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Just a reminder, wealth is **not** a zero sum game. If it were we would still be living in caves.

ยท ยท 10 ยท 4 ยท 11
Pie isn't a zero sum game either. As the parable of the Little Red Hen illustrates.

@freemo

in this game there's always new pie beeing created and the rich fags get their fingers on them first when they are still fresh and warm !

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what is the cantillon effect?

youtube.com/watch?v=LvvlEbX66j

@mk There is no claim here that there arent issues that are unfair in the economy.. but the simple existence of rich people is not a red flag.

@freemo @mk Yeah, I always wondered why there was so much emphasis recently (like the last 15 years) on wealth disparity in the US rather than quality of life for lowest X% of wealth.

@ech

Because politicians and parties dont really care about fixing things, they care about what hypes people up the most.. Having an evil villain does just that, plus it helps distract people away from their own evil deeds.

@mk

@freemo

"wealthy people having money doesn not mean there's less money for you."

1. wealthy people control the monetary system

2. wealthy people print money

3. printing money decreases the value of money

4. if the wage of ordinary people doesn't rise with inflation, they got less purchasing power...or simple..less money.

@mk

Ok, 4 points that have nothing to do with the fact I stated, and doesnt change the fact that what I said is true.

To your 4 points I am not saying they arent real concerns, they are conversations in and of themself worth having.. But you, as people often do, are blinded by trying to argue "Wealthy people are bad" which just pushes you onto unrelated topics since my argument is not "wealthy people are good".

@freemo

00:04:09 usa printed more than a third of the active money supply in the economy today in 2020/2021

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Hyperinflation is Already Here โ€“ You Just Haven't Realised It Yet.

youtu.be/1HmGLV46L60?t=249

@mk

Ok, not sure why you keep insisting on a topic that isnt what the OP is about.

@freemo

my position is:

you CAN NOT have working freemarket capitalism if you don't fix the monetary system first.

what should happen:
switching back to gold backed paper (like the BRICS does)

what is going to happen:
a totalitarian cbdc nightmare

@mk Regardless if thats true or not, it still isnt about the OP. I have no objection discussing the bigger problem, but that would deserve its own thread, not hijacking one of an unrelated topic.

@mk The original post is about wealth not being a 0-sum game. No matter how much some have that does not imply others had to have less for them to have more.

To put that in simple language. If the whole world had only two people, and one had X wealth, the other Y wealth, it is possible (and in fact fairly common ) that both values can increase over time. In otherwords, everyone can get more wealth without anyone loosing wealth. Over time that has overwhelmingly been the case as is evident by the fact that we arent still living in caves.

@freemo

"world had only two people[..]possible[..]that both values can increase[..]everyone can get more wealth without anyone loosing wealth."

yes, but we're not living in caves anymore. we're living in a hyper competitive world.

every cmยฒ an this planet belongs to somebody..the top 1% own most of the wealth..there's no such thing anymore as free land / free resources..

if person A earns 1 dollar, you're taking it away from person B. ones value increases and the others decreases..

@freemo

here's andrew #tate talking about it this subject.

00:00:12 "you cannot make money. you're not the Federal Reserve[..]all of us take money from somebody else[..]next time you buy a coffee. don't just buy the coffee[..]why am I buying this coffee?[..]why am I buying here?[..]is there any competition around?"

youtu.be/p5_YerY48Sc?t=12

@mk Again posting this just shows you need tor ead up ont he base concepts first... see how your quote doesnt have the word "wealth" anywhere in it... that should be a clue to you. Wealth is NOT money.

@freemo

"Wealth is NOT money."

we are not living in your lalal land. everything in our current world is priced in some kind of currency.

if the court comes to you and wants to know what your wealth is, they are expecting you to come up with a number..

they will not accept your perceived wealth...you will just go straight to jail.

@mk @freemo i suspect he's being poetic. one of my favorite definitions is that its the amount of days you can live your current lifestyle without performing any additional hustling.

@mk Nop im sorry that is not how wealth works.. you are thinking int erms of "1 dollar".. dollars are paper, they are money, they arent wealth. If you want to understand these base ideas so you can understand the bigger one, you first need a better understanding of what wealth is. You can probably understand that best when you think in terms of one or two people, but you are right in larger populations it gets more complex, but the same principles still hold.

@mk @freemo
you CAN NOT have working freemarket capitalism if you don't fix the monetary system first.

switching back to gold backed paper (like the BRICS does)

It doesn't matter, inflation was still a problem with the gold standard, and capital still attracts capital whenever the goverment prints money or not

@moffintosh @freemo

"It doesn't matter, inflation was still a problem with the gold standard"

yes..when you're a lying faggot country like the usa that has the monopoly on printing the globale reserve currency.

---
1971
Richard #Nixon

mastodon.satoshishop.de/@mk/11
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but what happens when multiple countries print the same gold backed currency?

when one of them fucks up and prints too much. they will get in trouble with the other ones.

@freemo @mk

I mostly agree with your original point that on the macro level that wealth isnโ€™t a zero sum game (though it can certainly be a lot closer to one within a company).

Saying that the existence of rich people isnโ€™t a red flag is a different and interesting argument, but I donโ€™t want to hijack your thread

@Gbudd

Honestly even within a company it isnt a 0-sum game, it just might be hard to see. I think it is most obvious (though not limited to) companies that sell a product, particularly when manufactured from raw products.

If I am a lumber company then cut and cured lumber has more value than a tree the dead trees I buy.. so generation of new wealth is clear and easy to quantify,

@mk

@freemo @mk

Itโ€™s might not strictly be a zero sum within a company (presumably itโ€™s value goes up and down) and sure, a company can increase its value and we would typically expect that gain (or loss) to be sent to the owners of that company.

On the employee level it feels like itโ€™s closer to zero sum though, and maybe thatโ€™s just a perception thing. While relative CEO pay has gone up over the years I guess you canโ€™t necessarily disentangle whether that increase comes out of the pool of wages available to all employees or whether itโ€™s coming out of the pool of money that could be going back to investors. I guess I should go see if economists have any papers on that

@Gbudd @freemo

"I should go see if economists have any papers on that"

at first we should start at the beginning and find out what the definition of a women...*รคhm.. wealth is..

mastodon.satoshishop.de/@mk/11

@freemo No, but wealth is a marker of exploitation. A certain degree of wealth can be legitimately earned, but above that point, the wealth is grossly disproportionate to the value created for the economy and can only be obtained through some degree of systemic exploitation of the labor of others. Stock trading is the classic example of this.

So, in that sense, the sign in the OP is accurate.

@LouisIngenthron Nah, that sounds just as incorrect to me. Having a lot of wealth just means you you may have longer-term do-gooder plans as well (just as you may have long-term evil plans). For example if you spend a lot of your money starting charities, you might recognize you do more good with their money than most. But if you spend all your money in one go doing charities then that is all the good you will do.. However if you invest some of your money in doing good, and the rest in generating more wealth, then long term you can do much more good.

So no, having wealth, even in the billions, is never an indication or red flag at all.. It means nothing on its own, you have to look at the persons overall choices.

@freemo Except, again, if you have the wealth, it means it's not being donated to charities. It's still yours.

Charity would, therefore, be a limiting factor to wealth. Good people would donate enough of the excess to avoid being over that evil-wealthy line.

Moreover, charities are free to invest the money too. Why would a wealthy person hanging on to it for themselves to invest be better than giving it to the charity to choose to do with how they think best (including investing)?

@freemo Also, for the long-term thing: The longest term that should matter for wealth, in my opinion, is one human lifetime. Inherited wealth just seems to create assholes.

@LouisIngenthron Its a short sighted view of money.. most people who inherit wealtyh d0ont go and stick it in a large vault.. the vast majority is invested, meaning it is working to create more wealth. So there is no reason to see it as a bad thing in and of itself.

@freemo Investment, in its most basic form (i.e. finding a prospective business that seems like it could be profitable and investing to buy a stake and help it thrive) does work to create actual value in the economy (i.e. more diverse businesses, more innovation).

However, investment abstracted to the point of the modern stock market is just horse betting for the rich. The "value" created is ephemeral, based more on confidence than actual products or services created for consumers. It incentivizes companies to seek short term profits to please investors, to the detriment of everything else. It encourages a race-to-the-bottom in our overall economic model, and incentivizes companies to buy out and squash their competition instead of beating them in the field. Besides these many systemic problems, the stock market also creates an avenue for even more money to flow upward, from those who actually perform the labor, to those who sit on their asses and contribute nothing to society but that which their parents earned for them a generation ago.

@LouisIngenthron

> However, investment abstracted to the point of the modern stock market is just horse betting for the rich.

That is just completely ignorant of how it works (but common).. I just finished 2 years running a company going public and know the process intimately both before and after being public (going on the stock market)... It is literally the same as when you invest privately except it is regulated so you have some guarantees you arent being lied to.

It has all the same properties...

* By investing you get physical ownership of a precentage

*You get to vote in general assemblies for any company you own shares in.

* You have all the same power over the day to day operations and the board as you would in a private company

* The comp can buy back public shares or issues new ones, meaning it acts as an investment in the growth of existing companies.

@freemo The difference is that a private company (generally) gets to choose who invests. They can choose to only work with people who have the long-term good of the company in mind.

In a publicly-traded company, there is no such control. Anyone with the cash can invest. And stock market investors tend to have zero interest in the long-term good of the company; all they care about is getting a return on their investment as quickly as possible (see, for example, the very existence of arbitrage trading). After all, they can sell their stake any time almost effortlessly, so that, along with the massive dilution, doesn't create a sense of genuine ownership.

@LouisIngenthron

> The difference is that a private company (generally) gets to choose who invests. They can choose to only work with people who have the long-term good of the company in mind.

No not really, if I invest in your company privately, much like the stock market, I can share my ownership to someone else regardless of what the company wants (usually).

> In a publicly-traded company, there is no such control. Anyone with the cash can invest.

No a public company can, to some degree (they are more limited though). If a public company makes more shares they can choose to offer it to the investor they want at a discount from public. So they still get some level of control.

@freemo
> I can share my ownership to someone else regardless of what the company wants

As I understand it, many private companies require board approval for major share sales for exactly this reason.

> they can choose to offer it to the investor they want at a discount from public

And they almost inevitably choose to use this power to offer it to fellow rich people or past investors, rather than use it to impose any kind of litmus test for positive intentions. Thus helping to rigidify the existing wealth structure.

@freemo
Well, the total amount grows over time, but slowly. If this is addressing wealth disparity, that is indeed a zero-sum game at any moment in time. The more that billionaires have, the less the rest of us do.

I haven’t really heard much angst about people with a million or three, though. The outrage tends to be directed at those with outsized wealth, and the outsized control that goes with it.

@IAmErik No the idea that wealth grows slowly is a huge fallacy.. you are probably thinking of money supply, not wealth. Wealth actually grows quite quickly, it can also be destroyed quickly.

The logic applyes whether you have a million or a trillion, no matter how much someone has is never a reason for outrage. What a person does with their money is all that matter, some create tons of wealth, some destroy wealth, and others give to charity… most do some sort of combination of the three.

@freemo
The money supply and one person’s share of it determine economic power. What I’m trying to say is:

  1. There isn’t much outrage over people with millionaire-level wealth, so the image on your post is a straw-man.
  2. The relative size of individuals’ assets does have an impact on their well-being.

@IAmErik

Ahhh well then I see where your understanding fails here:

The money supply and one personโ€™s share of it determine economic power.

Nope Wealth is not Money Supply. I can have 0 dollars and a huge pile of gold or other valuable goods and I’d still have a lot of wealth.

You cant begin to really approach what is being said here until you first understand what wealth is, and it is NOT the money supply.

@freemo
Hah, just realized I misquoted the image in your OP. Sorry. Someone else in this thread said, “millionaires”.

@freemo I'd prefer us living in caves. I could crush at least three a night on average.

@freemo

Whoa holy shit guy are you opening up a wormhole from 2015? Quick, you need to warn Stefan Molyneux that he needs to back up all his youtube videos before his channel gets suddenly taken down!

I'd tell him myself, but I'm from many years in the future where absolutely nobody makes gay libertarian arguments like this and it's too late to tell the goose egg what's coming.

@freemo This was a very interesting thread, thank you very much for stirring the pot. I tend to think the same as you on this topic so I may be biased, although pretty sure not as wealthy.

@freemo No? It is? Money has value because it is scarce, even more so after abandoning the gold standard

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