Should billionaires exist? 「Yes or No」

[Samicana]

Nope, not whatsoever

They are morally corrupt, hoard money, and have the ability to end a lot of our problems, yet they decide to underpay their workers, pollute the environment, and fund corrupt politicians.

Matthew 19:24

[Shin-Mutsu]

Nope, not whatsoever

They are morally corrupt, hoard money, and have the ability to end a lot of our problems, yet they decide to underpay their workers, pollute the environment, and fund corrupt politicians.

Matthew 19:24

"And again I say unto you, It is easier for a camel to go through the eye of a needle, than for a rich man to enter into the kingdom of God."
I can agree with you there.

[-Ra-]

Yes. And there's nothing you can do about it.

[New haven america]

Yes. And there's nothing you can do about it.

I mean, France asked the same thing about its nobility and we see how that want for said nobility.

[-Ra-]

Yes. And there's nothing you can do about it.

I mean, France asked the same thing about its nobility and we see how that want for said nobility.

False equivalence. Today's billionaires do not resemble 18th-century French aristocrats. The trouble with revolution is that you have to convince enough people that their living conditions are so bad as to make the possible risks for revolting seem meager in comparison. Most people in the west, especially in the US, lead comfortable lives and would therefore never be tempted by revolt.

[New haven america]

I mean, France asked the same thing about its nobility and we see how that want for said nobility.

1. False equivalence. Today's billionaires do not resemble 18th-century French aristocrats. The trouble with revolution is that you have to convince enough people that their living conditions are so bad as to make the possible risks for revolting seem meager in comparison. 3. Most people in the west, especially in the US, lead comfortable lives and would therefore never be tempted by revolt.

1. Totally equivalate.
2. You're right. French nobles actually spent money while modern billionaire are for the most part parasitic money hoarders causing wage stagnation.
3. Yes, working 3 jobs to pay rent is something I'm sure most people consider comfortable.

[-Ra-]

1. False equivalence. Today's billionaires do not resemble 18th-century French aristocrats. The trouble with revolution is that you have to convince enough people that their living conditions are so bad as to make the possible risks for revolting seem meager in comparison. 3. Most people in the west, especially in the US, lead comfortable lives and would therefore never be tempted by revolt.

1. Totally equivalate.
2. You're right. French nobles actually spent money while modern billionaire are for the most part parasitic money hoarders causing wage stagnation.
3. Yes, working 3 jobs to pay rent is something I'm sure most people consider comfortable.

1. No
2. On the contrary, all the French nobles did was wallow in their castles, while you have people like Bill Gates curing illnesses in Africa, sponsoring a COVID vaccine and being an all-around bro. Or take Bezos, for instance, who donated 100 mil. to Feeding America. What have you been doing for the poor?
3. I mean you might not be comfortable, but that isn't reflective of the general attitude of the country.

[Fahran]

1. Totally equivalate.

No.

2. You're right. French nobles actually spent money while modern billionaire are for the most part parasitic money hoarders causing wage stagnation.

We've dispensed with this claim already. Billionaires cannot afford to hoard their money because that leads to it simply diminishing in value due to inflation and the absence of returns of any sort. They have to reinvest it, which is, in theory, good for the economy and adds value. There is an argument to be made that investment in public institutions and families is preferable at times to investment in businesses for personal profit.

And wage stagnation is largely the result of automation, the availability of cheap labor globally, corporate choice, and consumer choice. The wealthy as a class aren't simply imposing it on everyone. That's not how it works.

3. Yes, working 3 jobs to pay rent is something I'm sure most people consider comfortable.

I don't make a lot of money at the moment. I think, at most, I would need to work one full-time job and one part-time job to make ends meet. The main issue I've found is that any medical costs or emergencies reduce my savings for the year down to zero. The most I've ever had saved was about $2,000.

[Fahran]

A distinction that could be noted, if it were ever necessary to do so, in some more accurate and less aggrandising fashion.

Well, it's one aspect of the American narrative and has been for over a hundred years. Europe couldn't really give an adequate reply until social democracy and the welfare state began dramatically improving social mobility and income equality following World War I. The point I was trying to reach here is that the accusations of hoarding or being parasitic aren't really accurate. We're not talking about trust fund babies. We're talking about people who were middle-class and then became wealthy through enterpreneuership as a rule.

The point is to make people think that, yes. It isn't true, but the point is to lead people to believe it nonetheless.

I mean it is pretty plainly true.

I don't find it useful in general to argue based on what people do or do not deserve. Billionaires shouldn't have that wealth whether they deserve it or not.

I'm inclined to disagree. In the extant societies that approximate best what leftists claim to want, billionaires continue to exist. While they may propose as of yet unimagined societies and unconceived economic orders, there will always be some risk that the policy intended to destroy billionaires as a class will reduce us to the poverty of Venezuela or Zimbabwe.

[Fahran]

On the conversation about "bad bosses": Exhibit A

That's freaking awful.

[Kubra]

The heck does that mean? Marxism doesn't understand the benefit of labor to wider society? The fuck.

Marxist economics has been disproven from both philosophical and ethical lenses, it keeps emphasizing the importance of the individual worker without realizing the collective benefit of said work

Hard to put it in writing exactly, but Marxism focuses too much on the worker instead of the work

"importance of the individual worker"
Lol like where did you read that

[Nobel Hobos 2]

Billionaires should 100% exist. We should aim to encourage their existence as the more billionaires, the more businesses and the greater our economy. NO taxation. TOTAL Capitalism.

That's absurd. To prove it to you, I'm going to use reductio ad absurdum.

How many billionaires are possible, say in the United States?
Well firstly we have to take excess billions off multi-billionaires. 179 billion from Jeff Bezos for instance.
OK that's maybe 3 thousand more billionaires.
Total money available (assets minus debt, excl. govt) 135 trillion.
One billion each to the lucky lottery winners, makes 138,000 billionaires in the US!

There. That's what you wanted. But the other 99.94% of Americans have nothing.
Like, NOTHING. One of the billionaires owns their house, and rent will be due soon. Another billionaire owns their car. But we'll let them keep their shoes, a couple of changes of clothes, and any pets they may have. We're not monsters, right?

Now let's get rid of government. We'll start with the police: we don't need them any more.

[Duvniask]

And wage stagnation is largely the result of automation, the availability of cheap labor globally, corporate choice, and consumer choice. The wealthy as a class aren't simply imposing it on everyone. That's not how it works

https://hbr.org/2017/10/why-wages-arent ... in-america
https://www.epi.org/publication/causes- ... tagnation/
https://insight.kellogg.northwestern.ed ... in-america

"Corporate choice" giving me the lols.

It is also particularly telling that the benefits of technological advance accrue disproportionally to the owners of capital and their prized managerial workforce.

I don't make a lot of money at the moment. I think, at most, I would need to work one full-time job and one part-time job to make ends meet. The main issue I've found is that any medical costs or emergencies reduce my savings for the year down to zero. The most I've ever had saved was about $2,000.

The corporate boot doesn't taste so good, no.

[Greed and Death]

So after heated debate the general consensus and agreement is Billionaires should exist and they deserve a tax cut.

[Resilient Acceleration]

So after heated debate the general consensus and agreement is Billionaires should exist and they deserve a tax cut.

And those labor regulations needs to be relaxed. Have you not seen how they discouraged all the lucrative Chinese investments?

[Kubra]

So after heated debate the general consensus and agreement is Billionaires should exist and they deserve a tax cut.

Merely a tax cut? Surely they ought to be subsidised, perhaps a monthly stipend is in order?

[Fahran]

"Corporate choice" giving me the lols.

I figured I wouldn't dismiss that completely, particularly as it relates to off-shoring and right to work states. Your first article in particular emphasizes the decline of collective bargaining and other changes to the labor market as one root cause of the overarching problem and, notably, all of the solutions are capitalist-oriented. Improve education, pursue looser fiscal and monetary policies, make it easier to become a business owner, etc. I don't think any of your sources actually opposed what I had to say on the matter even.

It is also particularly telling that the benefits of technological advance accrue disproportionally to the owners of capital and their prized managerial workforce.

It's not really surprising. The labor of well-educated managers and specialized workers has become much more important and valuable with the advent of automation and the shift from an industrial to a service economy. A lot of this has been great for consumers and bad for less specialized or less educated workers.

The corporate boot doesn't taste so good, no.

I don't work for a corporation. It's a partnership and I'm well-compensated given the job demands a fairly common skill set and I'm actually treated with a modicum of respect.

[Fahran]

So after heated debate the general consensus and agreement is Billionaires should exist and they deserve a tax cut.

Merely a tax cut? Surely they ought to be subsidised, perhaps a monthly stipend is in order?

Perhaps we could address poverty by allowing them to eat poor immigrant children, for a small fee of course, a la Jonathan Swift?

[Ifreann]

I choose to believe that this implies the existence of a Marxia.

It's a literary invention. A bit like El Dorado really, except it's for disenchanted millennials who have to work at Starbucks despite having a $100,000 degree instead of conquistadores who want to get in on all that gold, G-d, and glory - but mostly gold.

Understandable, gold is famously shiny.

---

Yes. And there's nothing you can do about it.

Alone? Perhaps not. But as the man said, the union makes us strong.

---

A distinction that could be noted, if it were ever necessary to do so, in some more accurate and less aggrandising fashion.

Well, it's one aspect of the American narrative and has been for over a hundred years. Europe couldn't really give an adequate reply until social democracy and the welfare state began dramatically improving social mobility and income equality following World War I. The point I was trying to reach here is that the accusations of hoarding or being parasitic aren't really accurate. We're not talking about trust fund babies. We're talking about people who were middle-class and then became wealthy through enterpreneuership as a rule.

Owning a very successful business is not incompatible with being a parasite nor with hoarding wealth.

The point is to make people think that, yes. It isn't true, but the point is to lead people to believe it nonetheless.

I mean it is pretty plainly true.

If the billionaire class fucked off to Galt's Gulch(Bezos' Bay? Musk's Mountain?), I hardly think that the world would be lost without them. I think that the people who actually do the important work of keeping their businesses running would be just fine without them. I expect they'd be better off in some cases.

I don't find it useful in general to argue based on what people do or do not deserve. Billionaires shouldn't have that wealth whether they deserve it or not.

I'm inclined to disagree. In the extant societies that approximate best what leftists claim to want, billionaires continue to exist. While they may propose as of yet unimagined societies and unconceived economic orders, there will always be some risk that the policy intended to destroy billionaires as a class will reduce us to the poverty of Venezuela or Zimbabwe.

Given the current state of the world, I would submit that such a risk is more than acceptable.

[Fahran]

Owning a very successful business is not incompatible with being a parasite nor with hoarding wealth.

It is when you built the successful business in question, in large part with your own capital and labor. Yes, your employees played a massive role in that success as well, but, as a manager and founder, you laid the foundation that enabled everything else to happen. You're not a parasite if what you're doing is essential. You're not hoarding wealth if you're reinvesting it. That doesn't mean that wealth inequality or a lack of adequate investment in public institutions aren't problems that can be addressed by asking you to contribute a little more to society. It simply means that silly insults that don't reflect reality are silly.

If the billionaire class fucked off to Galt's Gulch(Bezos' Bay? Musk's Mountain?), I hardly think that the world would be lost without them. I think that the people who actually do the important work of keeping their businesses running would be just fine without them. I expect they'd be better off in some cases.

I imagine a new managerial class would replace them. I do not think a major corporation could run without higher-level management. You need CPAs to keep reliable books and to conduct internal audits. You need CFOs to make questions using that information. You need marketing executives to devise strategies that will enable you to expand your market share by catering to existing demand. Specialization of labor and overhead have become extremely important and do add a lot of value to enterprises.

Given the current state of the world, I would submit that such a risk is more than acceptable.

I don't think so.

[Duvniask]

"Corporate choice" giving me the lols.

I figured I wouldn't dismiss that completely, particularly as it relates to off-shoring and right to work states. Your first article in particular emphasizes the decline of collective bargaining and other changes to the labor market as one root cause of the overarching problem and, notably, all of the solutions are capitalist-oriented.

Who could possibly have imagined that your average academic's solution to these woes is capitalist-oriented.

Improve education, pursue looser fiscal and monetary policies, make it easier to become a business owner, etc. I don't think any of your sources actually opposed what I had to say on the matter even.

I was responding to your claims about the causes of the Great Decoupling.

It is also particularly telling that the benefits of technological advance accrue disproportionally to the owners of capital and their prized managerial workforce.

It's not really surprising. The labor of well-educated managers and specialized workers has become much more important and valuable with the advent of automation and the shift from an industrial to a service economy. A lot of this has been great for consumers and bad for less specialized or less educated workers.

What I was taking note of was one of the essential paradoxes of capitalism, that as technology advances, it causes unemployment and ramps up social misery: automation not as a liberating force, but as a destructive one for much (but not the wealthiest) of the population.

The corporate boot doesn't taste so good, no.

I don't work for a corporation. It's a partnership and I'm well-compensated given the job demands a fairly common skill set and I'm actually treated with a modicum of respect.

That's good to know when you're also describing your situation as if it's on the cusp of bankruptcy. Like, I'm not at all trying to be mean here, it's just very strange to me how someone in your position spends time defending people who are so wealthy that you're practically a speck of dust compared to them.

[Greed and Death]

Merely a tax cut? Surely they ought to be subsidised, perhaps a monthly stipend is in order?

Perhaps we could address poverty by allowing them to eat poor immigrant children, for a small fee of course, a la Jonathan Swift?

I was thinking of brining back Prima Nocta. The problem with the poor is they have poor people DNA. This would solve the problem in a few generations.

[Fahran]

Who could possibly have imagined that your average academic's solution to these woes is capitalist-oriented.

Touche.

I was responding to your claims about the causes of the Great Decoupling.

They added a couple, but didn't really refute that automation and globalization were two of the principal driving forces behind the stagnation of wages. The subjective preference theory of value explains this adequately. It's simply that the social consequences of this phenomenon are less than satisfactory, and thus we must propose solutions to the problem that aren't "hand of the market" or "trickle down."

What I was taking note of was one of the essential paradoxes of capitalism, that as technology advances, it causes unemployment and ramps up social misery: automation not as a liberating force, but as a destructive one for much (but not the wealthiest) of the population.

This isn't really a paradox. We've experienced similar issues in the past as a result of industrialization and automation. The Luddites smashed textile machinery for much the same reason. As automation reduces demand for certain types of labor and an expanded, globalized labor pool dramatically increases the supply of labor, it makes sense that the price of a labor hour would decrease. The savings on cost then pass to consumers, upper level management, reinvestments in capital, or to stockholders. And workers must either starve or move into sectors where labor is more efficiently allocated on a global basis.

Ideally, the best solution for this problem would be for collective bargaining everywhere, but that's still going to create disparities due to the difficulty of large groups of workers collaborating and communicating in disparate economies, cultures, and political environments. In fact, I'm not certain embracing socialism, at least with markets of any sort, would address the overarching problem here because those disparities would still exist in the absence of management and the capitalist class. You could eliminate the problem of savings on cost passing to management or stockholders, but syndicates and unions that invest in capital on behalf of the collective or pass savings onto customers still have an advantage - the austerity is simply imposed from the bottom-up instead of the top-down.

That's good to know when you're also describing your situation as if it's on the cusp of bankruptcy. Like, I'm not at all trying to be mean here, it's just very strange to me how someone in your position spends time defending people who are so wealthy that you're practically a speck of dust compared to them.

Bankruptcy is far less likely than going into serious debt for about half a decade. And I'm defending aspects, though not the entirety, of the present system because I know that I can keep my head above water at the moment. I have no idea what your bold new world will bring and a lot of the immediate examples don't engender an abundance of confidence, especially not if they involve violence or revolution. If you promised me Denmark instead of Rosa Luxemburg, I'd be far less apprehensive.

[Konigreich Pruessens]

no. people who hoard money is the same thing as people hoarding,well anything. its plain stupid that billionares,or money exists.

[Fahran]

no. people who hoard money is the same thing as people hoarding,well anything. its plain stupid that billionares,or money exists.

I'm a little curious about how banning the medium of exchange that makes a lot of larger purchases possible would work on a large-scale. We could probably pull it off in rural communities, though we'd probably see a marked decline in the diversity of food stuffs and construction materials available as a direct result of a barter economy. Depending on regions, this could lead to starvation, mass migration, and nutrition issues as well.