Wealth acquisition and distribution?

[Audie]

Hong Kong looks lovely.

I understand your point. And I don't disagree entirely.

Leaving aside the fact that the skyline itself is the fruit of labour - from municipal planners, architechts, engineers, all the way down to brick layers and site labourers - wealth only creates the conditions that allows these people to cooperate, the actual creation is done in the minds and hands of workers. Does it require the existence of billionaires? Would a thousand millionaires not be capable of doing the same work? Or 100,000 people with £10k to invest?

Let's put aside any question of the rightness or wrongness of capitalism. It is here and while it is here we must work within it. Can lots of small investors not create the same value as 1 very large one?

It is not the wealthy, but the wealth that matters. More wealth distributed in greater numbers of bank accounts means greater numbers of economic decisions being made by greater numbers of people - this is typically the justification used by capitalists for decentralising economic plannning. Let us decentralise it further.

Wealth is the incentive fo capitalism.
Capitalism creates wealth, and , it concentrates the
wealth.

Without a concentration of capital, nothing
gets done. Whether its by one, two, ten thousand rich
people.

You still have millions who arent rich.

But all the workers you mentioned have jobs.

If you " decentralize" enough you will have only
street vendor tyoe entrepremeurs.

Take the ( foreced " de entralization) off. And soon
the smart, the lucky, and the hard working will
be back to getting rich.

But this is all obvious.

 

[MikeF]

I agree, but the trajectory we're on is clearly headed for a great and disastrous reckoning. Something we should all want to avoid. Especially if we're younger, or have offspring. We need to change course, and we need to do it soon.

Ok, you have stated that we are heading for a great and disastrous reckoning and we need to change course soon or it will come to pass. The problem here is that it is left up to the imagination of the reader to fill in what the reckoning entails or involves as well as what constitutes great or amounts to disastrous as relates to what the reader imagines you imagine.

Let’s assume we do not change course. What exactly is going to happen, why is it both great and disastrous, and when will it occur? Once we have an idea of what you think is going to happen if we remain on course, we can see if we agree with your conclusion or agree that it will be as great or disastrous as you are predicting.

The important thing for us to get into our heads is that it's not about the money, per se, it's about control. THAT is what needs to be shared, and because money is control in a capitalist system, the money needs to be spread around, and not allowed to pile up under and individual or groups control.

Step #1 is to take government out from under the control of the wealthy elite, and return it to the people. No progress will ever be made until we do that. And things will continue to get worse.

The problem with spreading the money around, in my view, is that capital investment needs capital to invest. The more capital to invest, the more that can be accomplished. If you spread all the money out evenly, it still has to come back together to do something with it, and somebody or collection of somebodies is going to have to make those decisions as to what gets done.

Instead of spreading the money out evenly, what if we no longer equate the spending of money with speech and remove the constitutional protections of speech from the spending of money?

In other words, what can we do to limit the ability for aggregated funds to unduly influence government, because even if you spread the money out it will only begin to aggregate again into special interest legal entities.

 

[Audie]

Ok, you have stated that we are heading for a great and disastrous reckoning and we need to change course soon or it will come to pass. The problem here is that it is left up to the imagination of the reader to fill in what the reckoning entails or involves as well as what constitutes great or amounts to disastrous as relates to what the reader imagines you imagine.

Let’s assume we do not change course. What exactly is going to happen, why is it both great and disastrous, and when will it occur? Once we have an idea of what you think is going to happen if we remain on course, we can see if we agree with your conclusion or agree that it will be as great or disastrous as you are predicting.



The problem with spreading the money around, in my view, is that capital investment needs capital to invest. The more capital to invest, the more that can be accomplished. If you spread all the money out evenly, it still has to come back together to do something with it, and somebody or collection of somebodies is going to have to make those decisions as to what gets done.

Instead of spreading the money out evenly, what if we no longer equate the spending of money with speech and remove the constitutional protections of speech from the spending of money?

In other words, what can we do to limit the ability for aggregated funds to unduly influence government, because even if you spread the money out it will only begin to aggregate again into special interest legal entities.

I get so tired of would-be
Cassandras and their constant
" Lo here, and, Lo there", whether
theys political poltroons, preachers, or
prophets of any other persuasion.

 

[Yerda]

Wealth is the incentive fo capitalism.
Capitalism creates wealth, and , it concentrates the
wealth.

It does concentrate the wealth very effectively.

It isn't the only way wealth is created, however, and the capitalist could not extract and concentrate wealth without the accumulated wealth of tens of thousands of human labour hours that make the conditions possible in the first place.

We're talking large legal systems, political decision making, national infrastructure programmes, public education systems, natural resource deployment, financial and banking systems, policing etc etc etc - all underpinned by our common wealth.

The point is that the economic rules that drive wealth to concentrate into fewer hands are political choices that we make (or are made for us). We can make other choices.

Without a concentration of capital, nothing
gets done. Whether its by one, two, ten thousand rich
people.

This is true under capitalism (to be precise, even in capitalist systems an incredible amount of work is done with concentrating capital but let's not get into the weeds).

What I'm getting at is that is that we can change the balance of concentration - the equilibrium point if you will.

You still have millions who arent rich.

Not everyone can be rich. We can have it so that more have better access to wealth, wealth creation, and wealth distibution.

But all the workers you mentioned have jobs.

Yes. Every worker has a job, by definition.

If you " decentralize" enough you will have only
street vendor tyoe entrepremeurs.

If we decentralise so that no uneveness in wealth can accumulate at all, yes, that does seem likely. That doesn't seem desirable at this point in time.

Take the ( foreced " de entralization) off. And soon
the smart, the lucky, and the hard working will
be back to getting rich.

Some will always be better at making money - some folk are just really clever at coming up with ways to accumulate wealth and this will always be the case. The point is to create the economic systems, legal frames and social policies that increase and encourage decentralised wealth.

There will still be rich people if we have millions of millionaires rather than thousands of billionaires. There would still be rich people if the richest people had handreds of thousands rather than millions. The point is that decentralised economic decision making is better for more people than the alternative, as capitalist theory points out.

But this is all obvious.

Well, it is in the terms that you employ. Perhaps the framing that you use is not entirely encapsulating of all the possibilities here.

Listen, I know that I'm not going to convince you of anything. I would like for you to see my position more clearly though:

The system of production that we have (capitalism) allows for a much wider range of outcomes (in terms of wealth distribution) than the ones we currently enjoy.
Some are much better than others.
The difference between the not-as-good and the better ones are determined by the political choices we make.
We can make different political choices.

Anyway, I hope you are having a good one. All the best.

 

[Revoltingest]

Like Musk?

Why are you citing him in response to my post
about Scandinavian countries being capitalist,
& having better social services than USA?

 

[Mock Turtle]

Why are you citing him in response to my post
about Scandinavian countries being capitalist,
& having better social services than USA?

Old age.

 

[Koldo]

Honestly, and no offense intended, but what I've seen is talking much...saying little...I tried my best to figure out how it might work...mostly on my own because there didn't seem to be any straight answers, either from the articles linked to the OP or from posters purporting to support the idea....but it's really not much more than an idealized latter day Robin Hood tale as far as I can see.

Ah, let me clarify that I never intended to be a frontman for llimitarianism. How it might work is very simple though: each nation will set a limit on how much wealth a individual can accumulate. I don't know if there is an unified perspective on how to manage the specific issues that may arise. Much like communism, I take it that the specifics would need to be dealt in accordance to the material conditions of each country.

 

[Koldo]

But it's a cultural change, really, and when it works better for everyone, other cultures will see it and want to adopt it. It begins with the idea that the wealth of the nation belongs to the nation's people. Not just to the wealthy investors that manage to capture and pile up huge amounts of it. That's a fundamental ideological cultural shift. And when it makes everyone's life better within that culture, others will follow.

I don't think the small fishes have the power to cause this massive cultural shift in the whales though. Even Europe's (a whale) success dealing with health care wasn't sufficient to cause the USA (another whale) to adopt a different model...

I also don't think this economic model is feasible without the rich countries leading the way. It would be absolutely essential to prevent capital flight, but the poor countries can't do that by themselves...

 

[PureX]

Ok, you have stated that we are heading for a great and disastrous reckoning and we need to change course soon or it will come to pass. The problem here is that it is left up to the imagination of the reader to fill in what the reckoning entails or involves as well as what constitutes great or amounts to disastrous as relates to what the reader imagines you imagine.

What do you think this ever-increasing economic disparity will lead to? How can it not result in a social and economic collapse that will likely manifest in a bloody revolt? Do you think millions pf people being forced further and further into poverty are just going to take it? Do you understand that the fastest growing demographic among the homeless are now senior citizens? And right behind them are the working poor? These aren't junkies and bums that we can just ignore and blame for their own fate. These people are us. And as time goes on they will be more and more of us. Because the rich don't give a damn. And the rich will NEVER be rich enough to ever agree to share anything. They will just keep takng and taking and taking while the people around them suffer and die. Because that's what the poison of greed does to people. That's what a couple of centuries of industrial strength capitalism has done to us all.

Let’s assume we do not change course. What exactly is going to happen, why is it both great and disastrous, and when will it occur?

You haven't seen the tent cities springing up all around the U.S. and Canada? The broken down RV camps along the sides of the roads? Town after town after town after town all across the country with their gutted empty centers surrounded by falling down and abandoned shacks? The few still occupied ones buried in junk cars and garbage?

I guess the wealthy corporate-owned media you watch didn't show you any of that. After all, it's completely unimportant to them. They extracted all the money from those people, already. Nothing left to see but the empty husks, and the broken humans. The big "losers" in the capitalist game of life.

And I guess you think you won't become one of them, as the rich keep squeezing more and more and more out of everyone else. Because no matter how much they get, it will NEVER be enough.

Once we have an idea of what you think is going to happen if we remain on course, we can see if we agree with your conclusion or agree that it will be as great or disastrous as you are predicting.

It's already happening. And it's very bad. You're just not looking. The bully boys are stock-piling weapons and amunition for the collapse and dissolution they can smell coming. And they want to be our next overlords.

The problem with spreading the money around, in my view, is that capital investment needs capital to invest.

There is nothing wrong with capital investment. The problem is that we are giving the investors total control over the business enterprises they are investing in. Which turns every enterprise into an economic parasite intent on extracting maximum profit to return to the investors. And to hell with everyone else. Everyone else is just an expense to be minimized or eliminated as much as possible. And by "minimized", read 'exploited'.

Instead of spreading the money out evenly, what if we no longer equate the spending of money with speech and remove the constitutional protections of speech from the spending of money?

Nothing positive will ever happen until westop that legalized bribery. But that is just the very first step. And no one it talking about "spreading the money out evenly". Just MORE evenly. This isnlt really even about the money. It's about control, and giving it back to the people being effected.

In other words, what can we do to limit the ability for aggregated funds to unduly influence government, because even if you spread the money out it will only begin to aggregate again into special interest legal entities.

They don't just unduly corrupt government. They corrupt all of commerce. They corrupt the whole purpose of commerce. Capitalism cannot be "fixed". It's a fundamentally toxic ideology and practice. And the only solution to it is to end it, by taking the decision-making power away from the capital investors and giving it to everyone effected by the business enterprise. That includes the investors, but not exclusively, anymore.

 

[PureX]

I don't think the small fishes have the power to cause this massive cultural shift in the whales though. Even Europe's (a whale) success dealing with health care wasn't sufficient to cause the USA (another whale) to adopt a different model...

I also don't think this economic model is feasible without the rich countries leading the way. It would be absolutely essential to prevent capital flight, but the poor countries can't do that by themselves...

Wherever the greedy rich run to, to "invest" in, they will destroy, eventually. It's inevitable. Eventually the whole world will be sick of it. And anyway, it's not that hard to strip them of their assets.

Bt this is all getting way ahead of ourselves. Nothing will change until we stop them from freely bribing our politicians to get them to act against us. That has to be the first step. We should be asking every single candidate how they feel about Citizens United, and make it very clear to them if they do not ACT to reverse or eliminate it as their primary task in office, we will remove them from office at the nearest possible opportunity.

 

[siti]

That's because we have allowed the wealth to pile up...

Once we put a stop to that,..

It all comes down to control. We need to take control...

All of your angry tirade may be true...but the operative word is "we"...and my question remains...

...if "we" can't even control our own spending habits because almost all 3.5 billion of us have been bamboozled by a handful of obviously corrupt and greedy super rich elites into giving all our hard earned cash to them...why on earth would "we" trust ourselves to run the entire economy...

I agree that "we" need a system overhaul, but limitarianism is not it. It's just yet another way of robbing Peter to pay Paul. It would do nothing to alleviate poverty, eliminate the wealth gaps that exist between prosperous countries and poor ones and still less to address the wasteful consumption that is, as we speak, laying waste the homes of some of the economically poorest victims of "our" profligacy...

...the truth is "we" already have control...the key is in "our" own pockets. What "we" lack, I fear, is the financial courage and moral integrity to put what money we do have where our outraged mouth is.

 

[MikeF]

What do you think this ever-increasing economic disparity will lead to? How can it not result in a social and economic collapse that will likely manifest in a bloody revolt? Do you think millions pf people being forced further and further into poverty are just going to take it? Do you understand that the fastest growing demographic among the homeless are now senior citizens? And right behind them are the working poor? These aren't junkies and bums that we can just ignore and blame for their own fate. These people are us. And as time goes on they will be more and more of us. Because the rich don't give a damn. And the rich will NEVER be rich enough to ever agree to share anything. They will just keep takng and taking and taking while the people around them suffer and die. Because that's what the poison of greed does to people. That's what a couple of centuries of industrial strength capitalism has done to us all.

You haven't seen the tent cities springing up all around the U.S. and Canada? The broken down RV camps along the sides of the roads? Town after town after town after town all across the country with their gutted empty centers surrounded by falling down and abandoned shacks? The few still occupied ones buried in junk cars and garbage?

I guess the wealthy corporate-owned media you watch didn't show you any of that. After all, it's completely unimportant to them. They extracted all the money from those people, already. Nothing left to see but the empty husks, and the broken humans. The big "losers" in the capitalist game of life.

And I guess you think you won't become one of them, as the rich keep squeezing more and more and more out of everyone else. Because no matter how much they get, it will NEVER be enough.

It's already happening. And it's very bad. You're just not looking. The bully boys are stock-piling weapons and amunition for the collapse and dissolution they can smell coming. And they want to be our next overlords.

There is nothing wrong with capital investment. The problem is that we are giving the investors total control over the business enterprises they are investing in. Which turns every enterprise into an economic parasite intent on extracting maximum profit to return to the investors. And to hell with everyone else. Everyone else is just an expense to be minimized or eliminated as much as possible. And by "minimized", read 'exploited'.

Nothing positive will ever happen until westop that legalized bribery. But that is just the very first step. And no one it talking about "spreading the money out evenly". Just MORE evenly. This isnlt really even about the money. It's about control, and giving it back to the people being effected.

They don't just unduly corrupt government. They corrupt all of commerce. They corrupt the whole purpose of commerce. Capitalism cannot be "fixed". It's a fundamentally toxic ideology and practice. And the only solution to it is to end it, by taking the decision-making power away from the capital investors and giving it to everyone effected by the business enterprise. That includes the investors, but not exclusively, anymore.

Just a quick search:

Poverty Levels Over Time​

In the late 1950s, the poverty rate in the U.S. was approximately 22%, with just shy of 40 million Americans living in poverty. The rate declined steadily, reaching a low of 11.1% in 1973 and rising to a high of nearly 15% three times – in 1983, 1993 and 2011 – before hitting the all-time low of 10.5% in 2019. However, the 46.7 million Americans in poverty in 2014 was the most ever recorded.​

​

Since the late 1960s, the poverty rate for people 65 or older has fallen dramatically. This drop could be ascribed to the enactment of the Medicare Program in 1965, which dramatically lowered out-of-pocket health care costs for this age group.​

​

Since 1959, when the U.S. began recording data about poverty, the numbers reflect events, from legislation to military activity to pandemics. This chart shows those numbers.​

I'm not seeing ever-increasing numbers of people being forced into poverty.

 

[MikeF]

...if "we" can't even control our own spending habits because almost all 3.5 billion of us have been bamboozled by a handful of obviously corrupt and greedy super rich elites into giving all our hard earned cash to them...why on earth would "we" trust ourselves to run the entire economy...

Indeed.

 

[PureX]

All of your angry tirade may be true...but the operative word is "we"...and my question remains...

...if "we" can't even control our own spending habits because almost all 3.5 billion of us have been bamboozled by a handful of obviously corrupt and greedy super rich elites into giving all our hard earned cash to them...why on earth would "we" trust ourselves to run the entire economy...

Because it we that suffer the consequences.

I agree that "we" need a system overhaul, but limitarianism is not it. It's just yet another way of robbing Peter to pay Paul. It would do nothing to alleviate poverty, eliminate the wealth gaps that exist between prosperous countries and poor ones and still less to address the wasteful consumption that is, as we speak, laying waste the homes of some of the economically poorest victims of "our" profligacy...

The solution is not one policy or another. It's a cultural change in our economic ethos away from selfishness and toward our collective well-being.

...the truth is "we" already have control...the key is in "our" own pockets. What "we" lack, I fear, is the financial courage and moral integrity to put what money we do have where our outraged mouth is.

I'm not even going to dignify that absurd nonsense with a response. You seem to be obsessed with victim-blaming. A very common affliction among capitalism apologists.

There is no doubt that we have allowed this to mess to happen, and that many of us still approve of it. That changes nothing. That excuses nothing. We can do better. We should do better. We must do better or the consequences will be very, very bad.

 

[Revoltingest]

Old age.

Did you steal some of mine?

 

[PureX]

Just a quick search:

Poverty Levels Over Time​

In the late 1950s, the poverty rate in the U.S. was approximately 22%, with just shy of 40 million Americans living in poverty. The rate declined steadily, reaching a low of 11.1% in 1973 and rising to a high of nearly 15% three times – in 1983, 1993 and 2011 – before hitting the all-time low of 10.5% in 2019. However, the 46.7 million Americans in poverty in 2014 was the most ever recorded.​

​

Since the late 1960s, the poverty rate for people 65 or older has fallen dramatically. This drop could be ascribed to the enactment of the Medicare Program in 1965, which dramatically lowered out-of-pocket health care costs for this age group.​

​

Since 1959, when the U.S. began recording data about poverty, the numbers reflect events, from legislation to military activity to pandemics. This chart shows those numbers.​

I'm not seeing ever-increasing numbers of people being forced into poverty.

Numbers lie. In fact, they are the 'go-to' method of lying for those who want to hide the truth. But the homeless encampments and gutted towns aren't numbers that can be fudged to deceive. I am 66 years old and I have never seen anything like this in my lifetime.

 

[MikeF]

Numbers lie. In fact, they are the 'go-to' method of lying for those who want to hide the truth. But the homeless encampments and gutted towns aren't numbers that can be fudged to deceive. I am 66 years old and I have never seen anything like this in my lifetime.

Well that would certainly be an un-scientific approach. How have you ruled out increased visibility of the homeless due to changes in vagrancy law enforcement, for example?

 

[PureX]

Well that would certainly be an un-scientific approach. How have you ruled out increased visibility of the homeless due to changes in vagrancy law enforcement, for example?

Why would I even care about ruling those out? Do you think their possible past invisibility somehow makes it OK? Not only that, I think it's wildly unlikely that we somehow managed to keep a homeless epidemic hidden for a half century, and then suddenly decided to "let them be seen" on the streets, now. Instead of looking for ways of making this invisible, why don't you go online and look at it for yourself? Not just the homeless camps, but the thousands upon thousands of gutted towns. This country has been hollowed out by it's own greed. It literally has become a third world country, and the well-to-dos have no idea that it's happening.

 

[Koldo]

All of your angry tirade may be true...but the operative word is "we"...and my question remains...

...if "we" can't even control our own spending habits because almost all 3.5 billion of us have been bamboozled by a handful of obviously corrupt and greedy super rich elites into giving all our hard earned cash to them...why on earth would "we" trust ourselves to run the entire economy...

I agree that "we" need a system overhaul, but limitarianism is not it. It's just yet another way of robbing Peter to pay Paul. It would do nothing to alleviate poverty, eliminate the wealth gaps that exist between prosperous countries and poor ones and still less to address the wasteful consumption that is, as we speak, laying waste the homes of some of the economically poorest victims of "our" profligacy...

...the truth is "we" already have control...the key is in "our" own pockets. What "we" lack, I fear, is the financial courage and moral integrity to put what money we do have where our outraged mouth is.

Since you want to get down to specifics, how would that work exactly?

Suppose, for example, I want to buy butter. By what process would I determine from whom I would buy it?

 

[MikeF]

Why would I even care about ruling those out? Do you think their possible past invisibility somehow makes it OK? Not only that, I think it's wildly unlikely that we somehow managed to keep a homeless epidemic hidden for a half century, and then suddenly decided to "let them be seen" on the streets, now. Instead of looking for ways of making this invisible, why don't you go online and look at it for yourself? Not just the homeless camps, but the thousands upon thousands of gutted towns. This country has been hollowed out by it's own greed. It literally has become a third world country, and the well-to-dos have no idea that it's happening.

You've lost track of what I was responding to. You have claimed a dramatic increase in poverty and then claimed that numbers lie when then did not seem to support your first claim. The visibility of the homeless was not what was at question.

As to gutted towns, the economy and industry change over time. Are we to lament all the ghost towns scattered throughout the West because the mining industry changed? We have the ruins of 19th/20th century millworks in my region. Were they to be perpetually kept in operation despite changes in the industry?