[balance_factor]

> skills and professionalism can be valued by the free market by people competing for them; why, despite pure populism for the lowest common denominator, someone wants to return to something like this, is completely beyond me.

The real determination of where the money goes is by the owners of the business. If one looks over the Forbes 400 richest list, we can see the heirs who drain off so much profit each year from the labor of those who work - the Kochs, the Waltons, the Johnson family. The Rockefellers fell off the list in the past few years, $2 billion is the individual cutoff and I suppose Forbes doesn't know of any individual in the family worth more that that. But I can assure you if they and their three siblings are worth 1.5 billion each, and their first cousins are all worth 1.5 billion each, they are not out there breaking the bricks.

It's amusing to hear about meritocracy and the rat race for education, skills etc. when these heirs are the people controlling the economy, and causing so many economic and other problems due to its increasing lopsidedness towards them. What are their skills and professionalism that are valued? The money they suck off from those who work is the truest lowest common denominator, rule by parasites. At least Lenin, Stalin and Molotov rose due to their merits, not their birthrights. Russia went from being a country pushed around by the Japanese, with an GDP equivalent to 1917 Brazil, to a superpower sending satellites, men into space, probes to the Moon (the first country to do so). It also had little crime and little poverty.

I am supposed to get into a tizzy about someone with less skills getting the same pay as me, when the money is being sent off to the heirs who do no work? I certainly would prefer that the people actually doing the work alongside me get the money.

[genericthrow]

> At least Lenin, Stalin and Molotov rose due to their merits, not their birthrights. Russia went from being a country pushed around by the Japanese, with an GDP equivalent to 1917 Brazil, to a superpower sending satellites, men into space, probes to the Moon (the first country to do so). It also had little crime and little poverty.

Following your logic so did Hitler. Whew, my first Reductio ad Hitlerum ever, but to my defence you've started with tasteless jokes.

It's easy to fell into this 'communism was good idea but bad implementation' meme. I've lived in communism era in western Europe and believe you me same things were happening as you describe (Kochs, Waltons etc), there was still '1%' just not mentioned in newspapers as 'those who got wealthy by hard work'. Lower and middle classes were basically under oppressive regime.

[golergka]

> Russia went from being a country pushed around by the Japanese, with an GDP equivalent to 1917 Brazil, to a superpower sending satellites, men into space, probes to the Moon (the first country to do so). It also had little crime and little poverty.

Russia went from one of the leading european powers to a country ran like a prison. It's easier to score up country-wide achievements like moon probes if you have slaves instead of citizens — a system that even the legendary lead engineer Korolev was a victim of.

[wyager]

> we can see the heirs who drain off so much profit each year from the labor of those who work

If successful people couldn’t pass ownership onto their heirs, the value of ownership itself would drop dramatically. If Bud and Sam Walton knew they couldn’t pass on their business to their kids, they would either have never done it in the first place or they would structure the business to close out well before they died. Neither of these is good.

Most complaints about rational capital allocation, including this one, are based on a failure to generalize or punch through enough layers of indirection.

[pfooti]

Hot take: if the Waltons (and their ilk) had not built the walmarts of the world, to maximize profits by externalizing costs (food stamps for employees who are not paid a living wage) and then dodging the taxes that pay for that externalization, then yes. Things would undoubtedly be better.

Pretty sure that if there were a much higher estate tax and other ways to de-incentivize generational wealth inequality that people would still find ways to exploit a semi-capitalist system by arbitraging the interface between public good and private service (c.f., the modern 1099 economy)

[maksimum]

> If Bud and Sam Walton knew they couldn’t pass on their business to their kids, they would either have never done it in the first place or they would structure the business to close out well before they died

How confident are you in those conclusions? There are plenty of very rich people who claim that they don't intend to leave much for their heirs.

[nine_k]

They still can command what happens to their capitals after their death.

Remove this ability, and incentives change dramatically.

[golergka]

> when the money is being sent off to the heirs who do no work?

Do you want to use your resources to help your children thrive? If so, then you've got to be OK when extremely rich to exactly that. It might not seem "fair" when you asses heirs as individuals, as if they appeared out of thin air - but they didn't. The original founder decided to pass on his wealth to his children, as most of us would.