General Discussion

So what is your proposal on billionaires? Make them disappear?

Self-determination. It is an individual's choice to be selfless or selfish, and it is the fact of making that choice independently, without the expectation of reward, that makes the selfless behavior laudable. Similarly we can condemn selfish behavior, but not necessarily criminally prosecute such behavior.

In either case, other people do not get to decide whether the individual in question is allowed to behave that way, at least not preemptively.

Because we're cowards. Might as well own it.

I have thought about this a lot.

I have a theory that most people are fine, let’s say 90%

Then you have 5% that are antisocial in a clear and violent way.

Then another 5% that are antisocial in a non violent way, they can never have enough, these people become billionaires (or try to).

I think most societies and economic systems try to control those 10% and under capitalism the system established two mechanisms.

For antisocial and violent: state sanctioned violence, police to arrest, beat, shoot and a justice system to incarcerate.

For antisocial and nonviolent: capitalism attempts to harness the unending avarice of these people towards constructive aims. The strength of capitalism is that this sorta works for a while, greedy people that want more and more and more end up making things of value for society. Not on purpose, not because they enjoy making valuable things, but as a means to their goal, accumulating more money.

The problem with capitalist systems is that the mechanism intended to control the nonviolent antisocial people breaks down. Witb enough wealth they can undo the competition that causes their greed to accidentally make value for society. They capture the power in the society and continue sucking up more and more, never satisfied.

I’m not sure what the solution is, but I’ve become convinced that you can judge any economic systems based on how it controls these two groups. European democratic socialism is fairing a bit better because they seem to still be interested in controlling the nonviolent antisocial group, but that group is happy to slowly accumulate more and more wealth and power and influence. A few well placed bribes, a couple key votes go their way, and bit by bit they will tear down the constraints. The problem with constant vigilance against a group of determined antisocial people is that they only need a handful of victories to change the rules in their favor and then it’s game over.

America should serve as a clear warning of what happens when your guardrails come undone.

We did not simply allow billionaires to exist. They have spent generations cultivating the billionaire class. They have tricked us all, like frogs in boiling water.

Now they feel emboldened enough with their success that they no longer need to placate us, and are their true selves. Yeah, there are more of us than there are them, but they control us because we own nothing anymore.

That said, we applaud basic humanity for the very same reasons: we have been brainwashed to think evil is normal. So when someone deviates from evil, and does the bare minimum human effort, we see that as extraordinary.