@Vincarsi I'd first stop and realize that making rich people obsolete is a tearing down when it's healthier to focus on building up.

But that dovetails with what you're saying, as stopping to enjoy MrBeast is building up.

We should focus on the positive and not the negative.

@volkris @Vincarsi Making rich people obsolete is no more “tearing down” than making fossil fuels obsolete would be.

@magitweeter how do you figure?

Fossil fuels will be obsolete when a better option out competes them.

I don't know how you make a, what, a person that's better than rich? How do you outcompete a rich person?

A fundamental quirk there is that the rich status is itself indicator of relative competition.

@Vincarsi

@volkris @magitweeter you change societal values so that wealth hoarding is no longer considered a virtue.
There's been a lot of research done on how cultural norms affect behavior. Paraphrasing Dr Robert Sapolsky, people with high testosterone will compete for dominance in cultures that value strength above all. But in cultures that value altruism, they'll compete to give away more than anyone else because social status is determined by human values and wealth is just economic dominance.

@Vincarsi

But we're already there.

People working in the context of modern financial systems are discouraged from hoarding wealth and rewarded for spreading it around as society pays them returns on their investments.

There are no Scrooge McDucks with money pools in places with modern banking.

Such hoarding represents a tremendous opportunity cost, so people don't.

@volkris I'm gonna need you to check your work on that one. When the incentive for altruism is more dominance then the core values are not altruism. A culture that values altruism above dominance wouldn't have more empty houses than homeless ppl. Modern financial systems incentivizes only helping people who are useful to you. A fundamental value shift would mean that requiring a direct return on investment would make you a pariah who's considered a selfish person who doesn't value life

@Vincarsi I'm not talking about altruism, though. You brought that up, but it's not necessary to highlight that our culture doesn't value hoarding wealth.

Wealth hoarding is already not considered a virtue. It has nothing to do with altruism but rather alignment of interests, people being rewarded for working in common interests.

It's fine to prefer altruism and think that's panacea to all of society's ills, but in the mean time we can recognize the way the institutions we have now work for the common good.

And in particular, the way the institutions we have now punish the hoarding of wealth, if that's something you care about.

@volkris again, I'm failing to see what you're talking about. I live in a world where less than 1% of people have amassed half of the wealth in the world, and in terms of social status they're considered superheros with near godlike influence on our social systems. The fact that there's some incentives to invest money in order to get more of it doesn't disprove that getting more money is culturally considered the default "win" condition. Even your earlier comment implies that rich=better person

@Vincarsi where is that wealth?

Again, it's Scrooge McDuck. Do you think they have moneyvaults that they go swimming in? Giant piles of coins? Maybe their driveways are paved with currency?

No, of course not. In a modern society people invest their wealth, making it available for use by others.

Because modern cultures push those with money to share their money with others, and not to hoard it.

There's a good chance your paycheck is in part made possible by some rich guy sharing his wealth with your employer, even if indirectly.

Now I'm not saying anything about whether this is good or bad or whether rich people are good people. I figure most of them aren't. BUT the reality is that wealthy people don't tend to hoard their wealth.

Even if such stories make for compelling clickbait and political messaging.

@volkris @Vincarsi

You confuse wealth with money.

Yes, a million dollars sitting in your bank account is wealth.

A million-dollar house is also wealth. And even if you're “sharing” it by renting it out, it's still yours, it's your investment, and you're still hoarding it. All of that is true.

Spreading wealth would be giving away the house, not renting it out.

@magitweeter @volkris thank you, I was starting to wonder if we were inhabiting the same reality, where a net worth of a trillion dollars somehow doesn't count as wealth hoarding

@Vincarsi

It doesn't because in our reality the net worth doesn't really count what you HAVE but what you're OWED.

There's little hoarding with our banking system.

When you deposit money in a bank the bank doesn't just throw the cash in their vault. No, that money is lent out and otherwise used elsewhere.

If you deposit $1T into the bank, so you have a net worth of $1T, you're not sitting on that cash. The cash is gone, with the bank transferring it to other people and institutions.

That's the disconnect between measures of wealth and hoarding. Hoarding represented an opportunity cost, so these days we've broken that connection through banking.

@magitweeter

@volkris @Vincarsi

It's possible that we're all talking past each other because we mean different things by “hoarding”.

To you it seems like hoarding means taking physical stuff and locking it away out of existence.

To us hoarding means accumulating large amounts of titles to things. That can mean bank deposits, corporate equity, real estate, anything that represents an ownership claim on some resource.

@magitweeter and I'm trying to point out that you are wrong about how banking works 🙂

When you have a bank deposit in a modern bank, you absolutely do not have a claim on any money. You don't own any money. Instead, the bank moves the money out of your ownership and gives it to other people.

When you deposit into a bank you give up your ownership of money.

What you receive in return is a claim against the bank itself, you receive a promise that the bank will give you other money when you request it. But you do give up your money when you deposit it in a bank.

So yes, I know that to you, hoarding means accumulating large amounts of titles to things, but what I'm trying to convey is that in modern financial systems you don't so much accumulate large amounts of titles to things.

(I'm trying to say this a few different ways to try to explain it)

So it's not so much that we are talking past each other, but that we have a disagreement over fact.

We agree that hoarding may involve keeping ownership of money. The difference is that you think these wealthy people do that, while I know that's not how banks work, and they give up that ownership when they deposit money.

@Vincarsi

@volkris @Vincarsi

So a positive balance in a bank account to your name isn't a title of ownership to a resource. Is that what you're saying?

@magitweeter

Yes, that is the structure of modern banking.

@Vincarsi

@volkris @Vincarsi

What about a real estate deed? Is that also not a title of ownership to a resource?

Corporate stocks? Government bonds? Also not a title of ownership to a resource?

I'm intrigued because your perspective seems to be exactly upside down from mine.

@magitweeter

Each is a different thing.

But it's so significant that so many talk about wealth in therms of currency, dollars and such, but so little wealth is actually held in dollars.

Take the real estate deed. The owner [probably] had to give up their money to buy that deed. The guy buying a million dollar house is a million dollars poorer after the purchase. He has literally given up a million dollars to other people who needed the money more.

We talk about wealth in these abstract terms that so often don't really match the substantial facts on the ground.

We want a rich guy to spread his money to others? Well, in old times that was a concern, but it's not really a concern now. With modern financial systems rich people are constantly transferring their cash to others since they're punished by inflation, not to mention opportunity costs, should they hoard it.

@Vincarsi

@volkris @Vincarsi

The only person in this conversation who thinks we're talking about money when we say “wealth” is you.

I suggest you read back through it. We've insisted multiple times that wealth doesn't equal money.

You seem insistent on convincing us that wealth doesn't equal money—something we're already aware of and have been since the start of this exchange.