i don’t see it as property confiscation; i see it as ok! you won capitalism! keep your enormous bag of 1000x what the average family makes in a year and enjoy it! also please enjoy living in a society that is based on the health and flourishing of all humans and the entire biosphere.
it doesnt have to be eat the rich; it could just be refraining from eating the poor and decimating the environment.
(i do realize this is incredibly idealistic and yet i can see it in my mind’s eye, clear as day)
I like having 2-3 bottles of wine around (sparkling, red and white). I usually have one. I’m more likely to drink kombucha or cider because unless I buy tiny prosecco I have to throw out so much.
I think that there is an obscene or immoral amount of wealth where you should give it away, but f if I know it. More than that I think there are obscene spending habits. My solution is more to tax the spending, and I’m happy about the new luxury car and plane tax…kinda confused that boats were ignored. And income taxes, and coming after tax shelters.
But what if I become a self made billionaire and I pay my taxes and give to charity and self impose carbon offset and want to set up a trust because I don’t know whose judgement I trust to steward my excess money?
They are hard questions and hard answers. I’d like to see people making 50-5000000000k start being angry about tax evasion and climate destruction. I’d like to see billionaires competing and collaborating to deliver healthcare and solve climate change.
I like the idealism myself! But I’m very wary of what the reality of trying to achieve it would lead to given past history
The problem with eating the rich is that there aren’t that many rich people compared to poor people, so most people will only get a bit of broth.
I’m all for a hard cap on wealth. Being a wealth hoarder is directly harming the other creatures on this planet, and should not be allowed. If you win capitalism you get to have a crown and several millions and you can tell everyone that you won. Maybe even a t shirt? But no, you cannot amass unlimited wealth. In the zero sum game of wealth the mega-rich are assholes.
Is wealth zero sum though? After all, there’s more people than ever before, but also more wealth per capita compared to any time in human history. Those can’t both be true if wealth is indeed zero sum.
i dont think it’s technically zero-sum, but i think in practice it often is. like the less jeff bezos pays his employees, the more money he gets to keep.
There is a set amount of resources that we can harvest from the planet sustainably. That limit has been vastly exceeded and now our planet is dying. Yes, resources (and therefore wealth) are finite, and therefore it is zero sum. We can only pretend otherwise if we don’t consider the planet or the most resource-deprived of humans.
agreed on everything except i dont want billionaires to solve these problems – i feel they need to be solved in a more democratic way. billionaires as people do not have an intersectional, inclusive view of the world. they are incredibly egotistical and non-egalitarian.
they can maybe pick off pieces of problems to solve? but i don’t trust elon musk to grok the complexity of, say, maternal mortality among Black mothers. maybe he can give the folks already working on these problems his bag of money, and step back and let them work.
Does an “objective” analysis of the impacts of private property/meritocracy/wealth/capitalism exist? Taking into account slavery (all flavors- American slavery, sweatshops, cobalt mines, etc), imperialism, child labor, crumbling infrastructure, deaths of despair and addiction, fucking CLIMATE CHANGE…
Because yes, I’m absolutely not disagreeing that various flavors of communism and “eat the rich” rhetoric has resulted in a lot of death and evil. But so has capitalism. And now I’m genuinely curious about comparing the two.
(Esme, you don’t actually have to answer-your comment just inspired these thoughts 
)
Gotcha, that makes sense!I guess I also wonder (not directing specifically at you)
about inequality of nature in a less extreme way and how that plays a part in these conversations. Like, if one sibling has an IQ of 130 and the other has an IQ of 90, what is fair? IQ 90 is not at the level of disability, and independent “normal” living is totally possible, BUT it is very unlikely that the IQ 90 person could compete with the IQ 130 person or make as much money as them. IQ is hugely indicative of future economic success.
I guess I think about this aspect a lot since I pretty much understand the arguments around “structural” inequity, but I rarely hear about “natural” (meaning, of nature) inequity.
ETA: And I’m off to some appointments so plz don’t take offense if I disappear for a bit.
this is such an excellent point. seems to me we base too many of our decisions on potential situations that people with power might encounter, and not enough on the actual situations that more vulnerable folks are already in.
i think if we design our society in such a way that everyone has what they need, natural equity matters less. like if the lower IQ sibling has access to what they need to enjoy their life, then who cares if the higher IQ sibling has a bit more?
i’m not advocating that everyone should have equal outcomes in life – just a nice high floor they can’t fall below, and a decent ceiling that keeps anyone from turning into a dragon atop a giant hoard.
Good points all!
See I’m really firm on the good floor, and I love @smacky’s meme. But I’m not certain that we can figure out where the ceiling should be. And I’m more worried about building the floor first. Because if we build that solid floor, then
We don’t have to trust Elon Musk because the problem will be solved, and the mamas in Birmingham will be alive and raising good kids and solving other problems
You’re all so smart and cool and I love this forum.
I think I’ve heard people quote the philosopher John Rawls on this point - the idea that universal access to “sufficiency” matters far more than preventing inequality. In a universe where everyone has enough resources, it’s not evil per se for someone to also have their weird hoard of gold piles.
As a matter of practicality I believe that we get to universal sufficiency in part by taxing the wealthy, and in part by e.g. technological advances that make universal sanitation, literacy, etc possible.
I’d recommend against donating to SPLC for these reasons:
1.SPLC took major heat in recent years for evidence of persistent racial discrimination within the organization. Which is pretty hypocritical given their history and mission.
there is some discussion in the field of the rigor and bias in their research products. They do good work doing investigative reporting, but the research products leave something to be desired. Yes, they do legal work, but have been focusing more on hate monitoring for a while. Their last major win as far as I know was in 2000.
They already have a massive warchest of money. Like MASSIVE… Close to .5 BILLION.
Things are changing in the org but I think they need more time to sweat it out with a drop in active donors as a metric.
My husband, who works in the field, recommends Network Contagion Research Inst. at Rutgers.
