tax on his wealth, or would it just be a tax on the poor schlubs who have their livelihoods or their consumption tied to Amazon. You’re right that Bezos doesn’t actually own 200B of stuff, and that the stuff that corresponds to his wealth is tied up in the lives of millions of people, but that is basically irrelevant because what taxing someone’s wealth ultimately means is redistributing their economic power over all of that stuff.

Not entirely lost.

But the person who made a valuable thing is – most likely, most of the time – going to know how to run it most efficiently.

I’d just want to point out that the dynamic problem – what happens tomorrow, and the day after tomorrow, and the day after the day after, on and on – will ultimately be much more important than the static issue of how ownership shares of corporation X are divided today.

I think ultimately the question about massive wealth redistribution is “will entrepreneurs and executives still contribute the same to the economy if there is effectively a ceiling on their wealth.”

With the exception of the case where a company is privately owned by one person, it’s not about any operational change. We can take 90% of Bezos’s stock and still leave him as CEO of Amazon. We just have to think about whether it means Bezos won’t have the incentive to keep making Amazon grow, and whether the hypothetical Bezos just starting out will want to go down the same path. In the hypothetical scenario that we could take 90% of Bezos’s wealth and he would still run Amazon the exact same way, then nothing is lost.

I think that’s a valid question to have, but it’s a completely separate one from whether you can actually tax rich people and have the net effect be that wealth gets distributed from rich people to a larger, less wealthy population. I think people often use this as a criticism of socialism - I personally think that real socialism that involves workers taking over the means of production fails at several points before this matters. Either way I personally wouldn’t go as far as to just seize 90% of wealth from billionaires - I think the best we can do is a market capitalist system with antitrust practices and taxes that make it tough for someone to get quite as rich as Bezos and allows us to fund a lot of other people’s healthcare if they do. We’ve seen policies like this in the US in the past, and in many countries today and we still have/had plenty of innovation, so I wouldn’t be worried about that.

[DeadTreasSecretaries]

I’ll just add that I don’t know a lot about concrete wealth tax proposals and what little I’ve read says they aren’t actually as effective as income, capital gains etc.

I could see a case that we need to figure out some way to do it now because we let the problem get so bad, and at this point we have to find some way to rein in wealth, not just income. Either way I don’t know enough to be for or against a specific proposal.