[door5]

>Sure, spend the $1T or so you would get from all the US billionaires on infrastructure. That's a decent fraction of US federal spending--for one year. Then it's gone. Now what do you do?

Again, you're interpreting my moral claim (billionaires are a policy failure) as specific advocacy of a one-time wealth tax on billionaires and no other shift of U.S. policy. I believe in a massive shift in U.S. economic policy to the left, which would entail a number of different reforms aimed at reducing wealth inequality over the long-term.

>What all of this leaves out is that wealth is not a zero sum game. Wealth gets created. If you want to reduce wealth inequality, you need to help more people create wealth, not try to take it away from people who have already created it.

You need to do both. I never advocated for merely expropriating billionaires' wealth and making no other policy changes.

>Jeff Bezos made his billions by serving the needs of the people; that's what Amazon does. Lots of people shop there because it gets them the stuff they need, when they need it, for an affordable price.

Jeff Bezos made his billions by exploiting his workers. Despite the fact that they built the company and do almost all of the work that makes Amazon possible, he reaps all the profits. Workers built Amazon, not merely Bezos alone, and you're totally erasing everyone else's contribution.

>Another way of putting what I've just said is that Bezos, in creating and growing Amazon as a corporation, created lots of wealth. A huge, efficient distribution system for lots of goods people want now exists that didn't exist before; that's a huge creation of wealth.

The technology that enabled this massive creation of wealth wasn't created by Bezos though, it was created through publicly-funded research. Why is Jeff Bezos a billionaire but not Tim Barners-Lee, when by any measure he did far more to enable the creation of wealth? And again, like I said earlier, it is a huge creation of wealth, but that wealth goes into Jeff Bezos' pockets, not ours, nor his workers'.

>Lots of them did so by not creating any wealth at all, just transferring wealth from other people to themselves.

All billionaires get their wealth this way, by exploiting their workers. Furthermore, all the big tech companies participate in anti-competitive behavior (vendor lock-in, etc) which benefits them individually but hurts the wealth of society as a whole.

There's no reason, for example, a publicly-owned or worker-owned company could not have accomplished what Amazon did. All they would have needed is sufficient access to capital -- the basic technology already existed & wasn't created by Amazon, they just built the institutional structure.

[geezerjay]

> Again, you're interpreting my moral claim (billionaires are a policy failure)

Complaining about poverty is addressing a serious problem.

Complaining about some people having more money than you just screams envy and childishness.

[door5]

These are two sides of the same coin. Our economy is structured so that wealth is concentrated at the top. This isn't just something that happens, it's a result of specific policy decisions. It went hand in hand with the dismantling of unions and the social safety net in this country in the 80s and onwards.

Regardless, if you're not a billionaire capitalist, why are you on their side? The rich are cognizant that capitalism is class struggle and openly state so, so why do you ally with them when they fight against you and your interests?

[geezerjay]

> These are two sides of the same coin.

No, they really are not. One is driven by envy and petty jealousy, and the other is motivated by a legitimate concern that someone might be living in poverty.

[hfern]

> Complaining about some people having more money than you just screams envy and childishness.

Where did he do that?

> No, they really are not. One is driven by envy and petty jealousy, and the other is motivated by a legitimate concern that someone might be living in poverty.

Screw off with the ad hominem. It doesn't suffice in lieu of a point.

> Complaining about some people having more money than you just screams envy and childishness.

So by your logic if you are poor and mention billionaires and income inequality then you are envious and full of petty jealousy. Therefore, only people who are well-off are able to even bring the subject up without being labeled as such. People who are well off have a vested interest in not bringing the subject up, as they maintain a comparative advantage with a cheap, underpaid supply of labor in their economy.

Every now and then, however, a well-to-do and handsomely paid software engineer with a conscious will bring up the subject. In which case, you can simply move the goalpost and label him as having petty jealously since they are probably not a billionaire.

In your framework, an economy with fatal inequalities will not be fixed. That's how you get revolutions.

[geezerjay]

> Where did he do that?

Everywhere. It's the central thesis. All statements were rooted on complaining about how some people are rich. If you remove them you're left with no assertion at all.

> Screw off with the ad hominem.

Excuse me? You're actually making that statement in defense of a personal attack based accusations of how someone is "on their side"?

> So by your logic if you are poor and mention billionaires and income inequality then you are envious and full of petty jealousy.

That's correct.

You can also pick other scapegoats such as the queen of england or Bill Gates, but they are not the reason why there is still actual poverty and malnutrition in the western world. You don't attack poverty by mounting petty propaganda attacks on the mega-rich.

[door5]

>they are not the reason why there is still actual poverty and malnutrition in the western world.

Why is there poverty and malnutrition in the western world if not because of capitalism? Neoliberal capitalism has been the dominant economic system in the west since the 80s.

[door5]

You ignored my point - that the concentration of wealth is an inhibitor of solving poverty, and you failed to explain why you feel the need to defend billionaires' interests when they couldn't care less about yours, unless you're a billionaire.

[pdonis]

> you're interpreting my moral claim (billionaires are a policy failure) as specific advocacy of a one-time wealth tax on billionaires and no other shift of U.S. policy

No, I'm disagreeing with your moral claim and illustrating how any policy that does not allow for creation of wealth is doomed. And any policy that does allow for creation of wealth needs to consider the reasons why people are willing to do it. Historically, satisfying leftist social and political dogma has not been among those reasons.

> The technology that enabled this massive creation of wealth wasn't created by Bezos though

Yes, it's true that wealth creation is never done in a vacuum--it builds on previous wealth creation. The technology that enabled Amazon's massive creation of wealth was another massive creation of wealth. Some of the initial technology for the Internet was created through publicly funded research, but the actual buildout of the infrastructure, along with optimizing the technology for a global network--the actual creation of that massive amount of wealth that connects every computer in the world to every other--was done by companies wanting to make money by selling Internet services.

> All billionaires get their wealth this way, by exploiting their workers

This is your opinion, not fact.

> all the big tech companies participate in anti-competitive behavior (vendor lock-in, etc) which benefits them individually but hurts the wealth of society as a whole.

Then why not focus on the anti-competitive behavior, instead of trying to remake the entire society in your leftist image?

[door5]

>Then why not focus on the anti-competitive behavior, instead of trying to remake the entire society in your leftist image?

because my leftist image is good

[pdonis]

Really? Please show me all the wonderful countries built in your leftist image where everyone is rich and nobody has to worry about poverty.

[door5]

Socialism is a material struggle, it isn't an idealist Utopia where everything is perfect. It's a process. And most socialist regimes have been in the developing world, which had much less to work with and much weaker infrastructure. Regardless, China has lifted nearly a billion people out of extreme poverty over the last 40 years. I also think that Cuba's accomplishments have been admirable, despite decades of aggression and embargo from the United States. You may compare these regimes unfavourably to a developed country, but that's an unfair comparison, because they weren't developed countries before socialists took over. Compare them to other, capitalist countries in the global south and I think there is no question what model works better

[icelancer]

>> Jeff Bezos made his billions by exploiting his workers.

You keep stating this like it an absolute fact. It is an opinion. And while it is true in some cases, it is definitely not true in the majority of them. If it is, please show your work that the majority of Amazon workers have been specifically exploited by the actual definition of the word, not "we paid them less for their labor than we got value out of it," which is called "running a business," not exploitation.

>> Why is Jeff Bezos a billionaire but not Tim Barners-Lee, when by any measure he did far more to enable the creation of wealth?

Building the best mousetrap does not entitle you to billions of dollars. This is a feature, not a bug.

>> Despite the fact that they built the company and do almost all of the work that makes Amazon possible, he reaps all the profits. Workers built Amazon, not merely Bezos alone, and you're totally erasing everyone else's contribution.

No, he does not. Have you heard of shares of stock that are publicly traded and also offered as a form of compensation to employees, which are literally exactly the opposite of what you are saying?

>> There's no reason, for example, a publicly-owned or worker-owned company could not have accomplished what Amazon did.

Then.... why hasn't any done a fraction of what Amazon, Microsoft, Netflix, Google, and others have done?

Your arguments are literally false. The facts are not in dispute here, especially on the claims that Amazon reaps all the profits - a lookup on AMZN and the various shareholders of said financial instrument is all you need to know about that particular part.

[door5]

We could do this all day, but the fundamental difference here is you look at the normal functioning of capitalism and think it is just and good, while I look at it and see it as highly exploitative, unethical and inhumane. I think concentration of wealth and power in the hands of an unelected few is bad, and I think the world that these people have created is also bad. I think that we as a species can, and must do better.