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sillysaurusx 2 hours ago

pg has an essay addressing exactly that: https://paulgraham.com/inequality.html

The problem is that when you cap earnings to $100m, most investors lose motivation to invest in startups, because their investment isn’t likely to yield a reward. Unless you think all investments should be less than $100m, this kills large investment rounds. That would have killed OpenAI, for example, since their recent round was larger.

In other words, it’s fine to say “you can only earn a hundred million dollars.” The hard part is implementing it without killing the investment ecosystem. Every investor is chasing the big return that covers the 20 investments that didn’t pan out. If that big return is capped, there won’t be investment, and hence no startups.

yunwal 42 minutes ago | parent [-]

I don't understand. Just because one person can't own 100 million doesn't mean an investment firm can't make a 100 million dollar investment and make returns on it. Those are 2 different things. The firm is managing the money of multiple people.

sillysaurusx 20 minutes ago | parent [-]

And when one of those people breaks $100m, does the excess money go to the firm, or to taxes? Or are you saying that a company can have unlimited money, as long as the shareholders don’t extract more than $100m over the course of their lifetime?

The ultimate point of money is for someone to have it. And since corporations are owned by people, it’s not enough to say that corporations aren’t bound to the $100m cap. Otherwise people will just hoard money using corporations, and take loans against their value, a bit like how it already works today.

What counts as $100m? If you buy a million dollar house, then sell it a few years later for a million dollars, are you now limited to $99m since you already spent $1m? Does the money from selling the house go to taxes, or to you? If it goes to you, what’s to prevent someone from hoarding equity and only taking out $100m at a time, effectively living the life of a billionaire while keeping their balance under $100m?

If you own some stock, and it rises in value to $150m, you forfeit $50m to taxes, right? But then if the value of the stock goes down by half, would you have $75m or $50m?

And if the answer is “you have $150m, the cap only applies when selling stock,” then what stops people from putting the money under the custody of a business (which you said isn’t bound by the cap) and then taking loans against that extra $50m?

These aren’t contrived scenarios. Stock goes up and down all the time, and it’s important to be clear about how the proposed system will work.