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somenameforme 2 days ago

Yip, I'm a advocate for capitalism but there's definitely a bug with interest/investments in that earning money makes it even easier to earn money, even if you do absolutely nothing with your life. Just dump everything in a diversified portfolio and you become an infinite money printer when you reach the point of having enough money that all your expanses are small relative to your capital gains.

This issue radically distorts the concept of who is contributing to society and who is living off the contributions of others.

nullc 2 days ago | parent | next [-]

OTOH that same unequal distribution allows investment and patronage in areas that would otherwise go unfunded, ... some of which goes on to create revolutionary technologies that benefit everyone.

somenameforme 2 days ago | parent [-]

I think the topic of an unequal distribution is somewhat different than somebody earning tremendous amounts of money in exchange for doing literally nothing. It can lead to it of course, but I think that even if we put a million people, from birth, on an island with absolutely identical initial conditions - give the islanders a few generations, and there would be people doing dramatically better than others. I don't really see a problem with this.

The point I was making is that tax receipts don't really tell you much of anything about who's contributing to society. For instance farmers tend to be living close to broke and are typical recipients of various assistance programs. By contrast the Waltons have paid more in tax than most people will earn in their lifetime, many times over. Nonetheless, the world wouldn't even notice if the Waltons, and all like them, suddenly disappeared - whereas there'd be a catastrophic effect were the same to happen to even a tiny fraction of farmers.

In a way the current system is sort of like a privatized deflationary system. Your money becomes worth more over time, but only if you're wealthy enough to buy this privilege. For everybody else, inflation makes their money, and frequently their earnings, only decrease over time. And I think this is highly undesirable, even for somebody 100% okay with inequality.

imtringued 2 days ago | parent | prev [-]

Ok, now go on YouTube and search for root bug, since you're so keen on bugs.