[laser]

At scale the only utility of wealth is the power it gives to allocate the means of production. The vast majority of ultra high net worth individuals spend a tiny fraction of their wealth on personal consumptive activities, the only true "cost" born by society. But in exchange for this small cost aside from the benefits accrued to society existing in a natural state of free trade and commerce, society also gets to have its means of production managed by those most qualified to do so—those that created the means and have the most to gain from it continuing to operate well and most to lose from it failing to deliver value.

The counterfactual, a society in which the means of production are allocated by those that did not create them and do not stand to lose in their inefficient operation, is already familiar to many, in government services and old oligopolies with low insider ownership.

[mjamesaustin]

Yes, and they've optimized our economy in a wonderful place where the average worker today makes less than 50 years ago.

But don't worry – it's not important that poverty, hunger, sickness, and many other social ills still exist even though we have far more wealth than required to solve those problems.

Obviously the answer is that ending poverty is just an inefficient solution the Great Minds have concluded, and our money is better spent elsewhere. Sorry Timmy, but you should be proud as you're dying of cancer because a billionaire's next yacht will surely solve more problems (or at least generate more money) than your life is worth.

[laser]

No, you're simply misinformed likely due to widespread propaganda online. In the US the average worker makes about 10% more than 50 years ago. [1] And this is despite a massive outsourcing headwind of globalization that has made non-Americans vastly richer on average and pulled billions out of poverty globally. [2]

[1] https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/LES1252881600Q [2] https://www.macrotrends.net/global-metrics/countries/wld/wor...

[paulryanrogers]

Considering gains in productivity [0] and rising costs for housing, healthcare, and food, I'd say average workers have been exploited.

[0] https://www.reddit.com/r/dataisbeautiful/comments/1o5u4d1/oc...

[oatmeal1]

Inflation needs error bars. A small bias in how inflation is measured, over a long period of time, would create substantially different results. I personally don't doubt that we have more buying power, but we have basically just created better addictions that we waste that buying power on.

[wat10000]

Those that created the means of production? You mean the people who build industrial robots and roads and trucks?

[greedo]

"most qualified to do so"

Yes, us poors should be reminded that our bettors will create the means blah blah blah.

You know who funded Arpanet? How the transistor was developed? On and on, taxpayers funded it. And now we have leeches acting like teenagers who think they invented sex.

[laser]

Public investment is wonderful, even if the return on capital is lower than private allocations. Unfortunately, public investment is about 4% of GDP while total government expenditure (across all levels) is around 40% of GDP. Sadly this means a marginal dollar allocated to taxes under current spending is hardly going towards the next Arpanet or transistor. Compare this to when Arpanet was invented in 1969 public investment was about 10% of GDP on government spending 28% of GDP. So we've gone from a society using over a third of government spending to invest in the future, to less than a tenth.

[hankbond]

Do you have any links or topics you can drop on me to learn more about your perspective? I find it to be really interesting.

[laser]

For lack of knowing a more reliable modern source maybe something like “according to Mill, two types of consumption naturally flow from production: productive consumption, which aim is reproduction and the only one which adds to national wealth, and unproductive consumption, which aim is direct pleasure and diminishes national wealth”, effective social liberalism, and John Stuart Mill https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/09672567.2023.2...