[jlawson]

> If we limited individual wealth to $999 million--just outright capped it, and enforced that--it would not impact these people in the slightest.

It would certainly impact their willingness to do the company-building that creates all those innovations and jobs.

With such a rule, Tesla wouldn't exist, no electric cars, no SpaceX, no cheap advanced launch tech; basically most of the modern world would be choked in the crib by taking away the incentive to build it.

[int_19h]

If some person isn't willing to do company building because they are already at the cap so it won't make them any more money, that just means that someone else will do that. We have a planet of 8 billion humans; there's no shortage of human talent.

[gjsman-1000]

This is an untested assumption, as it takes quite a bit of CapEx without return to start a rocket company, or a tunnel boring company, or a car company.

[jlawson]

From experience, there is a huge shortage of human talent.

Some people really are exceptional and there are very few of them.

How many Einsteins do you think are just kicking around? How many Robin Williams's or Tom Hanks's?

How many Kobes? We know not many because there's a huge search to find more.

There aren't 20 more Elons waiting in the wings there. Or 20 more Jensens. And so on.

It's actually far more rational as a society to pay the one guy who can create 100B his 10B for it.

[int_19h]

There's thousands of Einsteins kicking around. The majority of them are in places like India and Africa, not having access to resources that would allow them to realize that potential.

And the last thing we need is 20 more Elons.