[cirgue]

> Charity is problematic too, though. It's subject to the whims of the wealthy, and worse it's damaging to the dignity of recipients - it denies them agency in their own well-being.

What would you have the ultra-wealthy do? Give their wealth to the government? Distribute their wealth evenly to everyone? What is a non-problematic way to use concentrated wealth to help people, in your view?

[barrkel]

Structure the economy so that ultra-wealthy don't exist.

I didn't say I knew how to do that. That's the hard problem.

[cirgue]

You misunderstood my question: What should the ultra-wealthy, who exist in the here and now and will not be evaporating overnight, do if they feel like helping other people?

[barrkel]

And I keep saying I don't know how. If I knew how to fix these problems, I'd consider becoming a politician or philosopher or finding some other way to influence the debate.

This would be a start: how about ultra-wealthy advocate and lobby for a wealth tax, and stop feeding their gains through tax avoidance schemes?

All I know is that today, there's too much levering power in capitalist structures, that feeds too much surplus to owners of capital. I know all the arguments against alternatives; I want to preserve economic incentives, innovation and investment. But by the same token innovation is definitely reducing the utility of labour, and that's a problem that needs solving too. If every want and need in life could be produced automatically with no labour (the end result of innovation, where innovation has itself been automated), who would want to live? What meaning would there be in life?

At the end of the day the human animal is a tribal, social creature who wants to be useful to his or her neighbours, to make his or her way in the world with his or her head held high, knowing they make a positive contribution. That drive is ultimately not compatible with capitalist economics, which seeks efficiency and encourages consumption (the two, ironically, being in opposition to one another, ensuring that we'll never feel like we have enough, even if we didn't live on a hedonic treadmill).