I don't think it's unreasonable to limit a person's total wealth to, say, 100x the median person's lifetime earnings. In America, the median income is about $50k/yr. So 40 years as a wage earner means $2 million. With compounded interest, inflation, and wage growth, it's still under $10 million. So if we capped individual net worth at 100x that, it'd be $1 billion.
The fact that we live in a society where people don't bat an eyelash at people who have literally 100,000x the median lifetime earnings of a person (literally, 1000x what I personally consider reasonable) and yet want more says that our society has passed one of these absurdity tests and just suck down whatever stupid propaganda they promulgate.
So you're not allowed to own a company whose share is worth more than $1b? So everyone would cease productivity after that point because you'd essentially be working for free. Even worse, you have downside.
Suppose you own 10% of a company worth $10b and you love grinding so you keep working, grow it to $20b and your net worth is now $2b on paper so you have to give up 5% to the government, leaving you with 5%, bringing you down to $1b cap. Now the company drops back down to $10b and you now have $500m.
Bezos would have retired when Amazon was worth ~4-5b. But according to the kind of people that want this kind of cap, Amazon would just continue to grow to 50x over the next 25 years just through inertia. Because it's totally normal for a book retailer to 50x over 25 years.
Once someone has a billion dollars do we really want them to continue accruing more wealth (power)? Isn't billion dollar people and companies unduly influencing our government the source of many of our problems?
You don't "have" a billion dollars, you created a billion dollars. Wealth is created. If Amazon stopped in 1998, it's not like the $2.5t Amazon is worth today would be distributed across Barnes and Noble, Pets.com and other retailers. Maybe some of it, but it's likely that the world would just be ~$2.5t poorer, likely more since AWS is the backbone of much of the online economy.
What creates wealth? Mining raw materials? Work? Ideas? Services? Do you think any billionaire has created this wealth in these ways? No, they "create" a billion dollars by creating not value, but valuation. If it's a public company, they issue stock, which people buy for money. In the open market, the price of the stock goes up. Their valuation goes up. Their currency goes up.
Billionaires become billionaires by creating indirections of wealth. They create currencies. Like bankers, they create wealth by lending money they don't have. Those stock certificates are a currency, and trading the currency on the open market pumps up its valuation. Who buys it? People who think they too can make money off it in the future. Who pays them back? Maybe with dividends? Who makes those dividends? Who creates revenue? Mostly the organization they create.
There aren't words you say sitting around your desk that will create a billion dollars. But the desks they sit at, they can say words and a billion dollars are "created." I think that's what you don't want to admit. Their decisions are just amplified by a huge apparatus that they sit at, and the market scrambling to snip off a little profit by trading their stock in the future.
Sure they have businesses and things, but holy cow, we lionize the words they say around desks like it's some kind of magic holiness. I just don't get it.
I do wonder what your economic philosophy is. It seems to assume that money's existence is its own societal good. I would argue that resources are finite so 2.5trillion is not new money but a representative part of a ratio of resources allocated. Ie, every one else got 2.5 trillion units poorer
I would say the millions of people working at Amazon over the years is what made 99.9999% of that value. Capitalism just lets a single person take the value of their labor.
"it's not like the $2.5t Amazon is worth today would be distributed across Barnes and Noble, Pets.com and other retailers" I'm not sure how you get to this conclusion, it seems sort obvious to me that it would. It's literally why businesses go out of business from competition - someone else is providing the services in their place. Instead of AWS, Azure and Google's cloud offers would likely be significantly more widespread/valuable.
Seems pretty evident that once you get beyond that point you stop considering regular people fully human, and start doing crazy things like threatening to destroy entire civilizations or buying and selling children.
titzer · · focus · HN ↗
The fact that we live in a society where people don't bat an eyelash at people who have literally 100,000x the median lifetime earnings of a person (literally, 1000x what I personally consider reasonable) and yet want more says that our society has passed one of these absurdity tests and just suck down whatever stupid propaganda they promulgate.
bko · · focus · HN ↗
Suppose you own 10% of a company worth $10b and you love grinding so you keep working, grow it to $20b and your net worth is now $2b on paper so you have to give up 5% to the government, leaving you with 5%, bringing you down to $1b cap. Now the company drops back down to $10b and you now have $500m.
Bezos would have retired when Amazon was worth ~4-5b. But according to the kind of people that want this kind of cap, Amazon would just continue to grow to 50x over the next 25 years just through inertia. Because it's totally normal for a book retailer to 50x over 25 years.
Makes no sense.
93po · · focus · HN ↗
bko · · focus · HN ↗
titzer · · focus · HN ↗
What creates wealth? Mining raw materials? Work? Ideas? Services? Do you think any billionaire has created this wealth in these ways? No, they "create" a billion dollars by creating not value, but valuation. If it's a public company, they issue stock, which people buy for money. In the open market, the price of the stock goes up. Their valuation goes up. Their currency goes up.
Billionaires become billionaires by creating indirections of wealth. They create currencies. Like bankers, they create wealth by lending money they don't have. Those stock certificates are a currency, and trading the currency on the open market pumps up its valuation. Who buys it? People who think they too can make money off it in the future. Who pays them back? Maybe with dividends? Who makes those dividends? Who creates revenue? Mostly the organization they create.
There aren't words you say sitting around your desk that will create a billion dollars. But the desks they sit at, they can say words and a billion dollars are "created." I think that's what you don't want to admit. Their decisions are just amplified by a huge apparatus that they sit at, and the market scrambling to snip off a little profit by trading their stock in the future.
Sure they have businesses and things, but holy cow, we lionize the words they say around desks like it's some kind of magic holiness. I just don't get it.
thereader12 · · focus · HN ↗
93po · · focus · HN ↗
"it's not like the $2.5t Amazon is worth today would be distributed across Barnes and Noble, Pets.com and other retailers" I'm not sure how you get to this conclusion, it seems sort obvious to me that it would. It's literally why businesses go out of business from competition - someone else is providing the services in their place. Instead of AWS, Azure and Google's cloud offers would likely be significantly more widespread/valuable.
JuniperMesos · · focus · HN ↗
jackb4040 · · focus · HN ↗