[benreesman]

I’m aware of the concept of loss aversion, but I think it as an explanatory factor for macro economics is a red herring: one of a long list of diversions in the grand company of all trickle-down economics.

People say that the without arbitrary incentives for arbitrary wealth that hard work and innovation won’t happen. Demonstrably false! The Internet that the current cartel is looting was a public private partnership! The best software these days is done substantially by passionate hobbyists!

People point to Silicon Valley and say “this wouldn’t be possible in Europe”. Then they point to the market capitalizations of the vampire megacorps that the world would be far better without as the success story.

People make other arguments slightly craftier: punitive taxes on the mega wealthy wouldn’t raise enough revenue to matter. True, but that’s not the point of a punitive wealth tax: the point of a punitive billionaire tax is to deprive billionaires of godlike power to restructure society in their own interest.

Anyone outside a few narrow bubbles can see that this is going very badly.

I’ll agree with you this far: it’s going to be a tall hill to climb to get people with homes worth 20 times what they paid and 401ks to vote for a sane future. But this is a comparatively recent phenomenon: older people used to be obsessively concerned with the prospects of younger people for trivial biological reasons.

These days? That “blood boy” transfusion thing Thiel is always on about? It’s a terrifying metaphor for the bigger picture. The procedure was pioneered so a father could keep his daughter alive at great risk to himself.

For some reason we now tolerate if not celebrate the vampire ideal of running that backwards.

[JumpCrisscross]

> These days? That “blood boy” transfusion thing Thiel is always on about?

This complaint is old as civilisation. Cato complained about the price of pickled fish exceeding that of ploughmen, and that was hundreds of years before even the Republic peaked.

> punitive taxes on the mega wealthy wouldn’t raise enough revenue to matter

Who said this?

I’m a fan of higher (not necessarily punitive) taxes on billionaires. But you can’t trade that for middle-class income taxes 1:1; the former is far more volatile.

[benreesman]

I’ve read Cato as well as undergraduate behavioral economics.

No tax on the wealthy is worth its weight in paper unless it breaks the back of fluid fungibility of money into policy. We have any number of ways to raise revenue, most of which would be trivial if Bezos cast one ballot like anyone else.

Directly or indirectly bribing legislators or regulators should be a capital offense.

[JumpCrisscross]

> No tax on the wealthy is worth its weight in paper unless it breaks the back of fluid fungibility of money into policy

These are separate policy fronts. You've got a water leak in your engine and are trying to solve it by banning rain.

> Directly or indirectly bribing legislators or regulators should be a capital offense

Define this as loosely as Redditors consider lobbying and you essentially shut down democractic involvement to all but those who can afford the trip to D.C. to advocate in person. Or, to Cato, the Tribal Assembly. Bet you'd get a lot of rich people on board with that rule!

[benreesman]

We’ve all been having some version of this conversation for decades: any time someone proposes limiting campaign finance or any other mechanism by which wealth becomes law some unfounded assertion gets made about how it will have unintended consequences that actually favor the people with the money.

“Trust me, I’ll get you over the barrel even more easily if you try to stop me. Shhh, just let it happen.”

I think it’s a bluff.

[benreesman]

In the sunset of dissolution everything takes on the aura of nostalgia, even the guillotine.

Society worked just fine without IO/PO striping, it worked just fine without K Street as an institution.

I don’t make this case because I take any joy in what will happen to Marie Antoinette. It’s my aim to persuade the investor class to cut a deal before it gets ugly.

[JumpCrisscross]

> Society worked just fine without IO/PO striping, it worked just fine without K Street as an institution

It worked fine without anyone in tech, too. Or crypto.

Agree on K Street. But Trump's 2024 campaign is praxis in disintermediating K Street. We need more precision.

> I don’t make this case because I take any joy in what will happen to Marie Antoinette. It’s my aim to persuade the investor class to cut a deal before it gets ugly

This strikes me as idealistic, maybe arrogant. Marie Antoinette didn't have a private jet or wireable funds.

Even then, most of France's aristocracy fled and lived fine. Violent revolution is not a romantic reset. It's a civilisation bowing out of the competition. They only fester now, post Industrial Revolution, because it's no longer profitable to invade unstable neighbours. The July Revolution, for example, was checked by the threat of foreign intervention. Hell, the "Westphalian" sovereignty Putin talks about was actually a contract permitting the great powers to invade the HRE to guarantee its Constitution.

[JumpCrisscross]

> any time someone proposes limiting campaign finance or any other mechanism by which wealth becomes law some unfounded assertion gets made about how it will have unintended consequences

Saying "directly or indirectly bribing" encompasses all democratic interaction. I indirectly bribe my electeds with votes when they do what I want. You need to be more precise than that language to make a point.

More pointedly, your issue is with money in politics. Not bribery, which is already illegal. Not paid lobbying, I don't think, unless we should outlaw the EFF. Not rich people per se, most of whom have the sense to shut the fuck up.

[benreesman]

I appreciate that the phrasing “directly or indirectly” is a far cry from a reasonable draft of a bill.

The Bipartisan Campaign Reform Act was better thought out by a long way. I was being informal given this is HN.

We all know the moments in time when the public got knee-capped: Brooksley Born was highly on task preventing 2008 via her completely legitimate powers via the CFTC before Summers and Greenspan popped a cap in her ass.

The same is about to happen to Gary Gensler and worse Lina Khan.

This capture is a wratchet until it isn’t. And the Robespierre interlude is something we all hope to avoid.

You sir are clearly educated and astute and traveled, a cut above by far the typical HN apologist for contemporary Friedman shit.

If even you are willing to argue to the bitter end then I’m very sad about how brutal things will soon become.