[rmunn]

> Obviously nobody needs more than that per year ...

You are, of course, in a position to know what everybody on Earth needs.

What if someone wants to give $10 million away per year to worthy charities? Will you tell them they can't?

Or... what if someone wants to own something you consider wastefully expensive? Is it your job to tell them they shouldn't? Or is it wiser to adopt the position of humility and say "Well, it's their business, not mine, what they spend their money on"?

It's easy to be motivated by envy, even when we think we aren't. It's much better for your soul, and your peace of mind, to adopt the "let them" mentality, and not decide what other people, whose lives you know nothing about, need.

[apexalpha]

There is a big difference between 'needs' and 'wants'.

I'll defend the argument no one 'needs' more than 1.5 mill per year.

I agree with you greed is endless and lots of people want more and will rationalize their hoarding while others, often in their own communities, suffer.

[zeroCalories]

No one really "needs" anything. You can live perfectly well on minimum wage. But really, you could survive perfectly well as a slave. Infact, the world is content for you to die and get nothing. All "need" is "want". All you deserve is what you have leverage for.

[benj111]

This is a global audience. Define 'minimum wage'

[array_key_first]

This comment feels like playing stupid to such an absurd degree that the argument loses any semblance of thought and you sound like you're yelling at clouds.

Obviously being a slave is not the same as being a millionaire. If you make your argument this reductionist then you don't even sound human anymore, let alone well reasoned.

[queenkjuul]

You absolutely cannot live perfectly well on minimum wage lmao

[zeroCalories]

What you mean is that you can't have everything you want on minimum wage

[queenkjuul]

No, i mean precisely "you can't live perfectly well on minimum wage" -- housing is not a want

[jdub]

Opponents of obscene wealth/income inequality are typically not motivated by envy – that is your own projection.

[queenkjuul]

For going on so much about needs, it's very funny that your one example is about wants

[rmunn]

Interesting vote-to-downvote ratio my comment got. Seems there are a lot more people with anti-libertarian beliefs hanging out at HN at the moment than there are people who lean libertarian.

Since it was not my intention to engage in ideological battle (you'll notice I framed it as "good for your soul and peace of mind" rather than make any kind of political argument for it), I'll leave it there and not reply to any of the answers I got. But it was quite enlightening to see how people reacted to that comment.

[blackjack_]

I guess to reply to the OG, I’m very conservatively putting a bound on a cozy upper middle class lifestyle locally. Linus lives in Portland, Oregon. There you can comfortably live an upper middle class lifestyle on 200k or 300k. Again, conservatively take the upper bound. 1.5M >> 300k, so it’s more than anyone needs to live a cozy life. Technical needs are much lower, but this is a lazy mathematical proof where I prove the Linus number is bigger than a thing much higher than practical physical and emotional money needs and so don’t need to strictly define them.

In your argument case, those are all “nice to haves” (like much of the stuff in an upper middle class lifestyle), but it would be very difficult to argue they are necessary to live life, even at a relatively wealthy capacity.