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[Loud Whispers]

Consume less and poop out less children. You don't need the newest iPhone model once every 2 years. You don't need the newest winter fashion. You don't need to smear kilos of fossil fuel product (make-up) on your face because instagram tells you to.

What's the consumer equivalent of the jevon's paradox? That any savings you produce will be doubly consumed by some rich arsehole?

[martinuzz]

Well yeah, there's that.

The biggest threat to our species is the concept of 'economical growth'.
We should abandon that with haste, and aim for economical shrinking.

[Scoops Novel]

I'm afraid you lack imagination. We're looking at excess from all angles. Cultural overload; Technological explosion; old-fashioned consumption. Complication.

We do WANT excess, though. It's how you spin the yo-yo that's the challenge. How the fuck, precisely.

[EuchreJack]

No Future,
No Excessive Future.
Problem solved.

Alright, to not make this a downer thing, I'll pontificate further.

Stop believing in "The Future".  It's a mental construct that pushes responsibility onto "Future People" AKA "Not Me".
Instead, acknowledge that we are traveling forward in time, like a canoe in a fast moving stream.

What steps are we going to make to maximize the Present that we hope to reside?
What change can occur TODAY that will help in the Next Today?
Incremental progress is the most reliable progress, and keeps us in-tune with reality and success.  If you can read the times, you can influence them and profit from them.

PROFIT? But isn't PROFIT EVIL?!
NO
Profit means acquiring resources with which you can affect THE WORLD.  Profit is the BEST way to strive for the New Present in which we wish to reside.
GREED IS GOOD. 

[martinuzz]

A columnist in my newspaper has a brilliant idea:

Every year, the entire world population gets to vote which ultrabillionaire is to be disowned of all his property, and the proceeds will be distributed to healthcare and education worldwide.

A great incentive for the super rich to spend their fortunes on a better world.

Also WTF. It's completely batshit insane if you stop and ponder for a second that Jeff Bezos 'earns' 8 million dollars per hour, just from passive value increase of his capital. Why do we still put up with this dystopia?

https://www.volkskrant.nl/columns-opinie/wat-zou-u-doen-met-8-miljoen-euro-per-uur~b99d74be/

[MaxTheFox]

I'm afraid you lack imagination. We're looking at excess from all angles. Cultural overload; Technological explosion; old-fashioned consumption. Complication.

We do WANT excess, though. It's how you spin the yo-yo that's the challenge. How the fuck, precisely.

There is absolutely nothing wrong with cultural or technological advancement and, sorry to break it to you, you are fighting windmills here.

Well yeah, there's that.

The biggest threat to our species is the concept of 'economical growth'.
We should abandon that with haste, and aim for economical shrinking.

Actually, economic growth is fine if/when we switch to green energy or expand to other worlds. Then there are more resources, or the ability to exploit them without fucking the environment, again.

No Future,
No Excessive Future.
Problem solved.

Alright, to not make this a downer thing, I'll pontificate further.

Stop believing in "The Future".  It's a mental construct that pushes responsibility onto "Future People" AKA "Not Me".
Instead, acknowledge that we are traveling forward in time, like a canoe in a fast moving stream.

What steps are we going to make to maximize the Present that we hope to reside?
What change can occur TODAY that will help in the Next Today?
Incremental progress is the most reliable progress, and keeps us in-tune with reality and success.  If you can read the times, you can influence them and profit from them.

PROFIT? But isn't PROFIT EVIL?!
NO
Profit means acquiring resources with which you can affect THE WORLD.  Profit is the BEST way to strive for the New Present in which we wish to reside.
GREED IS GOOD. 

I don't care about profit, I care about equality.

[martinuzz]

Actually, economic growth is fine if/when we switch to green energy or expand to other worlds. Then there are more resources, or the ability to exploit them without fucking the environment, again.

This is exactly what I mean with my sig about optimism.

Green energy transition requires us to stop growing and consuming so much or we will never make it in time. I am 43. For my entire life, climate optimists have been going yadda yadda don't worry we will get greeener technologies.

The technology to colonize other worlds in such a way that it would allow for growth are so far away, if at all feasible, that we surely won't reach those if continue down our current path of evergrowing consumption.

We are heading full speed into one of the Great Filter's walls.

EDIT: Also, Novel, thank you for this question. It is a good one. Not going to grumble about cluttering the GD forum this time

[MaxTheFox]

Actually, economic growth is fine if/when we switch to green energy or expand to other worlds. Then there are more resources, or the ability to exploit them without fucking the environment, again.

This is exactly what I mean with my sig about optimism.

Green energy transition requires us to stop growing and consuming so much or we will never make it in time. I am 43. For my entire life, climate optimists have been going yadda yadda don't worry we will get greeener technologies.

The technology to colonize other worlds in such a way that it would allow for growth are so far away, if at all feasible, that we surely won't reach those if continue down our current path of evergrowing consumption.

We are heading full speed into one of the Great Filter's walls.

EDIT: Also, Novel, thank you for this question. It is a good one. Not going to grumble about cluttering the GD forum this time

I agree, I'm just saying it should be a temporary thing. Growth isn't bad by itself, it's just that current circumstances require it to be temporarily slowed or stopped.

This only applies to terrestrial resource exploitation, quality-of-life technology and space travel should get more funding.

[Scoops Novel]

There is absolutely nothing wrong with cultural or technological advancement and, sorry to break it to you, you are fighting windmills here.

We literally invented the nuke man. It's not without risk.

People need to get off their high horses if i have to say this man.

[McTraveller]

A columnist in my newspaper has a brilliant idea:

Every year, the entire world population gets to vote which ultrabillionaire is to be disowned of all his property, and the proceeds will be distributed to healthcare and education worldwide.

A great incentive for the super rich to spend their fortunes on a better world.

Also WTF. It's completely batshit insane if you stop and ponder for a second that Jeff Bezos 'earns' 8 million dollars per hour, just from passive value increase of his capital. Why do we still put up with this dystopia?

https://www.volkskrant.nl/columns-opinie/wat-zou-u-doen-met-8-miljoen-euro-per-uur~b99d74be/

I'm totally on board with limiting personal wealth to something like 200 years of your country's GDP per capita or something.  For the US this would be something like $15M - a surprisingly small amount when you think about it.

That said, the columnist's idea belies a complete lack of understanding of just how exactly wealth at that level actually works. I mean this is nation-state levels of wealth.  Put it this way - let's say you do nationalize Amazon and force it to divest all its shares to the general public.  How will the general public use wealth to actually do health care or whatever?

You'd either have to change the company policy to simply funnel more of its revenue into health care or education, and therefore limit the growth of the company, or you'd have to sell the shares and then basically end up where you started.

The first part of this is identical to taxation - society already takes a huge amount of Amazon's revenue for the public coffers.  If you want more public funds, fix the tax laws! If society wants more health care or education, why isn't society paying for it? If it's not available to buy, why isn't society making more of it!?  I mean yeah people say Amazon doesn't pay much in taxes, but I'd disagree; much of it is just attributed to Amazon's employees instead of Amazon itself.  But think about the income tax for the million Amazon employees - that is essentially society taking a portion of Amazon's revenue.  I'd be for the unpopular approach of taxing all business revenue only and not personal income; this would simply the lives of so many people.  This is unpopular both by businesspeople and for people that think somehow this would cause more harm to the currently poor than they already suffer.

The second option perhaps lets society benefit from capital gains, but society as a whole can't benefit that way from capital gains the way an individual can.  The reason is that at a global level, capital gains really are zero-sum unless the entire world is increasing its productivity.  That is, if you are the global population you can't gain wealth by moving money from one account to another - you can only gain wealth by using that money to build things, rather than consume things.

This is where you get into the philosophical debates - sure it feels good to strike down the uber-rich, but it won't actually do anything to help wealth inequality.

Sadly, the world is just not that simple.

[martinuzz]

A columnist in my newspaper has a brilliant idea:

Every year, the entire world population gets to vote which ultrabillionaire is to be disowned of all his property, and the proceeds will be distributed to healthcare and education worldwide.

A great incentive for the super rich to spend their fortunes on a better world.

Also WTF. It's completely batshit insane if you stop and ponder for a second that Jeff Bezos 'earns' 8 million dollars per hour, just from passive value increase of his capital. Why do we still put up with this dystopia?

https://www.volkskrant.nl/columns-opinie/wat-zou-u-doen-met-8-miljoen-euro-per-uur~b99d74be/

I'm totally on board with limiting personal wealth to something like 200 years of your country's GDP per capita or something.  For the US this would be something like $15M - a surprisingly small amount when you think about it.

That said, the columnist's idea belies a complete lack of understanding of just how exactly wealth at that level actually works. I mean this is nation-state levels of wealth.  Put it this way - let's say you do nationalize Amazon and force it to divest all its shares to the general public.  How will the general public use wealth to actually do health care or whatever?

You'd either have to change the company policy to simply funnel more of its revenue into health care or education, and therefore limit the growth of the company, or you'd have to sell the shares and then basically end up where you started.

The first part of this is identical to taxation - society already takes a huge amount of Amazon's revenue for the public coffers.  If you want more public funds, fix the tax laws! If society wants more health care or education, why isn't society paying for it? If it's not available to buy, why isn't society making more of it!?  I mean yeah people say Amazon doesn't pay much in taxes, but I'd disagree; much of it is just attributed to Amazon's employees instead of Amazon itself.  But think about the income tax for the million Amazon employees - that is essentially society taking a portion of Amazon's revenue.  I'd be for the unpopular approach of taxing all business revenue only and not personal income; this would simply the lives of so many people.  This is unpopular both by businesspeople and for people that think somehow this would cause more harm to the currently poor than they already suffer.

The second option perhaps lets society benefit from capital gains, but society as a whole can't benefit that way from capital gains the way an individual can.  The reason is that at a global level, capital gains really are zero-sum unless the entire world is increasing its productivity.  That is, if you are the global population you can't gain wealth by moving money from one account to another - you can only gain wealth by using that money to build things, rather than consume things.

This is where you get into the philosophical debates - sure it feels good to strike down the uber-rich, but it won't actually do anything to help wealth inequality.

Sadly, the world is just not that simple.

Nobody said anything about nationalizing Amazon. He's talking about people. So to use your Amazon example, if all voters decide Bezos is the worst scrooge in the world, Bezos' shares would be confiscated. All other shareholders still keep their Amazon shares. Amazon still exists and continues business as usual.
It wouldn't be impossible to create a trust that distributes the income it gets from the Amazon shares to UN healthcare and education projects worldwide.

[EuchreJack]

Uh, if you propose taking money from the uber-rich, then the uber-rich will just hide it better. News flash: Uber-rich are NOT stupid.

[MaxTheFox]

There is absolutely nothing wrong with cultural or technological advancement and, sorry to break it to you, you are fighting windmills here.

We literally invented the nuke man. It's not without risk.

People need to get off their high horses if i have to say this man.

Without advancement we would be still living in caves. And without nukes we'd have had World War 3 and 4 by now. Put down the weed.

Uh, if you propose taking money from the uber-rich, then the uber-rich will just hide it better. News flash: Uber-rich are NOT stupid.

Solution: more force.

[Loud Whispers]

Also WTF. It's completely batshit insane if you stop and ponder for a second that Jeff Bezos 'earns' 8 million dollars per hour, just from passive value increase of his capital. Why do we still put up with this dystopia?

Because until American foreign policy stops sucking the teat of oligarchal money there's not much foreign nations can do about gorillionaires

[McTraveller]

Nobody said anything about nationalizing Amazon. He's talking about people. So to use your Amazon example, if all voters decide Bezos is the worst scrooge in the world, Bezos' shares would be confiscated. All other shareholders still keep their Amazon shares. Amazon still exists and continues business as usual.
It wouldn't be impossible to create a trust that distributes the income it gets from the Amazon shares to UN healthcare and education projects worldwide.

Ok so technically it would be partial nationalization, not total nationalization. I maintain, though, that taking privately-owned shares and making them owned by the public is nationalization regardless of magnitude.

Also yes you could use a trust to manage those shares, but it sounds overly complicated to me.  Now you have to ensure the trust is managing the shares appropriately, you'd have to deal with the fact that companies (like Amazon) that don't pay dividends you only get funds by selling shares, etc.

- - -

The real issue though is just one of scale. I mean if I sell lemonade in my neighborhood and make $0.20 profit on each $2.00 glass, nobody really cares.  If I sell 100 glasses I make $20.  Is that wrong?  If I sell 100k glasses and make $20k what's the problem?  (Incidentally this puts me in the "pay the lemonade sellers a living wage, $20k/year isn't enough on which to live! category).

Say I sell 100M glasses, and ok so I had to build a company to help, so I personally only get $0.02 per glass instead of $0.20 - but I still make $2M!  Say I'm Amazon scale and I am selling $100B now, and only personally take a mere 1% of each dollar for myself.  I have just pocketed $1B.

Is this unfair? When does it become a problem?

(I am of course playing devil's advocate here - partially because I myself, even though I don't like wealth concentration, I have a difficult time coming up with any kind of "solution" that isn't based on emotion, feeling, or arbitrary "that is OK, but once you get that much, it's not" thresholds.)