[4wsn]

> In a more fair world a person should probably not be able to amass more than USD 1B by making the right bet on the stock market. That wealth is build in this way is anti-meritocratic.

It's anti-meritocratic for someone to invest their money intelligently in the stock market?

How do you determine the threshold where on one side they're entitled to the wealth they earned, and on the other side their wealth is unfairly earned?

[madsbuch]

> It's anti-meritocratic for someone to invest their money intelligently in the stock market?

I like how you threw in the word "intelligently" like this investments was planned and thought out from the beginning ;)

Thresholds are are not that hard to decide: It is about taxation that takes macro-economic behaviour and targets into account.

We have a political party that wants to reduce capital gains tax in Denmark (currently 27%/42%). However, analysis shows that this would benefit only the wealthiest 2% so the consensus is that this is a bad idea from a macro economic perspective.

The value of money is relative. Your 1 million dollars are worthless if everyone else has 10 million dollars. The second people act upon and realise that, we can start to build good economic systems.

[zaptheimpaler]

If you really don’t believe that it’s possible to invest intelligently, better than others that’s just wrong. There are many people who have done that. Like there are 10000s of investments and over any long period of time, some will so far far better than others. Some of those will be public companies or otherwise be investments that are open to all people.

[madsbuch]

I do believe that. But your choices has diminishing effects over long term. And also, in a meritocracy the "profit" needs to be congruent to the merits.

I think there is a broad consensus that talent won't make you a billionarie in the stock market, otherwise we had seen many more people become billionaires in the stock market.

If you really believe that that the person in question got billionaire on the stock market by their merits that’s just wrong.

[lobocinza]

Macro-economy shows that EU is doing wrong as US companies outperform EU companies. Wealth/power concentration isn't due to capitalism but due to human nature and society scale.

Even if success greatest factor is luck it still requires merit. By punishing success you're punishing people that put money into savings, that attempt to innovate and improve human society, that invest in promising areas. In the long term society will be stagnant. And I doubt that in the short term society will be more equal because forced distribution of wealth historically increases inequality.

[wokkel]

Maybe companies, but they are not what should matter. As far as know the amount of poor people in the usa is also way higher than in Europe. If we take that into account i'd say that Europe is doing just fine.

[jganetsk]

> As far as know the amount of poor people in the usa is also way higher than in Europe. If we take that into account i'd say that Europe is doing just fine.

Citation needed. No, Europe is not doing just fine. https://www.noahpinion.blog/p/americans-are-generally-richer...

[madsbuch]

this is a strawman. you can't eat gdp per capita for dinner. yes, US people produce more waetlh for rich people. but they don't take home that wealth.

try to find some statistics around spending power https://x.com/dima_heyqq/status/1758508340953448525?s=48&t=H...

[fiestaman]

From your link:

  Singapore – 7922 $ / month
  Qatar 5628
  UAE – 5585
  Kuwait – 5250
  Switzerland – 5232
  Denmark – 4894
  Germany – 4667
  Austria – 4484
  Saudi Arabia – 4419
  South Korea – 4076
  USA – 4066
  Canada - 4026
  Sweden – 3666
  France – 3556
  Hong Kong – 3219
  Spain – 3148
  UK – 3127
  Finland – 2827
  Israel – 2770
  Poland – 2753
  Portugal – 2220
  Russia – 2159
  China – 1823 (urban non-private) 1053 (urban private)
  Thailand – 1769
  Indonesia – 1051

[jganetsk]

That's all included in the article, which admittedly is behind a paywall. He goes into great detail, including purchasing power parity, means vs medians, etc.

And the conclusion is the US generates more wealth for the middle class than Europe does.

[RestlessMind]

Wasn't it just last year that the richest man and the richest woman in the world were both French? A statement at "Europe" level is far too generic, especially when it comes to economic policies or quality of life. Europe includes both Norway and Moldova and the variance in the quality of life is much higher than Massachusetts vs Mississippi.

[lobocinza]

> If we take that into account i'd say that Europe is doing just fine.

If things are so good why Europe is being dominated by authoritarian populists?

[madsbuch]

I don't really understand this comment. I also feels it needlessly sets up a polarisation nobody asked for.

I questioned the US paradoxes on philanthropy and meritocracy.

For all I care, you can hold on to your "America first, whatever country second", "F*k yea, America" and all that.

[lobocinza]

I'm not North American, the intention wasn't to polarize. I don't know what to answer. It feels like you don't like to have your beliefs questioned, so no point in talking.

[madsbuch]

I am sorry about that. please question my beliefs! I am just a bit in doubt on what belief you question?

you can derive from my statements that I don't think the current landscape in the US is entirely meritocraric or democratic as a single person can amass serious influence by investing in the stock market.

you respond that at least the US is richer than the EU, which is probably right. But I don't understand what belief it challenges? That it should justify a less democratic or meritocratic system?

please enlighten me :)

[JohnKemeny]

It's about putting an upper limit to the amount of resources a single person is allowed to amass and thus control.

We agree that we don't want a dictator. A single person with too much wealth can be almost as powerful, hence there are good arguments in favor of setting such limits.

[edanm]

And yet many people have far more actual power over people's lives, for example many elected and/or appointed officials.

If a cop in my city wants to ruin your life, there's a chance it'll be easier for them to do so than it is for a rich individual, not to mention the mayor of the city.

And unlike a billionaire, who'd have to spend money to actually "control people's lives" and is therefore limited by some constraint , an elected official gets to control people's lives with no constraint at all.

[tijtij]

What if the cop wants to ruin the lives of a large group of people? How about if it's a group people living in the next town over, can he get away with it? If he does manage to ruin the lives of people, will he get voted out or dismissed?

Bill Gates improved the lives of countless people around the world. He could as easily made the lives of countless worse if he wanted to or as an unintended consequence of his projects.

[edanm]

> He could as easily made the lives of countless worse if he wanted to or as an unintended consequence of his projects.

As an unintended consequence, sure, but that's more true of scientific/technological progress specifically than what Bill Gates did, which was closer to business and tech popularization. If a scientist invents a super-virus that kills everyone, then yes, obviously, they've made the world worse, but that's not really tied to money.

As for "as easily" making countless lives worse in other ways - I kind of disagree there. He made countless lives better because people voluntarily bought his products. He didn't coerce people, they chose to do it. There's no analagously easy way to spend money to ruin people's lives, and especially not if you consider the kind of scrutiny and backlash he'd receive.

[dillydogg]

Bill Gates is now largely considered a scourge in the public health community from my understanding

[lobocinza]

Can you expand on that? I don't like him but AFAIK most of the criticism come from conspirationists.

[dillydogg]

Yes, of course. I made a pretty books statement with no support.

My friends who work in public health research despise the foundation because they are absolute gatekeepers on what can and cannot be funded. If you are trying to do research that is not part of the foundations priorities, good luck, they say.

The Foundation is essentially only accountable to themselves and can have global impacts on health research distribution. A recent example is that their whims affected the speed and distribution of COVID vaccines.

https://www.politico.com/news/2022/09/14/global-covid-pandem...

[madsbuch]

This is a straw man: A police man can only ruin so many lives. He would have to be Santa Claus in order to harres the entire population of the US.

A policeman does not have the same impact over peoples lives as, eg., Jeff Bezos.

[edanm]

A policeman in my city could arguably have more impact on my life than Jeff Bezos does. What kind of impact do you think Jeff Bezos has exactly?

And obviously, a policeman is the lowest-power individual in this scenario - my city councilman probably has more impact than that.

[madsbuch]

It is because this debate is not about your life, but the life of the masses.

[nec4b]

Michel Jordan or Bill Gates are almost as powerful as Putin?

[mateo1]

>How do you determine the threshold

I think most people will agree the threshold to be in the few millions. Some will argue for 5 and few for 50, but nobody can produce $1B of value. Take control of it, sure, but produce, no.

[edanm]

> I think most people will agree the threshold to be in the few millions. Some will argue for 5 and few for 50, but nobody can produce $1B of value. Take control of it, sure, but produce, no.

That is just, on the face of it, false. Did Stephen King not produce millions and almost a billion in value? Despite writing books that have been read by millions of people, have turned into super successful movies, including some movies considered some of our best art?

[fennecbutt]

If I charge $1000 with a 90% profit and sell 10m units, can I claim all of that as having "produced value"?

If my movie budget is 300m but 200m of that went to high priced actors (think JD, RDJ getting paid 50m~) did that movie produce that amount of value?

Corporations have perfected consumer value extraction, allowing them to pay themselves more and bid higher against the competition, further increasing prices to consumers in an endless loop. It produces nothing of value for us, but we're too dumb to boycott this behaviour.

[edanm]

> Corporations have perfected consumer value extraction, allowing them to pay themselves more and bid higher against the competition, further increasing prices to consumers in an endless loop.

This flies in the face of most economic theory, and also flies in the face of reality. How many corporations are out there with 90% profit margins? Very few, if any.

> If my movie budget is 300m but 200m of that went to high priced actors (think JD, RDJ getting paid 50m~) did that movie produce that amount of value?

I'm not sure what the high-priced actors have to do with it, but the amount of value produced has nothing to do with the budget - it has to do with the tickets you sell. If your $300m movie tanks and no one ever goes to see it, you've in some sense created 0 value. If everyone in the world goes to see it and you make billions of dollars, you've created billions in value, as decided by actual people choosing to vote with their wallets to giving you money for your art.

The budget only figures into it in the sense that you need to subtract it from the revenue to decide on the actual profit.

[lobocinza]

Yes, people can produce value at scale.

[6510]

Apparently they can by giving it to the right entity at the right time.

What we could do (besides taxing it away) is configure a limit to what they are allowed to do with it.

I also see room for special titles with cosmetic privileges if someone accomplishes to pay the enormous tax.

It will be hard to find the right privileges. Something like a medal or an outfit is obviously doable. An annual fancy dinner for the group doesn't seem over the top. A daily 30 min slot on the TV for them to bid on exclusively, or each their own slot annually. Can grant 3 lectures in any university. It gets slightly dubious if we add special construction permits for locations no one else may build in.

The funniest I could think of, at 10 bl+ we seize all of your money and assets, you are forbidden to participate in the financial system. You get a robe and a cloak and a card with which you can eat any place, stay at any hotel, buy cloths, do shopping, take a taxi and take any flight with a maximum of 3 guests + partner and kids.

[madsbuch]

> Apparently they can by giving it to the right entity at the right time.

I want to understand this. If I buy a Novo Nordisk share on the market I never gave novo nordisk a single krone. My counter part is the seller (who rarely would be the company itself).

Generally I would say that investors provide liquidity to the market. Ie. the action of buying and selling are the ones that provide the value. Not holding.

You can conclude that a person holding onto a share for 30 years did not provide any value. That person was merely a rent seeker based on other people providing value by doing the asset allocation – In Denmark these people would be punished by the progressive capital gains tax, while the people trading ones in a while would benefit from a lower tax bill.

Or am I wrong?

[sokoloff]

If I give Novo directly $125 for a share of their stock, sell it 30 seconds later to you, who gives me $125.01, and you hold those shares for 30 years, which one of us really invested in Novo? Does your opinion change if we've agreed the night before that you'll buy the share from me?

I believe the long-term holders of equity investment are the true investors, regardless of whether they bought the shares in an initial offering or a secondary offering.

The initial offering market doesn't exist without the secondary market.

[madsbuch]

I am talking about the value you provide as an investor - regardless of where you got the share. I agree that it is indifferent whether you buy it from the company (in an IPO or in later emissions) or on the secondary market.

My point is that the value provide is liquidity. Ie. the property that owners of a stock con transfer that stock into money to use on other ventures. People that merely hold a stock does not provide liquidity. You need to have an open order on your stock to do that.

Now, please oppose me! My question is: What value to does term holder provide in virtue of them being long term holders?

[mlrtime]

All of your questions can easily be understood by a few minutes of investopedia. Start by reading about "Capital Markets" and then risk transfer.

You start the thread saying what people ought to do with their money and presumably having it forcefully taken with little understanding of financial markets. This is [one reason] why nobody takes these suggestions seriously about personally wealth.

[sokoloff]

They have (transitively) provided the company the original $125 to use in their operations.

In that example, you provided the money; I was just a middle-man.

Except as it pertains to employee/executive comp and future fund-raising, the company doesn't care about the secondary market liquidity. They care about the money they used over that 30 years to grow.

[6510]

> I want to understand this.

I certainly don't understand but there is no need. The mechanism (provided it is legal) isn't really important.

We need work, to earn enough to survive and have some quality of life. It must feel like you've contributed something useful and society rewarded you reasonably for it. Others will have to do work for you or it wont work. If there is no money for that it cant work.

I think 100 years before things get truly silly.

[vineyardmike]

This reminds me of ancient Athens. The rich would all compete to pay taxes, because your social status was based on your taxes, and you had special perks if you paid enough. It became a bragging opportunity to showcase your wealthy.

If you funded something with your taxes, you could hire the artist that made the sculptures. Say you build a new civic center with a theater. You have an incentive to hire a good artist to make the place in your preference, with your image, which means the city has more art. If it was an ugly building, it’d be an ugly building with your name on it. The rich during times of war would be separated into those that could fund a whole battleship and those that didn’t. If you shirked your responsibilities during war, you were viewed as a traitor who was so greedy they’d let the city fall.

Maybe we need to stop chastising the rich for building things in their names, but instead give them more opportunities to do so. Additionally maybe we should make all tax payments public, so you can see if your friends and family avoid taxes. Maybe people would become embarrassed to pay less taxes than their employees if everyone could look it up.

[rblatz]

”... he didn't pay any federal income tax.”

“That makes me smart.” - Donald Trump

[RestlessMind]

JK Rowling surely produced $1B of value. Much more in fact.

[madsbuch]

I would love to see the itemisation and deduction for this. In particular, how did you decide how much value was due to the publisher, movie studios, etc. vs. her?

We can safely assume that she would have produced absolutely no value, had there been no publisher.

Maybe the publisher produced $1B of value and JK Rowling produced none? They did after all select her over other authors.

[RestlessMind]

> Maybe the publisher produced $1B of value and JK Rowling produced none?

You are actually right that publisher produced most of the value... though only in the beginning when she was a nobody. I am sure publishing industry knows that too and read somewhere that their deals with new authors reflect that reality.

After the first 3 books when the series started gaining traction and people talked about lining up for the 4th one? It was absolutely the author who was producing the value. Publishing house couldn't have conjured up the remaining 4 books at the same quality - they are good at publishing, not good at creating. (Just ask HBO / Game of Thrones showrunners how it went after GRRM didn't write the last 2 books).

[chuckinthegump]

Nah. You were right the first time. Own it.

[scotty79]

> It's anti-meritocratic for someone to invest their money intelligently in the stock market?

Absolutely. To achieve such results you need so much luck and such a headstart that any merits you might additionally have are drowned in everything else that contributes to "your" "success".

> How do you determine the threshold where on one side they're entitled to the wealth they earned, and on the other side their wealth is unfairly earned?

Rule of thumb. About $10 million.

But it's not about who deserves what. It's about how much influence can society safely let a single random primate have.

The actual number will be determined by the political process. It's a number that seems sufficiently unachievable for 51% of people so that they feel safe to vote to heavily tax those who hace that much.

Current barriers to that is that the very wealthy own the culture and they are selling poor people the illusion that everybody can be the rich and what they are doing is actually building value not extracting it despite the fact that trillions of dollars have been extracted from the control of democracy and market and placed exclusively in their hands.

[edanm]

> But it's not about who deserves what. It's about how much influence can society safely let a single random primate have.

You are severely overrating how much influence $10m buys you, and very severely underrating how much influence you can have without personally having $10m dollars.

[scotty79]

$10 mln can have a lot of influence locally.

And please feel free to have $10 million. Above that it's starting to look like you aren't into it just to secure yourself but rather control and impoverish others.

There are various ways of attaining influence. Money is just the easiest and least controlled. Morally and practically. So let's plug the biggest hole first then worry about the rest.

[Brusco_RF]

>feel free to have $10 million

Thanks, but you don't get to tell me what I'm allowed to have. This is basic property rights.

>control and impoverish others.

This is quite plainly the fixed pie fallacy[1].

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lump_of_labour_fallacy#:~:text....

[scotty79]

Growing pie is same as fixed pie if the growth of inequality exceeds the growth of the pie. And it does. In US for last 50 years. Data shows that.

[lobocinza]

> Rule of thumb. About $10 million.

It's difficult to quantify but many government bureaucrats hold much more power than that.

Your "solution" replaces one problem with a worse problem while punishing sucess.

[scotty79]

What worse problem?

And why success should not be punished? Do you think people will voluntarily stay poor just because they might be taxed more if they reach 10 million?

And even if that would be the case. It's still good because inequality harms vast majority in the short term and everybody in the medium to long term so any disincentive to people getting rich at the expense of poor consumers is a win.

[lobocinza]

> What worse problem?

How would you solve the problem of wealth concentration in free-markets without incurring in greater wealth concentration under a closed-market?

> And why success should not be punished?

Because generally we want to reward and incentive the betterment of society.

> Do you think people will voluntarily stay poor just because they might be taxed more if they reach 10 million?

Maybe. It must be depressing to live in such a place. If you punish success, you reward mediocrity. But the thing is that those that reach 10 million or plus will always have the option to move their fortunes abroad, so it's the middle class that ends up paying the heavier burden in countries ruled by this mindset.

[scotty79]

> How would you solve the problem of wealth concentration in free-markets without incurring in greater wealth concentration under a closed-market?

I'd have free market with punishingly progressive taxation and redistribute proceeds of this tax as a basic income.

> Because generally we want to reward and incentive the betterment of society.

Financial success is intrinsically rewarded and it's orthogonal to betterment of society. Tou can't really tell if a rich person improved society or damaged the society just by looking at their wealth. No additional rewards are necessary. And some pubishement would be advisable if the scale of this success causes harm to the system that spawned it.

> But the thing is that those that reach 10 million or plus will always have the option to move their fortunes abroad, so it's the middle class that ends up paying the heavier burden in countries ruled by this mindset.

The mere presence of those who have more than $10mln is the cause of the system collapsing. They price out the middle class out of the real estate that they hoard for investment purposes. And of other limited resources as well.

Rich are more than welcome to leave. Their leaving improves lives of everyone else.

Owning money just means that society owes you some goods and services.

If you move out and request that some other country pays this debt to you then the country of your origin is better of.

Wealthy can be beneficial to capital starverd countries because their people can trade the wealthy low tech services to amass capital necessary to buy technologies from abroad.

So to help african countries we shouldn't be sending them food. We should cast away our billionaires there.

[lobocinza]

History disagrees with you.

[fennecbutt]

Algorithmic trading produces nothing of value and yet we allow it for some reason.

It actually detracts from the entire purpose of a stock market.

It has also created our poisonous modern environment where companies chase record profits every year, endless unsustainable growth with the added side effect of ass-covering for all their bad investments.

A lucky investment like this guy is probably fine but the truth is that the system is set up so that wealth begets more wealth; the wealthiest people have so much money that they don't have to be careful with it, look at how much Musk spent on Twitter as a toy for him to destroy, it doesn't matter because record profits and valuations ensure that dumbfuck CEOs and investors are bailed out of their dumb decisions.

Meanwhile we live in a biological society where our evolutionary path has made it exceedingly easy to manipulate people to hate based on sexuality, gender, race, etc ignoring the class war going on. We're too apathetic and ignorant to vote together, we could all share in our species' accomplishments but no, the suit and tie ruling class can have all the Bentleys they like so long as I get to vote for the guy that'll let me hate the people I want to hate.

[Brian_K_White]

"It's anti-meritocratic?" Yes.

"How do you determine the threshold?" Somehow.

It doesn't matter how you determine it or what you end up determing nearly as much as doing it at all by any means, and working out good procedures and results over time.

Currently, we have nothing at all. A sub-optimal limit, a downright wrong limit, derived from sub-optimal, downright wrong methods is better than none at all.

The Bezoss and the Musks of the world are not doing anything we need done badly enough to be worth what we give them.

Those people who like to run big projects will still be full of themselves and still seek to be in charge of everyone else and will still command the same resources even in a world where that isn't expressed as personal private ownership of the resources.

If the change in incentives changes anything, if there are people who currently became billionairs and produced Amazon and Facebook, who would not have bothered if they couldn't own it all, I am prepared to call that only a win.

We'd still get anything that was actually valuable to us rather than just valuable to the owner.

The only problem is needing to incorporate enough ownership and capitalism so that there is any motivation for excellence. If everything is purely communist and no one owns anything, then all products and services suck. There does need to be some sort of reward for making the electric car and the charging network actually good, and some anti-reward for not making it available to everyone. Patents and copyright need to be somehow quite different. Maybe they still exist and confer some sort of benefit, but nothing like now. Rewarding people for inventing or improving things only to let them keep it for themselves, and even retain ownership control through drm and software over products that were sold more than nullifies the value of getting them to invent the thing in the first place. More than merely negates. Their existence suppresses everyone else who might have done it differently.

Where is the line and how do you determine it is no conundrum at all. It's nothing but some boring policy grunt work to hash that out.