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by Kon5ole 977 days ago
>We have a dystopia now with billionaires and their private space companies, buying newspapers, tracking our every move. We'd have LESS of a dystopia if we prevented them in the first place.

History teaches us the opposite. The worst dystopias are the ones where you have only one billionaire who also controls the military, and that is inevitably what happens when you try to limit the number of billionaires.

The best countries to live in tend to have a high number of billionaires per capita, which is natural since freedom and prosperity will generate billionaires. Tax havens twist this statistic of course but look at countries like Canada, Germany, Scandinavia, they are all up there and certainly no tax havens.

1 comments

>History teaches us the opposite. The worst dystopias are the ones where you have only one billionaire who also controls the military

Explicitly not what I, or anyone else, is suggesting.

Or it could be that billionaires, being able to live anywhere, choose nice places to live - while not paying their fair share and contributing to the current situations we have now.

We don't want, or need, billionaires and we should stop that kind of ridiculous accumulation of wealth. Make stock buybacks illegal again, make the top marginal tax rate 70%, and make things work for workers (and not global capital).

Again, stop carrying their water.

>Explicitly not what I, or anyone else, is suggesting.

To be fair you hadn't suggested anything except "Billionaires shouldn't exist" yet, which is a sentiment that so far in history has only achieved dystopian results. How is your plan different?

Taxing and limiting the influence of billionaires and ensuring that workers are not exploited unfairly are fine suggestions. We can add prevention of monopolies and cartels to the list as well, but that's still a very different idea from "Billionaires should not exist".

I'm not carrying any water for anyone, you have just failed to make a persuasive argument for your position.