[dreinhardt]

There is a sound argument that to create wealth you need a society. We all contribute to it and if we didn’t there wouldn’t be a society and even if you had a billion dollar or a few tons of gold you couldn’t get anything.

At the point where the concentration of wealth in the hands of a tiny fraction of members of society becomes detrimental to the functioning of our society it is necessary to redistribute before society stops functioning.

How you feel about isn’t very important.

[pibechorro]

If I build a raft out of driftwood, risk my life in deep water, and bring back nurishment for my family while you starve on land; its to my advantage to help you but its by no means my obligation nor am I better off because of "society". Its not a zero sum game and individual effort is not dependent on an imaginary collective.

[nucleogenesis]

If you built that raft using plans, materials, and labor of society, then you risk your life to go out to the deep water to get food, then your contribution is just the last bit. To suggest it’s so important that the others involved deserve no spoils of your work (put another way - you say your effort deserves more spoils or sole control of the spoils) - then you’re selfish at the very least (although I’d say you’re among the worst kinds of humans to share society with) and exactly the reason why laws that extract aggressively from the wealthy are the only way to inch capitalism toward something resembling equity for most.

[germandiago]

That would be true if you get plans, materials and labor for free. What you do is to pay for it under mutual agreement. So you do not contribute the last bit. You contribute in all the chain, because each of those people got what they wanted so that you can build what you wanted.

Your argumentation is incorrect.

By the way, what is equity? If you come spoil me because I make money, what kind of equity is that if you do it to me just because I make money? Equity would be to not spoil anyone. Trying to punish them on the basis that they make money (or that they make little, I do not care) is not equity. It is something else.

[Mckckdk]

Would you support 99% of your income be extracted because you contributed only the last bit?

[germandiago]

On top of that it is not true you contributed the last bit. Take a look at my reply. You contribute in all the chain, always.

There is no other way. You are not going to get anything for free in that chain. Every step in the chain, from employing to get products to work to deliver your stuff are paid in one way or another.

[germandiago]

To create wealth you need a society. But it is not less true that the society makes you wealthy because they need YOU. It is an exchange.

When it is detrimental? Who decides that? I am against monopolies. Telling from offices all the others what to do or not when they are not harming anyone is also a monopoly. Governments are monopolies in many areas.

What makes you think that with fewer regulations there would be even more uneven wealth? I cannot reply to this, since it is just fiction, but fewer regulations means more services, which unfavors monopolies and drops prices for services. Making people more elligible for acces to those services as well.

[zarzavat]

What happens when the wealthy people decide that they don't like what you have planned for them and decide to set up somewhere else? Exit visas?

Wealthy people get to choose which jurisdiction they submit themselves to. That's just how the world is.

[Sander_Marechal]

That's where global taxation comes in. See e.g: https://www.theverge.com/2021/11/1/22756934/g20-oecd-15-perc...

[Krisando]

Did you know that's only covering 19 countries + EU?

[sokoloff]

Is there strong evidence that the concentration of wealth has reached the point where that is detrimental to a point where society is in danger of stopping functioning?

[rjmunro]

> society is in danger of stopping functioning

We shouldn't have to wait for society to nearly break down in some catastrophic way before we try to make things better.

Some sort of society will continue to "function", but it is likely to be a worse society for everyone, even the ones nearer the top of the wealth curve as they will constantly be worried about being robbed etc.

[germandiago]

At the same time, we should not be taxing people who make societies work with their money on the basis of "just in case" when the "just in case" means deincentivating those people, which create the wealth in the first place, and, on top of that, stealing them in the name of redistribution without any evidence of doing something good.

In fact, I would say there is plenty of evidence that too much redistribution impoverishes societies and, on top of that intervention, there is always a layer of corruption, way more than in more free countries (free as in non-economic intervention to wealth).