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by ForHackernews 1385 days ago
It sounds like your thinking on this issue is confused by your own hatred of government and/or taxation. There would be absolutely nothing preventing wealthy people from building libraries or even putting their names on them.

Anyway, we are not going to agree: you think a handful of hyperwealthy families will be better for humanity in the long term; I think a broadly shared prosperity is better. I believe historical evidence is on my side, but that's a much longer discussion than I'm willing to have here.

1 comments

Thing is, I don't want it to be a handful of families who benefit from this, but as many as possible. Give people a chance to build and far more than you believe will take advantage of this to make something good. I don't care about "humanity", but about actual people — and I want as many of them to have a chance, and to not simply to be lumped into an undifferentiated mass, as possible.
To be clear: I'm proposing something like "no one can pass on more than $1m (or whatever number) inflation-adjusted dollars to their kids". Realistically, this policy would only affect a tiny fraction of extremely wealthy families. (Reminder for HN readers: the median household net worth is something like ~$70k)

If you say you care about actual people, you should care about giving more of them a chance, and worry less about protecting the non-existent property interests of the dead.