Hot Take (for a leftist):
If the long term goal is making rich ppl obsolete, then a short term phenomenon of rich guys like #MrBeast is a step in the right direction. Should we stop there? Absolutely not! But if you're driving from a desert to a rainforest you'll have to go through some temperate shrublands. As long as we're still moving in the right direction, I don't see the harm in enjoying the view along the way. Celebrate progress! We still have a ways to go, but we've come a long way too
@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.
@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.
@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.
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.
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.
But that touches on my point: the million dollars *doesn't* sit in your bank account in modern financial systems.
The bank writes down that it owes that money to the depositor, but then it takes that money and loans it out to others.
That million dollars doesn't just sit there. It goes to help a small company make payroll for the week, or it helps a machine shop buy a lathe, or it helps a middle class couple buy a new car for their commute.
The idea that money is sitting in an account is exactly the misunderstanding people have when they talk about the wealthy that way.
Anyway. That's all a diversion because we're not talking about money, we're talking about (physical) wealth.
Owning a company is hoarding wealth. Giving the company away is spreading wealth.
Owning a rental apartment building is hoarding wealth. Giving the apartments away is spreading wealth.
Owning a machine that you can't use, so you have to hire other people to make stuff with it, is hoarding wealth. Giving the machine away to those who can use it is spreading wealth.
@volkris @Vincarsi
That's not how modern banking works.
Banks create money by lending it out. The limit to how much money a bank can create is not the bank's total deposits, but the reserve ratio set by the central bank.
If one bank needs to meet its reserve requirements, it borrows from another bank, sometimes from the central bank.
Sure, your million dollars will make it easier for your bank to meet its reserve ratio. But it's not the thing that's getting loaned out to other people.