The power and influence (and damage caused) does not scale linearly with net worth. And you don’t need to have money on hand to be able to use it to harm others, you can e.g. use it as a collateral for loans and funding to build your child crushing machine.

Personally I wager society would be better if the excess wealth of billionaires was simply deleted, or burned. It would be better yet if that wealth was used in our shared funds to build common infrastructure and services. Leaving such wealth in such few hands is really the worst you could possibly do for society.

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peyton 6 hours ago | parent | next [-]

Why not just force them to to build the common infrastructure and services, and in exchange they get to keep the money? e.g. Jeff Bezos has to build some subway stations in NYC or something.

That way you get somebody with a proven track record of building big projects who is also motivated by money, so the common infrastructure and services is handled competently.

	▲	don_esteban 4 hours ago \| parent \| next [-]
		Hm, wouldn't it be better to just have proper labour laws so that people are not worked to exhaustion in Amazon warehouses, for miserable pay? Similarly properly regulate the gig economy. And actually pay servers properly so that they don't have to rely on tips? The today's life is enshittified by thousand cuts ... why not fix them? All that is required is a legislative body that is not bought by big $$$.
	▲	runarberg 4 hours ago \| parent \| prev \| next [-]
		> Why not just force them to to build the common infrastructure and services, and in exchange they get to keep the money? Because it is undemocratic, ripe for corruption and abuse, will never work in practice (as the rich will inevitably find ways to game the system). What you are describing is basically just aristocracy, where the rich get to decide what is best for the rest of us.
	▲	salawat 4 hours ago \| parent \| prev [-]
		Ah yes. Let's trust civic engineering to a man who ran a company that had front-line workers using piss bottles to keep up with quotas. This cannot possibly end badly.

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card_zero 6 hours ago | parent | prev [-]

Uh-huh. It brings clarity to say you'd be happy to have the wealth destroyed. These are two different concepts, and the second one (about redistribution) always muddles these conversations.

1. Billionaires shouldn't wield lots of wealth, because it's scary.

Sticking to that concept makes the discussion a lot clearer. Never mind concept 2, it's haunted by the futile spirit of Marx and he's throwing crockery around.

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runarberg 4 hours ago | parent [-]

Personally I am a fan of logistical taxation, where the mean income (including capital gains) pays 50% in tax and every standard deviation σ above (or below) pays extra (or less) according to 1 / (1 + e^-σ).

What will happen with this taxation is that if everybody makes the same income, then everybody pays 50% in tax. If some rich dude is making a lot more money then everybody else, they will lower the tax for everybody else while paying a lot more them selves. At some point (say 3 standard deviations above the mean) you end up getting less after taxes then had your income been lower (say 2 SD above), in other words, the limit is 100% tax for extremely high incomes (and 0% for extremely low incomes). That is, I favor a system that has maximum income, and you are actively punished for making more.

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card_zero 4 hours ago | parent [-]

Suppose it's 1999, and I'm planning to expand my online bookstore into a worldwide network of distribution centers and logistics, that can deliver anything at all to anybody, very quickly, though a unified web interface. How can I carry out this major business enterprise without getting very poor?

I guess the board would have to vote to keep my income at the optimum level, or just below, to prevent me from jumping ship to run a competing company that offers to pay less.

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elevatortrim 3 hours ago | parent | next [-]

I would rather you did not do that. You would create a shit tone more global transfer of goods accelerating global warming, and make societies dependant on unsustainable dirt cheap production practices.

Even if yourself could argue that you’ve done a good thing overall, I’d rather not take your word on that and would rather not have you decide something so extremely impactful.

	▲	card_zero 3 hours ago \| parent [-]
		Tough, I'm gonna do it anyway, but through some kind of non-profit org. Because my vision is beautiful!

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runarberg 4 hours ago | parent | prev [-]

One can only dream.