Something needs to be done about the historic inequality in this country. It will undue all the “innovation” (ie selling ads and addicting people to the internet) that these tech billionaires have contributed.
Inequality will always be a thing. I am not saying it should be, just that it will be. Different people have different skill-sets, are in the right or wrong places at the right or wrong time, have different connections with people and a million other factors. Some are born with good RNG, some with a bad roll.
We as a society can barely get along with one another as this world gets more inter-connected and as more incompatible cultures are forced to mix with one another. There are too many conflicting and incompatible situations to fix before we can even get close to equality. That is the reality I can see. Perhaps if we divided ourselves up into a matrices of 512 or 1024 groups and each group populated a planet of their own then perhaps some of those planets could achieve the desired equality. Maybe. No idea how long it would last.
Even the sci-fi dream of Gene Roddenberry's totally equal future came with a lot of pain, wars, chaos and after all that there was still significant inequality and violence and this was from someone that was a staunch believe in all forms of equality. Even he had to keep it real enough or people would not be able to suspend disbelief yet still fictional enough to allow escapism.
I'm perfect fine not being as wealthy as Larry Page and having all the stress and drama that comes with it.
If you want to engage honestly, you can start by acknowledging that there is an enormous gap between believing that "record breaking wealth inequality is bad and causing societal problems" vs "no inequality should exist in any capacity."
If I am being honest inequality will always vary wildly based on the monetary policies and all the things I mentioned. To me anything else is getting into vague unattainable unrealistic ideologies. No harm in dreaming, everyone should. No harm in envy either even if some think it is unhealthy. It's all human nature.
If someone has a gazillion gazillion gazillion mega-bucks that does not harm me in any way shape or form. More power to them. I would be fine with them also collecting medicare and social security especially if they, like me, had to pay into social security their entire working life and could not opt out.
If we can hold out for machines like a holodeck then we can truly live any fantasy and that may be a nice form of escapism. No idea how long it will be for such machines to exist.
And that's fine. The pay out is also on a scale. I have no desire to "rob the rich". Everyone pays into corrupt governments and fraudulent wasteful government programs. I would rather cut 50% of all programs every year to remove the burden from all citizens.
It might be fine but it's not a brag that 'the billionaire is contributing'.
Reminder that the Republican policy for 40 years has been to 'starve the beast' and in other ways sabotage government programs so that exactly your argument can be presented. Prior to that intentional sabotage by Republicans and aligned political partisans against the United States we had much less fraudulent and wasteful government. When half of the politicians/oversite/management ACTIVELY wants government (and by extension the country) to fail and engage in policies intended to created failure in the government, it's hard to have effective government.
You are basically an anarchist then. There are examples of good governance in the world, where the rule of law hasn’t been eroded by the people you are set on protecting. The problem with billionaires is more about the problem of power in the hands of a few greedy people who change the balance of power in their favor.
We as a society can barely get along with one another as this world gets more inter-connected and as more incompatible cultures are forced to mix with one another. There are too many conflicting and incompatible situations to fix before we can even get close to equality. That is the reality I can see. Perhaps if we divided ourselves up into a matrices of 512 or 1024 groups and each group populated a planet of their own then perhaps some of those planets could achieve the desired equality. Maybe. No idea how long it would last.
Even the sci-fi dream of Gene Roddenberry's totally equal future came with a lot of pain, wars, chaos and after all that there was still significant inequality and violence and this was from someone that was a staunch believe in all forms of equality. Even he had to keep it real enough or people would not be able to suspend disbelief yet still fictional enough to allow escapism.
I'm perfect fine not being as wealthy as Larry Page and having all the stress and drama that comes with it.